#sonder's whump

[tired-of-being-nice]

taking a quick pause from febuwhump and starting on @whumpsday's conflict whump challenge!!!! i was VERY excited about the man vs. society prompt in particular, as it gives me an excuse to do some proper expositing for the story i've been posting

content: dystopia, systemic whump (i think that's the right term?), brief reference to brainwashing and violence, really unhealthy workplace culture, sleep deprivation, forgetting to eat, general Man I Hate Capitalism vibes

Life is simple. You're born. You grow up. You choose which company to stake your life to. You pick the one you think will exploit you the least. You realize you were wrong. You keep your head down and try to be obedient and hope no one notices you. You look away and don't complain and try to find little bright spots here and there, just enough to keep you going until you die. 

Of course, some people aren't satisfied with this. Some people try to fight it. Some people have stupid hopes and idealistic dreams about taking down the system from the inside. Some people are very, very wrong, and look where it gets them.

Supposedly, Milo is doing very well for themself. Supposedly, they're the top employee at their company. In actuality, all that really means is an excuse to keep piling more work on them, a bunch of coworkers who hate them, getting dizzy from exhaustion every time they stand up, and...

(You can't take down the system by yourself, of course. Milo had a friend—a best friend, even. Now, all that remains of it is a brainwashed shell, who out of what Milo can only assume is some sick sense of dramatic irony is tasked with hunting down anyone who tries to fight or flee the Company, or really anyone it feels like. Now, the only times they interact are when it's trying to hunt Milo for sport or when it's sobbing in an alleyway somewhere because it's employers don't mind letting it bleed and bruise and break as long as it keeps anyone from running.

Even so, Milo envies it sometimes. At least it doesn't remember everything it's lost.)

Milo's stomach growls, snapping them out of their brief reverie. Hm. That's right, they didn't have time for dinner today, and they spent their whole lunch break trying to stop crying. They never eat breakfast anymore, either, so...oh, that's not good. Maybe they should—

There's a chime from their email inbox, and Milo sighs and pulls it up. It's a very politely worded request for them to do just one more thing before clocking out for the night.

Milo glances at the clock. It's 2:49 AM. Their vision is blurry and their wrists ache from typing. They barely remember what sleep in their own bed feels like.

They send a reply in the affirmative. No rest for the wicked, it seems. They'll work here until sleep overwhelms them and hope that when it does, they'll dream about the good old days, of having Coren by their side, ready to take on the world. Back when they thought happiness was possible.

[clickerflight]

Voltober 18. Come Sweet Death - Sonder story

Author's Note: Another bit from Sonder Story with @writing-whump Is a very good time! This actually takes place before our writing starts. This is a part of Cody's backstory.

Masterlist - Voltober 17

Content: wolf whumpee, wolf whumper, minor whumpee, fear, 3/4ths of a death wish, execution, eviscerated, kind of sort or hospital whump if you squint at it

@voltober

Bleeding Out | Near Death Experience | Death Wish/Self Sacrifice

Cody sat shivering in a holding cell at the precinct. He rubbed at the terrible bruise forming on his arm where the chemicals in the dart used to subdue him interacted badly with his blood vessels. It reacted badly in all of him, actually. He was exhausted, he couldn’t stop tearing up, and he had thrown up everything he’d tried to eat in the last four hours.

He sat against the cold wall, pulling his knees to his chest and ignoring the chatter coming from the other cell. There were more people in there, all human. Wolves got their own cell, so they didn’t kill anyone if they decided to act up.

The silver bars radiated cold that Cody tried to get as far away from as possible. It was making him feel even sicker on top of the dart that had forcibly crushed his shadow.

He wished he could go back to this morning and warn himself of what he would be going through. To tell him to have a bit more restraint, to just never leave his room in the first place. All he wanted was a bit of sun and fresh air. He slipped out, but the twins noticed and they followed him to the local park, laughing and jeering as they followed him, never catching up to him but never far enough away to ignore.

When he had sighed and turned to face them, they got in his personal space, mocking him and his weak control over his shadow, pushing him around.

Cody wrapped his arms around his knees tighter when the words they said rang in his head. “Awww, are you gonna cry to your family pack? Oh, that’s right! You don’t have one! You’re lucky we agreed to have you here. You know wolves like you get killed just because they can’t control their shadows, right? Bet you’ll be gone within the year. What do you want us to bring to the funeral?”

Cody trembled. It was true. He’d only survived this long because of leaders who rolled his shadow down so the assessors wouldn’t realize how little control he had as a wolf. He had cheated the system to keep living, and it had come back to bite him. He had lost control there in the park, in public. He’d fought the twins and hadn’t been able to calm down until the police got there, called by the terrified humans.

And now he was here, waiting quietly after getting his mugshot and fingerprints taken, hoping the leader of the pack his social worker had placed him in would come to get him. At the same time, he almost hoped Kai would just leave him here forever. He was terrified of what the punishment would be for this. Wolves were only allowed to live with humans in cities based on how well they could control their own people in the packs. Cody losing it in public like that was a strike against wolves as a whole.

What if Kai killed him for it? Cody didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to think that the culmination of his life was just to be lonely, to suffer, and then to die because no wolf spent enough time or energy on him to teach him how to be a wolf himself.

No one would even care if he died. Or, if they did, they would be glad it finally happened.

Cody whimpered, burying his face in his knees, tears welling up in his eyes. He couldn’t take this anymore. Maybe he would be happier if he was dead. Somehow, he couldn’t really believe that.

He looked up as he heard footsteps in the hall, recognizing one of the pairs of steps at Kai’s.

He stood up, staring at the floor as the leader of the pack appeared, two police officers just ahead of him.

One of them unlocked the door and said, “We usually leave this sort of decision up to the packs, but you might want to make some serious decisions about this one. I haven’t seen a pup go so crazy in public like that before. You might want to get him checked for madness.”

“Oh, I will make certain he is handled,” Kai said, his shadow spilling into the cell and hanging threatening around Cody’s feet.

Cody silently stepped forward, trembling. The cops spoke with Kai for a moment before Kai left, his shadow hanging around Cody like an escort.

Cody swallowed hard, trying to keep his breathing soft and careful as tears spilled down his cheeks. He was so scared. He was so scared and he had no idea how to get out of this situation. He just wanted this all to be over, however it ended.

It was dark outside, and rainy.

Kai flipped up his collar against the rain while Cody could only fold his arms as the freezing rain soaked into his t-shirt.

Kai didn’t speak as he walked through the quiet city, the unaffiliated street wolves shying away from his commanding shadow.

Cody could only follow, the rain replacing his tears as a strange sort of numbness descending over him. Emotional exhaustion was familiar to him at this point, and he welcomed it to protect him from whatever came next.

Kai stopped by an alley and gestured for Cody to go down it.

Cody hesitated for a moment too long and Kai grabbed his arm and shoved him down the alley, following him in.

“Do you take me for a fool, pup? We take you in after every other pack in the area kicked you out, and you do this!? Do you know how bad this makes us look!?”

Cody was barely listening, but he nodded anyway.

“It is a wonder that you haven’t been executed before now,” Kai snarled, taking a step forward and backing Cody against the brick wall. “I think it’s about time I do everyone a favor.”

He grabbed Cody by the throat, lifting up against the bricks.

The numbness was gone as quickly as a startled hummingbird. Cody gagged for air, grabbing onto Kai’s wrist and kicking his legs. He was going to die! Kai was going to kill him! Cody tried to beg, but didn’t have enough air to do so.

“What a waste of time an energy on all of our parts,” Kai growled. “Goodbye, pup.”

Kai’s shadow seemed to fill the entirety of the world and pain exploded from Cody’s stomach.

Kai dropped him to the ground, staring down at Cody as the huge gaping wound in his stomach spilled out blood to mix with the rain.

Cody reached his hand out after Kai as the pack leader turned and left him to bleed out.

Cody keened, reaching down to the wound, only to touch things that were never meant to be touched by his own fingers.

He gasped and tried not to gag, afraid that more of his organs would try and come out if he did so.

He realized too late that he wasn’t breathing as stars started around his vision, the edges darkening, and when he tried to get air in, the pain that lanced through his body forced him to shut down.

………………………..

He never expected to wake up, but he did. He woke in a hospital, his stomach sewed up, his organs where they rightly belonged, and wrapped in blankets that only seemed to emphasize how cold he was.

A nurse smiled kindly at him. “Good morning. How are you feeling.”

Cody stared at her before trying to sit up more against the pillows, stopping when his wrists caught on something. He looked down numbly at the straps around his wrists and the nurse tutted. “Sorry dear. Sometimes when wolves wake up it can get kind of scary so we have to be careful. Let me take those off for you.”

She reached over him, careful not to touch him, and undid one cuff, then they other. “I was just checking on you, but I can go get you something if you need. Are you thirsty?”

Cody stared up at her and nodded faintly, folding his hands together.

“Alright. I’ll be right back.”

The nurse left him alone in the hospital bed, after nearly dying. He turned his head and closed his eyes, lifting a hand to cover his face as he started to cry.

VTB Part 19

@percy-frayer because I know you are curious about Sonder story

[ashintheairlikesnow]

How is Beringer 🥺

You can find work involving Beringer, the daycare-worker pet who ran away thanks to a handler who decided to stop being a handler, in this masterlist.

-

Beringer finds himself staring out the window at the endless span of white outside as the dirty water drains out of the sink, towel forgotten in his hands.

Snow covers the houses in the little town in a heavy blanket, obscures any suggestion that there had ever been a road that ran through it. A fence cuts across the plain white, where the pasture is. The horses are huddled warm in the barn, though, and the only thing visible in the pasture is the tiny house at the far end, almost cradled by the woods that rise just behind it.

Marc's in that little house, freezing slowly to death while his daughter at least is napping warm and dry and Beringer sits here like a lump, not allowed to see him alone.

We have to be sure, was all Brock had said by way of explanation. Hurried quick kisses before witnesses, having to tear Marc's own daughter from his arms after the far too short visits, holding Mallie while she wailed for her daddy in utter misery, not understanding. That's all he gets, for now.

Beringer understands.

They want to see if Beringer felt forced to offer himself to a handler who offered him kindness, if he's someone who knelt for a man with a badge and a shock baton, if any of this is him or just what WRU wanted. If it's real or if it was conditioned into him.

He gets it.

He doesn't like it, but he gets it.

He feels awful about it, too.

If he hadn't roped Marc into his plan...

No. He needed a way out, and Handler Sonders was that way. He needed someone who showed interest, who could be convinced that Beringer is a real live man who should get to choose where he goes. Marc Sonders fell for it, that's all. He fell for Beringer's half-smiles and soft flirting. That's it, that's all it was.

Marc Sonders was a man too easy to con.

But now Beringer can't bring himself to leave the mark behind. He's too aware of the way it feels to have Marc kiss his knuckles, like a knight in the television shows he watches with a lady. He remembers too well how Marc's lips are warm and dry, and that he isn't the best kisser but he makes up for it in how badly he wants to.

Beringer probably seems the same to him.

"Hey-yo, Earth to new guy," A voice sing-songs from behind him, and he realizes someone is knocking against the doorframe. He turns away, drying his hands off quickly, feeling himself flush. There's a woman there, with hair a thousand tiny braids that run shockingly far down her back, held together by a cord tied loosely at her nape. She has an oversized sweater that slips off one rounded shoulder, long as a dress over leggings. "You're him, right?"

He blinks, trying to jolt himself back to reality. "Uh. Yeah, I'm... one of them."

"Rye says you worked in the daycare at Facility One," She says, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the little drip pot. Everything is community property here. Nobody owns one coffee pot, everyone owns it. He just watches her add creamer from the fridge, French Vanilla flavor, enough to turn it from nearly black to a tan lighter than the color of her skin. That idea of drinking coffee that sweet makes his stomach flip and he winces.

"I did."

"I thought you guys were supposed to be perfect." She gives him a look like a challenge, leaning back against the counter. She's pretty, but there's a hard look to her, too. He realizes all at once that the colors in her braids aren't dyed hair, but colored thread, or yarn of some kind, woven through all the way from top to bottom. "Like, loyal to a fault. Supposedly you're trained so you can't ever leave. Don't even want to, can't even think about it."

"We are." He shrugs, lifting one shoulder more than the other. His eyes find their way back to the little shack at the edge of the pasture, just barely visible after the blizzard finally ended. He can see Rye, now, wearing snowshoes as he makes his way there weighed down with a heavy backpack. Beringer had sent fresh hot coffee, new bread baked by a woman who seems to do nothing else in a house two doors down. Salted butter.

I keep asking them to let him come into town, He'd said to Rye, before he came in here to wash the dishes. Please tell him. Tell him I keep asking for them to let him come here to me.

Rye had promised, sworn up and down, and Beringer had to trust him, because nobody trusted Ber or Marc at all. They were a runaway handler and a runaway daycare worker, two people who are supposed to be WRU's most perfect creations. Still...

Nobody's perfect, right?

Beringer runs fingertips over the back of one hand, where ancient scars still twist across like fading ropes. The reason he couldn't be made into something to serve. Pretty face, a handler once said, but get his shirt off and it's a goddamn ruin under there.

The burns cover sixty percent of your body...

"Then why are you here?" Her eyebrows raise. He jolts back into the present. There's no hostility in her, he thinks. Just a curiosity that seems even riskier than resentment would have been.

