#she would’ve been dead so many times had it not been for him. and she’ll smash a gravelrock over his head as many times as she has to-

[fujii-draws]

Sinnoh you will always be one of the few I can count on for unhinged tags ❤️

VERY long Ribbons/Grovyle tangent cause I do not talk about them nearly enough.

[Instead of the usual, “Hero finding a young Treecko in the future.” It’s switched around to “What if Grovyle found Hero when they were young.”]

~The Past~

—————

-Grovyle was going on one of his usual dungeon crawls to stock up on items— until he heard nearby sniffling. It’s there in that moment where he finds Ribbons; hiding under the stump of a hollow tree curled up in a ball. The sight of a small, terrified girl burned in the back of the wood gecko’s mind.

He lowered himself to the ground, his snout and head poking out as he got a good look at the human— Something that made her reel back and startled her; before Grovyle offered her a smile. Something the stoic grass-type rarely ever did. Coaxing her to come out.

And although very hesitantly, she did. Slowly coming out before he extended a hand towards her. Helping her outside the stump.

Grovyle didn’t know why… but seeing her so disheveled and terrified… it reminded the grass-type of himself when he was a Treecko. He decides to then to take Ribbon’s under his wing. Holding her hand as he walked her back to his main hideout… with the company of two other Pokémon.

-He introduced the small human to the pink fairy and ghost-type. Celebi was overwhelmingly cheerful. So much so that her mischievous energy rubbed off on Ribbons in the future. Much to Grovyle and Dusclops(and eventually Dusknoir’s) dismay…

But it was also probably why Ribbons made it her mission to use this newfound ability from the fairy-type to do the impossible— to get Grovyle to smile. A rarity in which even the time-traveling pixie and cyclopean ghost never managed to accomplish. Ribbons remembered how the grass-type done so just to comfort her during their first meeting… and she wanted to see it again.

-She tried many times with her antics, only to end in failure. Barely making a dent in the grass-type’s stoic demeanor. The first time she managed to get a chuckle made the other two stare wide-eyed towards the snickering grass-type— and back at the human, somehow being the only one to ever make him emote so much. She didn’t know why he tried to hide his smile. She loved it. (And Grovyle did not overhear this detail and began to open up only specifically around her because of it. Nope.) (and it’s not a power she holds over him for many years to come.)

(That isn’t to say Ribbon’s didn’t slightly rub off on him too, with her naivety and innocent, trusting behavior. Grovyle being much, much more reserved and cautious… before she came along.)

-Dusclops… was interested. A human? In the future no less? It was unheard of.

…But he also thought that Ribbons would be a detriment to their group with how… little and runt sized she’d been, barely surviving as is. Acting rather closed off towards the human at first, not trying to get attached. That is until she begins seeking Dusclops out. Trying to befriend the slightly large mummy-looking Pokémon. Although slowly— she ends up winning him over. The Beckon Pokémon now having unintentionally formed a bond with the weakest link in their quartet due to how… oddly endearing she was. A mistake he’d repeat make yet again in the present.

Even with her dimensional scream ability making Ribbons a somewhat useful assest to the team— the three take on the roll of her guardians in a weird way. Dusclops being the one to fret the most over her despite his dismissive behavior towards her in the beginning (hm.)

And then there’s Grovyle.

The one who probably spent the most time with her. He saw just how terrified and scared she was of the world around her. Grovyle tried his best to teach her how to survive— training her physically. (as Dusclops taught her mentally/intellectually)

Something Grovyle started to notice was how her demeanor changed when the grass-type was close. Acting almost… braver? Confident? It was like she was drawing her strength from him… something that made the grass-type a little emotional as her confidence grew more with each day. (She told him as much. Hoping some day she could be a role model to someone the same way Grovyle was to her.)

…He also noticed that the humans were also really susceptible to the cold, much like his cold-blooded lizard self—the brunette-haired girl having no real source of warmth around her neck… Grovyle dug through his matted Treasure bag, asking for her to come over. Before tying on a brown, Patsy ribbon around her neck. An item that she’d grow to love and cherish for many, many years.

The human girl absolutely adored the gift, thanking Grovyle before hugging him suddenly. Running off to show the other two her newfound item.

-She’d fidget and re-tie it whenever it slightly loosened around her neck… it was then the grass-type Pokémon finally decided on a name for her. Up until that point, she didn’t have a name— the other three opting to call her things like “human girl” “sweetie” or “kid/kiddo” (Dusclops, Celebi, and Grovyle in that order.)

So when Grovyle decided that her new name would be “Ribbons”… she kept it.

(this also explained why when inside of Wigglytuff’s room… Ribbons stared at the Green Aura Bow, before rejecting the item harshly. Her claws gripping onto the brown scarf around her neck.) (…although the color of the bow comforted her)

-The two end up forming an unspoken familial bond. Ribbons seeing Grovyle as her older brother… and the grass-type did her baby sister. This was further solidified by the way Ribbons followed him everywhere and copied his mannerisms. All the way down to his scrunched up, embarrassed face. (Something that greatly entertained the other two Pokémon.) Even if Grovyle wasn’t the best at showing how much she meant to him with his sternness for her to stay hidden and close whenever they traveled, or for her to stop goofing off so much, or his relatively stoicalness… Ribbons knew he did so because of how much he cared. He cared too much. Not wanting anything bad happening to her to the point that he’d more often than not sacrifice things to his detriment, but for her benefit. (Offering her all of the apples he found, taking the brunt of the damage from vicious Pokémon… ) It was one of the main things the two argued over.

-This… was also something Ribbons picked up on and inherited besides his courage. Something that Grovyle never forgave himself for. He never wanted her to adopt his self-destructive, reckless behavior.

-Another thing was his inability to tell her the full truth. He never wanted to scare her with the information of their disappearances. So the grass-type never told Ribbons (and made sure the other two promised him to never do so aswell.) (Until Dusknoir promptly breaks said promise out of desperation to tell Ribbons the gravity of their situation after the Stoneship fight. Grovyle glaring daggers towards the Ghost-type before hearing Ribbon’s quiet, yet terrified “W-What..?” Falling back on her old fears when she was once human—Grovyle taking his attention fully off of Dusknoir to try and comfort her.)

But even after any heated argument. Grovyle will find the human girl coming back to sleep right next to him on his hay bed, still very much frustrated with the lizard… but not pushing her away when she snuggled up to him. Grovyle reciprocated the hug right back— putting his head over hers.

Out of her relationships with the three, her bond with Grovyle was the most unbreakable.

…So when Darkrai threw the attack that disoriented the two, Grovyle gripping Ribbons’s arm as tightly as possible. His claws beginning to even tear into her skin. (A scar on her paw that never went away. She uses it as a reminder to show the woodland gecko how hard he tried to save her whenever he felt guilty.) Trying so desperately to not lose her— even if it meant being thrown out of the passage of Time aswell—

…It’s Ribbons who lets go, smiling up so brokenly at her older brother, before disappearing out the passage. And the grass-type can only watch in horror, as the self-sacrificial behavior Ribbons inherited from him came back to bite Grovyle in the worst way imaginable.

By the time Grovyle lands in the present— his claws are trembling wildly. Not even realizing his own tears began to mix in with the rain from the thunderstorm.

——————

~The Present~

——————

When he’s collecting the Time Gears alone— the desperation of it all comes back full force. If he lost her, the least he can do is finish this mission. For the future. For her.

-When Grovyle sees Ribbons for the first time in the Northern Desert, he doesn’t recognize her as an Eevee. But the item around her neck and voice both sound so eerily similar. As if this random Pokémon was haunting him for his past failures. If anything, the similarities make Grovyle even more angry towards the quadraped Pokémon.

-Crystal lake… really sucked. Before, Ribbons didn’t know what to feel about Grovyle. On one hand, he was a wanted criminal. Threatening the lives of every single Pokémon. But on the other hand… she felt so… sad? And guilty? Why would she feel guilty? And why was it that he was apologizing every single time for every little thing he’d done? Like he’d lost his confidence in his abilities? Why does it matter. He’s a horrible, rotten— no good Pokémon…

-It was when Ribbons had to helplessly watch as he nearly killed Aimilios that her resolve did a complete 180°. The Eevee being prepared to do whatever to took to get him caught. Joining the cloaked ghost in the library whenever she could, (even if she wasn’t as smart as the Great Dusknoir or her Riolu partner. She wanted to at least give them company and be there for moral support.)

And when he’s finally… finally caught. Tied up as the Sableye walked him through the town as they cheered… Ribbons isn’t celebrating. She should be. She should be happy. So why does she feel a horrible gut feeling when their eyes meet in the crowd? And he looks seconds away from breaking down…?

-

-The whole future arc is a rollercoaster of emotions for the Eevee. Although she’s immediately with Grovyle on the plan to help him escape— she does not trust him so quick.

-No. That time was over. The second Dusknoir tried to kill them, both her (and soon Aimilios’s) tendencies to trust Pokemon blindly were thrown out the window. So they both are glaring daggers at him when he suggests that they trust him. That ‘If he was so untrustworthy, how would they explain what Dusknoir had done back there?’ Ribbons protectively gets in-front of her partner— hissing back that ‘They aren’t going to trade one lunatic trying to kill them for another. Or did Grovyle already forget about the little incident at Azelf’s lake?’

…And even though her and Aimilios do feel safer around him. (Gut feeling/aura sensing) it just feels so terrifying to trust someone again after what the giant wraith did to them. Not only that, but he was offering to take them back to their world… so they cautiously agreed.

It’s... strange. The way he’d called out for her and Aimilios to get away when Spiritomb had him in their grasp. When they traversed dungeons as he took as many hits as possible for them…the familiarity is almost nauseating.

And when Dusknoir reveals everything, the two only stare at the cloaked ghost-type cackling. The same one they both once thought was their friend.

She and Grovyle only stare at eachother as a painful amount of time passes by. He..

He tried to kill her.

She was still alive and he almost—

The realization is what makes him give up. To concede. Begging Dusknoir to just do away with him and let the other go. Let her go.

—

-When they’re in the Sharpedo Bluff during the nighttime— Grovyle explains the situation to the two… staring at Ribbons with hopeful eyes, sharing recollections of how they once were. Of how close they’d been. Hoping that it’d re-jog her memory now that he was there to explain the situation.

…Ribbons only stares. Guilt eating away the more Grovyle retold their supposed history. How the hope slowly died in his eyes little by little when he looked at her with that same, clueless expression.

One of Ribbons biggest fears when it came to her amnesia was forgetting someone important to her. Always having the dreaded feeling of losing three important Pokémon to her. And now one of them was trying to kill them. Aimilios reassured her many nights that it wasn’t the case. So for that fear to become a reality— her ears slump, the Eevee’s messy, leaf-and-twigged tail curling around her in anxiety. She wants to apologize— but she only breaks away eye contact.

She forgot. She wants to remember. But she can’t she can’t she can’t-

Ribbons sees Grovyle trying to reach out for her— only for the small quadruped to back away. Still too touch-adverse from everything that went down with Dusknoir. All the Eevee can do is watch Grovyle’s expression turned into a pained one. Trying to hide the hurt in his eye with a wry smile as he slowly retracted his arm, ”Ah… right. Too soon. Forgive me.”

…It’s a very rough night on the two of them. Both Pokémon completely unaware that they’d been trying to fight back the tears threatening to spill in their eyes. Eventually overwhelming and awakening the aura pup.

-

When they rode Lapras, presumably for many hours by now by how night fell, white stars scattering across the sky as it reflected in the dark blue sea. The Riolu had slept soundly— something that couldn’t be said for the other two.

Ribbon’s curled around her partner as he slept, grooming his fur with his tongue before looking over towards the grass-type; something very much on his mind.

Grovyle looked pensively down toward’s Lapras’s shell— recalling Wigglytuff’s comment about how Chatot had been his ‘invaluable partner.’ The woodland gecko gripping the strap of his treasure bag. Unaware of the Eevee slowly approaching him. He stares— unsure of what to do. The last time they’d talked was at the Bluff, when she backed away from him in fear.

…Ribbons plopped right next to the grass-type, waiting for the uncomfortable silence to pass. When she realized he wasn’t going to cut the tension, she opted to ask the lizard what she was thinking about since their talk at the bluff.

“What was it like…?”

“What…?”

“Y-yknow…W-When we were together… What was it like?”

The small Eevee repeated. Wanting to hear stories of their times together… Memory or no memory— she hated seeing Grovyle upset. Something that was practically built into her. Like it’d been second nature.

Grovyle hesitates, afraid of a repeat of last time. He looks at Ribbons who was staring up coyly… before going on to explain and further elaborate on their history. He studied her expressions, trying to get a read on when he should stop… only to be greeted with an cheerful look on her face. The same, goofy one plastered on her human-self.

Grovyle calms at the sight, continuing to looks back on memories— preferably the more lighthearted ones the woodland gecko fondly looked back on. Although within those silly memories were times when Ribbons did… admittedly some of the dumbest things he’d witnessed during their time in the future.

What makes him smile even more is how she began to look more offended. Until she’d gotten fed up with the grass-type. Claiming that she would never do anything so blatantly stupid— and that she had a scale of stupidity she was abiding by— Chatot’s words, not hers.

This gets a chuckle from the grass-type… something that almost immediately warms the Eevee’s heart. She hesitates a littles before scooting closer, fully laying her body beside Grovyle as he continued to recollect stories of their past together… listening to the older Pokémon’s droning… until she fell asleep.

…

Now Grovyle is faced with another problem. And it was in the form of his little sister sleeping soundly right next to him.

…

He knows what’ll happen to them when he puts in the Time Gears.

He knows he’ll never get another chance like this again.

…

He lays his body near Ribbon’s, curling around her tiny body protectively. Before getting what was probably the most sleep he did since he arrived in the Present.

———

When they’re traversing through the Hidden land, the same arguments when they did in the future about Grovyle’s recklessness. Although this time around— Ribbons had been calling the kettle black in this regard. The Grass and Normal type Pokémon going back and forth before falling silent.

And when the ghost-type returned a second time to ambush the three Pokémon, Ribbons and Aimilios opted to fight the Sableye. Meanwhile, Grovyle took on Dusknoir—Which proved to be nearly impossible. It was only when the Sableye were dealt with and the two joined Grovyle on his assault on the wraith, that Dusknoir’s attacks begun to.. slow?

They fought and fought, Ribbons having managed to get in a really nasty Bite that made the cloaked revenant roar out in pain; unintentionally slamming her against a pillar. Hard. Grovyle yells her name, trying to run before being intercepted by a large fist being mercilessly swung his way. Not offering the same hesitation he did with the young Eevee and Riolu. If there was anyone Dusknoir was willing to kill— it was him.

It was when Dusknoir gripped the Riolu to the point of him whining out in pain— that the Grass-type the adrenaline and anger made his body move harshly to knock down the ghost-type with the slice of a Leaf Blade. Getting protectively infront of his sister and the Riolu Grovyle had begun to start considering as his little brother. His eyes turning into cat like-slits, glaring at the revenant.

———

Dusknoir hit the Eevee a second time when the two were distracted— Ribbon’s having cried out in pain, wincing from the hit she received from the large ghost-type— closing her eyes as she anticipated for him to finished her off—

Before Grovyle shielded her— and began shoving him into the Dimensional hole.

Grovyle could only smile to himself despite how much he was struggling to keep the giant wraith at bay— Dusknoir nearly breaking out of the wood gecko’s hold.

So many times. He failed to protect Ribbons. So many times. And now…

“Though the parting hurts… the rest is in your hands!”

He could finally make it up to her.

——————

~The Future~

———————

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Ribbons nearly broke Grovyle’s ribcage when he returned to the present, berating and yellowing at him so angrily for leaving her the way he did… while hugging him in tears as she bawled her eyes out— Grovyle reciprocating the hug with as much strength as the Eevee.

…So when she saw Dusknoir and ran, he was the one to chase after her. Celebi having stayed back with Aimilios to explain the situation to the equally confused and afraid Riolu.

-The Eevee’d hidden under another hollowed tree stump, her entire body frizzing up at the sound of the woodland gecko calling out to her. Ribbon’s brows furrowed in anger despite her fear, yelling at him for bringing the ghost-type back. Grovyle tries to fit himself inside the tiny hollowed area… before curling around Ribbons— gently explaining the situation with the cloaked ghost. He apologizes for bringing Dusknoir without warning. Knowing that he should’ve better prepared those two.

-It’s because of Ribbons refusal to be anywhere near/talk to Dusknoir, that the Eevee has the opportune time to reconnect with Grovyle. Spending the first three years to catch up, talk, do jobs, drink at Spinda’s. Becoming even comfortable enough to start bantering with eachother, and squabbling like siblings. (and yes they partake in Cain Instinct ™️ through harmless paw baps/“oh no gravity’s increasing on me” “YOURE CRUSHING ME YOU ROTTEN BROTHER.”) Those two being practically attached to the hip as they constantly stayed side by side. Even having slept in the same hay-bed together the first year. (Separation anxiety is doing wonders.)

Grovyle is also Ribbon’s go-to hiding spot from Dusknoir whenever he’s near— not-so-discreetly hiding behind the woodland gecko anytime he’d gotten close. Something that he was more than willing to do, being a barrier being the giant specter and minuscule Eevee.

Grovyle is also the one constantly reminding Ribbons that if she feels uncomfortable/unsafe around Dusknoir, that she can come to him at any moment. And he’d talk to him. (Or smack him upside the head with a leaf blade, earning the gecko a laugh from his little sister.)

But… He knows she’s lying through her fangs when she says she’s fine with him being around. (Chalk that up to Older brother instincts) Which is why Grovyle goes to Dusknoir anyways to tell him to minimize his presence around her as much had possible in the beginning— something the wraith was already ahead/aware of.

-The Eevee also tries to repay the favor my reminding Grovyle that he actually isn’t the POS, horrible brother he thinks himself to be with the amount of times he failed to save her. Redirecting his attention to her paw scar and nuzzling the self-deprecating grass-type. Grovyle doesn’t believe himself to be the right guardian for her… but she trusts him anyways.

-And you KNOW by the time she evolves— he’s fighting back a copious amount of tears. (Dusknoir might be getting choked up over Ribbons and Aimilios’s evolutions— but Grovyle looks like he’s seconds away from actually tearing up. Just so happy to be alive to witness his baby sister having the chance to actually grow up.)