"Because I was..." He hesitates. Then he just shakes his head. "Because I was tired of having to watch my babies leave me."

"What? Your what?"

"Every four years they took them from me to go to real school. Every four years. I met them as infants, some of them brand new. I saw them roll over for the first time, watched them learn how to smile. We helped them take their first steps and then swore up and down that their parents were the ones who saw it first. Taught them alphabets and numbers and I taught them some Spanish, too, I know it for some reason. They had to be taught not to call me Dada. I loved each and every one of them, we're good at that, that's why we get picked for it. But we have to let them go. And when they leave, they get told we never mattered to them at all. They get taught to leave us behind."

"And... you can't leave them behind."

"Had to. No choice."

She blinks. Her voice - her whole face - softens now, with real compassion. "That was... really rough, huh?"

"Agony, thanks for bringing it up. Really love that feeling."

She doesn't look pissed at his snappy reply. Instead, she laughs. "Oh, man. You remind me of a friend of mine from the city. He was all bristles and thorns like you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Probably saved my life a couple times that way. I tried to save his, when I ran. Tried to take him with me." She looks down, her smile wavering a little. "He stayed. I hope he's okay."

"I hope so, too. Was he one of us?"

"Yeah. He went through a lot more shit than most of us do, though. I think. He never talked about it, but I don't think you learn to be as paranoid as he was without there being a good reason. What's your name? I'm Juliet."

"Beringer. Or, well. They called me that, but... I like it."

"That's funny, too. My... friend I told you about called me Juliet, so I called him Romeo. Are you going to Canada? That's my plan. I heard you shouldn't try Montreal unless you speak really really good French, but supposedly Toronto and Vancouver are safe for us."

"That was the plan, yeah." Beringer hums. Rye has vanished, having made it to the little shack where Marc Sonders sits. Beringer wonders if Marc likes the coffee. If he likes the bread.

If his mouth would taste like coffee.

Does Marc still think it was worth it to bring him here? Maybe he's realized now that Beringer just needed access to a car and a fool who could drive and who wouldn't realize it was all a big lie to get here.

Is it still a lie if it... isn't a lie any longer?

"It was the plan? What's the plan now?"

"I'm waiting for them to let my-... my friend out. He's in the house out there." He gestures towards the pasture.

"Your friend is the handler?" Her lip curls, half a snarl that fades away as soon as she realizes she's doing it. He can tell she was a Romantic - she has that way of standing, with an unconscious grace. One hip slightly tipped, begging you to notice the way waist curves into hips. If she flirts, he thinks, she'll put a hand out, run it down his chest. She'll bite her lower lip, tilt her chin down slightly to make her eyes seem bigger as she looks up at him.

They all do it.

Just like the Domestics all have the same distant smile and way of disappearing into the walls as they walk past, like they're shadows who clean when your back is turned and not people. The way the Platonics always look excited and wait to be given attention, affection, some sign that things are okay, that they're being the right kind of friend or surrogate son or whatever they've been bought for.

Everyone has their false expression, everyone gives away their body in one way or another and pretends they're happy to do it.

He likes the look on her face now much better. It's mingled suspicion and disgust, as her eyes move to the window over his shoulder. It's an honest look. She makes it because that's how she actually feels, not just because she has to do whatever it takes to survive.

They all do whatever it takes to survive.

Just like Marc got a job to pay for a child and a wife and then kept the job when the wife vanished and he had to figure it out on his own. The way needing the job made it easier to sell his body to hurt other people, because then he went home at the end of the day. Just like Beringer went into his little back room with the beds and watched TV and wondered what it was like to be the people in those shows, who could just open a door and go for a drive. For a coffee. Just to smell the air.

"He quit," Beringer says with a shrug. "Or. Um. I think he's legally dead or missing now. There was a fire-" His hands tremble at the memory of the heat, mixed up with a deeper memory of the skin on his back firing every nerve as he reached, desperately, for a hand that no longer reached back for him-

"He quit," he repeats, cutting it off before his headache can start. He isn't going to entertain the memories, he wiped them for a reason. He feels better without them anyway. "For me."

"Oh." Juliet blinks. Then, her eyes widen. "Oh. Are you fucking him?"

Romantics. Always the one assumption. Beringer holds back a sigh. "You're the fifth person since we got here to ask me that."

"Well? I mean, are you?"

"No." His voice is flat. "I'm not."

He wants to.

She doesn't need to know that.

"Did he ask you to?"

"No. Hey, what happens in my pants is kind of my business, okay? I just needed a way to get to Canada, and he wanted to get his daughter away from the system. He didn't want to do this anymore, and I didn't either. That's it. Simple as that."

"Nothing is that simple." She sets her empty mug down in the sink. Beringer's jaw tightens when she doesn't bother to rinse it out, just leaves it dirtied there. "Nobody does shit for free, Beringer. Nobody helps just to be nice. Nobody does a good thing without getting paid for it. Nobody's good. Everybody just does what it takes, and fuck whoever stands in the way."

She walks away, and Beringer manages to wait long enough for her to leave before he turns and washes the mug out, so aggressively he's afraid he'll break the handle from how tightly he grips it.

He has no idea how to tell her that he never had anything to lose, not really. It's Marc, not him, who has had to give up everything just to get him here. It's Marc who lost his entire life.

Beringer is the one who convinced him to throw it away. He tells himself it had to be done, though. He had to get out of there. He had to stop watching them take his children from him, year after year after year. He had to... He had to trick someone, and Marc was close and easy.

It doesn't make Beringer the bad guy here.

He just did what he had to do to get beyond surviving.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @arlinthesnep @endless-whump @doveotions @emdeighamae @wildfaewhump @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @orchidscript 

[clickerflight]

@writing-whump

He's giving me matthew vibes for some reason

Wolf's Rain - Ep 22

[writing-whump]

Wip info: Shadow wolves

Story tag: #werewolf wip

Genres: urban fantasy, hurt/comfort, bromance, romance

Whump: mainly sickfics, emeto, injuries, concussions, heart condition, stress sick, daily and magical whump

Setting: collage in Vienna, contemporary

Tropes: found family, pack life, 20+ characters navigating uni and work, first serious relationship, stoic older brother, estranged younger brothers, siblings, sfw

Tw: family trauma, family abuse in the past, graphic descriptions of illness (vomit + sometimes scat), self-destructive tendencies

Story: Follows the formation of the Sonder pack, consisting of stoic and perfectionalistic psychology wolf* student Isaiah, the exiled heir of the biggest pack in Western Europe, an independent, feisty witch* working in research and obsessed with writing named Seline and a grumpy, boxing-loving wolf with temper problems called Matthew. Important characters include Isaiah's jealous and competitive younger wolf brother Hector and their youngest mouthy human brother Arnie.

*they don't actually turn into wolves, they are just born with demonic like shadows in their souls that have wolf characteristics and temper and give them their supernatural strength and abilities

*witches are only born in werewolf families, and need contact to wolves to use their magic. Very elemental, songs, writing and dancing oriented

[clickerflight]

I'm back from my crazy work schedule and I'm getting back into the swing of things, and as I get back into it, here is Romeo from Sonder story that I write with a friend. He went undercover and now has to decide if he regrets it or not, lol.

More Random Whump art

Yes, I do commissions.

[clickerflight]

Cute little drawing I did for @writing-whump 's birthday. Roman and Marcella from our Sonder story. Roman is still healing and is on babysitting duty

[ashintheairlikesnow]

The Least

CW: Hypothermia, environmental whump, referenced pet whump, this is genuinely a comf piece though

Follows after this piece. You can see other work Marc Sonders is in right here. For @amonthofwhump day 5, Trapped in a Blizzard

-

A knock sounds at the door, but Marc doesn’t dare move out from under the blankets, even just to answer it. He’s not even sure he can. 

He’s still shivering, muscles locking and releasing so intensely and so close together that he isn’t sure he’d be able to stay standing even if he did try to get up. All he does is briefly peek his head out from under the blankets and say, in a tremulous voice, “C-come in!”

The door doesn’t lock, anyway.

Not from the inside.

It’s made to keep him in, not keep anyone else out. Even if it was unlocked, he’d never make it back into the town before he froze out there in the snowstorm. It’s coming down too hard, too fast, and it’s so cold Marc can barely stand to breathe in the air. It’s like knives stabbing deep into his lungs.

He’s in a little shack of a space just outside of Hope, far enough away that the residents aren’t frightened of his presence, but close enough for interrogations. So far, he’s answered every question they give him, and Brock thanked him for not being trouble. He’d explained to Marc, in his friendly enough voice, that he’s never felt easy having to make someone scream.

Me neither, Marc had confessed, and Brock’s thin humorless smile told him that his attempt to connect had not exactly been a resounding success. 

Between you and the person you were doing harm to, Brock had said in a level voice, only one of you held the remote, Handler Sonders. Only one of you held a whip. Only one of you held any power to stop it.

Right, but it didn’t-... feel like-... I’m sorry. Please, call me Marc. I’m not a handler anymore.

You and I both know that handlers don’t have the option to simply quit. You remain Handler Sonders until and unless I change my mind. You see, Handler, between the two of us... only one of us has the key to that door. Only one of us can order you buried in the woods or up on the mountain.

Marc swallowed around a lump in his throat. Only... only one of us has the power, he echoed.

Brock smiled. Precisely, Handler Sonders. Your cooperation so far is appreciated. We’ll be voting on allowing you out in another few days.

Then he had left Marc here, sometime... yesterday. Just before the snow started to fall, and the temperature dropped from chilly to dangerously freezing in what felt like ten minutes but in all reality, probably took a couple of hours. Now he’s out here, in a shack-house located inside a fenced-in horse pasture. The horses are settled snugly tight into a stable, now, a big barn that looks like a painting against the view of the mountains in the distance, the forest where the secret road to the border winds through. Marc has seen people trudging in and out to keep them fed, caught a flash of heavy woolen horse blankets slid over their backs. They’re warm enough. 

It’s just Marc who is freezing, slowly, maybe to death.

Maybe that’s how they get rid of handlers out here. Maybe they held the vote, he failed, and now... this. He’ll stay locked alone in a single room with almost nothing in it. He’ll lay here, isolated, until he loses his mind. He can’t say he’d blame them, really. Not after what he’s been party to.

The key turns in the lock, the door pushes open inward, and Marc’s first thought is simply of the white.

Snow is piled up two feet high against the door, some of it spilling downward and not even melting much when it touches the little shack’s floor. That’s… probably not good. 

Heavy snow boots crunch down onto the floor, thickly padded quilted snow pants shaking white powder off, heavy gloves that barely resemble hands and a ski coat, gloves, face mask, and fur-lined hood. The figure is short, but with all that on, Marc can’t begin to tell who it is, other than to know it isn’t Beringer.

Ber’s taller than that, and he wouldn’t leave Mallie alone, not to come out here. 

Not that they’ve let them see each other more than once or twice, and it’s been at least two days since the last visit. Two days since Ber had last pressed a quick, rushed kiss to his lips and Mallie had wrinkled her nose and declared them both very gross and then cried when Beringer had to pull her out of Marc’s arms. 

Ber is probably already in Canada, honestly. They’d want to get him up to the border ahead of the storm. Marc wouldn’t hold it against him. If he took Mallie with him, well, that’s good, too, even though it makes Marc’s entire chest burn and ache and tears sting his eyes at the idea of his little girl being somewhere where he can’t see her again.

It’s okay, though. Someone else can do a better job raising her to know right from wrong. God knows Marc’s fucked her up just by making the choices he made, choices he thought would help him afford a good life for her, but what’s a good life if you’re not actually good? Beringer knew being a pet was wrong even while he was one. Marc had to figure it out from conversations over Mallie’s little head with a man who seemed to catch his attention more every day at drop off and pickup, until he realized…

He had a crush on a pet.

Not wanting him like the prospectives want them. Not wanting him like a body, but wanting to know the person inside of it. He had wanted to know who Beringer had been before, and had let himself go hunting for information he wasn’t supposed to have to find out. He’d asked about his favorite tv shows and really cared about the answer.

He’s been a bad guy in so many lives, and he never felt happy about it but a job’s a job, right? You have to make a living. WRU made it so he could have a house with a backyard for Mallie to play in, so he could take her to the doctor when she was sick and buy ridiculous cakes for birthdays. WRU had made sure he could pay for Mallie to go to private school - there’s a tuition reimbursement for half the cost, for God’s sake! - and get braces one day… 

It had seemed like a good enough trade - someone else’s life, some stranger’s, made worse to make his better. It had seemed like a good trade… until it wasn’t, any longer. Until he’d realized what it meant to have other lives torn apart to sew together your own.

Yeah… yeah, he won’t blame the people in Hope if they let him freeze to death out here. He deserves it, and more. 

The person in the doorway shoves it shut behind them, dropping a heavy knapsack to the floor and groaning with relief. Then they shove the ski goggles back from over their eyes, pull off the face mask, and Marc realizes who it is, blinking with surprise as he pushes himself up on one elbow, even as his body protests every movement. 

“Rye,” He says, and the young man’s face breaks into a wide smile. 

“You remembered my new name!”

“Course I d-did. It’s a good one. Did… B-Brock s-s-send you?” 

“Yeah. I brought some stuff for you. The others still don’t want you in the town, um, safety reasons. But with the snow…” Rye glanced at a window, watching the snow continuing to fall in great heavy flakes, so close together it felt more like fog than frozen rain. “And the temperature… you’re not safe out here, there’s no real heat in this place. The blizzard’s going to go at least one more day, we think.”

“Yeah.” Marc’s breath puffs out in front of him, making a new cloud right inside the room. “I kn-know. I’m sh-sh-shaking pretty bad, actually… And my h-h-hands feel… well, th-they don’t feel m-m-much…”

“Yeah. So I brought some stuff. You shouldn’t be, um, frostbitten or anything else just yet. You just stay there.” Rye holds up a gloved hand, and Marc settles back into the bed, watching him. The younger man shuffles around, opening up the heavy backpack - it’s one of those army-style things that can hold a hundred pounds of stuff without bursting. The Rye he knew had been lithe and couldn’t possibly have hauled that kind of weight around. But this Rye - he looked a little older, of course, but also stronger. There’s a hint of muscle to him that he hadn’t had before. It looks good, he looks… healthy. Happy.

Marc smiles, watching from beneath the dubious protection of his blankets as Rye starts pulling things out of the knapsack. 

First, a thick plastic square like fogged bathroom windows after a hot shower that Rye tapes over the single window in the shack, his lips pressed together in concentration. Almost immediately, some of the chilly drafty breeze simply stops making its way inside. 

Then, something in a box that he sets down on the little wooden table with its single chair. Marc squints - it’s little heating pads, the kind that you crack and then hold as they warm you. He nearly lunges off the bed for it, startling Rye so badly the kid trips over himself and nearly falls back into the wall.

“Sorry! I’m sorry, just, I’m s-so cold-”

“No, it’s okay, go ahead, you. I just didn’t expect-” Rye laughs, breathy and nervous. “I guess I’m still kind of flinchy from… before I ran away.”

Marc’s useless numb fingers somehow manage to clumsily paw open the box and pull out one of the packs, listening to its crack with a thin trickle of hope as he breaks it. The warmth starts slow, at first, and then all at once and he retreats back into his blankets to hold it tightly until his fingers start to tingle and burn as the feeling fully returns to them. It hurts, but it’s so good to know he can feel things that he doesn’t even care.

“I’m sorry,” He says, looking up to meet Rye’s eyes.

He’s glad the younger man isn’t that close to him. He knows he would smell, if this place wasn’t so frozen he can’t even sweat. He needs a shower, like, three or four days ago now - but really, isn’t this what he deserves? Didn’t he lead trainees with hair matted to their skulls from overwork, or a week in isolation, to the showers more than once?

Even if all he did was look down at his phone and let them have any privacy they could find - even if he never, ever had his own trainees go into iso - he still escorted other trainees as a favor to coworkers. He still saw how they looked at him, worried he would touch them or frightened that he wouldn’t. He still ignored his prickling unease every time a trainee put a hand on his arm to try and curry favor by giving away the only thing they had left to trade.

Even if he said no, every time, he still knew it happened.

And he still worked there.

Hell, he sat across the lunch table in the cafeteria chatting about TV shows and football games with guys he knew had been beating the shit out of someone who couldn’t fight back a half-hour before.

“It’s not your fault,” Rye says, shrugging.

Marc shakes his head. “No, it r-really is.” He watches Rye set up a tiny little space heater in one corner, close to the bed he lays on and facing him. When it clicks on, he’s almost fascinated by the soft buzz and the way, after a few seconds, he can feel a touch of warmth against his cheek. “I could have taken you to a safehouse, or something-”

“Wouldn’t have gone, probably. I don’t know. I don’t like to think about it, the-... the Facility. Training and all that.” Rye lays a blanket over him, one that’s silvered like foil on one side. “Juliet sent this for you, it’s hers. She’s, um. She came here and got stuck out in the cold, too, before they found her, and she says these blankets are worth their weight in gold. She keeps seven in her room.”

“Seven?”

“Seven. She says you never know when you’ll freeze and need them. I think she’s a little scared of cold, now.”

Marc nods. He’s already warming, with the tiny heating pad under the heavy blankets. His toes start to tingle, too, inside the three pairs of socks he’s wearing. “Don’t blame her. I might not be so happy with it, either. Rye, can I ask-... my daughter. Is she-”

“She’s in town, she’s safe. She’s asking for you, a lot, but Brock wants to wait until he can finish asking you questions. Then maybe he’ll have some smugglers take you up to the border or something.”

Marc swallows, his heart nervously fluttering, and forces himself to ask the next question. “And… and the person I came with. Beringer, is he… did he leave, or…”

“Are you kidding?” Rye looks up, and then smiles. His face is full of kindness, just like it was in training. He was such a good trainee, worked his ass off in his classes, just rocketed through every step. Marc had really liked him.

He’d really enjoyed the company of the poor kid he was helping train to spend his life counting pills to make sure some old lady took them on time-

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “No, I just-... did he make it to Canada before the snow? At least?”

“No. But, hey wait, don’t get upset or anything, I just mean… he didn’t leave. He stayed.”

“He… he stayed?”

“Yeah. He said he won’t go anywhere unless he can take you with him. So he’s watching your daughter while Brock figures everything out.”

Marc’s exhale comes out of him so fast it’s almost an oof, which makes Rye break into soft laughter. Marc puts his burning hands up over his face and finds he could almost sob with relief he hadn’t quite realized he would feel. He won’t go anywhere unless he can take you with him. “Thanks… thanks for telling me. It helps to know.”

“He really likes you, I guess.” Rye pulls out a thermos and a bag of crackers. “We had beef and vegetable soup for lunch. I got you some, plus there’s some cornbread in here, too. It should still be really hot. Oh, and... hold on, Juliet sent some coffee...”

“Thanks… thank you.” Marc pushes himself up to seated, keeping the blankets wrapped tightly around him, and finds his hands working well enough to hold the thermos if he keeps it balanced on his leg. The soup steams up out of it, and he inhales salt and beef broth smell with delight. Has soup ever smelled so good?

Rye hesitates, watching him, and then sits down at the little table. “Handler Sonders-”

“Please, just Marc. I quit, like I said. Or, well, I kind of walked off the job. But please... I don’t want to be called that shit anymore. I ran away.”

“Just like me.” Rye grins, and he has a bright and shining smile, the kind you find yourself answering whether you mean to or not. 

Marc shakes his head, spooning a bit of soup into his mouth and trying not to make an audible sound of happiness as it nearly burns his tongue. Outside the taped-up plastic-covered window, the blizzard is getting heavier. “Not really. You… you ran because of what was done to you. I ran because of what I did.”

“But you decided not to do it anymore.”

“... Yeah, pretty much.” 

“Well, that counts for something.”

“Does it?”

“To me it does.”

Marc takes another bite. This time he can taste the beef a little bit better, gets a chewy bite of it, a bit of carrot that nearly melts as fast as he spoons it up. “So what made you choose the name Rye?”

“I don’t know. I just liked it, the sound of it. Juliet calls me Rye Bread sometimes.” Rye smiles. The little shack is warmer now, with the little heater hard at work, the window taped, and the good company. “I don’t mind, she’s not nice but she’s, um, kind, you know? She’ll do anything for you but she might ask you why you did it the wrong way the first time.”

“I think kind is probably better than nice.” Marc thinks about Rye as a trainee, skinnier then. He’s put on weight, it looks good on him. Weight, muscle, and a brighter smile. “I tried to be nice, but what I did was… evil, not kind. Can you stay for a while?”

Rye glances back outside at the falling snow, then turns back and nods. “Sure. For a little bit. Not like we can do most of our chores in weather like this, anyway.”

“Great. I just… tell me about your life.”

“What part?”

“... everything since the last time I saw you.”

The way Rye brightens at interest and attention is sickeningly familiar, but Marc fights past it. He does want to know, to see what Rye made of himself when he created his own identity, after the Facility took the first one and he decided to shake off the second. He does want to know who Rye really is, now. 

“Uh… okay, yeah, sure. So, you remember my prospective…”

The snow falls, and Marc finds himself wishing he’d known how to walk off the job when he could have taken Rye, too, but finds that in the end… in the end, it doesn’t matter. Rye found his own way here, and so did all the others in the little town.

Marc wants to know them all.

It’s the least he can do.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @arlinthesnep @endless-whump @doveotions @emdeighamae @wildfaewhump @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @orchidscript 

[ashintheairlikesnow]

Reaching Hope

CW: Self-made bandages, injured, ambushed, death threats, guns, fear of child being hurt (no child is harmed), captured

Find Marc and Beringer’s story up til now right here

For @whumptober 2022, days 11, 21, 22: self-done first aid/sloppy bandages, “Take me instead”, and alt prompt 5, “Ambushed”

-

“I feel so stupid,” Beringer says, groaning as he leans forward, resting his forehead in one hand. The rock he’s sitting on freezes his ass right through his heavy canvas pants, but he ignores it. Around them, the woods are beautiful, and Beringer keeps getting distracted, watching a bird flit from one branch to another, listening to a squirrel.

It’s all real.

He’s seen all of this on TV, for sure - knew it really existed, somewhere out in the world. But he - all of the WRU pets, training maintenance and daycare and the cleaning crew who works in the higher floors where employees are allowed to see them - understood that none of it would ever be real for them.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows along the big playroom at the daycare, he could see the parking lot, row after row of cars parked neatly with the sun glaring off their tops, and somewhere nearly out of sight, the bright green sign for the coffeeshop most of them stopped at on their way in if they didn’t use the complimentary coffee shop in the cafeteria. There were neatly spaced trees, carefully landscaped with patches of perfect almost fake-looking grass. The playground attached to the daycare had two small saplings still held in place by twine.

He had never been allowed to see anything like this. 

It’s totally different. He knows what it means, now, to say it’s so cold it’s nipping at your nose. He knows how pine trees smell, and it’s like the candles and air fresheners but not like them at all. He can barely keep his eyes on the trail - there was a deer, a while back, and he had been so enraptured at the sight of the flick of its tail and its crashing speed through the woods that he’d literally tripped over his own feet.

Which is why Marc is currently using a pocketknife to cut off a strip of his own shirt to use as a bandage, because they’re idiots who didn’t bring a first aid kit for this walk through the woods, hoping the trail they’re taking is the right one.

“You’re not stupid,” Marc chides him, gently. 

Beringer feels something shift in his chest, a soft flutter he shoves aside. When he swallows, he feels the safe assurance of his collar around his throat. He definitely doesn’t take the chance to glance sidelong and see the slight softness of Marc’s stomach, a hint of roundness over the muscle underneath. “You just got distracted and tripped. It happens to us all.”

“I know, but… we’re so close. And of course I manage to fall over and slice my arm open on… what, a fu-... a dang tree?” 

“Dang,” intones a soft small voice, with a tone of imperious thoughtfulness.

Beringer looks over at Mallie, who is walking in a slow circle around a tree, mouth open slightly in awe as she looks at how the moss grows on one side but not the other. 

“Nice catch,” Marc says with a wink. “You’re a dad through and through, huh?”

“Not really,” Beringer says, and wonders why the idea thrills him so much, that there might be children out there who will really be his, not just borrowed and handed back and disappearing into schools as they grow older, over and over and over again.

He realizes he might get to see Mallie grow up and his throat nearly closes with awe at the thought.

“When I was a kid, I read a book,” Marc says, conversational, not noticing how Beringer feels like he’s been hit by a train driven by time, finally stopping long enough to let him on and let him stop hovering in a limbo that never goes anywhere at all. He takes Beringer’s arm in his hands, and his touch is so soft and gentle that it makes the hairs on Beringer’s arm stand up, sends a spark racing up to his shoulder, his neck, to light up his mind. 

“Hm, kids sometimes do that,” Beringer answers, teasing to cover up the tremble in his voice, and catches the telltale flush on Marc’s face. He blushes so easily, and Beringer wonders if he even knows it.

“Ha ha, you’re hilarious. Anyway, my point was-... Mallie, are you listening?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Mallie replies automatically, crouched down and poking one finger into a soft bed of green moss, upper teeth gnawing on her lower lip in thought. “I’m listening.”

“Okay. Because this is for you, too, honey. I read this book where this kid got lost in the woods, or… left there, or something. And he was trying to survive, right? Until he got rescued. And he said something about how moss only grows on the north sides of trees.”

Beringer blinks, leaning forward, wincing with a hiss as Marc starts to wrap up his arm and it stings. 

“Sorry,” Marc says, tipping his head slightly to the side as he looks up. 

Beringer very nearly leans over for a kiss, stopping himself with a reminder that he’s supposed to be telling Marc thank you and fuck off once they get to Hope.

But... maybe Marc could stay for a few days to help him adjust to life outside of the Facility. He’s never been anywhere else before this, after all… He could use the help getting up to Canada.

Rumors say if you can just cross the border, you’ll be safe to start over. He can figure out who he is once WRU can’t breathe down his neck anymore. 

“No, it’s okay, just… what were you saying about moss? Does it really only grow north?”

Marc laughs. “No, but I thought it did. And when I went hiking with my dad, when I was like eight or nine, I got incredibly lost trying to follow that advice. Moss can grow anywhere it wants, who’s going to stop it, huh? It’s older than like... every other form of life, or something. I don’t know if that’s true either, actually.” He ties a knot and leans back, still crouching. “Okay, I think you’re good now. Want to start moving again?”

“Yeah, sure. How far are we, do you think?”