—————

Anyways that’s what I have for now!!!! Just mainly putting this heat to give more insight to their dynamic :) (as well as have a little library of drawing ideas for Grovyle/Ribbons when the mood strikes.)

[tiredrxtz]

Eternal love of a demon king and the one he called his wife

She was harmonious, that was what he would say.

The way her heels clicked and scraped against the grass of the barren field she found herself in at the break of dawn, her eyes dazed as she gazed up into the night sky; [e/c] reflecting the divine emotions held by the very moon that took up the large canvas splattered with stars.

She was bewitching.

Anos voldigoad followed her swaying figure from where he was perched, besides an old blossom tree that blemished into a true representative of mother nature, his crimson eyes never straying from the women that danced to her hearts content before him.

The unconscious bodies of the humans that swarmed them previously forgotten, not dead, never dead, but a lot more quieter than when they stood before. The war between the human race and the demons was unyielding; no matter what constitutions he proposed, nor how honestly he bestowed his ideology of bringing peace to all beings, the humans failed to recognize the path of fate they were swarming down.

This war would possibly last centuries to come…

For what he wanted— a generation that did not have to suffer the consequences of a battle forgotten deep into the past— not even a miracle bestowed by the gods could compensate the desperation of his request.

He did not wish to demand peace because he was a demon nor because he was a king, Anos voldigoad simply wanted to clear up the misunderstanding that demons were the true enemy in this magic filling world.

To achieve the goal that all races wanted to forge into reality, he, along with his beloved wife, would have to lay down their very own lives in order for that to happen.

“Kanon, let me ask you this; just how many demons have you killed?” Anos spoke with sincerity as he gazed down from his throne and into the eye for the human hero— the only person that had the potential to come even close to defeating him.

Kanon hesitated on an answer. They had time but they had to hurry if peace was to be obtained within this era of time. After all, time waits for nobody…

Except for the demon king himself.

Their end had been tragic yet Anos couldn’t have asked for anything more. While it had been selfish to strip his beloved wife of her life, all in the name of peace, it was a necessary precaution he had taken; if he had been reincarnated alone, he’d have to see his wife take on the burden he once carried and that would drive him utterly insane.

He can only hope that, when they meet again in their new life, she’ll forgive him for being so selfish.

If not then he’ll have to make it up to her by taking her hand in marriage once again.

“Who would’ve though...” he wondered out loud. Anos voldigoad gazed longingly towards the night sky that was splattered with pinpricked shining stars from where he lay on his bed. “2000 years and there’s still signs of destruction.”

The demon king had been reincarnated into a new era 2000 years after his announced death as a teenage boy and had been admitted into a demon king academy— a school that purposely trained descendants of demon royalty.

Ironic isn’t it?

the peace he had obtained was formidable, well for now at least. His death had resulted in the magic residing within him to create a barrier that’s purpose was to separate the humans, demons and even the gods from each other.

His true power was truly remarkable.

The only thing that he had left to do was fulfill his last promise: find his wife and have her hand in marriage once more. If she were here right beside him, he’d bet that she’d say something along the lines of—

“The moon is rather bright tonight, don’t you think?”

The mattress dipped slightly as the weight Anos voldigoad knew all too well settled over his relaxed stature. A smile made its way to his lips as one of his hands enclosed around the one that lay against his broad chest.

It seemed that his wife was closer than he’d realized. Lucky him, he hadn’t even lifted a finger and his beloved had already sought him out from the thousands of people within the village; he was quite lucky to have an extraordinary women as his betrothed.

His lips found her own within seconds, their fingers intertwining and their bodies being pressed together. He had waited 2000 years for his wife to finally come to him and the time had come, he wasn’t going to waste another moment without her.

As cheesy as that sounded, he had missed her dearly.

Parting with a small pant, the reincarnated demon king racked over the appearance of the women lay beneath him. She hadn’t changed at all from the looks of it; her [h/c] locks cascaded down her figure just as graciously as before and her eyes were still gazing into the abyss they both ruled over.

“[Y/n].”

She was just as devoted to him as he were to her. She had remained loyal to him for all these years and had believed in his return to her— she was the embodiment of the love he longed for.

“Anos—“ the door creaked open and in popped his mother who, upon peaking in for no more than a mere second, squealed joyously and skipped away with a poor departure excuse.

Anos voldigoad sighed while the [h/c] female giggled.

“I guess your introduction will come just as early as expected.” He complained, sliding off of the female and stretching to a stand. “There’s no doubt about it that mom will spill her little fantasies to dad so there’s no point in trying to hide this little secret, is there?”

“Come, I’ll introduce you to them.”

Her hand enveloped his and on they went. The evening was then spent with Anos voldigoad’s mother crying tears of joy, clinging to the women he called his forever wife, while his father drank in honor of their announcement.

Before his reincarnation, Anos voldigoad didn’t have the fortune of his parents being alive, meaning that not only did he miss out on their shared love for him, he also didn’t get the chance to introduce them to his wife.

However, if they still resided here on earth, there’s no doubt that his mother would love [Y/n] just as much as he did.

His love remained eternal and so did hers. Only now can they experience true peace without having to draw their blades and dance in a mach destined to end in death.

[pa-pa-patato]

Headcanons (I have not done this in hot minute)

•cuphead always had mug following him as kids

•when Boris was told he wasn’t allowed to bite he took that as being allowed to hit other kids when they annoyed him (was genuinely confused when bendy got mad at him for it)

•Alice’s mom never allowed violence or fights but her dad would cheer on his children anytime he saw the fight (will pretend scold then after if they weren’t in the wrong)

•bendy has face blindness cause I say so

•when he was younger cuphead really wanted to learn how to dance but he never had time and the time he did have was not enough since he’s not a natural

•Boris has a bite mark on his arm from bendy

•Boris also has a scar across his neck which is the reason he wear the bandana (the scar is barely visible and covered by his fire but he’s so used to wearing the bandana that he still put it on)

•Boris and Felix can smell if someone is pregnant

•Boris got used to bendy remaining him to do things like brush his teeth and fur or take showers ext. so when bendy stopped doing it cause stress and what not Boris also stopped cause he forgot

•everyone of the questers had a very realistic nightmare of bendy dying from the ink illness except for bendy

•bendy was supposed be a zanny but never was able because of his living conditions. But he’s still somewhat zanny and will sometimes quote Morden memes

•Alice used to always play dad in house game so she could marry her female friends

•cupbros once found a baby in the middle of nowhere and had no idea what to do so they just brought it hat who freaked out since demon being seen with a baby is super suspicious

•bendy loves to bath in the sun but he’s always to hot to stay long (a nudge to my other hc that he’s supposed shed his skin in the summer)

•bendy is a very slow eater so he has to hurry up when eating with everyone which usually leaves with either stomach ache or being hungry later on

•bendy wants to make dolls that look like all of the quester but worried he’ll be seen as weird and creepy

•bendys hair is magical representation of how in control he is of his magic he used wonder why his hair was always messy no matter how many times he brushed it

•once hat punished cuphead he out of anger just chewed on his desk living marks all over it

•if bendy was raised in hell he would’ve had been a child prodigy

•bendy would pull on Boris’s cheek instead of his ears cause they are sensitive

•he now pulls on anyone’s cheek when they do something stupid out habit

•Oswald and Fanny had really nosy neighbors that saw them kissing one time and tried to spread it around the neighborhood but everyone thought they were just spreading rumors

•once while they were training Boris suddenly remembered all fear and anger he felt while cupbros were chasing them and he just knocked cuphead to the ground shocking everyone including himself

•holly is trying to make a tracker so she doesn’t have to worry about where the questers are

•Boris used to be awful at cooking so much so that he somehow burned down half the kitchen trying to make noodles

•granny insists they all do an ugly sweater contest and to have a photo taken with it all of them on holidays

•cuphead once took a a little bird as a pet and was such a positive influence on him. Unfortunately he came to his bird dead on his bed after he disobeyed hats orders

•baby and snowball pretended to be each other and bendy and holly play along cause it’s so cute

•bendy can’t die from blood loss

•Boris made a small sign that said “I am not free and have a loving home” that he pulls out whenever he’s left alone somewhere

•bendy was always shamed for asking to many questions or was called annoying so he stopped asking. He now just stays close to Holly hoping she’ll ask a question he wants

•bendy also made a lot theories about the machine and his magic that he just keeps in his room not showing then to anyone even tho they could help

•Alice always wanted to be the one that proposes when she thought about getting married

•ebi wants to be friends with bendy but has no idea how to socialize

•Boris can be absolutely brutal if he wants to roast somebody it takes everyone by surprise except bendy that heard worse from him

•bendy got so happy when he realized he could hug Alice as hard as he could without hurting her

•every demon goes to all seven stages of grief when they find out about sexism and homophobia on the surface

•if Alice is flying cuphead will just pull on her leg in the direction he want her to go

•bendy once coughed out an entire knife. He never ate a knife. He doesn’t know where the knife came from. But now he has a cool knife

•mugs used to have freckles

•holly and bendy have the absolute worst taste in crushes

[bestworstcase]

Great, now a couple more questions about the life-death-rebirth cycle come to mind. Namely, isn’t it some level of unfair to punish characters who “break the rules” by resurrecting the dead when they don’t know that’s a rule in the first place?

Take Pietro. He had no idea about Remnant’s past nor any way to learn about it (the only conceivable courses are the relic spirits, which are off limits without a Maiden, and Lewis, who is dead and likely never told anyone beyond what he wrote), so why should he and Penny suffer for it?

Heck, you could make a similar argument for Salem and even the GoD, but really, I’d like to hear what this says about the GoL. He created and strictly enforced the entire false paradigm of death being eternal. Sooo… what about him?

(Sorry if I’m asking too many questions, you just have so many amazing insights.)

in the case of pietro and penny, it’s less about punishing wrongdoing than it is just a natural consequence of the way penny is treated (not just by pietro but by the whole system of the atlesian military) – why does she suffer? because her father built her as a living weapon owned by his very powerful employers and brought her back, after beacon, into a situation where she had zero autonomy. it’s implied that penny literally does not have down time – she’s either working or in standby mode, no time for friends. and when she breaks away from ironwood, he gets so obsessed with forcing her back under his control that he winds up treating salem assaulting his city as a secondary concern.

this has nothing whatsoever to do with some sort of cosmic punishment for “breaking rules” – there aren’t any rules at all, besides the arbitrary ones the brothers tried to impose and light is (notionally) still trying to enforce. the point is that abrogating someone’s personhood, taking away their autonomy in this manner, is wrong because it inflicts grievous harm on that person. and in a setting where death isn’t an ending but rather a moment of transition between the old life and the new, where nothing can happen to you except what you want to happen, it’s wrong to take that choice away from someone by bringing them back.

that’s not to say it would necessarily turn out badly every time – for example, in a world where the brothers decided to relax, salem and ozma would’ve been fine, probably; millions of years later when ozma’s given the chance to return to her, he eagerly takes it. but there’s always, inescapably, that dimension of wrongness. of not letting go. of not letting the person you love choose. (& this is why salem did the right thing in not ever trying to bring ozma back herself after the gods fucked off.)

the narrative explores this with penny through the extreme control she’s subjected to in life. she isn’t allowed to leave. she isn’t allowed to make her own choices. she isn’t even allowed to die, because the atlas military considers her its property, and her father loves her very much and is also cheerfully complicit in this system right until the moment his daughter gets branded a traitor.

pietro knowing or not knowing about the distant past or the arbitrary rules set by the gods doesn’t matter. what is salient is that he knows what he’s bringing his daughter back into – the military machine of atlas in which she is, against her will, a mere cog. and he’s fine with that.

(i do think it’s sort of interesting how blasé he is about penny being the protector of mantle early in v7, before public opinion turns against her; this is a dimension of his overprotectiveness that often gets overlooked, but pietro is completely fine with penny being atlas’s robotic supersoldier. similar to his blithe lack of concern about mantle’s network security, pietro has several massive blindspots because he has very much drunk the atlesian exceptionalism koolaid)

and eventually that view of penny – doesn’t matter if she dies, we’ll just bring her back; doesn’t matter if she’s unhappy, she’ll do what we built her to do with a smile on her face; doesn’t matter what she thinks or feels or wants, she’s under control – was going to come due. inevitably. in the same way that rhodes training cinder to fight and then putting a weapon in her hand had obvious, completely predictable consequences.

what happened with salem is a whole different kettle of fish because she is being punished – tortured, really – for not even breaking but just questioning an arbitrary rule that had no basis in reality. and of course that’s unfair; that injustice is the beating heart of the story because salem was and is right to loathe the brothers as tyrannical monsters. all she did was pray to both of them for something light didn’t want her to have.

and then light’s issue fundamentally is that he doesn’t understand destruction, and therefore disdains and fears it, so change terrified him and he’s obsessed with control. very much in the same mold as ironwood; by the time it gets to the point of light setting up the divine ultimatum it’s less about the original sin than his fixation on salem as The Aberration Who Must Be Corrected (By Punishing Her Until She Submits).

[atla-suki]

sokka’s treatment in lok was astonishing tbh but i’m actually glad he was dead by the time the series started bc toph being a cop??? aang being an awful dad???? they would’ve ruined him and suki’s characters lbr.

as far as any possible kids go idk we didn’t meet suyin till book 4 we barely saw izumi i think they just didn’t want to make the new series be a atla reunion plus lok was only meant to be one season so they were making that shit up as they went along lmao. and back in 2012-14?? they didn’t know themselves what happened to sukka lmao.

sokka and suki are definitely the type to break up bc of long distance but then find their way back to each other a few years later especially as they settle into their roles in life.

while bryke definitely neglect suki and sokka to some capacity also they do have a soft spot for suki after bringing her back. many don’t consider her to be team avatar but they’ve stated they do so idk ! she shows up a lot in the comics which have obv been created post-lok and it’s been said that they’ll utilise it’s plots and characters in shall see in future projects (crane fish town becoming republic city maybe??? where suki currently is working?? and sokka later lives!!)

i’m p sure suki will be in it at some capacity anyway and that there’ll stick with jennie as she’s one of the few asian og va’s. she’s doing a lot of work atm for avatar studios.

also random but i literally found out today that it’s not bryke-confirmed that mai and zuko end up together. it was a comment on a panel by the old comic writer. it’s not technically canon. izumi is the spit of mai anyway but hmm! interesting!!

btw btw suyin’s father was def a sandbending outlaw who toph had a secret relationship with that couldn’t be public bc of her role as police chief x

oo big ask ok let me break this up into different paragraphs …

fist point - one thing i will admit about lok is that it fell short in incorporating the original characters into the new series in an interesting way with enough verisimilitude (realistic-ness) that it didn’t feel like they were just throwing a popular character into an episode for the sake of it. such as the whole ‘aang is a bad dad’ thing because they under-utilised him as a mentor figure to korra and instead focused on his supposed favourite son (i have thoughts on this re. aang NOT being a ‘Bad’ dad but i will make another post on it if u are interested (or have i alr made one? i’ll make another one.))

i have to agree that they would’ve probably done something shitty to sokka or suki if they were included. especially with the entire first season of lok being about bender/non-bender equality… i can just imagine they’d make sokka say something dumb about the equalist movement being 100% Bad instead of him actually supporting some of their completely valid arguments. idk. i’m sad there’s no sukka but at the same time…. quit while ur ahead yk.

second point - sukka long distance relationship is so real ESPECIALLY during their first few years together. i can see them just kinda calling it off because of commitment issues due to their work, etc. but not ever really losing feelings. they’d be endgame tho🥰

i can absolutely see suki being in upcoming projects! especially since she and the other kyoshi warriors expanded their reach across the nations - it would be hard to ignore them completely if we’re assuming they’re including comic canon into the universe. i hope jenny returns!!

third point - yeah! how crazy that maiko as izumi’s parents isn’t canon confirmed… though she’s so clearly mai’s daughter. i wonder if mai’s role will be expanded in upcoming projects / if she’ll be featured more. hmmm.

fourth - would honestly prefer this to the theory sokka is her father lol. it kinda baffles me that TOPH became a cop.. not bc she opposes authority - there’s something different about enforcing it than there is having to follow it. i can see toph in authoritative positions, and she fits them well. but i think it baffles me moreso because why would toph even work as a COP? isn’t that boring as hell for her?? go do something awesome like probending or professional underground fighting (adult blind bandit anyone?? this would make a good fic) or literally just construction idk i feel like toph isn’t a Hard Worker type that would want to be stuck in such a rigid career.

[purple-ambrosia]

Reimagining “Velma”

I’ve been seeing a lot about the new Velma show on Twitter, and I kind of wanted to take a stab at possibly reimagining it to be truer to the gang while still attempting to do something different.

@omegagorilla made a great Tiktok about how it’s important for characters that are so iconic to keep their fundamental traits and stay recognizable. The show is still coming out, but so far it feels like there’s a bit of a disconnect. The show could have come up with characters unrelated to the Scooby-Doo franchise rather than relying on the property, but with the way that animation is being treated by streaming services, a totally new IP would’ve come with a higher risk of cancellation or receiving less marketing. The Velma show has come out at a time where we’ve seen many shows, especially animated ones, be dropped quickly with little time to find their footings. We’ve even seen some be scrubbed off the Internet entirely. So what setup could have let us see a fresher take on the gang while also letting them stay familiar?

College.

Having the gang go off to college would allow the show to a) explore its adult rating without sexualizing high school students and b) create a setting that poses new opportunities and trials for the gang. This also means the writers have some wiggle room to adapt the gang as they find themselves as new adults. And as a lot of us know, finding ourselves doesn’t come without hardship.

The show opens with Velma still as our primary focal point, but she’s a sophomore in college rather than a high school student. The gang lives in a college town with a good school, but the school is just large enough that they can all avoid each other for the most part. Velma studies hard and mainly keeps to herself. After the gang split up, she’s scared to put herself out there again and start making friends. Part of herself justifies it because she knows she’ll go elsewhere for graduate school, then somewhere else when she has to find a job.

The only one that knows she likes girls is Shaggy. After Fred and Daphne first got together in high school, the two felt pressured to have their own relationship. It didn’t last after Velma blurted out that she might be in love with Daphne when Shaggy tried to kiss her. They were lucky that their “relationship” had only lasted a couple of weeks and one date to the movie theater. Fred and Daphne couldn’t say the same, because when they finally broke up, Daphne transferred to a prep school across town for her junior and senior year. She promised to keep in touch, but the longer the school year went on, the more time it took for her to respond to Velma’s texts. Fred became more focused on trying to get a wrestling scholarship, and that left Velma and Shaggy to rely on one another.