“I think about another hour or so of walking should get us to the perimeter.” Marc turns, looking down at the trail marked carefully through the woods. You have to know what you’re looking for, and somehow Marc does. Beringer had asked how, but all Marc had been willing to say was that some people from Hope had been caught a few years ago, and WRU knows exactly where it is and how to get there, and chooses not to. 

Beringer tries not to think about WRU knowing where the only real sanctuary on this side of the border is. If he can just get to Canada, WRU can’t touch him there, if they even know he’s alive and didn’t die in the fire.

Mallie stands up, blinking as she looks deeper into the woods. “Daddy, there’s a man,” She says, curious and not immediately alarmed. 

Marc looks over his shoulder at her. “What, honey?”

“There’s a man,” She says, pointing.

“There’s a man?”

“He just told me to shush and stop telling you things.” She narrows her eyes. “You’re not my dad, you don’t tell me to shush!”

There’s an exhale from somewhere nearby. “Shit,” a strange male voice says.

Marc and Beringer meet eyes.

“She’s got you there,” Someone else says, higher-pitched, clearly failing at hiding their laughter.

“Oh for fuck’s-...” The first voice sounds irritated now. “Okay, fine, listen you three - don’t move!” 

Marc and Beringer turn to look in that direction.

“I said don’t move, what part of don’t move-”

“Sorry!” Marc puts his hands up, and Beringer follows suit after glancing sideways at him, eyes wide. 

People step out from behind trees in every possible direction, surrounding them, a haphazard mix of shotguns, rifles, and handguns aimed at them. Mallie is a silent still figure with wide terrified eyes.

“Daddy?” Mallie’s lips wobble.

“Oh, crap, the kid’s going to cry,” Someone says. “I hate when kids cry. I used to be a-”

“Ssssshhhh!”

Mallie’s nose scrunches up - her eyes follow suit, squinting shut, and she goes red in the face as her lips start to pull back from her teeth. Beringer knows that face.

She lets out a wail, deafeningly loud, and there’s a sudden burst of movement and motion as birds take off, startled by the racket.

“Mallie!” Marc goes for her, stops short when a rifle is aimed at his head. “That’s my daughter, please let me-”

“We said don’t move!” The man holding it snaps.

“Jesus, just let him hold her,” The woman who originally laughed says. “I can’t listen to her cry this whole time, Kevin-”

“No names! Oh for fuck’s fucking sake, are you all fucking amateurs?”

“Don’t cuss in front of a kid!”

“... Don’t cuss, what are you, twelve?”

“Please,” Marc says, hands up, dropping the pocketknife and kicking it in the direction of the man aiming the rifle. “Please, that’s my daughter, please just let me hold her, God, please...”

“I-...” The man hesitates, glances sidelong to another, then back, bracing the rifle back up. “I, I said don’t move!”

“Please-”

“Daddy,” Mallie cries, “I want my daddy!” Her voice is so desperate and scared and sad. 

“She’s just a kid.” Beringer stares, helpless and hurting, then comes to a decision. He feels like his arms and legs move through molasses as he starts to turn to grab her-

Marc beats him to it. 

Mallie’s father throws himself forward and scoops his daughter up, then drops down to the ground, curling around her with his entire body in a movement of such pure and perfect instinct that Beringer hasn’t even finished raising one hand before it’s done. 

“If you’re gonna shoot someone, just shoot me, not her!” Marc yells. “But you can’t make me not hold my little girl!”

“Oh, Christ, Kevin, just let it go,” A short man says. He looks barely adult, if that, and Beringer can see tears in his eyes, too. “He just wants to hold his kid.”

There’s a gun pressed to the back of Marc’s head, but he stays still, right where he is. Mallie’s little arms are around his neck, her face buried against him as she cries. Her sobs make Beringer’s whole body ache with the need to soothe her, but he doesn’t dare move.  

“Don’t hurt her,” Marc says, voice breathless. “Please, please don’t hurt her, she’s just a little girl… She’s never hurt anyone! Please, she’s just a baby, she’s just a baby-”

“Jesus,” Someone says, and they all look uneasy then. “What do we do?”

“Kevin, go grab Brock. Tell him the alarm was two men and a little girl on the woods trail.” 

“But-”

“Kevin. Put your gun away and do what I said. I’m Brock’s second, not you.”

Kevin, jaw working angrily, nods and runs back through the woods, headed in the direction of Hope. 

Marc clutches Mallie to his chest. “Please,” He keeps begging, and Beringer’s heart hurts as much for him as for Mallie’s terror now. “Please, please don’t hurt my daughter, I brought a runaway, I’ve got a runaway-”

There’s a pause, the people shifting uneasily as they keep their weapons aimed. The woman, a muscular, tall woman Beringer knows was a Guard Dog once, looks over at Ber himself, eyeing him up and down with suspicion. “Name and designation,” She commands, voice sharp. 

A shudder of unease ripples down Beringer’s spine. He’s always hated how the handlers demand those things.

“Beringer,” He says, and puts his own hands up, shifting from foot to foot as they all move a little closer, circling around the little group. “554897, Facility 001.” Someone gasps. Beringer closes his eyes, flinching a little at the sound. “In, um. B-Berras.”

“That’s headquarters,” Someone mutters.

“We all know that, you moron,” Someone else snaps back. 

The woman looks back at Beringer. “Finish your designation.”

“I… right.” Beringer has to take a shaky breath. “Designation Facility Platonic, Child Development.” His voice is airier than he wants it to be, and he hadn’t really considered what would happen if Hope turned out to be something other than he had dreamed. Now, though, now is the time to get away from Marc for good. 

To be on his own, and leave Marc behind to whatever Hope decides to do with him.

But...

Looking down at Marc holding his daughter, kneeling on the ground with his arms so tightly around her - thinking about how much Marc gave up to get him here, leaving his entire life behind in one fell swoop… Beringer steadies himself, and makes a different plan. “This is Handler Marc Sonders,” He says, to another soft exhale.

“Handler,” The youngest man repeats. “I-I thought they couldn’t come here-”

“They can’t,” The woman says, voice low. “It’s all right, Esteban.” Her entire demeanor changes as she looks at the younger man, softens visibly. 

Beringer clears his throat. “And this... this is his daughter Maliyah Sonders. They-... they helped me run away.” 

There’s a pause, and then someone previously behind everyone else pushes forwards. It’s a young man, willowy in build and slight, with a rounded face and close-cropped hair. He asks, voice slightly uncertain, “Handler Sonders?” 

Marc closes his eyes, breathing out, and then he looks up and searches through the small crowd of heavily armed people, each and every one ready to shoot him, until he finds who he’s looking for. To Beringer’s surprise, Marc smiles in recognition. “I remember you,” He says, softly. “You were-... 098… 09844-... 5? Platonic? Companion? Sorry, the numbers are... a lot.”

“Six,” The person answers, almost shyly. “098446. And, um. Yeah, Companion.” It’s a willowy young man with a rounded face and close-cropped dark hair. He’s lowered his gun, and it points at the ground, now, not at Marc. Not that that means he’s in any less danger - there are still twelve others holding weapons, too. “I’m Rye, now.” 

“Rye. I like that.” Marc’s voice is breathy, too. “You picked that name?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I picked it.”

“It’s a good one.” He shifts, and everyone tenses, but it’s just so he can move from crouching to sitting right down on the ground, on a soft bed of pine needles and leaves. “Did you... did you have any issues with the surgery afterward? You still had stitches last I saw you.”

“No, I didn’t. I was already mostly fine when I went to my prospective, but...” Rye grins, shy and soft. “Everything was perfect - about the surgery, I mean. The scars aren’t even very big.”

“Good,” Marc says, and it sounds like he means it. Marc’s arms are still tight around Mallie, who is slowly settling down and looking through her hair at Rye. “What... what went wrong?”

“Well... I didn’t last at my prospective’s,” Rye says, and steps forward. The others look at each other uneasily, but no one one stops him. 

Beringer moves, too, taking each step with care, until he is next to Marc, where he slowly sits down, too, leaning against Marc’s warmth in the chilly air. “I ran away.”

“I can see that,” Marc says, and someone might even chuckle. “Was she cruel?”

“No… no. But her-... her daughter was. She kept hurting me. Hitting me and... and I didn’t want to be there any longer. I left my-... I left my-... I left Mrs. Robbins a note to say goodbye, and told her it wasn’t her fault, but that if she got another one she shouldn’t let her daughter... be mean like that. I was just tired of having to lie about bruises.”

“Then I’m glad you ran,” Marc says, with firmness. “It was the right thing to do. Heck, all of you... all of you did the right thing. Pets shouldn’t even exist.”

The circle of runaways all look at each other, eyebrows raising. 

Marc sighs. “Rye... You look great.”

“I… I do?” 

“Yeah. You look like you like living here. You look... really happy.”

“I do,” Rye repeats, with his shy smile widening. “I am.” He’s clearly forgotten his gun entirely, it’s all but dangling in his hand. He turns and looks around at the assembled group. “Handler Sonders was nice, um. He was nice to me. He never… touched. Like they do. He was always nice about teaching us. He never touched.”

Beringer watches Marc wince. “No. I never… God. I’m so sorry, Rye. I’m so sorry you were hurt. All of you.”

“It’s okay,” Rye says, softly. “You were nice.”

“None of them are nice,” The ex-Guard Dog says, her lips pulled back in a sneer. “They’re all handlers.”

“She’s right. We’re-... we’re all monsters. That’s why I quit.” Marc laughs, and it’s a desperate, sad sort of hysterical laughter that only makes Mallie cling to him more tightly. Beringer puts a hand to her back, and feels it rise and fall rapidly with her terrified breathing. “Or, um. I guess I sort of faked my death? I’m not sure what I did, exactly. But when the Facility burned, Ber and I ran. I don’t-... work for WRU anymore. I hated it, anyway.”

“Bull-fucking-shit.” That’s a man’s voice, somewhere behind them, deep and hostile. Kevin must be back. “Bull. Fucking. Shit. Why didn’t you quit, if you hated it so fucking much?”

“Hey, there’s a kid here,” Someone chides. “You could control your language for five minutes!”

“You think I give a shit?” The man answers, and Beringer can hear his eyeroll in the tone of his voice. “Why didn’t he quit? Huh? Why?!”

“Not a lot of them get the option,” Someone else speaks. His voice is melodic, fluid and calm, and the whole group seems to go still and quiet with some kind of respect. He steps around in front of Marc, Beringer, and Mallie, and moves into a crouch. He’s older than Marc, with salt-and-pepper hair and a five o’clock shadow, heavily muscled arms. He isn’t holding his gun - it’s still holstered, and Beringer relaxes, just a little. “They disappear, don’t they? The handlers who quit, who don’t like it. The ones who don’t do the job. They just... vanish.”

Marc is quiet, and then slowly nods. “Yeah, so... If you’re lucky,” He says, voice low, “You sign an NDA and you never speak about it again. Like Connor Manning did. Just go, and we’re all supposed to pretend you never existed. That’s… that’s the best possible option.”

“Right.” Brock nods. “And if you’re not lucky?”

“You disappear,” Marc says. His voice is low. “They bring us all in, parade us through, to see you on the Drip, too.”

One of the runaways makes a sound like a choked sob. The others are dead silent.

“And after that?”

Marc’s jaw works, and his eyes slowly. “Then they ship you off, and a few months later you’re wearing a collar, your name is a number, and they sell you off at a private auction we’re not supposed to know about.”

Beringer turns and looks at Marc sharply. “They-... you mean-”

“If you fuck up too bad as a handler,” Marc says, nearly whispering, looking over at Beringer now. Their eyes meet. “You become a pet, too, if they catch out.”

Beringer’s heart freezes in his chest. “You what?”

“You didn’t tell him?” Brock, who seems to be in charge, tips his head to one side, curiously. “You helped him escape and you didn’t tell him what happens to you if you get caught? If we send you back the way you came from, if you ran into WRU’s recapture crew out here in the wilderness, or worse, back in the city?”

“He didn’t need to know.” Marc stares the man down, jaw set. “I knew the risks when I decided to do it.”

“Marc-... if I had known-... I wouldn’t have asked for your help-”

It’s a weird, unsettling feeling as Beringer realizes he means it when he says that. 

“It’s all right, Ber.” Marc turns to look at him. His voice is soft and soothing. “It’s okay. I knew there was a chance, that’s all. I put it in my will that my parents could take Mallie if anything happened to me. WRU makes it look like an accident, there’s no body to bury, but everyone says you’re dead. Mallie would’ve been safe. It’s just... Look, we made it here, didn’t we? You made it.”

“What happens to… to you, though?”

Marc looks back at the surrounding crowd with their weapons. “I guess that’s up to them,” He says, softly. “But… whatever it is… please. Just… don’t hurt Mallie. Whatever you’re going to do, just do it to me. Take me somewhere she can’t see, and… and just leave her out of it. Ber… Ber can take care of her-”

“Daddy, no,” Mallie cries, and tightens her grip on him.

“Ssssshhhh,” He whispers to her, and presses a kiss into her hair. “It’s okay, baby girl. It’s all right. Beringer can take care of you for a little while, if I can’t, okay? Just for a little bit.”

Mallie sniffs, hard. “I don’t wanna go with Beringer.”

“I know, but sometimes we have to do these things, don’t we? It’s okay. They just want to talk to Daddy for a while.”

There’s a long pause. 