Velma mainly sees Shaggy between exams, usually for meals or to pick him up after he gets too high at a party. She would never tell him, but she likes knowing someone still needs her. Sometimes she catches a glimpse of red hair and some of the parties Shaggy goes to, and her heart pounds so hard that she can’t breathe.

Fast forward to sophomore year, when a girl is found dead on campus. Velma and Shaggy are just coming back from the dining half when they spot the crowd. They push through to the yellow police tape, and for the first time since high school, the gang is all in one place again.

[another-corpo-rat]

Prompts: Born to Die Adam Smasher/OC Warnings for mentioned injuries and violence Summary: Smasher’s AV is hit by Animals jacked up on Juice. Victoria gets injured, he doesn’t handle it well.

.

Violence in Night City rarely had a glimpse of reason to its existence; families gunned down because their car just happened to be between a gang and their target, lives lost or ruined because someone somewhere had a chip on their shoulder and were determined to make the rest of the city pay in blood. Sometimes there was a stupid amount of eddies up for grabs, others they were bored and had access to big fucking guns. Senseless and boringly familiar – Night City’s grime was a thin layer compared to the shit Adam had been knee-deep in when he was a fleshy still running the streets of New York.

Screams and wails, a small voice begging for their dead momma to wake up. Shouting over the gunfire, orders to push up. Secure the AV. His AV.

It all seemed distant, further than it actually was.

In the midst of it, he’s still. Standing sentinel over his netrunner’s prone body, watching the stain on her ridiculously expensive suit-jacket grow, her blood crawling through fine threads. The white one, because of course she wore white today. Anything to spite him.

He had nudged her, heard the too-sharp breath and immediately pulled away. Not for the first time did he curse her lack of metal; titanium ribs wouldn’t have shattered so easily, and syn-lungs were increasingly difficult to puncture. He had heard the crunch of bone when gravity yanked the AV down by the nose, tossing him right on top of her. She was lucky he had braced otherwise he would’ve crushed her completely.

It wasn’t the first time she had made him pause recently. He couldn’t figure out why. Why the roll of her shoulders commanded his eye, why that stupid accent of hers drew his ear and held his attention better than any barked order, threat, or insult throughout his life ever had. Why he felt warm when she smiled at him, mind buzzing in a way it hadn’t for a while. Not since Michiko. Her smiles had been stupid things too.

Maybe he knew something would happen. That some bullshit would tear her from his hold.

Another AV rumbles above him, a siren blaring. Trauma Team. Fucking finally.

“Took your sweet fucking time.” He growls as they surround her, guns pointed at him. The one closest trembles, the shaking to their fingers slight but there. He ignores them, glaring straight at the EMT that rips open her shirt to get at her injuries. He could hear Victoria’s complaint, almost voices it for her: ‘It has buttons for a reason you bloody gonks.’

A glint pulls his attention to her face. Her optics were open but dim in their golden glow, hazy focus on him.

“A-Adam.” Her voice is weak, wet with blood. Quiet enough that even the EMT hovering over her doesn’t hear it. He does. He’s heard her say his name before – plenty of times. When she was particularly annoyed she’d follow it up with an insult that was too pretty in her accent for him to take her seriously.

Maybe his brain got rattled in the crash. Scrambled enough for her to sound so precious now. For his own words sound wrong in his head.

“TT-070 to Control. Patient NC721156 secured—”

Her vitals were steadying. She fights to keep her eyes open, to keep them on him as the team lifts her for extraction. It’s a battle she loses.

A bottle shatters where she was moments ago. A ganger yells ‘fucking Trauma!’ behind him. Fucking pricks.

He turns from her pool of blood, from his crashed AV.

He’d get a new one. A new AV. Not a netrunner – because Victoria will be fine. She’ll survive or he’ll tear into the gates of Hell itself and drag her back kicking and screaming. He’d get her a new suit, as many as she could possibly want.

“They’re tryna take off!” Trauma Team’s AV rumbles heavily, its engines lifting the armoured mass steadily and quickly. Its turrets focus on those coming in from the front. Oblivious to the RPG-toting dickhead re-loading, readying for the order from an even bigger dickhead further back. “Keep ‘em down!”

 Julio had been with the Animals for a while now – since Sasquatch herself picked him out of the gutter by the scruff of his neck and told him to stop being a leech on his mother’s already thin purse. He wasn’t the strongest, and god knew he wasn’t the smartest either. But he had good aim, could keep himself steady where his mates were a bit shaky from the juice.  It’s why Bull let him be the one to fire on the Arasaka AV. But steady hands and a keen eye didn’t mean jackshit when the RPG was torn from his grip, his wrists almost pulled with it.

The point of the grenade was shoved into the meat of his stomach, ripping through skin and muscle from force alone.

All he can hear is his pulse in his ears. Deafened to his own scream as a titan of dark chrome and piercing optics twists the launcher. Its finger hovers over the trigger.

“Count yourself lucky, boy.” The heavy voice shakes his bones. Or maybe that’s just him. Trembling like a coward. “The rest of you won’t die half as quick if she does.”

He pops. An explosion of viscera and shards.

The metal of his implants are little more than shrapnel, lodging deep into the skin of his fellow Animals. It merely glances off of Adam’s chrome as he tosses the RPG aside, flexing his fingers as the rest of the pack finally realise what just happened. The hum in his circuitry is familiar this time, it builds in his arm, cannon ready before the panels fully slide back.

Animals they called themselves. At least they knew they were meant for the slaughter.

[hannysarang]

Control // Twenty Four.

Summary: Draco hasn't been able to enjoy sex and a little birdie tells him Hermione likes to take control. Is he willing to give it up? Can Draco Malfoy give up control?

Chapter 24 ————————

Hermione was gone. 

Draco had waited all evening, not even aware that she was missing. How could he be so dumb?

Dolohov — no, Voldemort — had taken her and had given two impossible options: Either give her up to them completely by not looking for her or look for her and watch people die every hour they fail to find her. 

Everyone in the meeting was rather biased, everyone but the Head of Aurors not willing to give her up, including Kingsley. 

“The best case scenario is finding her as soon as possible,” Kingsley had said.

“As soon as possible,” Ginny had stressed. “We don’t know what they’re putting her through.”

Fists clenched, Draco had agreed. For all they knew, she was probably locked up in a cell, being tortured every hour they failed to find her.  

However, the Head of Aurors’ priority was not Hermione. 

In the beginning, Draco had doubted the threat would be real. But he knew better than to underestimate Voldemort, especially when the Head of Aurors mentioned that six random people on the streets had already been killed. 

Hermione had been taken since 4 o’clock and he had just sat around like a dumb kid, waiting for her to return home. 

“I’m sure Miss Granger will understand,” the Head of Aurors sternly stated. “I know her to be a sacrificing witch. She’ll understand if we give up the search.”

This comment had resulted in Ron almost punching the man across the face. While Harry and Ginny held him back, Draco observed Kingsley’s face. 

As Minister of Magic, there was no way he could ignore the fact that people were dropping dead because of their stubbornness and Draco knew it. 

But he didn’t seem ready to give up on her just yet. So Aurors and everyone that knew Hermione were on the search, hunting for any signs of her. 

Two hundred and eighteen bodies later, the news hit the papers:

< He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named on a Killing Spree because of Hermione Granger. Does the Ministry Value Her Life over Everyone Else’s? >

Draco burnt the papers out of fury despite Hermione’s smiling photograph displayed on the front page. 

There were many complaints. Though they were all expected and quite frankly justified, it drove him insane because he knew which side the Ministry will decide to stand with. 

If you asked Draco, the Head of Aurors should’ve been punished for leaking classified information but Kingsley did not choose that path. He said he understood why the Head of Aurors had made that decision with a sorrowful face. 

Now, Kingsley had no choice but to stop the search. He made an official announcement that gave up Hermione to Voldemort and his followers for the sake of everyone else. He said he was very sorry but he also said that Hermione Granger would have agreed with this decision. 

Deep inside, Draco knew she would have. Hermione would’ve made sure they didn’t look for her right from the beginning. If anything, she would be the one to escape on her own, without the Ministry’s or anyone else’s help. 

But knowing this didn’t make anything feel better. To Draco, the rest of the Wizarding Society did not matter as long as she was safe — but she was not. 

He had spent a few days frustrated at Kingsley, not being able to get any food down his system when the Minister called him to the Ministry once more. Except this time, he was summoned to his office and not a meeting room and was greeted by Harry and Ron as well. 

Turns out, Kingsley had not given up on Hermione. The Minister had, but Kingsley Shacklebolt had not and he planned to send Harry and Ron on a secret mission to look for her. 

Ron and Harry had had a long debate on whether they should call Draco or not and it was clear which side each were on. But Ron had been convinced by the fact that they needed all hands on deck. It was also the reason why it had taken some time for Draco to be alerted of Hermione’s rescue mission. 

“No one can know,” Kingsley had warned the new trio. “If you are caught, the Ministry of Magic will deny any connections to you three, is that understood?”

The three had solemnly nodded, all agreeing on something for once. 

“But please,” he had also added. “Find her and bring her back safely.”

The three nodded with a little more determination that time. 

So that explained why Harry, Ron, and Draco were sharing a tent in the middle of the woods. What it didn’t explain was why they were eating shit food. 

Continue Chapter 24 on ao3

Start from the beginning

[stevethehousewife]

Summary: She looks down and touches herself, her clothes, her legs, and then she hurries towards the house and reaches for the door to let herself in, nearly falling right through when there’s nothing to grab.

The Slow Dying Flower

All she remembers is the monster.

Pain in her face, pain in her arms and legs, her jaw - immeasurable amounts of pain that never seemed to end.

For a long time, pain is the only thing Chrissy feels at all. For a long time, she worries that this is hell. This is what her parents talked about, purgatory or hell, or whatever it was, and she’s in it.

But the longer she’s in it, the less she feels like she deserves it.

Death is like rushing through a dark unknown, and with the physical pain of a body she can’t see, and all of the guilt and shame of a life spent on wasted potential, and so many regrets. The regrets are probably worse than anything else she feels on a physical level.

She should’ve broken up with Jason last year instead of wasting so much time dealing with all of his abuse. She should’ve done something better, been someone better, been with someone better. She should’ve spent less time worrying about what others thought of her and done what made her happy.

She should’ve eaten more cheeseburgers, or any cheeseburgers. Or lost her virginity. Or went on a trip out of state during the summer like she’d planned, instead of spending it working two jobs and preparing for Cheerleading come senior year.

She should’ve taken the risk and talked to Steve Harrington when she had the chance. All of the time she spent watching him from a distance feels unusually childish in hindsight now that everything is over.

She probably could’ve had a chance with him and now she’ll never know. And while that’s sometimes comforting, thinking that she can always hold onto the hope that he would’ve wanted her back, and she never ended up making a fool of herself. She’ll never truly know.

And then her luck changes.

One moment, it’s that black endless flood of forever, and then she’s released.

Like some kind of creature falling down from the depths of hell, she breaks out of the dark abyss she’s been stuck in for so long, and barely catches herself on the opening of a gaping hole in the ground growing in size.

Chrissy clings on, scrambling and pulling with arms and legs she didn’t have a moment before. She makes it over the edge and drops again, landing hard on the other side.

Red light glows from above and, for the first time in a long time, she can hear herself breathing, feel the ground underneath her hands and feet, and she stands up and looks around the remains of Eddie Munson’s trailer - or that’s what she thinks it is.

She walks outside and looks around the street at the broken down houses and, without knowing how or what happened, she starts to walk away from the wreckage. There’s no telling how much time has passed and what happened. She doesn’t have the words for it.

How would she even begin to explain it all to Jason? Her parents?

Without knowing how, without even having a reason or being told anything, Chrissy knows that she won’t have to explain anything to him because Jason is dead. She doesn’t really know why her mind comes to that conclusion, but it does.

She heads in the direction of home which, under any other circumstances, would’ve been an unrealistic distance to walk after what she’s endured, but she doesn’t tire out. She doesn’t even break a sweat, or have to stop to catch her breath.

Chrissy reaches the house by the time that the sun starts to come up and she’s just walking up the sidewalk to go inside when her mom comes out through the front door, heading towards the car at the front of the driveway and walking right through her.

She nearly jumps when it happens, clutching her chest in terror and watching in shock as her mom continues on.

Chrissy moves over to stand in front of the car, trying to wave, calling out, but there’s no response, no reaction to her being there at all.

She looks down and touches herself, her clothes, her legs, and then she hurries towards the house and reaches for the door to let herself in, nearly falling right through when there’s nothing to grab.

“What…?” she stops as the door opens and her dad walks out and he, as well, doesn’t seem to notice her at all and walks through her.

She feels like a bucket of cold water was just dumped over her and she moves out of the way, watching him lock the house up and leave in his own car. Her parents drive away, completely oblivious to her standing there on the doorstep, shellshocked.

Chrissy looks at her hands again and then nervously walks through the front door, looking around the house as she makes her way down the side hall.

There are obvious signs of disturbance in the house - knocked down pictures, cracks in some of the walls, and she walks down the hall to her bedroom and feels her whole body go cold when she sees all of her things packed up in boxes, the bed up on its side, all of her makeup taken from the vanity mirror.

Chrissy walks over numbly to try and look at herself, but there’s nothing there in the reflection even when she reaches out to wave her hand in front of it.

She runs.

She turns and leaves the house, and she runs and runs and runs, down the roads of Hawkins in an aimless direction. She runs in hopes that she’ll tire but she never does. Air doesn’t run out, her lungs don’t burn, but she pants and breathes and she can feel the racing of her heart beating in her chest and tears on her cheeks. But she never tires out.

Eventually, she gives up when she realizes that running doesn’t affect her in the way that it would normal people.

She… must be a ghost.

The moment she thinks it, she knows that she isn’t a ghost.

It makes no sense for her to be any the wiser than she was a second ago, but the information comes to her so plainly, almost as if she’d known it all along.

She’s not a ghost… but she is dead. She died.

Chrissy continues to walk throughout the day, watching cars pass and never slow, no one looks at her, no one even knows that she exists.

She spends more time than she should continuing to wander around, to look at the damage that befell the town. Just like her parents’ house, the library at the center is the worst, and everything spider webs out from there, all of the shops along the way, the school.

Chrissy notices that the school seems the most active and she gravitates there in a way that she didn’t when it came to staying at her house.

She tries time and time again to get people’s attention, to talk to someone, anyone, to make any kind of real connection. She doesn’t know why she knows, but like Jason and knowing that she isn’t completely dead, she knows that she has to make a meaningful connection.

Without something real, something genuine, she’ll be stuck the way she is forever.

She tries connecting to Wayne first - Eddie’s uncle - when she finds him, but he’s in his own kind of misery and never responds. She tries to connect to some of the girls helping around that she knows from school, teachers, other peers, even some of the guys that have always made her uncomfortable (only because, back when she was alive - when she had a body - she could never get away from them).

It turns out that when she doesn’t want to be invisible to them, now she truly is.

Days pass in the school and she’s made no progress with any of the people there, she starts to accept defeat, and she’s started drifting around in a daze, feeling hopeless when she walks into Steve Harrington.

And not just ‘walks into’ like she’s done with countless others, no.

She’s walked through many of the people here and there - walls, doors, cars, cats, dogs - but she bumps into Steve and nearly falls backwards off of her feet.

“Oh, sorry-” Steve stops and looks around in confusion, “Uh… what?”

Chrissy stares at him in disbelief as his eyes go down, then back up, and she gasps when he shrugs to himself and continues to step forward, walking through her like he should’ve the first time and continuing on like he didn’t just do what he just did.

Her eyes follow him as he heads towards the kitchen area and she can’t help but go after him.

“Steve?” she tries nervously, voice barely above a whisper, but he doesn’t respond so she tries to shout instead, “Steve!”

Still nothing.

She walks closer, looking up at him as he waves to a few of the other workers there and pulls on an apron. Chrissy tries to touch his shoulder, push him, tap him, everything she can think of, but nothing happens.

It’s been days.

No one has seen or heard her or touched her, and she wasn’t even trying when he walked right into her. Now that she’s trying, nothing seems to work and she inevitably ends up giving up again, but she stays with him. Maybe it’s foolish, but she feels drawn to him like she felt drawn to the school in the first place.

She watches him cook. Steve Harrington… cook. It’s so outlandish to even think of, but he fits into the kitchen like it was made for him.

She watches him make breakfast after breakfast, filling requests for people that come up more and more to the window as the smell of it wafts through the air. He’s at it for hours, into lunch, making sandwiches and quick snacks, and then dinner.

Not once does he hear her try to say his name and he doesn’t bump into her again, not even a little.

Chrissy feels hopeless and out of control, but she has nowhere else to go and she’s had nothing from anyone or anything else, so she… she follows him out to his car and she walks into it. She can sit on the seat, which is really weird and doesn’t make any sense at all, but she doesn’t question the physics of it all.

Steve joins her a moment later, face scrunching up a little tight as he sits, twists to pull his seatbelt on and groans in a low voice. Fortunately, right along with being able to sit, the car starts to move, and she goes with it.

He turns the AC on and she reaches out curiously to feel it on her hand just as he does the same, and she almost jumps when their fingers touch.

Steve does jump, car nearly swerving off of the road as he straightens back out and hits the brakes, looking around the car and peering into his passenger’s side seat where she is.

His eyes aren’t focused on her, but he looks around skeptically.

“Can you hear me?” she tests but he doesn’t react to the sound of her voice, tentatively reaching out into her space and moving his hand through her shoulder.

“I’m losing my fucking mind,” he mutters as he turns back to the road and continues on.

Chrissy watches him the entire time, her eyes wide. She tries to touch him again, a couple more times, but nothing else unusual happens. But this can’t be a coincidence that he’s done it twice now, or that it’s him, of all people that does it.

She reaches back out again to feel the cold air and lays back in her seat, trying to relax as Steve drives, glancing over to her seat time and time again.

He doesn’t take her to his family house like she’s expecting. At first, she worries that maybe he has other plans than to go home for the night, that maybe it’ll get awkward when he invites a girl along or something, maybe he has a date, but instead he parks at an unassuming house, one that Chrissy knows has been for sale for a year or so now, and climbs out of the car.

There’s no ‘For Sale’ sign and Steve goes around to the back of his car to grab a few things out of the trunk, wincing in pain as he hoists a duffle bag up and onto his shoulder. His face smooths out as he grabs another smaller - but heavy, it seems - box and nudges the trunk closed.

Chrissy follows him up the driveway as he sifts through his keys and unlocks the door.

The small house isn’t fit for more than a couple of people, but it’s warm and welcoming and she watches Steve toe his shoes off at the door before closing it and locking it behind him.

She glances down at her own feet and tentatively takes her shoes off as well, surprised when she can actually do it. She’s been walking around in her clothes for days, but she never stopped to consider if it was possible to remove any of them.

Steve flicks on the lights and moves to a nearby table to set the box and bag down, quietly sifting through them and muttering lowly to himself as he takes out a few things - tactical gear and gloves and-

Chrissy’s eyes widen in shock when Steve sets down a bat with long, sharp nails spiked through it. It’s covered in blood and looks like it’s been through a lot - scratches gouged along the wood, nails starting to rust a little. He then also sets down an axe that looks a little better, but also has blood all over the blade.

Her heart starts to race, her head spins, she feels like she can’t breathe.

Steve lifts a large, long-range walkie talkie to his mouth and presses the button on the side, “Squirrel Trap, this is Dizzy Ninja, do you copy? Over.”

Chrissy’s face quirks in confusion and amusement as she watches him wait for a second, repeat his words, and then set the walkie down, continuing to go through the box.

A young girl’s voice comes from it a minute later, “This is Squirrel Trap, what’s your 20? Over.”

Steve chuckles and lifts the walkie back up, “Just got off shift at the school, do you have perimeters covered tonight or do you need a hand? Over.”

Perimeters? Chrissy moves slowly closer to Steve as the girl responds, watching him push the box aside and set a thick folder down on the table before him.

“10-6.”

Steve squints, “What the hell is 10-6?” he asks himself and opens the folder, running his finger down the paper and then laughing out loud, “Jesus Christ, Dustin’s rubbing off on her.”

“All perimeters are being monitored at this time,” the girl says after some time passes, “We don’t have a full set scheduled for the morning yet, over.”

“I’ll take it. Over.”

“Get some rest, we’ll see you at oh-six-hundred. I’ve put you down for the third perimeter, The Wise advised that he’s seen bats and blooms today, so heavy assistance will be needed. Over and out.”

Steve puts his walkie talkie back down, taking a pencil from the rings of the binder and scribbling something down. Chrissy’s looking over his shoulder as he does it and he turns suddenly, looking through her, around, and then shaking his head to himself.

Is he… role playing or something? Like what the kids at school have for that Dungeons and Dragons game that Eddie would play?

She looks back at the bat.

It makes the most sense - fake blood. Steve would never-... he would never be involved with criminal activity, of that she’s sure of. Chrissy traces her fingers curiously up the handle of the bat, imagining what it would feel like to touch, and then she startles when Steve takes off his shirt.

But what’s underneath isn’t what she’s expecting.

She almost turns away completely, wanting to give him privacy, but then she sees the tight bandaging wrapped around his torso and she realizes now why he’s been wincing when he lifts or moves things, sometimes when he walks, when he sat down in his car. All of this time… he’s been wounded.

She watches him remove the wrapping with tentative, careful movements of his arms working together to expose raw, torn skin underneath. Chrissy’s heartbeats pick up again as she looks from the gouged open skin still healing back down to the bat and the axe.

While the voice on the other side of the radio had seemed like it was just a kid, she’s starting to wonder if what she overheard was more than just some kind of role playing thing.

She watches as he cleans the wounds, bandages himself back up, and then walks into the kitchen to make something to eat for himself after feeding so many people throughout the day. If she were able to do anything, anything at all, she’d offer to help. He’s done so much already.

But try as she might, she still can’t get a reaction out of him. It’s happened twice, but trying to do it on purpose seems to be impossible.

He walks back over to the table some time later with a mix of steak and mashed potatoes, a side of green beans, and starts to sift through the folder.

Chrissy moves around behind him to look over his shoulder again and watches him put two little markings along a red line that leads out to Lover’s Lake, a little symbol that looks like a bat and another that looks like a flower. Bats and blooms. She glances back to the walkie talkie.

Maybe it’s… a hyper realistic version of Dungeons and Dragons…

She looks back to his side. Would they really have gone that far just to be realistic? She’s heard some dark things about the game, but nothing she ever wanted to believe.

Chrissy doesn’t follow him when he takes the plate back into the kitchen to wash it, nor when he goes into the bathroom to brush his teeth, but she does follow him into his bedroom, turning away however when he starts to strip out of his day clothes.

She touches her hand to her chest, her other to her eyes even though she’s looking in a completely different direction.

There’s the sound of footsteps behind her and both of them startle when Steve brushes past her and their skin touches. This time, Steve’s hand flicks out and grabs her, full-on grabs her arm as he reacts instinctively, turning them and pinning her against the wall.

“What-!” Steve stops, blinking, “What… the hell?”

Her hands come up between them in terror but her body reacts differently - heated and coiling with arousal as she stares up into his wide eyes. He searches the empty space that should be her face and then looks down at where he’s squeezing her biceps and then he steps back in shock, taking his hands off of her.

“I’m… I’m going insane,” he says, panting, “Is someone there? If you’re there, say something.”

“I’m here,” she insists for what feels like the hundredth time, hoping that he’ll hear her at last, but there’s nothing from him still.

Steve searches, looks, waves his hands, even moves back into her space and tries to touch her again, but none of it works, “I’m going… I’m going fucking crazy-” he walks away, back into the dining room, staring down at his palms in disbelief.

Chrissy follows him as he stops at the table and then turns towards the door, walking over and… and picking up one of her shoes!

“Girls’ Reeboks?” he asks aloud as he turns one of them over and then he throws it down and rushes back to the table, snatching up the walkie, “Dusty-Bun, this is Dizzy Ninja, do you copy? Over.”

Her heart is still up in her throat as she shakily moves around to the door frame to watch Steve holding the walkie talkie in his trembling hand.

“10-4, this is Dusty-Bun, I’m a little-... 10-6, 10-17. Over.”

“Dusty-” Steve stops, “Dustin, is everything okay?” there’s silence on the other side, “Dustin!” he slams the walkie back down and looks through the folder, “10-17,” he mutters, “10-17…”

Chrissy moves over to him to see where his finger rests on the paper under ‘Urgent Business’ and she looks at the rest of the page of CB Radio codes.

Steve reaches back out and grabs the walkie talkie again, but just before he jams his thumb down to talk, Dustin’s voice comes through on the other side, panicked and alarmed.

“Steve! Help! Perimeter one, perimeter one, I’ve got bats and they’re on me-”

Steve’s already moving, grabbing the nailbat and walkie, snatching his keys from their spot just inside the door and he runs. Chrissy can barely keep up, taking her shoes and running outside as Steve slams the front door and bolts down the driveway. She walks into the passenger’s side seat, sitting down as Steve starts the car with one hand and slams the door closed behind him with the other.

“On my way, on my way,” he says into the walkie as he backs up and spins out of his driveway, resting the nailbat between his legs at an angle as he peels down the road.

Even though he has no idea that she’s there, the air in the car feels tense between them. She’s curious and excited about what’s on the other end of this interaction, but there’s also this small, tingling sense of fear. This is either the most complicated, intricate game of Dungeons and Dragons she’s ever heard of, or something dark and serious.

It might be something dark and serious regardless, considering the wounds she saw on his sides.

Steve parks out on a road near the edge of Kerley County and climbs out of the car, bat in hand as he runs across the road and into the trees. Chrissy does her best to keep up with him, passing quickly through the forest and stopping when they reach a fault line not unlike what she climbed out of when she came to.

“What…?” she starts to ask and Steve turns to her like he hears her.

“Nancy?” he asks in confusion and Chrissy stares back at him, but he looks away, “Nance!? Dustin!?”

“Steve!”

They both turn to the sound of the voice and Steve doesn’t hesitate to run in that direction, Chrissy following him once more and she finally starts to see the boy in the distance, trying to fight off… something coming at him from the sky above-bats.

Steve hits the first one hard, swinging the nailbat around to take out a second. He grabs the third by the tendrils of its tail wrapped around the younger boy’s wrist and flicks it around his own, yanking it free as it comes in and bites his hand.

“Steve!” Dustin shouts, trying to help him get it off.

Chrissy watches in horror as the little monster gnashes at his hand but Steve rips it free and slams it down on the ground, stomping its head out with the heel of his sneaker.

He slings his arm out, blood splattering over the forest leaves as he takes his nailbat to the other creatures, dispatching each of them until he’s satisfied and finally turns back to look at Dustin, swinging his bat up onto his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone. Where’s Nance?” he asks, glancing around the fault line.

“I know, I shouldn’t-... Nance?”

Steve nods as he motions vaguely with his free hand, “I heard her. Where is she?”

“Nancy isn’t out here,” Dustin tells him, “She’s on perimeter four tonight. It’s just me here, I figured it was safe. Every time before we’ve come out here, there wasn’t really any action-”

“We’re still supposed to go in teams,” Steve says sternly, resting his hands on his hips as he stares down at Dustin, checking him over for any other visible cuts and Chrissy smiles at the interaction. She’d never imagined him to be so protective, so caring, but it’s clear he cares about this boy, “The plan was for no less than two.”

“But we’re already stretched so thin,” Dustin complains as Steve starts to lead them back through the woods, “I was on my way home anyway. The rest of the line was pretty calm from what I saw so far.”

Steve motions for Dustin to go ahead of him and they’re about to start off into the woods when a shrill, frightening sound comes from behind them and they all turn.

Chrissy squints to look at the creature in the distance, shaped like a man but with a flower for a face, a five-petalled star-shaped open mouth… and lines of sharp teeth. Her whole body freezes and she sees Steve move to place himself between Dustin and the monster.

“The car is back on the road,” Steve says shakily, reaching into his pocket to take out his keys.

“Steve, don’t-” Dustin begs him, trying to grab his sleeve.

Steve doesn’t look at him but takes the hand scrabbling to try and hold onto him, jamming the keys into his palm, “Go and get it started, turn it around if you can. If it comes after you, you need to drive.”

“Come with me.”

“We both won’t make it.”

Chrissy looks back and forth between them, terror shooting through her, unsure if she should go with him. She doesn’t have a driver’s license but she’s been in Driver’s Ed for a while, she’s pretty comfortable with the concept of U Turns. She can sit in the passenger’s side seat… she wonders if she would be able to drive it.

But the idea of leaving Steve behind, even though she can’t do anything to help him, the idea of leaving him here to die alone-

“Steve, I can’t-”

“You offered to do it back when I was gonna go with Nance, you can do it now.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I’m staying. If you die, I die.”

“Not this time.”

“Steve-”

“Do it!” Steve shouts, bracing himself as the monster starts to run at them, “Go, now! Go now, Dustin! Run!”

Dustin runs, she stays, and watches Steve dodge a swipe of the monster’s claw, roll to the side and swing hard from underneath, the bat and all of its glorious nails hitting it hard from the chest, up to its faceless head.

The monster roars in pain as Steve comes back upright on the other side, bracing again as the monster runs at him once more, mindlessly swiping with its long arms, but Steve dodges it again and again, backing away to the edge of the fault line and dropping through it.

At first, she thinks it was an accident on his part, that he tripped or fell, but when Steve comes back through, it’s the strangest thing to watch. It’s like he’s been propelled, faster, like jumping off of a tree onto a trampoline and coming back up. He swings the bat and hits the monster as he comes down. There’s a loud crack and snap, a pained shriek, and the monster slumps down to the ground.

Steve lands hard but catches himself before he can go back over the edge.

He braces himself on the nailbat and stares down at the monster one last time, tests it with his shoe. She expects him to walk away, but then he lifts the bat and brings it down again and again, and then again. She loses count of how many times it comes down on the monster’s head, beating it until there’s nothing left.

Steve finally straightens back up, he starts to walk back through the woods and stops, eyes wide as he looks at her. He blinks, squints, moves another step towards her.

“Chrissy?” he starts to ask, blinking rapidly then before looking off to the right.

Her eyes follow his and she realizes where he’s looking. Towards the trailer park. Forest Hills Trailer Park is in shambles, but Steve looks over at it pensively.

“Steve?”

They both turn to see Dustin still standing there.

“Jesus Christ, I thought I told you to go to the car,” Steve sighs and rushes forward, snatching the keys from his shaking hands.

Chrissy follows after them and takes the backseat when Dustin climbs into the passenger’s side. She keeps her hands between her knees, nervously watching as Steve drives over to the trailer park and stops the car outside of what used to be Eddie Munson’s trailer.

“Steve, what are we doing here?”

Steve rolls his eyes but doesn’t answer, climbing out of the car and walking up to the house, Chrissy following after him.

She remembers walking down the street when she climbed up and out, when she came back to their world. Steve walking through the ruins of the trailer now is almost like having an out of the body experience. He’s felt her more than once now, he heard her, and he just saw her. And not only did he see her, but he understood that it was her.

And she doesn’t know exactly what he saw or what she looked like to him, but he knew it was her. He knew her name.

He stares up at the roof, the opening to another world and then slowly backs out, heading to the car again and Chrissy joins him.

Dustin’s there in the passenger’s side seat, relaying everything over the radio to the girl that Chrissy still doesn’t know the name of, but Steve once referred to her as ‘Squirrel Trap’. Steve listens to him quietly, only speaking up a couple of times to give more information about what happened between him and the, as he puts it, ‘Demogorgon’.

She sits quietly in the backseat as he drops off Dustin, she follows him once he’s parked at his house, and she watches over him as he cleans and bandages his hand. Only then does she realize where he got the wounds on his side from.

These bats, these monsters, that thing-the Demogorgon, everything he fought tonight… is a part of something bigger, maybe even a part of what happened to her.

And not only does the most popular, most attractive guy in Hawkins know about it all, but he fights it on a nightly basis? It can’t be a coincidence that she was lured to him, that she felt the pull, that he bumped into her, that he knows enough about this other world that the idea of a ghost girl, or whatever she is, might actually be believable to him.

Steve walks back out into the main room and leans over the table to write more in the folder, flipping through a few pages. He’s shaking from head to foot almost violently now and he stops to lift his shirt up and off, checking his sides and she immediately sees why.

She can see blood coming through on the left side and Steve winces, pressing his palm to it and hissing in pain, then reaching out to wrap up another few layers to his side, pinning them in place before brushing his fingers down his stomach.

Chrissy’s so engrossed in what he’s doing, staring at his chest hair, his stomach, all of his exposed skin, that she barely notices him reaching out and taking up the nailbat in his right hand.

“Whoever you are, whatever you are, I’m prepared to use this if you don’t back away,” she’s never heard him sound hostile before, but Chrissy immediately takes a few steps back as Steve turns towards her, glancing, moving away from the table himself with the bat in both hands.

The way he holds it… the way he handled it against the Demogorgon, with so much confidence, so capable-her heart thunders loudly in her chest, breath tight. She should be scared of him but she’s not scared at all. She’s excited.

Instead, she moves tentatively closer, stepping into his space as she’s drawn to him, lowering her hand to his wrist like she can touch him, like she’s forgotten that she can’t, but then she can feel the hairs on his arm as she steps in and tilts her chin up, her lips brushing softly against his as he freezes and drops the bat.

Steve pulls in a sharp gasp of breath as she kisses him, eyes squeezing closed as her own lids drop and she parts her lips to taste him, feeling the warmth of his mouth, his breath, his tongue against hers. She presses her whole body against him, Steve’s hand coming up to rest on her hip, keeping her in place.

He backs away, breaking the kiss and looking at her, nearly stumbling further back as he stares in disbelief, “It really is you.”

Chrissy blushes and looks away, then back to him, lifting her hands in a weak little ‘ta daa’ motion, “You can see me?”

“I can see you,” he says, the sound of it more like a prayer or a promise, “This whole time, I thought I was going crazy. I… I felt you… I bumped into you at the school. That was you, right?” she nods and he runs his shaking hand through his hair, “You’re… alive.”

“Or something,” Chrissy says, shrugging, “I’ve been invisible to everyone for days. You were the first person that actually touched me.”

Steve searches her face, “You kissed me.”

She blushes, “I didn’t-I guess it felt like the right thing to do?” she asks, lifting her shoulders, “I-” she laughs lightly and looks down to her feet, shaking her head to herself, “I’ve always wanted to,” she admits, “It just… seemed like the right thing to do to diffuse the situation.”

“Diffuse the situation,” he chuckles and drops his hands to the table as he sits back against it, “This is crazy.”

“Tell me about it,” she says as she moves closer to him once more, “I thought I was hallucinating all of these… all of the things with the monster. But you know about this stuff, you know about things that are out of this world. All of this time, I thought I was alone. But you’re here. You saw me. You knew it was me.”

She touches his hand and their eyes snap back up to look at one another before she moves in to kiss him again. She doesn’t know why, but she needs more from him. She needs that connection, something real. She needs to feel his hands on her, she needs to feel what it’s like to be alive.

Steve doesn’t stop her, his other hand lifting to her waist again as he tilts his head and parts his lips and takes her mouth with his, surging up from the table and pushing her against the wall, their bodies shifting together.

Chrissy moans against his lips, hands at his waist tracing up the bandages, feeling the solid form of him, warm and giving as he cradles the back of her head.

She feels a pull inside of her, an unnatural pressure, chasing, aching, she wants-she needs more. She needs all of him.

Her hands drop to his belt in a hurry and he mirrors her urgency as their breaths mingle between kisses, Steve’s fingers sliding up under her skirt, pressing between her legs. The draw is getting stronger, an aching, painful, sharp, biting-

“Dusty-Bun to Dizzy Ninja, over.”

Steve breaks the kiss, panting as he looks at her, starts to kiss her once more when the walkie talkie goes off again.

“Dusty-Bun to Dizzy Ninja, do you copy? Over.” … “Steeeve! Pick up! Answer RIGHT NOW, STEVE!!”

Steve turns from her, clenching his jaw as he snatches up the walkie, glancing at her as he turns away and she slumps against the wall, feeling drained, feeling tired, genuinely, “I copy!” he cuts off Dustin’s almost nonsensical screaming at this point, “Jesus Christ, dude, what do you want? Stop screaming bloody murder.”

“Over?”

“Over,” Steve snaps.

“Just wanted to check in on you. How’s the hand? Over.”