Brock pushes himself back up to his feet. It’s Beringer he addresses. “All right. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re not expected, you used a trail nobody is supposed to know about, and you’ve got a handler with you. The first step is interrogation, and if you don’t cooperate with that-”

“Me.” Marc looks up, and his eyes glimmer with tears, but he’s resolute. “Interrogate me. I can tell you a whole lot more than Beringer can. And I have-... in my pocket. I have something in my pocket I thought might help smooth our way, and explain why we’re on the trail. Why we know about it.”

The man stands back, nods, gestures for Marc to stand. With Beringer’s help, he makes it without ever putting Mallie down. Beringer reaches into his pocket while he keeps Mallie in his arms, pulling out the USB and holding it out.

Brock takes it, frowning as he looks at it, dangling on a little nylon lanyard. “What’s on here?”

“Everything,” Marc says. “Everything WRU knows about Hope, about you. All of you. I’m currently sort of hoping WRU thinks the lib group that set the fire killed me and used my ID to get into the system.”

The assembled group goes silent and still. Brock nods, sharply, and steps backwards. “All right. Come on. It’s a long walk back to Hope with a child in your arms.” 

They end up at the center of a circle of heavily-armed runaways, walking down the trail, and Beringer realizes that, whatever happens to him next… he wants Marc with him, and Mallie, too. 

“If it’s not enough,” Marc says, voice low, shifting Mallie around so she’s more comfortable to carry, “Then you take her to Canada, and you start over, okay, Ber? Get her to call you Dad. No one will know.”

“Marc-”

“No, don’t… don’t talk. Just. If I don’t get to leave with you, you take her and you go, and give her a better life than I did.”

“You love her more than I ever could, Marc. You’re a good dad. You’re the best dad-”

“I’ve been a bad person, though. I let her grow up thinking this is all normal and okay. Take her and teach her it isn’t if I-... if I don’t get the chance. Okay? Promise me you won’t leave without her.”

Beringer looks at Mallie, back to Marc. Then he smiles, just a little. “I promise I won’t leave without you,” He says, instead.

Even now, Marc blushes when he looks away and down at the ground, trying to hide a smile. 

-

@astrobly @finder-of-rings @burtlederp @wildfaewhump @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @orchidscript  

For whumptober: @whumpworld 

[ashintheairlikesnow]

WIJ Day 6: Hold On

CW: Pet whump, fire, burns, panic, referenced past burns, some internalized dehumanization, BBU

Marc Sonders, Maliyah Sonders, and Beringer made their original appearance in Telling Time. This is for the @whumpmasinjuly prompt for day 6: Hold On

-

554897 takes the third shift, shooing the other daycare pets off to their beds in the tiny, cramped dorm behind the child development center. Only one adult really needs to be awake during these midnight hours, anyway - someone to handle night feedings, hand out cuddles if there are nightmares, change diapers or offer glasses of water and a sense of safety to tiny little people whose lives are entirely held in someone else's hands. 

He knows how uncertain that can be - to know anything could happen, and you have to hope someone cares enough to help. 

There is always someone awake in the daycare at Facility 001. And 554897, who everyone calls Beringer, volunteered to be awake tonight. 

He's the one who knows how important tonight is, after all. The others couldn’t have been trusted with the truth. Beringer is the only one who can keep his mouth shut when a handler starts asking inconvenient questions. 

It’s never the right handler asking, anyway. Easy to lie to all the wrong ones.

He learned that lesson a long time ago.

Beringer pads on silent bare brown feet over brightly colored rugs in the shape of rainbows, hearts, happy faces, and flowers towards the big windows that face out towards the parking lot. There’s a temporary tattoo of a green triceratops still wearing slowly away on the inside of one wrist peeking out from beneath his long-sleeved plain beige pajama top. The temp tattoo was a gift from one of the daycare kids. It’s flaking off like pixels dissolving on a screen, leaving the image of his skin and blood beneath.

Dissolving like the image of the smiling compliant perfect pet he’s always had to use to stay alive in a pit of vipers, laced with a couple harmless garden snakes. Took him a long time to be able to see the difference. 

To figure out which garden snake will carry him away from here without swallowing him whole. 

He keeps one hand closed around the tag that dangles from his collar, so it won't jingle. Around his wrist is a colorful bracelet made with giant beads by Handler Sonders' daughter Maliyah. Marc Sonders had come by last weekend shyly offering the gift. Beringer had played innocent surprise with the talent of a natural-born actor. It had been his idea for Mallie to make one as a way to bond with him, he’d sent the little ziploc-bag of beads and plastic ‘string’ home with her. He’d expected it, and he’d wanted Marc to be the one to bring it. Made a production out of trading, insisting Marc wear it for me, when you come to see me. 

He hasn’t taken his off, either.

Beringer tries not to think too much about why.

He steps carefully around the occasional small air mattresses, each one with a child laying atop it, a blanket and pillow from home and a stuffie for comfort, too. They run the gamut of bunnies and puppies and kitties and bears, clutched in itty bitty arms. Along the walls are infants in cribs. They sleep with grunts and huffs and groans, shifting and moving their little bodies. He smiles at the sound. He might hate a lot of things here, but he really does love the kids. 

He fights how his throat wants to close. 

He’s going to miss them.

Time for regrets when you have what you want, he reminds himself. For now, only look forward to the future.

It’s sort of an exciting feeling just to have one. 

His eyes scan over the sleeping children with fondness. Some of them he has known since they were four months old, tiny infants he could hold in his arms turned into wiggly toddlers who never sit still. Some, like Mallie Sonders, will go on to real school soon and leave him behind. 

Beringer is always the one left behind, the one who cannot leave. Seeing them as big brothers to new classroom charges, big sisters, big siblings who smile and wave or give hugs and keep on growing, where Beringer can’t see. 

Can’t shepherd them, can’t help shape the grown-ups they’ll be.

The nanny pets are the lucky ones, he thinks, the Platonics who get to watch their children growing all the way through. Even some of the Romantics get to bear their own, hold infants in their arms that don’t get taken away at the end of the day. Daycare pets are damned to lose their babies after just a few short years, again and again, until they grow numb to the grieving.

But Beringer isn’t going to have to lose his any longer. He won’t have to watch them walk away, won’t have to give high-fives with tears in his eyes to eight-year-olds who barely remember his face. 

Not anymore. 

He has spent so many years in just these few rooms, staring through the crayon-scribbled drawings and painted papers at the parking lot outside, wondering at the suggestion of trees just a little further than he can see. 

Maintenance probably assumes he’s the lucky one, since he gets to see anything at all. 

The floor-to-ceiling windows all along one side, marked with the construction-paper flowers and plastic 'stained glass' projects they've made, are cold against his hand as he looks out, grazing fingertips along the glass. Beyond the parking lot, the fence winds around the perimeter, seven feet of concrete topped with razor wire - not to keep anyone out, but to keep potential runaways in. 

The gate the employees badge through before they can park - a little station where a man usually sits inside reading magazines and thrift-store novels while casually ignoring the gate going up and down and up and down again - is simply standing wide open.

The man who usually sits there is gone.

554897 smiles, a small and private expression. 

That's step one.  

There’s a deep breath behind him, and he turns, scanning the sleeping children until he sees little Jill Frugelmann, stretching her arms over her head. She yawns, eyes fluttering open, seeing Beringer and smiling hazily at him before she slides right back into slumber.

He smiles back. 

Maliyah Sonders pushes a blanket off herself and heads for the little bathroom off in the corner, never even looking at anyone. She’s the earliest fully potty-trained kiddo he’s dealt with so far.

The back of his neck prickles above and below his collar as he says nothing, waiting and waiting. It’s hell, staying in this holding pattern. He’s waited so many years for something to change - and it’s been weeks since the notes started appearing in Laira Grant’s lunchboxes, notes he answers in his own slightly childish scrawl and sends back.

If it had been a trap, he’d have been hauled away, downstairs to be refurbed or just handed over the maintenance, chained to a mop bucket for the rest of his life. If it had been a trap…

 But it hadn’t been. He’s sure of it, now. 

He’s sure because he has to be, because if he’s wrong the consequences are… not unimaginable, exactly. He can imagine them very well. But he doesn’t want to linger too long, or he’ll lose his nerve.

A flash of light catches his attention and he looks back outside. It’s coming from the parking lot, slightly off to the left. If he squints, he can almost see them out there, a group of four or five. There’s another ten scattered around, getting into place. He sees shadows moving, silhouettes that don’t resolve into details.

The light keeps going. One deliberately slow flash, then a quick one. A pause. Three slow flashes. A quick blink, two more slow. 

N. O. W.

It’s the sign he’s been waiting for.

He gives one last mournful look at the latest round of art projects - macaroni glued to paper, some paintings and drawings, tissue-paper flowers. He’d been so proud of how well the kids had done with all of them. At least some of the parents have taken photos, anyway…

Right on time, the scent of smoke starts to settle slowly downwards, piped through the vents. The first round isn’t real smoke, but it’s meant to look and smell like it, and Beringer moves fast towards the bedroom the daycare workers use in the back.

He sticks his head in. “I smell smoke!” His voice is a little too flat to sound sincerely surprised, but they’re all asleep, the other five, some until he literally shakes them to get them to start swimming back to consciousness unwillingly. “I smell-... there’s a fire, come on, we have to get the kids!”

223654 groans and swats at him, pulling a blanket over her head. Beringer has to yank it off, irritated, even as the others wake with shouts of alarm as the scent of smoke gets stronger, the haze a little more complete. It’s not real, yet - Beringer knows how real smoke feels when it stings your eyes, although he isn’t sure why he knows that - but it will be, and he’s on a time limit before people could get hurt.

“Hold your effing horses,” ‘654 mutters, then goes still. She pulls the blanket back and blinks, looking upwards. “D’you smell smoke, ‘897?”

“Yes. That is why I just woke you up at 2 a.m., you piece of dull cheese, come on! We have to get the kids!”

“Right, right-... darn it… oh, heck-” ‘654 finally manages to essentially just roll off the bed onto the floor, but she’s on her feet a second later. Around him, the others murmur in worried voices. This is new, unexpected. There’s no direction from a handler, no one but them to take care of their charges in what they believe is an emergency.

Beringer swallows, squares his shoulders, and steps up.

“654 and 339, grab the walkies strollers, they hold six apiece and that’ll take care of our 1s and the young 2s. 504, have the older 2s, the threes, and the fours hold hands behind you and walk in a line. 505 can help you. 112, you take the cribs for the two little ones. I’ll make sure everyone is out and nobody is left behind.”

He smiles at them, projecting confidence and strength. The others, clearly relieved to see someone who at least pretends to know what to do right now, immediately follow their assigned tasks. 

Beringer takes a deep breath.

The smoke is settling in his hair and sleeves, and he has a painful flash of the idea of a bar, a cigarette in his mouth, laughing while holding up a lighter to a smiling girl-

He shakes off the pain and keeps moving. Memories just get in the way.

For a while, he just flits from one to another. He helps 112 to get the two cribs pushed out into the lobby first, moves along the mattresses to shush the crying toddlers and young children as they’re reluctantly woken and realize something is wrong. No one pays much attention to him, not right now. 

Especially not when the fire alarm goes off suddenly, a shrieking repetitive wail broken only by a disembodied metallic voice announcing EVACUATE BUILDING ONE, EVACUATE BUILDING ONE.

That’s the sign that the fake fire has became a real one.

They promised him, in those secret notes, that only this building will burn, and that they don’t want to hurt anyone. They promised, and like all the good little pets, Beringer has to hope and trust that the promises aren’t lies.

Once everyone is out, he heads back to finish his own part of the job. In the supply closet next to the potty-training bathroom, he finds the small can of solvent cleaner he’d stolen from a maintenance cart a week ago, a few old rags, and a matchbook. His heart is starting to pound, banging around within his chest, screaming at him for his betrayal. 

The handlers will be upset.

The handlers will be angry.

The handlers-

He pushes past the terror and closes trembling hands around the can and the rags, carrying them out and pouring solvent on one, another, yet another, until seven rags are soaked and lined up along the outside wall. It doesn’t matter if it’s obvious arson, because the people who set the first fire have promised to claim this one, too.

Then, finally, he goes to the little bathroom for his final act before whatever the hell this is about to turn into - and finds Mallie, right where she’d gone for the bathroom break she takes every single night around two in the morning, her dark eyes big and scared.

 “It’s so loud!” She shouts, and reaches for him. “It’s so loud, make it stop, make the noise stop!”

“Hey, Mal-pal,” Beringer says, voice as soothing as he can make it when he’s nearly shouting to be heard. “There’s a fire, but everyone is safe. We just need to go and find your daddy, okay? Things are about to get kind of scary, and we should find your daddy so he can take care of us now. It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you. It’s okay, come here-” 

She nods, chin wobbling, and Beringer’s heart hurts at having to scare her like this. But it’s the only way, he tells himself. It’s the only way he can get away clean in the chaos and confusion, the only way it might take a couple of days for anyone to care enough to look for him. 

He sweeps her up into his arms, carrying her back towards the door and setting her down on her feet. Out in the lobby, chaos is starting to reign as the few handles on duty this late at night come boiling up to evacuate. Beringer swallows back his loathing - if it were a real fire, those bastards would be abandoning the trainees in the cells down below. Sure, there’s a sprinkler system and big locking doors and some other things Marc Sonders explained to him when he, ever so innocently, asked about what would happen in case of fire, but…

But it’s still leaving them to be terrified and alone in the cold light, not knowing where the fire is or if it will roast them alive in their cells.