Steve sighs and looks down to the bandaging on his hand, “It’s fine. Did you talk to Ho-uhm… Lovebird One about the Demogorgon? … Over.”

“Lovebird One is aware of the situation,” Dustin says back, “Are you still doing perimeter three in the morning? Over.”

“Copy that. Over and out.”

Steve turns back to her and pauses, looking around the room, then into the bedroom, back around the one they’ve been in this whole time, “Chrissy?”

“Not again,” she mutters at the same time he does, still trying to catch her breath as she weakly pushes away from the wall and wobbles a little on her feet. She nearly drops, catching herself and slowly slumping to the floor.

“Uh,” Steve turns back to the table, then back to where she would’ve been standing, eyes not focusing on her specifically, “Right… clearly I need some sleep, because I… think I just made out with a dead girl. And I was literally gonna go further. And now I’m talking to myself like a crazy person.”

Chrissy blinks, wide eyes watching as Steve walks past her and into his bedroom, pulling the belt from his jeans the rest of the way. She’s too weak to follow him immediately, but comes in shortly afterwards in hopes that he’s already changed, but he’s still in the process of stripping down and she can’t pull her eyes away as he carefully steps out of his jeans.

She’s already seen his chest, his entire torso, but she feels her whole body ache at the sight of Steve’s thighs, the shape of his ass, his calves, his very obvious, very evident erection barely contained in his underwear.

He climbs into bed and pulls the covers up, looking around the room and touching his lips. Steve squeezes his eyes shut, mumbling something to himself under his breath before saying out loud, “Clearly it’s been too long since the last time I got laid.”

Steve presses his palm against the tented shape of his dick and Chrissy starts to get up to leave, wanting to give him privacy to touch himself after what almost happened between them, but instead he moves his hand away and reaches out to set his beside alarm. He groans as he does it and pulls back, pushing down the cover again to look at his waist once more, shaking hands gingerly touching his side.

And then he lays down flat, drops his head back and, quicker than she can wrap her head around, passes out completely. In less than a second, he’s dead to the world.

It’s the weirdest thing, it’s like he just flicks off a switch or something. Chrissy’s heard that her dad is that way, but she’s never actually seen it in action. Steve does it so easily.

One second ago he was questioning his sanity, having an existential crisis, thinking he was seeing ghosts. He just fought some kind of alien creature not more than half an hour ago… and he’s passed out so effortlessly, it’s like he was put to sleep by some kind of psychic.

She’s envious.

For as long as she can remember, she’s been ruled by insomnia. Not that she can even try to sleep right now if she wanted to, but she lays down beside him and curls atop the covers, watching him through the night, hoping that he’ll wake soon so she won’t be alone, while also wanting him to get all of the rest he needs.

It doesn’t last long.

Only a handful of hours pass before the alarm goes off and Steve slams his hand down on it, sitting upright like a zombie rising from the dead. Just like going to sleep, he’s off and then he’s on.

Chrissy follows him around the house as he gets dressed, makes breakfast, checks his side, puts new, clean bandages on his hand, and grabs his nailbat. He stops before he leaves and glances around, then walks to the door, grabbing his keys as they go.

The entire ride out to Lover’s Lake, Steve keeps glancing to the passenger’s side seat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel for the first few minutes before turning the radio on and shifting in his seat at the first red light.

Chrissy tries not to stare at him too hard in hopes that he’ll relax. Clearly, he still thinks there might be something of her here, otherwise he wouldn’t be so paranoid.

Cyndi Lauper starts to play and he mutter sings under his breath along to it, wiping his mouth and scratching his jaw. He’s a nervous wreck and she wishes she could comfort him at all about it. She tries to talk, tries to touch him, but nothing. She’s like a dead battery and it doesn’t make any sense.

Why was he able to see her before but he can’t now? What was so different? What changed?

All she did was touch him and kiss him, and the moment his lips and hands were gone from her, she was gone as well. And she was exhausted. She’s still a little exhausted from it, tired in a way she hasn’t been this entire time.

They don’t head directly to Lover’s Lake like she was expecting though, stopping by a yellow house on Magnolia with a cute little birdhouse-looking mailbox out front.

Chrissy recognizes Robin Buckley the moment she sees her and she hurriedly scrambles through the car and into the backseat before Robin has a chance to sit down on her, or in her, or… whatever might happen.

“No coffee?” she asks as she closes the door.

“No.”

“That’s disappointing.”

“Buckle your seatbelt.”

“You’re in a cranky mood this morning,” Robin observes, “Wake up on the wrong side of bed? Oh wait, I forget, you’re a psychopath with a big bed and you sleep in the center of it.”

“Ha, ha, you’re hilarious,” Steve says as he pulls back onto the road, “Put it on or we’re not going anywhere.”

Robin groans in annoyance, “Alright, alright, don’t get your panties in a bunch,” Chrissy watches as she pulls on her seatbelt, a trickle of worry start to stir around in her.

God, did she make Steve cheat on Robin? She hadn’t even considered they were together. Granted, she’s seen him dropping Robin off at school, she just… had always thought that Robin… might not be into guys or something like that.

Fear starts to grip her in a real way, but there’s nothing she can do about it now, other than to drop her head, look down her lap, and mutter a low, “I’m sorry,” so imperceptible that-

“No, I’m-... I’m sorry. It’s okay, I’m just… it’s been-the last twenty-four hours, if you had any idea what was going on in my life, you’d think I was going insane,” Steve says and Chrissy looks up, “Don’t apologize, I’m just… I’m cranky, yeah.”

“I didn’t apologize,” Robin says as she stares back at him and Steve looks at her, looks around the front of the car, glances to his rearview mirror and jumps, nearly swerving the car like he did yesterday, “Jesus Christ, Steve, what the hell are you doing? Trying to kill us!?”

“She-” Steve stops the car and turns in his seat, staring directly at her and Chrissy stares back, leaning in a little and searching his eyes, hopeful.

“You can see me?”

“I can see you,” he says again and startles a second time when Robin turns to look as well.

“Steve,” she starts hesitantly, voice shaking a little, “Who are you talking to?”

Steve motions to her and then looks at Robin, “Chrissy,” he explains, “Don’t you see her? She’s literally sitting there in the back seat.”

“Steve,” Robin says, lifting a hand to touch his shoulder, “How many hours of sleep did you get last night?”

Steve squints at her in annoyance and glances to the back seat, sighing and turning back around to the steering wheel, “God, I really am losing it.”

“Tell me about it,” Robin mutters as they start to drive off again, “Something tells me you didn’t get enough down time.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Dustin told me you fought a Demogorgon last night.”

“Yeah.”

“He said you killed it.”

“Yeah.”

“You know that makes you one of exactly two people to do that, right?” she asks, nudging him with her elbow, “We should get you and Hopper some kind of special badge.”

Steve snorts as Chrissy’s eyes dart between them as she absorbs the information. Hopper? As in, Chief Hopper? Killed one of those monsters? Knows about-knew about-of course he knew about it all, who is she kidding? He was Chief of police, it makes sense that he would know about it more than anyone else in town.

But the way they talk about him, like he isn’t dead… she wonders if they know something she doesn’t know.

There’s a beat of silence between them when Robin finally speaks up again, “So uh, you were seeing Chrissy in the back seat?” she asks and Steve nods stiffly, “Chrissy Cunningham?”

“Yeah.”

Chrissy leans forward in the seat to try and get a better look at him, he seems more reserved with Robin now than he was when she climbed into the car initially.

“You can talk to me about it, you know,” Robin says, reaching out to touch his arm and Chrissy looks away, her chest tightening, “If it’s Vecna-if he’s back, we need to know the moment it starts. Everything started with her last time, it makes sense that she… she could start coming up this time, too. Maybe he’s using her to get to you.”

Steve laughs, “Get to me? Right. Because I’m such a threat.”

“You killed a Demogorgon.”

“I’ve been seeing Chrissy since-” Steve stops and shakes his head, “I don’t want to talk about the fact that I might be going insane and seeing a dead girl.”

“Too bad. This is shit we need to be talking about because we all could be in danger.”

Steve lets out a long sigh, dropping his head back against the headrest and Chrissy wraps her arms around herself, feeling a cold dread seep under her skin.

“You did throw a molotov cocktail at him,” Robin adds and Chrissy’s eyes widen, “I don’t think he’d be-”

“Technically, you threw the second, and he actually saw that one,” Steve says, “I hit him when his eyes were closed. And Nance shot him. He could go for either of you, why go for me instead? As far as he knows, I didn’t do shit in that fight.”

Robin hums lowly and shrugs, “You also killed one of his bats.”

“Twice now… well-... like seven or so times? Three last night, three last week. Like seven, yeah.”

“See what I mean? You’re a threat. And Dustin said you fought the Demogorgon before, and the Demo-dogs as well. You’ve fought more of them than anyone else, other than maybe El.”

Steve sighs and rubs his hand against his forehead, “I don’t… I don’t think this was Vecna,” he says and Chrissy smiles a little to herself, thankful that even though she doesn’t have a voice here, and he thinks he might be crazy, Steve is inclined to think she’s not… whoever this guy is that he threw a flaming bottle of alcohol at, “She didn’t feel malicious.”

“They never do.”

Chrissy frowns and Steve doesn’t say anything to correct Robin, keeping almost completely quiet for the rest of the car ride.

It isn’t until he parks out on the edge of Lover’s Lave, in an old, traditional makeout spot that Robin reaches out to take his hand before he can leave the car.

Chrissy knows that, once again, she should probably leave and give them some privacy to talk, but she’s invested so much time already into Steve that the idea of walking away and dropping the whole thing makes her sick to her stomach.

Staying kind of does the same thing, but it doesn’t require getting up and walking away.

It’s just-he felt so right. All of this time, reaching out to him felt like the right thing to do. And his lips, when he kissed her, how he touched her, his hand pressing against the apex of her thighs. She presses her knees together just thinking about it.

How can she be wrong?

“Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” Robin tells him, her voice soft, “Have you talked to anyone else about it?”

“I almost told Dustin,” Steve says, “I thought I heard-... I knew I heard a voice that wasn’t his-I thought it was Nance, he probably thinks I’m going crazy too.”

“Or he’s just worried.”

Steve shifts in his seat and pulls his hand back, “You’re the only one that knows. And I haven’t even told you the worst part.”

This is it, this is the moment the whole plan starts to unravel.

“You could talk to Nancy about it,” Robin says in a suggestive tone and Chrissy raises a brow, “She’s the only one conscious and alive right now that was spoken to by Vecna and brought into his creepy little world - other than Eleven, that is. But maybe she might… have some insight.”

“Can you stop with this crap about Nance?” Steve asks, raising his voice a little, “She’s with Jonathan, she made that abundantly clear. Whether I wanna be with her or not, that doesn’t matter anymore. If she’s happy, I’m-” he stops and turns to look out the window, then hurriedly climbs out of the car.

“You’re not happy. And, even if you don’t want to admit it, she’s not happy either,” Robin says as she opens her own door and climbs out as well, Chrissy following them as they move to the trunk, “She wants you, I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Steve reaches in to take out his bat and a few other things as Robin scrambles around to join him at the back.

“She was jealous of me,” Robin continues as she leans on the car, trying to get Steve to meet her eyes, “Look, I know I’m not good at reading people, normally, but I know jealousy. I don’t think she’s happy with Jonatha-”

Steve slams the trunk closed and turns to her, “Robin,” he says calmly despite how upset and hurt he looks, “I know you think you’re helping, but you’re not. I don’t need to get back together with Nance, I need to get over her.”

“But she’s what you want-”

“I’m not what she wants,” Steve cuts her off, motioning with his hands “It sucks, but it’s the truth. I knew it when I was dating her, I know it even more now. So drop the whole thing with Nance, okay? It doesn’t matter what I do or how much better at this whole thing I get, I’m not what she wants and I never will be.”

He lifts the jug of gasoline and shoves it into Robin’s open arms, taking a metal lighter out of his pocket and handing it over to her before heading out towards the lake.

Chrissy blinks rapidly as Steve walks away and then she hurries after him, her mind whirling. The whole conversation has thrown her initial ideas of their relationship right out of the window, but now she doesn’t even know what to think of it.

Are they friends? Are they together and Robin is… trying to help Steve get back together with Nancy? It doesn’t make any sense.

She follows Steve through the next few grueling hours which, for her, it’s not that big of a deal because (for whatever reason) the only time she’s ever gotten tired was after interacting with Steve last night. Today, she’s fine. Today, she walks around with them for hours as Steve and Robin fight off those little flying bat monsters and set aflame some of the stuff coming out from the other side.

Tendrils pull away, retreating back to the safety of the gaping, red opening, but eventually all of their hard work starts to pay off. There’s not really much she can do to help, but she keeps up with them and continues to try to interact even though nothing she ever does works.

Steve drops off Robin around noon and they’re back at his house shortly thereafter.

He cooks lunch, cleans around the house, and then sits on the edge of his bed with his face in his hands for so long that Chrissy starts to feel a little anxious.

The first sign of movement makes her jump, as Steve drags his face through his hands, looking around the room like he’s still looking for her, and then his fingers touch his lips like they did last night.

“It felt pretty damn real,” he mutters in a low voice.

Chrissy feels her cheeks warm as she watches him staring distantly in the direction of the front room, tapping his lips with three of his fingers and then his hands drop to his belt and he starts to undo the buckle. Her eyes widen, she should look away, but she clams up, her heart thrumming wildly in her ears as Steve lays back on the bed.

She pulls in a sharp breath as he starts to push down his pants, startling when he jumps back up into a sitting position, flinging his hands away from himself as he looks at her.

“I knew it,” he says as he pushes away from the edge of the bed, “All day today, I’ve felt out of my mind, but I saw you in the back seat and I was pretty sure I saw you out on the field, too. You keep following me around. I knew you were here.”

“You see me,” she checks and he nods, “I… didn’t mean to peep on you, I was just-you were here-” he smirks, leaning back on one arm, “You did it on purpose.”

Steve shrugs, “You’ve been quiet for hours, I had to try something.”

“I haven’t been quiet at all,” she says, “I’ve tried talking so many times before and you never respond.”

He squints at her, “Why do you go away?”

She wraps her arms around herself and shakes her head, looking down at her feet, “I don’t know. I-it’s… like you forget me or something.”

“Like I think you’re not real,” he observes and her eyes come back to him, “When I start to doubt that you’re real.”

“I guess,” she smiles sadly, “I’ve… never done this before.”

“That makes two of us.”

She moves closer and he tenses so she stops a few feet away, hands itching to try and touch him, to see if she could, “You’re scared of me.”

“I don’t know what you are,” Steve says, holding out his hands, “You died months ago. You’ve been dead for literal months. No one else has seen you, just me. So am I going insane? Do you-are you Vecna?”

Chrissy’s brows lift, “I don’t… know who that is,” she admits, “You and Robin talked about him before. You fought him. But I don’t know who he is.”

“He looks like Freddy Kruegar,” Steve says, motioning to his face, “Long claws for hands, red and burned all over.”

“The monster that killed me,” Chrissy mutters as she looks away from him, thinking back, “He… his claws, I felt them go in, and there was pain, and I… I thought I was in purgatory, and then I woke back up here, but-” she wipes her eyes, “But I’m not him, I-I mean I don’t work with him, I don’t know anything about most of this. I swear I don’t.”

Steve stands up from the bed and comes closer to her, reaching out to touch her shoulders, “Hey, hey, it’s okay, I believe you,” he says as he runs his palms down her arms, the warmth of his body drawing her in, “I didn’t think it was like that in the first place.”

Chrissy looks up at him, stepping closer and pressing her whole body against his. Thankfully, he doesn’t hesitate or question it, arms wrapping around her.

“I just want to get back to normal,” she says as she shivers, “If that’s even possible at this point.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Steve tilts her chin up to look into her eyes, “Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out. Trust me, we kinda have a knack for solving these sorts of things.”

She feels drawn like she had before, completely out of her own control when she lifts up onto her toes and kisses him, seeking that warmth in hopes that it’ll fill up every inch of her. Her hands move up to run through his hair, lips parting to taste him.

He gasps against her lips but doesn’t deny her this one, simple request, kissing her back and pulling away after a minute.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna take a nap,” Steve says as he motions back to the bed, “It’s been kind of a long morning and I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night-”

“Can I stay?” Chrissy asks, feeling a little tired herself the moment he’s no longer touching her, “In here? With you?”

Steve’s eyes turn back to her in surprise, “I was gonna take off my pants,” he says carefully.

Chrissy blushes, shrugging, “I don’t mind.”

Steve huffs a laugh and moves over to his dresser, taking off his pants and shirt and then moving back to the bed. He glances at her again and she can see the relief when their eyes meet, like he thought she might disappear again. She very well could’ve, but she’s glad she hasn’t.

She nearly slumps over when she starts to move, catching herself on the bed and then climbing carefully onto it to join him, Steve watching her in surprise as she curls up in his arms.

“You’re kind of…” he hesitates, “Flickering in and out.”

“I feel weak,” she says breathlessly as she wraps her arm around his waist.

“You’ll be here when I wake up?”

She hums softly, “Even if you don’t see me, I’ll be here.”

His hand touches the back of her neck, warm and anchoring her down. For the first time in a long time, she feels like she’s at peace. She feels safe.

And she sleeps.

This fic was already posted on Patreon with active updates and is also now on AO3. For full releases at once, you can go here. Otherwise, I post semi-sporadically here and on AO3.

[daaydreamy]

no cuz i really cannot stand him especially recently 😭

like i think maybe a month ago my sister found out that her student loans were maxed out so she had to switch from one degree to a different one which ended up being good for her bc she can get the same kind of jobs but she’ll finish like 2 years earlier BUT when she told him that her loans were maxed out he started freaking out bc she has debt and he apparently didn’t know “how this is supposed to work” if she has so much debt bc he wants to buy a house at some point and that sent my sister into a spiral bc she thought he was gonna break up with her for it and she’s severely attached to this man so that literally would’ve been the end of the world but the thing that gets me!!!! is he litchrally knew that she had student debt when they started dating 😐 like BEEN had it and now all of a sudden he wants to start having a meltdown even tho the issue has not changed like…..we did this for what sir

AND THEN SHORTLY AFTER THAT he kept making up excuses to either not go to work or to come home early like one day he insisted on needing to go home and worried his boss and coworkers enough that they insisted he have my sister go pick him up bc they didn’t want him driving AND U WANNA KNOW WHAT TF HIS PROBLEM WAS⁉️ GAS‼️ HIS POOR WITTLE TUMMY HURT AND HE MADE IT SOUND LIKE HE WAS ABOUT TO DROP DEAD ANY SECOND like u rly had to have my sister go all the way there to get u bc u had to fart bitch 😐 but then another time after that like literally only 2 weeks ago he stayed home from work bc he flat out said he hates his job and doesn’t wanna work there anymore AND THEN last week he said he had a migraine but when we showed up at her apartment bc we already had plans with her he was sitting in their room on his laptop playing video games 😐 i thought ur head hurt babes⁉️ like how u gon come at my sister for having debt when u wanna fake sick ur way out of working so u can make money hoe 🤨 and when my mom brought up the fact that he made a huge deal about her debt but is constantly taking days off or leaving early bc he doesn’t like his job my sister just said “yea trust me i know but i if say anything it’ll be a whole thing 🙄” um that sounds like a red flag girlie

and then the last thing is that they take her car eeeeeverywhere and i KNOW he doesn’t pay her back for gas like there’s been so many times where she’s like “i need to get some cash out” and i’ll ask why and it’s bc she owes him for paying for food or something 😐 oh ok but he can act like ur his personal uber and that’s fine?? like her car has no AC right now and a little while ago she was talking about how awful it was to go get groceries bc of the heat and i said “why don’t u just take ryan’s car” and she said “his trunk is too small” so i said “he has a back seat 😐” and she said “oh yea ur right idk” AND THEN when we were at her apartment the same day that he stayed home to play video games bc he had a migraine he went outside and came back in with this HUGE plastic tote that he had where??? IN HIS TRUNK‼️ so i asked my sister “if he can fit that in his trunk why can’t y’all take it to get groceries” and she got mad at me 😋 and then when we met up with them for dinner this past weekend which was just a few days later bc my cousin was visiting and it was her last day they showed up IN HIS CAR so i’m assuming i struck a nerve 🤭

but yea clearly i do not like his ass but likeeee can u even blame me 😭

(oh and one lil extra thing i just remembered is that when we were visiting her at her apartment when he had his “migraine” he ended up playing uno with me and my cousin 😐 and EVERY‼️ SINGLE‼️ TIME‼️ it was his turn he’d just sit there for a little bit and then go “oh is it um…..is it my turn??” YES U STUPID FCK IT GOES IN THE SAME ORDER EVERY TIME HAVE U NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE CARD GAME IN UR LIFE omg i could not handle it and also while we were eating dinner my sister burped and he literally patted her knee and rubbed circles on it like comforting her or something as if she’s a toddler and not literally 27 years old 😐 so that made me wanna scream too)

the way that she already had student debt when they started dating is so…….. girl. 😐 making a fuss all about what???? LITERALLY NOTHING!!!!! literally acted like the world was ending tomorrow like. u knew this already???? this is not new news???? ANYWAY girl anybody could take a stomachache 😐 are u telling me u couldn’t drive bc your stomach hurt 😐 also like this is giving very like kid who faked being sick to not go to school LMFAOOOO u are a grown ass man 🙄 “it’ll be a whole thing” … not even gonna say anything about THAT. also… just use his car???? 😭 and pay her back for gas bitch that’s just rude 🤕 AND I FUCKING HATE WHEN PEOPLE DO THAT OMG!!!!! “is it my turn” YES OH MY GOD PLEASE PAY ATTENTION!!!!!!!

baby owemgee that burp was so big 🥺 are u okay baby? 🥺 that was so brave 🥺

[talesofcrypt]

WEATHERS, GALE​:

“Oh, I’m sure I would have. I would have loved to see you bust a bunch of bad guys in your sexy uniform.” Gale laughs but, she’s also telling the truth. She would’ve cheered Dewey on as she followed behind him, with her film crew and caught the whole raid on camera. They’d make a great team, or great power couple. He finds all the dirt and apprehends the suspects, while Gale puts their shit on blast. Why she hasn’t considered going on dates with him before, she’ll never know.

“You’re right. I broke my own rules.” She can’t help but talk dirty though. Gale has no clue what a filter even is. She doesn’t have one, nor has she ever had to use any on social media. ( Because she’s naturally beautiful, duh. ) “I’m not much of a law abider, Dewey. But shhh, don’t tell anyone. That’s our little secret.” And possibly, their first of many.

“This place is so magical. Not what I was expecting for a first date.” Then again, her others had already set the bar extremely low. Dewey was like Prime Rib status right now. He should totally bask in it. She, sure as hell, was going to as she swirled the wine in her glass. It was an anxious habit of hers but it also, somehow made the Pinot Grigio taste better.

“Are you kidding?” The gory details were important but, also necessary for solving any case. Gale couldn’t stress the severity of these murders to the citizens of Riverwood if she left such horrifying details out. “The details matter. Even if they are brutal. The people of Riverwood need to know what they’re facing, so they can understand what they’re up against. It’s my job to report the facts, regardless of how bloody and at times unsavory they are.” Plus, Gale didn’t shy away from murder. She’s been fascinated by true crime ever since she was a little girl and she witnessed many incidents take place in her neighborhood. She told herself when she got older, she would find a safer home to come back to. She succeeded, while also making a name for herself in the process. People looked up to her, like Isadora had. They thought she was the next Barbara Walters, or Diane Sawyer.

“If you’re asking what I think —” and that’s exactly what he was doing, “I think we have another serial killer on our hands. There’s really no such thing as a coincidence. And like you said, these attacks feel personal. That’s because they are. Whoever this executioner or anonymous slasher is, they want to be noticed. Otherwise, why leave a dead body behind a dumpster where anyone taking out the trash can stumble upon it? And why attack the dean of admissions at a very prestigious school if you’re trying to fly under the radar? This killer wants people to talk about him. So, what do you do? People like me, give him a platform. He performs for us and eventually he’ll slip up. They always do. And when he does, I’ll be there to catch him. I’ll do what your colleagues are too afraid to. Because some lunatic with a knife doesn’t scare me. Plus, if I have you to protect me… I’ll be fine.”

...

Gale was right, the details do matter. Dewey would have to stop hiding behind his own secrets and fears if he wanted to get to the bottom of this case. He had a suspect in mind but, he hasn’t told the precinct about him, and he couldn’t exactly tell Gale either. At the top of his list was 22-year-old Westham student, Stuart Macher. The first killing was apparently a drug deal gone bad. That’s what the victim’s sister says. The second victim was Mr. Macher, Stu’s father. Now, Stu is a drug dealer, who also happens to have a history of abuse with his father. Dewey would have told the precinct about the connection but, then Stu might feel reconsider opening up to the police about the brutality he faced at the hands of their American hero. Dewey beat him nearly to death and has been harboring that guilt ever since. 

“So what you’re saying is you want to team up and take down this bad guy...or bad girl...woman...together?” Dewey didn’t want to come across as sexist. The killer could very well be a woman, if not Stu Macher. But if it is Stu, Tatum could be in trouble. Which meant, Dewey would have to have a follow-up conversation with the bonehead. “What if I can’t trust you?” She said so herself, she’s a reporter first. It was all about the story. If he has a lead, how does he know she won’t leak it? 

“You said you don’t always follow the rules. That you sometimes break them to get what you want. What if I had to do the same thing once or twice...And what if, hypothetically, I have a suspect in mind who knows a few of these secrets. Then what? Do I go after him alone or call my buddies and risk my badge?” Maybe Dewey shouldn’t have been drinking. He was on his, what, ninth beer now? Loose lips sink ships and he was on a roll. In his alcohol-hazed mind, he realizes he’s said too much but, Gale’s pretty and he can’t help himself. He wants to give her a story. He wants to give her whatever she wants if it means he’ll get to spend more time with her. 

[dumdumsun]

Lost and Found

A/N: And finally, Chapter Sixteen. Thank you so much to everyone who has taken time to read this first installment of the Lost and Found series. I am deeply and crazily thankful for all the love and support this has gotten. I didn't want to write for Stranger Things for so long because the story is so huge, but I'm so happy I talked myself into doing it. This has been the most fun thing to write. I'm currently a chapter and a half away from completing the sequel; see the note after this chapter for when that's coming out. Again, thank you beautiful people so much, thank you @yurtletheturtlehenderson for your amazing fic that inspired this (please go check out "COSMIC", guys. It's so damn good) and thank you @sapphicsyn for your constant support when I'm offline and getting this written. I hope you all enjoy this final chapter and I hope to see you in the sequel, "Break and Mend". Love y'all ❤️

(P.S. if you’re on the taglist rn, you’re automatically on the taglist for the sequel. So if you’re not on it yet, then lmk so you can be notified of the sequel)

Warnings: vomiting, mentions of gunshots and death/dying

Word Count: 3700

—————————————

Chapter Sixteen: Doc Destructo

“Doc? Doc, can you hear me? Come on, please wake up!”

Doc didn’t know when or how she got on one of the tables in Mr Clarke’s classroom, but it was obvious it had something to do with Mike. The boy was hovering over her, panicked eyes shining with tears as he watched for any sign of life from his sister. Doc could hear yelling and gunshots outside the room, and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open her eyes and welcome herself back into the real world. But she couldn’t take the heartbreaking sound of Mike’s pleas any longer.

The sight of Mike’s panicked expression washing away into relief when Doc opened her eyes caused a small smile to make its way onto her face. She felt him squeeze her hand she didn’t even realize he was holding until now. “Are they dead, Mike?” She whispered. “Did I kill them…?”

Mike swallowed as he solemnly nodded. “Yeah… They’re dead. But you had to, Doc, they were gonna take you and El. And who knows what they would’ve done to the rest of us? They were gonna hurt us and no one else could’ve stopped it.”

“W-Wait,” She sat up with a start despite her aching body’s protest. “I-I feel something. W-Where’s El?”

“Doc, are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about me, Mike. We need to focus on El.”

Turning over, Doc found El laying on the table beside the one she was on. Remembering that he had two people to watch over, Mike rushed over to El, taking her hand into his. The girl looked on him as if he were a beacon of hope to her, her saving grace. He might as well have been. “Just hold on a little longer, okay?” He sniffled. “He’s gone. The bad man’s gone. You’ll be home soon, and my mom… she’ll get you your own bed. You can eat as many Eggos as you want… And we can go to the Snow Ball.”

Mike could make out the desperate smile on El’s face through the flickering of the lights above them. “Promise?” She softly asked.

“Promise.” He sniffled. The two warmly and sweetly stared at each other until screeching interrupted their moment. The boys all flinched and grouped together, ready to defend the two girls if need be. Just outside the door, the screeching continued, accompanied by thudding. The gunfire from whatever agents were left soon decreased to nothing, signifying their demise. A beat later, the door to the classroom was broken down and the Demogorgon leaped into the room on all fours, opening its mouth to let out a roar as Lucas hurried to shrug off his backpack. Mike and Dustin screamed for him to get his wrist rocket out of his bag.

“Get the rocks! Get the rocks!” “I’m getting the rocks!” Dustin screamed back at Mike before handing one of the rocks to Lucas, the boy slinging it back into the elastic of the rocket and aiming it at the creature that slowly stalked towards them. As their screaming continued, they failed to notice Doc trembling on the table she sat up on, head tilted toward the monster.

The boys finally noticed her when the Demogorgon seemed to cave in on itself, its skin shriveling and sinking into itself until a few holes were left in its body. It screeched out in pain so loud, the boys covered their ears when they were pierced by the sound. When about half of its body was nothing but holes, Doc let her body go limp and roll off of the table with a thud. The boys would have rushed over to her if the Demogorgon hadn’t continued its way toward them, despite how much it was weakened.

“Kill it!” Dustin screamed to Lucas, who aimed his rock to be flung once again. He let go of it, the rock smacking it in the face. It hardly budged, which only fueled their fear. As they continued to scream at him, Lucas flung another rock, showing the same result.as the first. The third and last rock launched, however, hit the Demogorgon just before it was sent flying back, its back hitting the wall harshly. The three of them stared in confusion, certain Lucas’s rocks hadn’t packed that much of a punch, before El walked between them. Her eyes were sunken in, skin paler than before, blood dripping from her nose as she approached the monster with an unafraid look on her face.

“Eleven, stop!” Mike called out, quickly following her. Without looking, El stretched her arm backwards and sent Mike flying and sliding across the floor until he slammed cabinets in the back of the room. El continued to move forward, only stopping when she was right in front of the weakened creature. Its chest still heaved and its head moved about as it tried to break from El’s hold. Tears falling from her eyes, she turned back to her friends, to her sister who still lay in a heap on the ground. El drew in a deep breath as her eyes returned to Mike once again.

“Goodbye, Mike. Take care of Doc.” She sadly spoke before turning back towards the squealing creature. “No more.” She whispered and slowly stretched her arm out towards it. Had Doc been conscious, she would have been quivering on the ground due to the excessive use of El’s powers. The scream the girl had let out paired with the screeching of the monster was too much for the boys to bear, so they covered their ears once again. El silently thanked Doc for the damage she did on the Demogorgon already. It was already weakened, but it would never stop unless she put an end to it. Her power tore the monster apart more and more until ashes began drifting from it and surrounding her. Mike watched through teary eyes as El disappeared along with the Demogorgon.

The screaming and the screeching silenced and there was nothing in front of them but a mess of ashes falling from the air onto the floor, and a dent left in the chalkboard where the monster once was. There was another beat of silence before Mike scrambled to his feet, he and his friends rushing to the front of the classroom, desperately calling out for El. Tears blurring his vision, Mike twisted his body all around. “El, where are you?! Eleven?! El?!”

“Mike…” Lucas gently touched his shoulder. “We gotta get Doc out of here.”

“B-But El-”

“Come on, Mike.” Lucas tried to urge him as Dustin rushed over to the Wheeler girl. Sniffling, Mike followed them and knelt down beside his sister. Dried blood stuck to her clothes, her hair, her skin. It made him realize that all four of them had been covered in blood that wasn’t theirs. Shivering at that, Mike let his friends help his sister into his arms. From outside, they could hear the sound of several sirens going off.

Karen Wheeler had practically jumped out of the car before Ted could even park, winding her way around police officers, paramedics and their respective cars as she searched for her children. “Mike? (Y/N)?” She called out. The whole scene came to a stand-still when the entrance to the school opened up. First, it was Lucas and Dustin walking out and holding open the double doors. Their mothers could be heard sobbing as they rushed for them. But Karen nearly fell to her knees as she watched a grief-stricken Mike walk through the open doors with a very bloody and very unconscious Doc in his arms. “Oh, my babies!” She cried out, sprinting to them with open arms. “Oh, my god, what happened? Is she- I-Is she-”

Karen was interrupted when a few paramedics approached them and gently informed her that they needed to take Doc to the hospital. At this, Mike snapped out of his daze. “Hey… H-Hey! Be careful with her! Don’t hurt her! You hear me?! Don’t hurt her!”

“Mike…” Karen sobbed, bringing her son into her arms as she watched the paramedics take her daughter onto the truck. Off to the side, Ted was talking with one of the police officers, his eyes drifting back and forth between his two kids. Approaching his wife, who still watched the ambulance truck like a hawk, he set his hand on her shoulder.

“Why don’t I take Michael home to get cleaned up, and you can go to the hospital with (Y/N)?”

Looking up at her husband through tears, she absently nodded and gave Mike a kiss on the cheek before hurriedly walking to the car.

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

An unbelievable amount of thoughts ran through Mike’s head a million miles a minute as he, his friends and family sat in the waiting room of the hospital to see both Will and Doc. He hoped and prayed that his friend and sister would wake up, that Doc hadn’t pushed herself too much when fighting the Demogorgon. But the thoughts that occupied his mind the most were those of El.

Where did she go? Was she okay? Did she take the Demogorgon with her? Did it get to her? Is she alive?

Mike’s head snapped up when he heard the door to the room open, Jonathan standing in the doorway. He gave a nod to the boy, sending a wave of relief through him. Turning to Dustin and Lucas, who were asleep beside him, he shook them awake. “Guys. Guys, he’s up. Will is up! Guys, Will’s up!”

Grunting, the two shot up and jumped to their feet, rushing after Mike to their friend’s room. Upon entering his room, Mike was ecstatic to see Will awake and smiling at him in shock. “Byers!” He cheered, the three boys joyfully laughing as they ran over to his bed.

“Be careful,” Joyce warned as Lucas and Mike piled themselves onto the boy in a hug. “Be careful with him.”

“Move.” Dustin pulled them off of Will before going in for a hug himself as Jonathan entered the room, softly trying to warn the boys to be more careful with his little brother. Pulling himself up, Dustin stood between Lucas and Mike. Will tried to keep up with Lucas and Dustin’s overlapping words.

“You won’t believe what happened when you were gone, man.”

“It was mental!”

“You had a funeral.”

“Jennifer Hayes was crying. Doc was so pissed!”

“Not as pissed as Troy! He peed himself in front of the whole school!”

Will grinned. “What?” He laughed before going into a coughing fit. The boys silenced themselves as they watched the poor boy try and compose himself. When he was done, Mike gently patted his shoulder.

“You okay?”

He nodded. “It got me. The Demogorgon.”

“We know. It’s okay. It’s dead. We made a new friend. She stopped it. She saved us,” His eyes turned downcasted. “She’s gone now…”

Dustin decided to pop into the conversation. “Her name’s Eleven.”

“Like the number?”

“Well, we call her ‘El’ for short,” Lucas added.

“She’s basically a wizard.”

“She has superpowers.”

Mike smiled a bit. “More like a Yoda,” He nodded. “But… Doc is like her. She has powers, too. She’s always had them.”

Will blinked. “Where… Where is Doc?”

Nancy, who had entered the room at some point and was watching the sweet moment, heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Turning around, she widened her eyes at her younger sister entering the room. She was in nothing but her hospital gown and walked with the IV pole rolling beside her in her grasp. “Hey, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be in your room.”

“Is Will awake?” She whispered, moving past Nancy and towards the bed. Upon seeing her, the boys immediately moved away for her to reach Will. When the two locked eyes, her lip quivered and her vision became blurry. “Will…” She grinned, leaning down to gently hug him. Will wrapped his arms around her the best he could as he sniffled into her shoulder.

“I knew you’d come for me,” He whispered. “You said you would.”