He hates them all.

He doesn’t hate Marc, but he should. But he doesn’t. But he should-

He shouldn’t. He can use Marc, at least, for now. That’s all.

“Stay right here,” He says, setting Mallie slowly down near the door. “Okay, honey? Stay right here. I have one more thing I need to do. Then I’m going to take you outside to be safe.”

The alarm pauses, briefly - then starts again, at a slightly higher pitch. That’s two fires.

Beringer digs the matchbook back out of his pocket and heads for the window, ready to set the third. It’s easy - light the match and drop it to the cloth, wash the fire kick up, watch it take the edges of the papers he purposely hung too low in the windows. Set one more fire by the art supplies, knowing the paint cabinet burns easy, too. Set a couple of the rugs and mattresses on fire, pretending his heart doesn’t ache at knowing so many stuffies will be burned beyond recognition.

But the kids are safe.

He would never have done this if it would have hurt the kids.

He clings to that - he isn’t totally selfish, he isn’t a monster trying to be free when he doesn’t deserve it. No, he’s just… taking his chance, and hopefully no one will get hurt. That’s all. This is… this is understandable, and he’s done everything to make sure the children, the babies, are safe. 

With the flames making their slow way up the window behind him, he turns with the warmth at his back to see Mallie still standing by the door, tears running down her heels. Crying with a silence he can’t bear, louder than the crackling of the flames. He grabs her up in his arms again and pushes open the door with his shoulder, running out to join the people who are streaming towards the exits. Handlers, the upstairs maintenance staff - not the pets, those will be trapped down in the basement levels, too, but the paid maintenance who put on a good show up here where it’s all above-board and normal. He even sees a couple marketing people who must’ve put in an overnight to finish a project. 

Demo pets, holding their handlers’ hands, are rushed past him. Perfect actors with perfect hair and perfect clothes, as frightened as any bad pet before a refurb. Beringer can smell the smoke out here, too. 

“You made fires,” Mallie wails, but her arms are tight around his neck. “I saw you!” You made the scary sounds! You made the fire”!

“Ssssshhh.” He doesn’t have time to explain. Can’t even begin to know how he could explain it, or convince this absurdly honest perfect little girl to lie for him. “Sssshhh, let’s just get outside now, okay? Let’s just get away from it.”

“You made it-”

“Mallie, hush baby, let’s just-... oh, here we go.” He sets his expression to one of wide-eyed shock as he sees Marc Sonders, pushing past others to make a beeline for the daycare. Beringer grabs him by the arm with his free hand, his other arm holding up Mallie, watching Marc look at his daughter with a stricken relief that she’s all right, hands to either side of her face, before he pulls her away from Beringer and holds her tightly, gripped on as though she’ll fade away if he lets go even the slightest bit. 

“Mallie! Oh, Ber, you’ve got her, thank God. Oh, thank God. Just hold on, baby girl, we’re going to get out of here.”

“Daddy,” Mallie cries. “Daddy, it’s so scary, I’m so scared!”

“I know, honey. I know. Come on, Ber, you come with us, you can wait in my car with me.”

 “No!” Mallie looks over at him, wide-eyed, and Beringer swallows against the guilt in his heart, seeing the little girl he loves - one of the children he has loved so much - fear him. “He can’t come!”

“Mallie, the rules don’t matter right now.” Marc shushes her as she tries to protest again. “Honey, let’s just get somewhere safe, okay?”

She swallows, and pushes her face into the side of his neck. “Okay, Daddy.”

Beringer exhales, closing his eyes. He can apologize to her later, he can, he’ll make it better-

His eyes fly open again. “Wait. Just-... one sec, Marc, please, stay right here.”

“Uh-... okay?”

Beringer doesn’t explain. He just turns and pushes his way back into the daycare’s main room. He’s met with a blast of heat, his little fires meeting the bigger one the pet lib group he’s helping set to cover their tracks as they break in. He inhales and the air is too hot and full of smoke to make it to his lungs. He  coughs as he drops down to crawl on his hands and knees, trying to get under the smoke, squinting as his eyes sting. He reaches out-

So close-

His girlfriend is screaming as she’s pinned under burning wood and if he can just reach a little further-

His heart splits in two from the sudden burst of agony, and he groans, dropping limp to the floor. He can’t stop coughing enough to inhale, his hands are groping blindly along mattresses holding to find the right one.

Then, he’s got it. Two small round shapes, soft with age and washings, and the flutters of blankets attached to them. Maliyah’s loveys, Mommy and Baby Lovey, are in his hand.

His face aches from the heat, he can feel it blasting against his skin. What did they start these fires with? It’s spreading too fast, too easily. He runs out of air to cough with, wheezing hoarse and weak. He doesn’t turn around, just crawls straight backwards. Turning around would waste precious time, what little air he has left.

His feet bump wood that clunks, the door, and he sits up with his back against it, feeling blindly with his hand. He can’t breathe-

He can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t breathe-

The door smacks him as it opens, pushing him forwards, and there’s a strong hand gripped round his arm that pulls him out of the blistering oven of heat, yanks him to his feet, and he turns to see Marc, blurry, crushing him close in a hug. He coughs, inhales, coughs again.

“What the hell-” Marc starts, but Beringer pushes the loveys into Mallie’s arms even as a coughing fit wracks his entire body, and he fits himself against Marc.  The frightened pet desperate for leadership, even though he is a leader, when he wants to be. 

“You saved Mommy and Baby Lovey!” Mallie says, eyes wide, and hugs them close.

Beringer’s voice is a rasping whisper when he tries to speak. “Please, Marc, just, just take me outside, please.”

Everything smells like smoke. He keeps reaching, but she isn’t reaching back any longer. The heat-

It hurts-

His skin cracks, it blisters and peels all down his back, he screams but her silence is so much louder-

Marc nods and pulls him along, out the double-door entrance, a place Beringer has never been before. Behind them there’s a cracking that’s far too loud, the groan of the structure struggling with the flames. 

Once they push through the door, the crush of people around them, the heavy scent of smoke suddenly lightens.

The ghost of the fire before - the one that turned his back and arms to twists and ropes of scarring he hides under long sleeves even in summer, burying the flickers of memory as far beneath himself as he can - fades. Beringer takes a breath as he feels a breeze against his face and his hands, feels the concrete still holding a little warmth from the day under his feet. He almost stops, just to experience it, but Marc yanks on his arm and they keep moving, weaving through the others who stumble with the same desperate fear and confusion Beringer is trying to fake. Around them, people yell, the sound of fire sirens starts to rise and fall from a distance as the first trucks head for the Facility.

“Oh my God,” Marc whispers.

Mallie’s voice is a whimper. “Daddy? What’s happening, Daddy?”

“It’s a fire, baby, but it’s okay, it looks like-... it looks like everyone is out, it really does. I think everyone’s going to be okay, baby girl. Just keep holding onto Daddy, just keep holding on.”

She nods against his shoulder. Baby Lovey peeks up over her arm, flopped slightly, its odd stitched-in face eternally looking just a little bit surprised. 

The sirens don’t sound at all like they do on the cartoons the children watch. Beringer frowns, wondering what else the television shows have lied to him about.

Before the three of them get any further than the edge of the sidewalk where the parking pavement begins, there are a series of loud booms, one two three four, and the people scream. Beringer skids to a stop as the ground shakes under his feet - he didn’t know anything about this - and looks over his shoulder.

The windows of the daycare show a growing inferno inside, but one side of the building - a long, low-level area that holds the currently-closed cafeteria and a bricked-in walkway to the pet clinic off to one side - no longer exists.

It’s just rubble, and a big hole torn in the side of the building. More flames, crackling and reaching greedy fingers to grasp at the oxygen outside. Beringer stares through it at smoke and dust. Figures dart inside, dressed all in black and wearing respirators with small tanks on their backs.

Everyone else is fleeing, but these seven run in. 

The pet lib group who has been sending the notes, he thinks, and swallows, hard. There’s no one in the cafeteria at two in the morning, he tells himself, but if they lied to him about explosions, what if they lied about not wanting anyone to get hurt, too?

What if the trainees locked in their cells down below-

“What the fuck was that?” Marc gasps, looking as well, sliding his arm around Beringer’s shoulders. The two of them stand there, Mallie’s face buried against Marc’s neck, and stare together. 

“I don’t kn-know,” Beringer says, and he’s not lying. He can hear wailing children through the noise and the chaos, and strains to see until he catches sight of the other daycare pets, circled far enough away to be safe with all their babies and children in tow. He tries to count, although the light from the streetlights isn’t great. It casts shadows too starkly, it’s hard with al the children clinging and crying and moving to be sure. 

One-... two-... two cribs. Two infants crying, so that’s Yolanda and Markus. The six ones in their stroller - Hailie, Bethany, Myklaylah, John, Brayden, Ben... the six twos in theirs Addysin, Ophelia, William, Peter, Edward... a parent picking a three up - Elizabeth - and clutching them to her chest, weeping, two handlers together for one of the fours, that’d be Henry… He doesn’t breathe until he knows they’re all there, every single one - except for Mallie, of course, safe in her father’s arms.

“Marc…” He turns to look at the man, who looks back at him, dazed and struggling to process what he sees. Another boom rattles the parking lot, setting off car alarms and adding to the commotion - it’s a car, off to the side, suddenly going up in flames as well. Then a second car. Then a third. 

Mallie screams. “Daddy!”

Marc shudders and pulls Beringer close, turning him so their foreheads rest against each other, Mallie sandwiched between them. She’s crying, weeping openly, but the sounds all around are so loud Beringer can barely hear her. 

“I don’t even like this fucking job,” Marc says, in a voice like a faint, thin, strained wire, pulled tight enough to snap. “And people want to kill me over it, B-Ber.”

People like me, Beringer thinks.

His back itches, phantom aches from the scars that make up most of his skin from the collarbones down.

 “She was probably still alive when you freed yourself-”

“Because you have to hurt us,” Beringer says, finding his opening, his way in, his escape in the pain in Marc Sonders’s voice. “To make us good. And we don’t want to be hurt, Marc. None of us want to be hurt.”

“What? But you-... you sign up for-” There’s a pause, and a look passes over Marc’s face that Beringer can’t read in the darkness. “Ber… if I told you I looked at your acquisition paperwork… I know I’m not supposed to, but if I said I did-”

“No,” Beringer says, and isn’t sure why. He shivers as he sees two of the daycare pets catch sight of him in the crowd, waving at him, trying to wave him over. He looks back to Marc, speaking as fast as he can. “Please, just put me in your car and drive and we can talk about it then. Get me off the grounds. Please, even if you bring me back later, just let me see the stars before I have to go back in there. Please.”

Marc looks at him, startled by the desperation in his usually-placid voice, the intensity. “Beringer, you’re-... you’re not allowed-”

“Please,” Beringer whispers. “Please, just let me watch TV with you in a real house. Just one time, Marc, please, I’m begging you, please-”

“Well…”

Beringer takes a chance and pushes forwards, pressing a kiss to Marc’s unresisting lips, pulling back to see an expression of such comical surprise he even finds the time to laugh despite his racing heart, and kisses him again. It’s a breathless, terrified laughter, but it’s laughter nonetheless.

“Come on, Marc. Just this once. Let me be a person, just for a while.” He nuzzles against Marc’s cheekbone, lips grazing stubble. “Let me be your person.”

It works when the Romantics do it, right?

Marc swallows, touching his own fingers to his lips, and then nods. He pulls Beringer to his car, unlocking it before they get there, even opening Beringer’s door so he can slip inside quickly. “I’ll get Mallie in her carseat, you get on the passenger side. Hold on, Ber, you’ll see stars tonight.”

“I hope so.” Beringer smiles at him as he buckles his seatbelt, watches Marc climb into the driver’s side. Marc starts the car and flies out of the lot, past the emptied open gate, and down the road just as firetrucks come screaming past them to go in. 

Beringer catches the barest glimpse of the looks of shock on the faces of the other daycare pets, and then they’re gone. It’s gone, the whole damn place is gone. 

One hand goes up to his collar, to rub his thumb over his number, his name. 

He’ll wait a couple of hours. Do whatever it is Marc Sonders needs him to do, to make it worthwhile. He won’t be very good, but maybe Marc doesn’t need him to be. Then, once Marc’s guard is down, he’ll knock him over the head and get the hell away from this place for good. 

He just has to wait for his chance. 

If he does it right, he won’t have to kill him. He can just, just maybe get him to drink too much, or see if he has sleeping pills. Beringer has watched television late at night where they crush up sleeping pills into someone’s hot chocolate or pudding or whatever to drug them. Maybe Marc has trouble sleeping, Beringer offers to help… Maybe he can do this with no one getting hurt, he doesn’t really want to kill him, he’s the only person who has ever been really nice to Beringer, maybe he can-

Marc clears his throat, breaking into Beringer’s thoughts. “Um. Hey.”

Beringer finds himself looking over with a wry smile - not a feigned expression at all. He really doesn’t want to have to hurt Marc Sonders. “Hey?”

“What if… um.” Marc clears his throat again. Even in the dark, it’s clear he’s probably blushing. A streetlight briefly illuminates his face as he glances over, then back at the road. Behind them, Mallie whispers to her loveys. “What if, we… uh. Never came back, actually? Like... what if I just kept driving?”

Beringer blinks.

Waits a second.

Blinks again. 