Doc pulled back and softly kissed his cheek, the boy’s face warming and his heart beating rapidly. “I would never lie to you…” She then felt a hand on her back and straightened up to see her brother smiling at her. She leaned against his shoulder and drew in a deep breath. “Where’s Eleven?” She whispered. Mike wrapped an arm around her shoulders and rubbed her arm.

“She’s gone, Doc…”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Okay…”

“(Y/N)?” Karen could be heard as she entered the room with Ted. “Oh, there you are! You’re awake! The doctors are looking for you,” She assisted her daughter’s shaky walking. “Let’s get you back in bed.”

“See you later, Will.” She quietly called over her shoulder.

Lifting a hand to wave, he whispered back. “See you later, Doc…”

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

On a dark winter’s night, at the edge of Maple Street’s suburban cul-de-sac, flakes of snow began to fall. They landed softly onto the lawn of the Wheeler residence. This lawn, amongst other aspects, was a symbol for the perfect nuclear family residing within the two-story home. Below those two stories, within the basement, sat the five members of Hawkins Middle School’s Audio Visual Club and players of the current Dungeons and Dragons campaign.

“Something is coming. Something angry. Hungry for your blood,” Mike whispered, eyes trailing over his friends and sister who all sat around the round table. “It is almost here.”

“What is it?” Will impatiently asked.

“It’s the thessalhydra, I’m telling you.” Dustin spoke.

“It’s not the thessalhydra.” Lucas countered.

“I’m telling you, it’s the thessalhydra.”

Doc leaned over to whisper into Will’s ear. “What’s a thessalhydra?”

Before he could answer, Mike slammed a figurine onto the table. “The thessalhydra! It roars in anger!” He exclaimed as the boys groaned. “Will, your action!”

“What should I do? I-”

“Fireball him!” Lucas shouted.

Will looked to Dustin, who leaned forward and thoughtfully rubbed his chin before smirking at his friend. “Fireball the son of a bitch.”

Looking to Doc for confirmation, she shrugged and nudged him. “Hey, if they say to fireball him, fireball him.” She chuckled. Bashful, Will picked up the dice and shook them in his hands before letting them fall onto the table. Leaning forward, they all counted the numbers before-

“Fourteen!” They all exclaimed as Mike continued his narration.

“Direct hit. Will the Wise’s fireball hits the thessalhydra. It makes a painful-” He let out a short screech before falling to his knees on the floor. “-and then… it crumbles to the ground. It’s clawed hand reaches for you one last time and… and… and… and…” He pretended to pass out, the four others jumping from their seats and cheering, moving from the table to dance around. “Lucas cuts off its seven heads, and Dustin places them into his bag of holding. You carry the heads out of the dungeon, victorious, and you present them to King Tristan. He thanks you for your bravery and service.”

Returning to their seats, they all looked at Mike in confusion. “Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s not it, is it?” Dustin shook his head.

“No, there’s a medal ceremony-”

“Oh, a medal ceremony! What are you talking about?!”

“The campaign was way too short.” Lucas joined.

“Yeah!” Doc and Will agreed. Mike leaned forward with widened eyes.

“It was ten hours!”

“But it doesn’t make any sense!” Dustin argued.

“It makes sense!”

“Uh, no, what about the lost knight?”

“And the proud princess?” Lucas raised a brow.

“And those weird flowers in the cave?” Will leaned forward.

“And Doc Destructo’s home going into war? Didn’t she ask for backup?” Doc placed her hands on her hips. Mike looked around hopelessly, holding back a cringe at his sister’s character’s name. He hated it so much, but she loved it just as much as he hated it.

“I don’t know-”

The argument was interrupted when they heard the door open and footsteps descend the stairs. Jonathan entered with a smile on his face. “Jeez, what’s that smell? Have you guys been playing games all day or just farting?”

“Oh, that’s just Dustin.” Lucas teased. As he and Dustin went into some more playful banter, Jonathan shook his head and called for Will to come with him. As he began to stand, Doc rose with him.

“I’ll see you guys out.” She softly smiled at them. After exchanging goodbyes with the boys, the three headed upstairs. Closing the door behind her, she walked with the two through the kitchen. Jonathan looked back at the two with raised brows.

“So, (Y/N), you’re finally playing with the guys?”

“Yeah. It’s still a little confusing. But Will’s been helping me.” She squeezed said boy’s arm as he started to blush. Jonathan chuckled at them as they began to pass Karen, who was making Christmas desserts in the kitchen.

“Hey, boys.”

“Hey, Mrs Wheeler.” They greeted her.

“(Y/N), you’re walking them out?”

She nodded. “Yes, Mom.”

“Thank you, sweetie. And boys, wish your mom a merry Christmas for me, okay?”

“Yeah. Merry Christmas.” Jonathan nodded before they approached the door.

“Hey, Jonathan. Wait up!” Nancy called as she descended the stairs, holding a gift in her hands. “Merry Christmas.”

Jonathan stared down at the gift in confusion. “Uh… Thanks, um… I-I didn’t get you anything. I… I feel bad.”

“No,” She shook her head. “No, it’s uh, it’s not really a present. It’s, um… Well, you’ll see.” She smiled before leaning forward and placing a kiss on Jonathan’s cheek. Will smirked over at Doc, not expecting her to already be staring at him. She glanced down at her shoes for a second before she stepped closer and kissed his cheek. Softly gasping, Will covered his now reddened cheek with his hand.

“Merry Christmas…” Doc whispered before Jonathan gently held his shoulder and led his brother out of the house. After the door had closed, Nancy bumped her sister with her hip, a teasing smirk on her face.

“Aren’t you bold?”

“Shut up.” Doc groaned, and now it was her turn for her cheeks to warm up.

Later on that night, as Doc walked up to the bathroom door, she stopped at the sound of Mike calling out to her. Turning around, she saw that he was staring down at the ground. Ever since she asked him about El’s whereabouts, he hadn’t spoken another word of the girl. Doc knew it was eating him up inside, not knowing where she was or how she was doing. It had the same effect on her as well.

Not being able to stand the look of sorrow on his face anymore, Doc took four steps forward and wrapped her arms around the back of Mike’s neck, pulling him into a hug. Letting out a slow sigh, Mike wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face into her shoulder. And that’s how they stayed for a long, long time. It was quite possibly the longest hug they had ever shared. Even longer than the times Mike would hold Doc when a nightmare struck her so hard, she was a shaking mess. She was happy to be trading places now. It meant she was a person of comfort for Mike. “It’s gonna be okay.” She whispered when she felt him take in a deep, stuttering breath.

“Can you… feel her? Y-You said that was something you could do. That you could feel her presence from miles away.”

Closing her eyes, Doc dreaded the truthful answer she was to give her brother. “No. I can’t feel her… I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s okay,” When he pulled away, he gave his sister a tight smile before ruffling her hair. “Merry Christmas, Doc. Get some sleep.”

“Hey,” She whispered as he walked down the hall. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” He whispered back and entered his bedroom, closing the door behind him. Doc didn’t move from her spot in front of the bathroom door for quite some time. She only continued to stare forward as an uneasy feeling settled itself at the bottom of her stomach.

Doc cursed herself for eating all that junk food with the boys because everything in her stomach was rushing up to her throat. Spinning around, she hurried into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. Kneeling down in front of the toilet, she began gagging uncontrollably, her throat already on fire. A tense pressure built up in the side of her head and she swore she was going to pass out had it not been for the vomit that spewed from her mouth and into the toilet.

Only, it didn’t stop there.

Doc clutched her pounding head in both her hands as her body disposed of everything in her stomach. When that was all out, her body didn’t cease its convulsing. This terrified her because she was no longer in control of her body. Bile rose in her throat once more before a thick, black goo-like substance shot out of her mouth and into the toilet. The force of it leaving her body had Doc slumping against the wall beside her. Her wide eyes never strayed away from whatever was now in the toilet. It didn’t frighten her as much as it did shock her.

This was because this wasn’t the first time she had vomited something like this up. She had spewed out the same black goo the night Will went missing. The night Eleven opened the gate between their world and the Upside Down.

Sighing heavily, Doc reached over and flushed the toilet, standing shakily to wash her mouth and brush her teeth. Returning to her bedroom, she dressed into her night clothes and climbed into bed, staring up at her ceiling with a blank look.

Maybe the vomit meant nothing. Maybe it was just the color of everything in her stomach mixed up. Maybe there was nothing to worry about.

“Nothing can happen to you tonight,” She whispered to herself, pulling her blanket over her head. “Tomorrow’s Christmas.”

—————————————

Taglist: @yurtletheturtlehenderson @crybabyalex @sapphicsyn @shydestinymoonalexa @nailbatbitch @that-one-multifandom-chick @ariyabella  @lonelywitchv2  @bilesxbilinskixlahey @frogserotonin @mymomsdisappointment  @hewwofriends  @billieissad @get0ut0fmyr00m @softasha @kaz3yo @satsuri3su @sassygentlemenjellyfish @thegirlwhowishedeveryonelived @unordinary-simp @raquel12

The sequel "Break and Mend" is coming to you July 18, 2022. Thank you for reading!

[takerfoxx]

The Owl House, Season 2 FINALE, "King's Tide," First Impressions!

Spoiler: She wasn’t ready for trauma.

Well, haha, hey!

At least Belos’s plan got foiled! I mean, no more Day of Unity! Draining Spell, fully stopped! Belos, squishy goo! Hooray!

Shame about what is basically a prepubescent Bill Cipher running rampant all over the Boiling Isles and basically holding the actual voice of Bill Cipher captive and Gus, Willow, and Amity being stranded away from their homes (I doubt Hunter would feel that bad about moving to the Human Realm) and them being unable to go help their loved ones.

But Belos did get what was coming to him! That counts for something, right?

Actually, can we talk about how horrifying the reveal of what the Day of Unity was actually about was? See, we all assumed that it was intended to serve some greater purpose, like to actually merge the two realms, or provide the power necessary to free the Collector, or turn Belos into a god or something. But NOPE! It was just plain genocide. If he had been solely focused on getting home, Belos (or Philip, as I suppose we should call him now) probably could have pulled it off long ago. But instead, he had to spend actual centuries setting up this elaborate plot, deceive hundreds, seek dark powers, all to just kill a whole bunch of innocent people.

And that’s what’s really scary about him. Philip is a believer. He’s not doing it because of greed or ambition or whatever (though there is plenty of spite because of the Caleb situation). He genuinely believes that scouring the Boiling Isles of all magical beings is the right thing to do. And the chilling thing is, while nobody is likely having to worry about magical apocalypses or whatever, there are so many people out there that genuinely think like he does. It adds a believable dimension to him that makes everything he does that much more horrifying.

That having been said, for as smart, meticulous, crafty, and level-headed as he is, he definitely isn’t genre-savvy, whereas Luz definitely reads TV Tropes and has an ao3 account. Got to him by dissing the drip, ha.

In other news, I’d also like to say that I called it when it came to Eda’s detachable limbs being used to save her from the sigil. I would’ve liked for that aspect of her to have come up more, because it’s funny, but it was still a cool moment. That having been said, seeing how the Draining Spell was stopped in time before it killed everyone, she did kind of get screwed out of an arm. Oh well, I’m sure she’ll forgive her wittle Rain Cloud.

And, hey! Would’ja look at all those dead Hunters! Jesus, we only saw like 12 or 13 in Belos’s mind. Kikimora called them the failures, so I’m guessing that for every complete Grimwalker there was a whole lot of insufficient ones that were disposed of. It was very…Hollow Knight, like a lot of things were in this show.

Also, Kikimora knew about the Grimwalkers? What? How? Did Darius?

At least we got confirmation that the other Coven Heads were also deceived and not willingly taking part in genocide. There’s going to be a lot they have to come to terms with once they come around. But how the hell did Odalia know? And where is she? Did she have a sigil?

Also, there were probably whole episodes planned intending to introduce each of the Coven Heads the same way Adrian was that we’re not going to get now. Bleh.

So, hey! The Collector! Quite terrifying, aren’t they? But at least not actively evil and malicious. More of immature and disturbingly powerful. Yeah, uh, I don’t know how King is going to get through to them, but given the short sympathetic moments they’ve gotten, I do see them being talked down rather than outright defeated like Bill Cipher was. Though hey, since they confirmed that it was the Titan that sealed them away, and they’re the ones responsible for turning the Owlbeast into a scroll back in prehistoric times, do you think that the Owlbeast might be a Titan? But like a beast one? We already had it confirmed that there is more than one kind of Titan, some of them animals.

Yeah, not a whole lot to really analyze this week, as this episode was more intended to make you stare blankly at your screen than dig into clues and make theories. Well.

Also, yeah, Grimer Belos is still slithering about. Great.

...

Well, hey! Another silver lining! At least Luz's promise got resolved without a bunch of uncomfortable drama! Say what you will about overwhelming trauma, at least it doesn't make you cringe while watching it!

And Camila not only gets to learn that her daughter has real friends and a girlfriend now, she gets to meet them! And Luz and Vee get to meet face-to-face! And there's soup! Everyone loves soup, right?

...this is going to be a long wait for season 3.

[biconderoga]

Part 1: Here

Scenario: The death of Itadori hung over Y/N’s head at every waking moment. The circumstances were shrouded with mystery, and Y/N couldn’t do anything but carry on with a heavy heart. Minor Spoilers ⚠️ (Just briefly mentions the way Itadori was revealed to the first years).

Word Count: 2,069!! (My longest piece to date-)

“It’s me! The dearly departed Itadori!”

Megumi liked to think he could take a joke. He could handle teasing on his behalf. Gojou was relentless in that field, so it wasn’t a foreign experience for him. Years of dealing with the blindfolded sorcerer taught him to deal with sometimes tasteless jokes.

But this…this was the most distasteful joke he had ever seen. It left an incredibly bad taste in his mouth. He would rather chug curdled milk than deal with the spectacle that was playing out in front of him. His so called dead comrade was wheeled in by Gojou, and surprise surprise! He was alive and well.

Megumi closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took a very deep breath. He opened his eyes again, and glared at Itadori. Itadori, sensing the tense atmosphere, feebly made jazz hands in hopes of alleviating the mood.

It did not work.

“So, um,” Itadori rubbed the back of his neck, and continued in a quiet rushed tone, “Sorry about not telling you I was alive and all...”

Nobara’s eye twitched at his apology while Megumi turned around to join the second years. The shikigami user didn’t have time to deal with this. The Goodwill Event currently took priority. Perhaps after it was done, Megumi could properly wrap his head around Itadori’s revival.

He didn’t know what to feel. If anything, he felt anger. Anger on Y/N’s behalf. How would she feel about Itadori’s return? She didn’t know how he died, and would especially not understand the fact he was alive. Megumi was not one for strong emotions, but the swelling of anger in his chest was too great to ignore.

“Oh? What’s got you so pissy, Megumi?” Maki leaned against the wall as she placed her head on the back of her hand, “You seem upset. Shouldn’t you be a bit more relieved about Itadori?”

Megumi silently huffed, “It’s nothing.”

Nobara, who was marginal to Maki, rolled her eyes, “Always so secretive.”

“You know you don’t have to keep visiting me…”

Megumi merely nodded at Y/N’s statement, “I know, but it’s only fair that I check up on you.”

Y/N groaned at his statement, “I appreciate the sentiment, but you don’t have to babysit me. I may have been Itadori’s girlfriend, but I’m not nearly as rash as he was.”

He nodded once again. Megumi himself didn’t understand why he habitually returned to Y/N’s residence. She didn’t properly know him, and if anything she most likely associated him with Itadori’s death. He wouldn’t be surprised if Y/N was just being polite. She easily could’ve been putting up a facade as she silently seethed on the inside.

“You can say you hate me,” Megumi paused as he chose his next words, “You can kick me out if you want. I know you probably blame me for Itadori’s death, I know I blame myself.”

Y/N’s breath hitched as Megumi ended his miniature spiel. She shook her head before she firmly placed her hands onto his shoulders, “We haven’t known each other for long, but Itadori did tell me you were strong. I’m not sure where your strength lies, but I do know it’s not your fault. Itadori’s stupid mistakes don’t have anything to do with you. If anything, I hate myself for not asking him more questions,” She lowly whistled, “and I would be lying if I said I didn’t blame Itadori. He was always doing the most, and never took a break.”

Itadori was right, Megumi did like Y/N. Despite the fact she knew absolutely nothing about the circumstances of his death, Y/N was still able to continue forward. She was hurting, but she still took her time to confirm her faith in Megumi.

“Before he…” The sorcerer paused and swallowed thickly, “…died. Itadori told me I would like you.”

Y/N weakly laughed, “And do you?”

“You’re nice…” Megumi smiled, “Itadori got lucky.”

With the goodwill event said and done, Megumi found himself back in his dorm. His blinds were shut, and he was curled beneath his covers as he nursed a headache. No matter the occasion, Megumi found himself injured…

A quiet knock resounded throughout his room followed with a weak, “Hello?”

Megumi shifted under his covers and huffed, “Who is it?”

Silence was heard before the voice mumbled,“Itadori.”

‘Ah,’ Megumi thought, ‘He’s alive’ Following all of the hustle and bustle of the festival, Itadori’s miraculous revival was the last thing on his mind. Megumi processed his answer. He liked his lips before he uttered a, “Come in.”

Itadori entered the room and stood awkwardly by the entrance. He rubbed the back of his head, before gathering the courage to speak. “I heard you made everyone the meatballs I taught you how to cook…”

“Yeah,” Megumi sat up, “Everyone liked it.” The black haired male scratched his head. Itadori was usually a straightforward and happy-go-lucky person, this tense small talk was beneath him. “What do you need Itadori?”

“Ah! Well-you seem distant? Are you still mad at me?”

Megumi shrugged and feigned indifference, “I was never mad. I’m just not used to dead people being revived.”

“Oh, true!” Itadori visibly calmed, “Well if your not mad, can I ask you something?”

Now there was the Itadori that Megumi knew, blunt and straight to the point. The male raised his eyebrow, a silent indicator for Itadori to continue.

“So um…about Y/N…” The vessel fiddled with his hands, “She’s probably real mad I went M.I.A without telling her. Especially, after going a two months without contact! Can you be my excuse? Like we can say we were on a surprise field trip in the middle of the country.”

Megumi sighed at Itadori’s rambling. It seemed to be an ongoing trend that he was the bearer of bad news. First, it was Itadori’s death to Y/N. And now, it was the fact Y/N now thought Itadori was dead. What was first an act of kindness on Megumi’s part was now a huge problem for Itadori.

“So whaddya say?”

“She thinks you’re dead,” Came Megumi’s blunt reply, “If you’re ever going to talk to her again, she deserves the truth. She isn’t going to blindly trust you after thinking you were dead. It’s the least she deserves.”

Itadori’s eyes widened into saucers, “Who told her? Gojou-sensei said no one would—“ He threw himself to the floor and rolled back and forth, “He said since she was a regular person no one would bother telling herrrrr.”

As Itadori continued his senseless bemoaning, Megumi took in a deep breath. The black-haired male rose from his bed and approached Itadori. He gently kicked his side (in a silent hope that it would shut him up) before he spoke, “I did.”

“You did? I thought you hated doing that type of thing.”

“I do,” Megumi rolled his eyes, “But it isn’t fair that she would’ve been waiting for a dead person to call her.”

“But I’m not dead!”

Megumi’s vein nearly popped out of his forehead, “Well I didn’t know dumbass!”

“Can you pass me the ginger paste?”

The male nodded as he foraged through Y/N’s fridge. Once found, he tossed it to her. The girl fumbled to catch it, and playfully glared at Megumi when she did.

“Did Itadori teach you how to make the meatballs?” Megumi queried, “He taught me how.”

“Yeah right, it was me who taught him.” Y/N kneaded the meat in the bowl, “He failed to mention that didn’t he?”

The stutter of the subway cart knocked Megumi out of his thoughts. To his right was Itadori, who appeared to be contemplating something. They exited the cart, and like many times before, they started on the familiar route to Y/N’s residence.

This current predicament eerily mirrored his first meeting with Y/N. Except this time, Megumi brought good news instead of bad news. Hopefully Y/N would take it well and not blow up in anger. She had every right to be angry, but Megumi had an inkling she would hear them out.

“Should I surprise her like I surprised you and Kugisaki?” Itadori pumped his fist, “She’ll probably swoon and fall into my arms! It’ll be super romantic!”

Megumi deadpanned, “I don’t think she’ll appreciate that.” Was Itadori truly that dense? Didn’t he see how Nobara reacted to his revival? He could only imagine how his actual girlfriend would react, “Didn’t you see how Kugisaki reacted?”

“True…” Itadori pouted and placed his hands on his hips, “She looked like this, and she kept glaring when I spoke.”

“I wonder why…” Megumi rolled his eyes at Itadori’s theatrics.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“I suppose I should break it to her…” He ruffled his black locks, “Then when she’s ready you can come in.”

“Alright…”

With a nod, Itadori walked out of view. Megumi took a deep breath, before he knocked on the door.

“Where do you keep running off to? The second years keep nagging me whenever you skip training.” Nobara crossed her arms, while she tapped her foot on the ground as she waited for Megumi’s answer.

“To visit Y/N,” Came his short answer, “After I told her about Itadori’s death we exchanged numbers and kept in contact.”

“Oh…” Kugisaki murmured, “Tell her we should meet up sometime. Maki’s the only girl I’ve talked to on a regular basis,” She pinched her nose, “There’s too much testosterone here.”

“So…what is that you need?”

“Uh, can we sit down?”

“Right, ok...”

Megumi awkwardly trailed behind Y/N as she led him to her couch. He tugged at his uniform’s collar. Was his uniform always so stuffy? No, it was just the nerves. Megumi was at a lost about how to break the news. He wished it was as simple as watching a YouTube video titled ‘How to tell a girl their boyfriend isn’t dead!’. But alas, here he was, with a choked up expression painted on his face.

“What is it Megumi? You’re freaking me out.”

“Itadori isn’t dead.” Megumi truly needed to practice on his execution. His forward way of speaking could easily rub someone the wrong way. The poor guy couldn’t help it! His nerves always loosened his mouth. It wasn’t normal to just vomit information like that. His execution was so poor that he couldn’t help but internally cringe.

Y/N’s eyes widened, “You’re joking. This has to be a sick joke.” She leaned back onto her couch, “Then again you’re not really one for jokes.”

Megumi slightly recoiled from her subtle insult. It may have been nothing malicious on Y/N’s part, but Megumi was still irked. He could tell a joke! Instead of pursuing the matter any further, he kept his mouth shut. It was inappropriate to complain now.

“I found out a couple of days ago. I would’ve told you sooner, but I was busy with school.” He started, “It would’ve been unfair of me to just tell you over the phone.”

“C-can I see him?” Y/N mumbled, “Is he here now?”

He nodded, “I’ll grab him for you.”

Within minutes, Itadori is ushered into Y/N’s living room. Megumi quietly excused himself as he was not keen on being caught up in a couple’s quarrel.

Itadori was uncharacteristically silent as he witnessed the tears falling from his partner’s eyes. Itadori’s arm slightly raised out to her, but he ultimately faltered. He wanted to reach out and hug her, but he was unsure if the situation called for it.

“Y/N please don’t cry—“

“Two months.” Y/N hiccuped, “Two months I thought you were dead. I got no explanation. I didn’t even get to see your body.” She tugged down her sleeve to wipe her eyes, “Megumi was the only person I could talk to. He couldn’t give me a reason, but he respected me enough to tell me.”

“I’ll explain everything to you, I swear.”

“You’re an asshole for this…you tell me you transferred to some fancy school, and then you die! This isn’t some drama Itadori, you better not have joined some cult!” As her tangent ended, Y/N stumbled over to Itadori and threw her arms around him, “Please trust me, tell me everything from the beginning.”

Itadori tightly returned the hug, and littered kisses on her forehead. Once done, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Of course. I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“So you did join a cult.”

“Y/N I swear it’s not like that-“

[ragingbookdragon]

Let It All Come Crashing Down

Batbrother x Batfamily One-Shot

Word Count: 2K Warnings: Explicit Language, Mentions of Past Assault/Abuse

Author's Note: One of my favorite episodes of Criminal Minds was always the one where Morgan came face to face with his abuser. The dialogue at the end of the episode fits Batbrother's past too. But, this does mention past assault. If this is a triggering subject, please don't read. -Thorne

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When he’d told Dick about the incident when he was seventeen, he didn’t expect it was going to come back full front. He’d kept tabs on the man whenever his former CO would move bases, when he promoted, when he eventually retired and relocated to Gotham City, opening a military assistance center. It was a farce, and he knew it. A place where the old CO could still continue his reign of fear on those still in the military and those outside.

***

He stared at the screen in the Batcave, ignoring the bickering of his youngest sibling and his father’s oldest friend, recounting every moment that led to the mission. A woman his age found dead, murdered, the brother charged with the crime. All evidence supported the facts, but (Y/N) knew. He knew deep down something else was going on, especially when he learned that the brother had attended the center in Gotham.

“Isaac Keegan is going to be sent to Blackgate tonight,” Bruce murmured. “He won’t last the night.”

(Y/N) shook his head. “He didn’t do this.”

His father glanced at him. “How do you know?”

“Doesn’t matter how I know,” he retorted with mild annoyance. “But I know who really did this.” He turned, glancing at Ghost-Maker. “Think you can get Isaac out of the armed van and back here without anyone dying?”

The vigilante cocked his arms over his chest. “Of course. But why do you wanna talk to him?”

“I don’t. But I need him alive long enough to get a confession out of the real killer.” (Y/N) answered, looking at Tim with a gaze that had his younger brother’s spine going straight; he could feel the seriousness ebbing from his older brother. “And I’m going to need your help with this.”

***

He didn’t like stepping into enemy territory without protection. He felt naked without his nano suit, even more so without his sidearm, but the last thing he needed was for the metal detectors in the building to go off and let the remaining people inside know he was there.

Slipping down the halls, he took a moment to catch his breath before he turned the corner into his old CO’s office.

“Davis.”

The older man looked up, eyes widening at the sight of his former subordinate. “(Y/N)? Is that—you’re alive?”

“I am,” he answered and Davis’ face split into a fake smile.

“I thought you’d died years ago in Afghanistan.”

“Not exactly.” (Y/N) kept away from the desk, away from close contact; he knew he could take the man, but he wanted the confession first before they came to blows, if they did. “I heard about Jessica Keegan.”

Davis frowned. “It’s a shame what happened to her. Even more so a shame that Isaac was the one who did it.” He shook his head. “I thought he was doing to well with his treatments too.”

(Y/N) tapped the device in his pocket. Now Tim. “Except that Isaac didn’t kill Jessica.”

“Excuse me?”

“All these years, I’ve kept my mouth shut,” (Y/N) said. “I’ve let you go on being a hero. Admiral Davis, the great war hero.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Davis questioned, face contorting in confusion and the younger man scowled.

“God, I was so afraid of you when we were in Afghanistan,” he admitted. “I was afraid of going to Command about it all. Afraid of losing every promotion and achievement I was being given.” (Y/N) stepped forward, expression shifting to anger. “But that’s how you’ve always worked, isn’t it? You made sure there was a helluva lot to lose if someone came forward, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you think you remember about Afghanistan,” Davis said. “But—”

“No, no, no,” he interrupted. “See it’s not what I remember that’s going to hurt you, Davis. The business between us has been over way too long ago to matter.” (Y/N) explained. “You’re protected by a statute of limitations and that’s my fault.”

Davis shrugged. “Then good evening.”

He glared. “You set Isaac up! You knew his sister wanted him to call someone about you. So you killed her and framed him as a distressed veteran?” (Y/N)’s face pinched as he accused, “You killed her because you knew someone was going to piece it all together and come after you, didn’t you?”

“Now you’re just throwing accusations around.” Davis replied and (Y/N) slapped a decoration off his desk.

It shattered and he shouted, “God, I should’ve told someone about you when I was in Afghanistan! When you were ‘training’ me.” He took another step forward, voice lowering dangerously. “Well, you know what happens in cases like this? Once that dam breaks, the flood comes.”

He raised a finger. “One servicemember stands up, just one. And then another one, and another. Because they’re not afraid of your repercussions anymore—they know they’re not alone.” (Y/N) tipped his head up. “Isaac Keegan is your dam.”

For the first time since they’d started speaking, Davis showed his anger as he barked, “Whatever lies Isaac told you—”

“THEY ARE NOT LIES!” (Y/N) yelled. “YOU DID THE SAME THINGS TO ME!”

“I didn’t do a damn thing to you or to Isaac—”

“One by one, they’re going to pile up until there’s so many accusations, you can’t say that they’re all lies!”

Davis thrust his hands to his chest. “Do you have any idea how many men and women I helped promote? How many lives I’ve saved with my service?” He gestured to (Y/N). “Look at you! You would’ve been dead in a shallow grave if I hadn’t helped you.”

“Yeah, well that shit wasn’t for free, was it?” (Y/N) demanded, throat tightening with emotion.

“I pulled you out of the gutter.” Davis murmured.

He shook his head, the tears of anger flashing the pain from his voice. “I pulled myself out of the gutter! All the way to the top military squads! I did that!”

“You’re saying I had nothing to do with making you who you are?” Davis questioned, a look of offense on his face.

(Y/N)’s rage cooled, shoulders sinking back as he raised his head and admitted, “No Davis. Actually, I’m saying you have everything to do with making me who I am.” He gazed at the man. “Because of what you did to me, I’m the man who’s going to spend the rest of his life making sure abusers of power like you face the consequences.”

“(Y/N),” Davis comforted. “I never meant to hurt you.” His expression turned sympathetic. “You could’ve said no.”

He turned his head away, jaw clenching so hard it hurt, then he looked back at him, and two men turned the doorway. (Y/N) watched Davis’ eyes widen in shock.

“Quinton Davis, you’re under arrest for the rape and murder of Jessica Keegan.” The two military police officers walked around (Y/N), and each took an arm.

Davis shifted. “I’ve helped a lot of veterans and service members.” He started thrashing. “Nothing in this goddamn city is going to be the same with me. Without the center, who’s going to look after them?”

His expression hardened. “Wayne Enterprises will. I will.”

“Wait a minute damnit!” he looked at (Y/N), pleading, “(Y/N), please, isn’t there anything you can do for me?”

(Y/N) got in Davis’ face. “You can rot in hell.”

He watched the MP’s drag away the screaming man before letting out a shaky breath and reaching up to his chest, yanking off the necklace that had the camera built into it. Tim had no doubt cut the feed by now and he shoved it in his pocket, free hand coming up to wipe away the tears in his eyes.

***

“What happens now?” the young man asked, dark circles under his eyes making him seem wearier.

(Y/N) sighed. “There’s going to be a trial. Davis will face the consequences.”

Isaac frowned. “I’m going to have to testify, aren’t I?”

“Yes. But I know who the prosecutor is. She’s good. She’ll nail Davis to the wall for everything.”

“I…I don’t know if I can do it.”

He reached out and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Then do it for Jessica.”

“I miss her.” Isaac whispered, head lowering as he sniffed. “I should’ve spoken out sooner.”

“I know,” (Y/N) murmured. “I feel the same.”

His head cocked up, teary eyes gazing into (Y/N)’s. “Will you be there?”

“I’ll probably be called by the prosecutors to testify.” He shrugged. “But with the statute of limitations, I don’t know how much it’s going to weight in our favor.”

“But you already told the world about your past with Davis?” Isaac said. “We—we all watched it live.”

“That was just the start.” (Y/N) said. “We have to see it to the end. For all the servicemen and women he abused over the years.” He turned, looking at Nightwing and Red Hood. “They’ll take you back to your apartment.”

Isaac nodded, starting to follow, then he stopped and looked back at (Y/N). “How’d you go on after Afghanistan?”

He met the young man’s eyes, then he glanced at his family. “I was still needed. Still am.” (Y/N) turned back to Isaac. “You never forget it…but it does get better.” He stuck his hand out. “And I’ll be there when you need me.”

They shook hands and he watched Isaac walk off with his brothers before he turned and moved to the railing overlooking Gotham Bay. A multitude of emotions swirled in his chest, but a sense of relief rested on his shoulders, and he let his head drop, the tears starting to drip down his cheeks.

Someone’s hand rested between his shoulder blades, followed by a deep voice comforting, “It’s okay, son.”

He shook his head. “I should’ve said something earlier.”

“It’s not your fault,” Bruce affirmed. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

(Y/N) looked up, gazing at his father. “I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” the man murmured, expression soft. “But why didn’t you come to me?”

He paused, inhaling shakily as he said, “It only lasted for a short time. I was promoted and inducted into the super soldier program.” He shrugged. “By the time I finally wanted to tell someone, Davis had already left the compound and too much time had passed for it to matter.”

(Y/N) gazed out at the water. “It’s not over…but the world knows what he really is now. And all the people who suffered are going to see justice.”

Bruce leaned on the railing next to him. “You don’t show many signs of a survivor,” he noted. “You keep it all under wraps.”

“I learned during the super soldier program that there are worse things than what happened to me.” (Y/N) sighed. “Davis’ abuse might be what makes me so hateful of abusers, but when I started the team, I refused to let it control me and my life.” He raised his head. “I was going to live my life to the fullest, with whoever I wanted and even if I never told anyone, that was going to be the one part of me no one would ever take away.”

His father observed him for a moment then he stood, nudging (Y/N) until he did too; they looked at one another, a father and a son, and Bruce said, “I’m proud of you, (Y/N). For everything.”

(Y/N)’s mouth opened and snapped shut once, twice, a third time, then he raised one hand to cover his eyes as the lower half of his face twisted in pain, the other fumbling blindly for Bruce. His father caught him, one strong arm wrapping around (Y/N)’s back, the other pressing his son’s head to his shoulder.

“I’m here son,” he murmured. “I’m always going to be here.” He pressed his lips to the young man’s temple. “And I love you son. So much.”

“I love you too, dad,” he choked out, holding onto his father for dear life.

[another-corpo-rat]

Ship ask, enjoy lmao for Vic and Adam

What was their first impression of each other?

Who felt romantic feelings first?

What would their lives be like if they had never met?

What was their first kiss like?

What are their primary love languages?

What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

Who’s the better cook?

oml you spoil me with so many 💕 Questions are here!

What was their first impression of each other?

Answered here!

Who felt romantic feelings first?

Victoria was the first to recognise them as romantic. She didn’t have an ‘Oh. Oh.’ moment so much as a: ‘Really? HIM?” one.

What would their lives be like if they had never met?

Adam’s would follow its course ‘till the end: he’d continue serving Arasaka and whoever heads it at the dictation of the contract he signed a lifetime ago. Unwilling or unable to give much serious thought about Yorinobu’s intentions without his HUD flashing with warnings about contract breaches and the potential line of treason his thoughts may be in danger of veering towards.

Victoria’s would be more heavily altered in that she’d definitely be in a more comfortable position; her life would’ve stayed on her designed course of promotions and back-stabbing, of finding her own perch that’s not too high but enough that she can comfortably watch others fall in their climb, or be the one to kick them off.

And maybe she’d have been dragged into some hare-brained scheme of one Arthur Jenkins, forced to hit the ground running in her fall from the pinnacle to the pit – returning to Arasaka only to rob it and ending up with a dead rockerboy in her head.

What was their first kiss like?

It wasn’t anything special.

It was the instance of Adam, in his Elvis Gemini, deciding to mess with his know-it-all little netrunner (who didn’t have a fucking clue who Elvis Presley was) while she was out for the night. He had been deliberate in getting her on his lap, with very obvious plans on where the night was going to go (and indeed, how it went.) So, their first kiss was a deep, passionate thing which ultimately meant nothing to either of them, just another step in getting laid that night.

What are their primary love languages?

I answered a similar question here, but in summary:

Receiving: Quality time & physical touch (Victoria), a mixed bag (Adam) Giving: Gifts (Victoria), acts of service (Adam)

What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

Victoria has Adam saved as ‘Tinman’ in her contacts list, and she does call him that to his face from time to time. Occasionally, she’ll call him ‘Addie’ but only when she’s wine-drunk.

Adam started calling Victoria ‘Blondie’ for the simple fact he liked the annoyed expression it got him. It’s just kinda stuck through the years. When he knows she’s in a particularly bad mood, he’ll pull out the ‘Queen Victoria’ just to make it worse.

Who’s the better cook?

As if either of these fucks know how to cook.

Even when he was human, Adam struggled to make anything more involved than an MRE or just throwing shit into an oven (and even then, I bet he forgot to pre-heat the fucking thing half the time.) Victoria is a rich bitch who has never had to lift a finger in the kitchen courtesy of always having a personal chef employed.

So, technically, I guess point to Adam.