 Then he whispers, “Wh-... what?”

Marc looks away. “Yeah, you’re right, it’s probably a stupid idea, just-”

“N-no, I didn’t say, uh, I didn’t say not to, you just surprised me.” Beringer leans over, worried this brief bright chance will be lost, and lays his hand over Marc’s where it rests on the gear shift between them. Marc swallows, an audible click in his throat. Shifts so they’re palm to palm, then pulls Beringer’s hand up until he can kiss the back of his knuckles. 

“I don’t want to go back to work,” Marc confesses, turning left at a stoplight. The world seems empty at three in the morning, devoid of everything but the streetlights and the three of them here in the car.

“Me neither,” Beringer replies, a smile slowly spreading across his face.

“I hate everything about my job except for you. You and paying the rent are literally the only reason I keep going and, you know what, if we just leave, then... then i don’t have to pay rent anymore...”

“Oh.” Beringer hadn’t considered that, that Marc might... not actually want to be a handler. That he might be willing to take the risk of quitting, or even just... vanishing into the darkness after the fire, just like Beringer plans to do. “Oh, uh. Then... where do you want to go?”

“I’ve heard about a town for people like you,” Marc says. He merges onto the interstate, heading due north. As they leave the heart of the city, the orange glow of all the lights starts to fade and the stars wink into existence one by one. “We know kind of where it is. What if-”

“Take me there.” He doesn’t even need Marc to finish the sentence. “Take me to that town.”

“I mean, I don’t know exactly where-”

“Take me as far as you can. I want to see it, I want to see-... everything.” He laughs again, more sincerely this time, as the city - the only place he has ever known - is finally and fully behind them. “I want to see anything.”

“I want to see you,” Marc says, voice low.

Beringer thinks of the scars under his clothes. Fifty-five percent of his body, something deep within him whispers. Weeks in the hospital fighting to heal. Twisted into a shadow of someone else long before WRU took his mind. “No you don’t.”

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“No-”

“Ber. Just let me feel something for somebody, it’s been a while and I’m not great at it, but... I know what I feel about you. Let me have that.”

Beringer looks over at him, and his heart… shifts, in a strange way. It’s almost a fluttering, as if his racing heart has found something new to fly towards or away from. His nerves feel like they’re on fire, like he’s made of sparks burning away the edges, showing something else beneath. 

 Something... clean.

“Yeah,” He says, and leans back, closing his eyes. He can smell the smoke all over himself, clinging to clothes and hair, even his eyelashes. 

He discovers, to his surprise, that he wants more of this new kind of burn. 

-

-

P.S. No one is actually hurt in the fire, for the record.

-

Tagging people who have expressed interest: @astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @wildfaewhump @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @peachy-panic @winedark-whump @boxboysandotherwhump @whumptywhumpdump

[iamtheshriekingguineapig]

I really do shift from "WHUMP ALL THE MEN" to "uwu Credo💖💖💖" to "someone photoshop Nero's face onto a small rodent please"

But yes, your lore is reading your little gremlin children bedtime stories. If I'm Nero, @princesssakurasylveon is Dante, and @spoiler1001 is Vergil, you are Sparda, Sonder 🤣

Every mutual group has:

a chaotic mutual but doesn’t show it

a cinnamon roll mutual but says that they are chaotic (not true)

a mutual who wants to commit arson

a mutual who wants to commit murder

a mutual who sunshine personified

a mutual who is so cool, it intimidates you

the mutual who makes edits/moodboards etc, they are hella cool

a mutual who wants to kill god

a mutual who is god. Periodt.

a mutual who has seen all the discourses

a mutual who has gotten involved in every discourse

a mutual who gets in a discourse accidentally, they didn’t mean to

A flirty mutual

a bookworm mutual

a dark academia mutual

chaos incarnate mutual

a mutual in A continuous existential crises

a mutual who is addicted to making picrews

a parent mutual, the only one with a brain

and a popular mutual

[ashintheairlikesnow]

WIJ Day 9: Falling

CW: Building collapse, trapped, broken bones, fires/burns, nightmares, brief pet whump at the end, very brief vague ref to expected noncon that doesn’t happen

Beringer, Marc Sonders, and Mallie Sonders originally appeared in Telling Time and Hold On. This is for @whumpmasinjuly day 9, prompt: Falling

-

Houston, Texas, 2004

One moment, Miguel and Penny were sitting on the couch in his seventh floor apartment, and everything was absolutely fine. He had the Xbox controller in his hand, frowning as he watched the Elite be made an Arbiter, wondering how that tied into Master Chief and where the game was going next. “Look, Pen, I get to play as one of the Covenant.”

“Cool.” Penny was curled at the other end with a book. She didn't look up.

“Yeah, this game is going like a whole different direction than Combat Evolved, this is neat.”

“Definitely.” She still didn’t look up.

He huffed in good-natured, affectionate annoyance. God, he loved her so much.

One moment, everything was perfectly fine.

The next, he heard a sound.

Miguel looked up to see a crack in the ceiling that hadn’t been there five minutes before. “Penny? Do you see-”

She blinked, tearing herself out of the story, and followed his gaze. Her eyes widened, and his last good look at her would be seared into his mind until he begged them to take it from him. Her hair was still wet from her shower, laying dark over one brown shoulder. He remembers - or he would remember, for a little while - how her chest hitched under her tank top as she took in a sudden, sharp breath. “What do you think that’s about?”

“I don’t know… I don’t know. Uh, let’s-... let’s go downstairs and report it.” He grabbed his cell phone off the side table, while Penny dog-eared her page and set her book down. He remembered, for a long time, what book she was reading - The Da Vinci Code, because her coworkers wouldn’t shut up about it.

“Yeah, that’s scary shit. Want to get a hotel for tonight?” 

“Definitely. No way I’m staying here until they fix whatever the hell that is. Maybe the upstairs people have a water leak?”

“Maybe-” There was a low rumble - the sort of thing they felt more than saw. Penny’s voice cut off, and she gasped. “Miguel! Look!”

He glanced upwards and he saw the crack in the ceiling get bigger, right before his eyes. It snaked further across the ceiling in both directions, and the goddamn roof over Miguel’s head seemed to… sag, a little. 

“Oh, shit,” He whispered, and didn’t even bother to turn off the video game. He just dropped the controller and grabbed her by the arm. “We gotta go, Penny, come on, let’s go. I think the roof’s about to fall in!”

The walls around them seemed to shudder and change somehow. When he got to the door, it felt jammed shut, and he had to let go of Penny’s hand and shove his cell phone at her so he could grab on with both hands and yank as hard as he could to get it to swing open. The bottom edge, which had always been perfectly set just above the floor, scraped along the doormat and then dragged the floor. 

“The walls moved,” He whispered. “The walls are wrong.” His mind couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing, and he hesitated too long.

“What?” Penny asked.

“The walls-”

He would remember the seconds of that hesitation ticking by, afterward.

“The walls are wrong-”

He would wonder if they would have made a difference.

“Penny… the building’s gonna fall!”

Maybe they would both be dead, if he’d been even a second faster or slower to realize what was going on. Maybe that would have been better.

“Oh my God,” She whispered. 

He grabbed her arm and ran.

His bare feet hit cold concrete as he raced down the hall for the staircase throwing open the heavy reinforced door meant to slow down a fire. As they passed over apartments, he could see lights turning on, hear people calling out to each other. He refused to think about them, to think about anyone but Penny, anyone but himself. 

“Miguel, oh my god-”

“Just run!”

They made it into the stairwell as the rumbling became a roar. The fluorescents overhead flickered wildly as he took the stairs three at a time, making it down one flight of stairs, then a second.

It happened so fast, in the end.

It happened too fast.

He had enough time to dive, pulling Penny with him into a corner underneath the fifth floor stairwell. He threw his arms around her and held on as tightly as he could, crushing her against him as she screamed.

It sounded like a whisper as the wall next to them cracked apart and gave way, and then there was nothing holding them at all.

They were falling.

The floor was still underneath him, chilly concrete painted with some kind of smooth sealant, but the wind whipped his hair and the air felt like sandpaper blasting against his skin. He screamed, too.

The roar of the building collapsing was louder.

They fell, every second slowing to individual ticks of time. He clung to her, and her nails dug into his back near his shoulder blades. 

What a weird fucking way to die, he had time to think, before all thought was gone as they hit the ground. 

Pain spiked up his leg and he screamed in a new way entirely. The force of their landing threw Penny away from him. He reached blindly for her and grasped only empty air. “Penny! Pen!”

“Miguel!”

He hit the ground, rolled, slammed into something like a rock with the breath knocked out of him. He gasped, rolled onto his back, and was shocked to find himself in the dark still breathing, staring upwards but seeing no stars.

No lights.

There was another rumble, and he flinched and covered his head, but nothing happened. Eventually, he pulled his hands slowly down. 

The air reeked of smoke and that smell of building materials that he remembered from his time working construction back in high school, summers spent helping his uncle and dad for handfuls of cash he’d spent on girls, boys, weed, and movie nights. Way too many CDs, too, filling his CD book he kept in his car until he had to buy a second, filling that one, too. His eyes opened and closed without his say-so. He had grit in them, or it felt like it, and he coughed as his lungs kept inflating. 

“What the fuck,” He whispered. 

Then, from somewhere nearby, he heard Penny crying.

“Pen-... Penny-... where are you?”

“Miguel… what h, happened to us?” Penny’s voice cried out, somewhere close by but with the smoke he couldn’t see her. He coughed again, lungs fighting every breath - there was something wrong with a rib on his left side, it ached when he breathed, but it hurt so much less than his leg than he barely noticed. He lowered himself as close to… what used to be a floor… as he could get. 

Little easier to breathe down here.

What had they taught, when they used to visit the fire department in elementary school? If there’s smoke, get low to the floor, because smoke and heat rise and you can make it to the door. Check the knob-

But what if there wasn’t a door, any longer?

What if he wasn’t even in a room?

“Keep talking, Pen, I’m coming to find you,” He groaned. His fingernails dug into what felt like pebbles, and he was making tiny trenches in the ground as he moved forwards, his leg shrieking agony, ignored for now. His teeth ground together.

“Miguel… I’m over here, baby, pl-... please, I’m stuck, please-”

He’d remembered her face, when he first saw her again, for a long time, too. Until he had thanked them for agreeing to take the guilt and the regret away. 

He found her, only a few feet away, and she had blood in her hair and on her face, mixed with dust and dirt smeared all over. One of her arms didn’t look right, and he refused to look too closely at it, then. He refused to see the bone, visible through a break in her skin, through the blood. 

For the moment all he saw was her face and that she was still alive. 

For a second, his relief was greater than his terror.

Somewhere off to the side, he heard a cat meow, the scattering of bits of stone, the sound of it racing away from the rubble.

“I think-... I think that’s Abigail Henderson’s cat,” Penny managed, and then she coughed, so hard he knew even then there was more broken than her arm. “It has that weird kind of me-... meow. Miguel, what-... what happened? What just h-happened-”

“The… the whole building fell, I think.” 

“Why?” The cry was a wail, not really a question.

He tried to answer anyway. “I don’t-... I don’t know, Pen.” A hint of cool air whispered around him, and he shivered. But the smoke seemed to clear, for just a minute, too. He could see, now, why he couldn’t see stars. “Oh, shit, I think we’re… I think we’re underneath it.”

“Underneath-”

“The building. Or… what was the building.”

Above him, there was concrete, and twisted metal, wires torn apart from each other. Incongruously, he could see half a sofa sticking out over to one side, the other half just… gone. Nothing left. Papers were everywhere, a smashed desktop monitor. A hairbrush, neon green backing, and he just stared at it, trying to understand.

Everyone’s entire lives buried down here with them, like a city after a volcano.

“What?” She tried to roll over, cried out in pain, and went still again, craning her neck instead to look up. “Oh-... oh my god.” Her voice shook, and he covered the last bit of distance between them to grab onto her hand, leaning his forehead down until he felt her fingers twitching against his skin. “Oh my God, we’re… we’re buried al, alive-”

She started to cry, sobbing helplessly, loud wracking sobs that made her hiss in pain, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. He just held on, as best he could, because he couldn’t think of a single thing to say to help.

Faintly, he could hear other people calling out to each other. He could hear water rushing from broken pipes somewhere nearby. There was a new rumble, something shifted, and people screamed. He tensed, lowering his head, but… nothing new fell on them. The rumbling stopped. 

“I think we’re-... we’re in a pocket, or something,” He said, his voice coming out airier than he meant it to. He couldn’t comfort her if he sounded scared, could he? He tried to swallow, but even his saliva felt thick with dust and smoke. “Penny, I think we’re… I think it’s pretty stable right here. We just have to wait for the, uh, the firefighters-... they’re going to send firefighters, right?”

“Um, yes, r-right, I think they send firefighters. I saw-... I remember from when that place fell, the, uh, the vacation place-”

“Right, right, that place in Florida, the firefighters were on the scene super fast. We just have to hold on for a little while.” He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. “Just… just a little longer. Can you-... can you  move at all?”

She swallowed, looking at him, the whites of her eyes seeming too bright in the darkness. She shook her head, looking back over her shoulder. The sob she wasn’t allowing out any longer was still in the thick of her voice. “I-I’m stuck under something, Miguel. I’m… oh god, I’m stuck-... my l-legs-... something’s on my legs-”

“Okay, uh, maybe I can pull you out-” He managed to get onto his knees, despite the pain racing through his nerves. He gritted his teeth and held her shoulders, trying to pull backwards.

She shrieked, holding tightly to him, clawing at him. He pulled and pulled but then her screaming fell apart, broke back into sobs, shaking her head. She had moved... maybe an inch. “Stop! Stop, I can’t do this, stop stop stop stop-”

“It’s okay,” He whispered quickly, letting go and settling back down in front of her. “It’s okay. I’m done, I’m done. It’s okay.”

She nodded, weeping softly.

He looked at the concrete and rebar and everything else on top of her, then back to her, seeming so... so small. “It’s okay, Pen. The firefighters will have something to move that off you, you’re going to be fine. It’s going to be fine. We’re okay. We’re not dead, we’re not dead.”

Yet, his brain filled in, but he recoiled from that thought. He had read books on people who survived weird things like this, and they all said that believing you would live was more important than anything else.

Don’t lose hope. Don’t give up.

He looked around the little open space they were in, bordered on every side by ruin and rubble. His own ankle and leg throbbed, but it was… it wasn’t important, compared to so much of what he could feel right now. 

He couldn’t stop thinking they would get out, or maybe they wouldn’t.

“Right, it’ll be f-fine.” She nodded, but she didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe himself. “They’ll save us.”

“They will.” He put a hand to the side of her face, and she tipped her cheek into it, eyes closing. He kept his forehead against hers, breathing slowly in and out, until his racing heart began, finally, to calm. The adrenaline just couldn’t keep rising any longer. “Penny, they will.”

The pounding headache started sometime around when the adrenaline crashed. But he kept whispering to her, as much as he could, until he ran out of words, and then they simply laid there, breathing together in the dark. 

When they heard the sirens, they both began to shout, hoping someone would call back. 

Someone did. 

They waited, listening to the rescuers working to move enough of the wreckage to find them. Miguel found a loose piece of metal he refused to think too much about - somebody’s bedframe, another piece of a person’s destroyed life - and banged it against a nearby pipe to make noise until his arms wore out. 

He broke the pipe enough to get some water from it, so he and Penny could have a little to drink. He moved to her with water cupped in his hands for her to sip. 

The firefighters kept saying, just hold on a little longer, we’re coming for you, we’re working your way, just hold on.

Just hold on a little longer.

By the time the rescuers were close enough, though, the fires had spread, and their pocket of air was starting to heat up.

-

Beringer’s eyes open in the darkness. He stares upward, seeing no stars, and feels his breath coming in harsh rasping gasps, shallowing fighting for air against the smoke filtering down into his lungs. 

“Penny,” He whispers, and doesn’t know whose name that is. Only that she’s dying, and he’s watching her fade, hour by hour, as the smoke gets thicker.

His hands move up to his own throat-

And find his collar, still there, the tag clinking softly, worn metal against his desperately seeking fingers. He rubs at his number, at his name, again and again. Runs his fingers over the leather that curves around his throat, eyes closing as tears prick hot and demanding against the insides of his eyelids.

They force their way out, run down the sides of his face, dampen his ears and then soak into the pillowcase beneath.

His heart pounds, but he doesn’t remember why.

Falling, and fire.

And her voice.

Penny, I’m so sorry-

Kid, you gotta get outta there right the hell now or it’s going to fall on you-

I’m so sorry, g-goodbye, I’m so sorry-

“I’m so sorry,” He whispers, without remembering quite who he owes the apology to. 

There’s a warm hand on his shoulder through the cotton of his shirt and he startles, jerking to the side with a whimper, looking up wide-eyed to find Marc Sonders leaning over him, wearing just a white tank top and boxer shorts. In the other queen-sized bed, Marc’s little girl shifts, murmuring to herself, her loveys clutched to her chest, their soft little heads just under her chin. He has seen Mallie asleep for naptime or overnights a hundred times. 

People who think children sleep silent or still are people who have never had them. Not that Beringer has, but…

But every child was his, for as long as he could care for them, until WRU ripped them out of his arms when they got too old to stay. 

Never again.

“You okay?” Marc asks, in a whisper. There’s real concern in his face, his voice, his eyes. He’s so easy to lie to, so easy to fool. 

Beringer wants to whisper, I was going to hit you over the head, and you worry about me? Which one of us has had our brain emptied out, exactly? But Marc doesn’t know that part, about how Beringer was going to hurt him. So all he does is swallow, lick at his lips, and slowly nods. “I’m-... I’m okay. Just-”

“Nightmares. Yeah, you guys get those a lot.” Marc glances back at Mallie, then carefully seats himself at the edge of Beringer’s bed. “You usually show up running from the kind of stuff that causes nightmares, they tell us. Although I guess if you don’t have ‘em before you show up, we make sure you get ‘em, huh?”

Beringer pushes himself up to seated, back against his damp pillows, looking closely at Marc. His short hair is all mussed up from sleeping, and it’s… kind of adorable-looking. “Do yours get nightmares from you?” He asks, leaning forward to wrap his arms around his legs.

Marc looks down. His half-smile is only a little sad, in the dim blue light that makes its way through from outside the window, around the edges of the heavy curtains pulled tight. “Not from me,” He says, finally. “But some of them come with nightmares, when they start. Things that they tried to get rid of keep coming back up. The Drip works, it really does, but if there’s really severe trauma, sometimes… sometimes-”

“Sometimes,” Beringer whispers, thinking of another terrible late-night movie, of sitting up glued to the screen watching shuffling zombies while the kids and the other daycare pets slept. “Sometimes, the dead don’t die.”

“Uh… right. Yeah. Or, abusive parents, whatever. I get them in with the counselors, I get them meds to help them sleep, whatever work signs off on. But none of their nightmares come from me, at least. That’s… that’s something, right?”

“It’s something.” Beringer can’t quite keep the dry humor from his voice, and both of them huff soft laughter, trying not to wake Mallie up. “How close are we to Hope, Marc?”

“I don’t know. I just know it’s in Montana, near the border with Canada, kind of close to Idaho. Probably… two more days in hotels before we get there. Is that okay? Mallie can’t really handle those all-day car rides super well-”

“That’s fine. That’s just fine. We should probably go to a store and get new clothes, though.” Beringer hesitates, then reaches out, and closes his hand over Marc’s, feels his fingers shift underneath his grip before Marc turns to look at him. “Marc… do you want to kiss me right now?”

Marc’s breath catches. He looks away, then back, but sidelong, as if afraid it will all dissolve. His cheeks have gone all red, just like on TV. Beringer feels his scars shift and itch, the ropey burns that had worked up his back as he had fought like hell to get through to the firefighters, to the rescuers holding out a hand, begging him to push himself through the space, to survive-

Penny was still alive when he left her-

He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath.

Forgets her.

Marc is still watching him when his eyes open again. He smiles, but it’s slightly sad, and soft. “Not tonight,” Marc says, gently. “But if you want… do you want to watch TV for a while? Just until you feel good to go back to sleep again?”

Beringer had expected heavy hands, hard kisses. Had expected to have his own boxers pulled down over his hip, to have to make frantic explanations he can’t quite recall when Marc sees the burn scars that cover his legs, his shoulders, his back, parts of his stomach and chest. When that doesn’t happen, it takes him seconds to process, and then he smiles - brighter than he means to, more sincere than he intended - and nods. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, Marc.”

“Cool. Good. All right. Just stay there.”

Marc stands, wanders over to find the remote where it still rests on the TV stand, and comes back. He climbs into Beringer’s bed, but all he does is sit with his back to the headboard and his body on top of the covers. He turns the TV on and picks some random James Bond movie playing at 3 am, settling back to just… sit there, with Beringer, in the dark.

Beringer turns to look at him, the lines of his profile written sharply in the cold light of the television. When his hand moves, hesitantly, Marc feels his questing touch and their hands press together, palm to palm.

That’s it.

Marc doesn’t push for a kiss, or say Beringer owes him anything for this escape. Beringer looks back at the TV, but he doesn’t see - or hear - a thing.

Shit.

He’s still falling, isn’t he?

Just a different way of hanging in the air before he hits the ground and breaks.

-

@burtlederp @finder-of-rings @astrobly @boxboysandotherwhump @vickytokio @orchidscript @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up ​

[ashintheairlikesnow]

I would LOVE to read some beringer and marc and I would love some spice, but feel like any actual spice at this point of their relationship might feel just a little too abusive, still. Too much power imbalance before they get to Hope, y'know? Or even after that, but before Beringer gets back to his more independent non-pet self.

They're trudging into Idaho when Marc calls it a night, easing off I-15 (Marc has lived in California so long, he keeps having to remind himself it isn’t ‘the 15′, not here) into the crunchy gravel parking lot of one of those two-story, twenty-room highway motels with doors that face out. The sign says clean bathrooms and no bugs and at this point, that's good enough for him. 

Hell, maybe there’ll even be an ice machine.

He’s not going to put any money on that, but... anything is possible. 

Mallie is awake, having alternately napped and whined or cried her way through the day, and he smiles into the rearview mirror at her reflection. At night, quietly singing to herself or making her loveys speak to each other in a soft affectionate half-whisper, all the frustrations of the day are forgotten. His love for her is immense, overwhelming. Just like the day Lucy was discharged after giving birth, driving their newborn baby home going about 20 miles an hour and terrified. Aware that he’d give anything for her, and there was almost no way he wouldn’t mess up somehow.

She sees him looking - her eyes catch his in the rearview - and she giggles, looking back outside. “Are we stopping?”

The streetlights move over her, yellowed, one bluish purple. He pulls into a parking spot and exhales, sitting back with one hand still on the gearshift. Then he looks to the right.

Beringer's asleep, slumped with his head to the side. The blue-purple light is right above them, and God, Ber's gorgeous like this. The way his hair glimmers, almost, like someone’s threaded gold through it. The way he smiles a little in his sleep, something Marc never knew before they’d spent a night in a motel with Mallie.

Speaking of...

"Are we going to sleep, Daddy?" Mallie pipes up, breaking into his thoughts.

"Yeah, baby. Yeah, we'll stay here, and no hurry in the morning, huh? Lots more breaks so you don't have so many wiggles."

Mallie sighs, dramatically, the weight of the world on her little shoulders. "I did have wiggles today, Daddy, I had so many wiggles."

"You sure did. Tomorrow we'll swing by a park or something. Idaho's beautiful, you and Ber should get to enjoy it."

Mallie giggles. "Rarrr," She half-whispers, turning her hands into bear claws and swiping at the air.

"That's right, honey, Ber the bear." Marc grins and reaches over to rub lightly at Beringer's leg. "Hey, wake up, we're here."

Beringer shifts, breathing out, eyelids fluttering as he pushes himself up. He yawns, and his eyelashes are so long they're visible in the damn dark. That doesn't seem fair. "We are? In Hope?"

"No, not that far. Just a good spot to stop for tonight. Motel.”

“Oh, yeah. Okay.” Beringer groans and rubs at the back of his neck, and Marc pretends he isn’t watching him. He looks away before Ber can catch him at it and opens the door. “I’ll be right back, I’m gonna check us in. You watch Mal for me, okay?” He leaves the car running, for the air conditioning, and walks towards the small office off to one side. Before he even opens the door, a woman who looks like she may be congealing to her chair out of sheer boredom is looking up.

It occurs to Marc, suddenly, that Beringer could just... drive away. Kidnap Mallie, or even shove her out of the car. Go screaming out of the lot, head hellbent for leather towards the border, towards Hope.

He just left his four year old daughter alone with a runaway pet who has no real reason, no good real reason, to care about him at all. He’s a handler. His entire job has been to hurt people just like Ber.

It would make sense if Ber wanted to hurt back, right?

He swallows, ignoring the way his heart skips with nerves, and decides - consciously - that he’s going to trust Beringer. He’s trusted him and the other daycare pets with Mallie for every single day of her life, more or less, since Lucy left. He’s cried on Beringer’s shoulder when he was really taking the divorce rough, when Lucy didn’t want to have much to do with Mallie any longer. And Beringer trusted him to get out of the burning WRU Facility alive, to take him to Hope.

“Sir?” The woman clears her throat and he jolts back into awareness. “Do you need a room?”

“Uh, yeah. You got one with two beds?”

“Sure thing, all our rooms are double-queens except for the king-size on the end. Let me get you taken care of, just fill this out for me.” She slides a paper across what stands in for a desk - it looks wobbly and it’s balanced on a book at one end. 

Marc swallows. “What’s this?”

“Oh, just for your car. Just fill out make, model, color, and your plate right there.” She points helpfully with a spare pen at each space, marks them with little X’s. “Then sign down here, and date. It’s just for safety.”

If they know he ran with Beringer, they might be looking for his car. Searching license numbers, trying to find him. Marc hesitates so long the woman’s eyebrows start to furrow, then he smiles and nods and fills it out, carefully.

He’s a little worried, trusting so much to chance. But they’re only a day from Hope, and the odds that WRU will come sniffing around this one single little motel in the middle of nowhere seem close to nil.

He gets his key - a real key, an honest-to-God metal key hooked onto a little plastic flap with the number 18 written on it in shimmery gold paint - and pays her, straight cash, no card record needed. It’s so cheap that Marc doubts the bathrooms are going to be as clean as the sign led him to believe.

Oh, well. Maybe they’ll have HBO.

It’s quick work to get inside - by the time he gets back to the car, Beringer’s already gotten their overnight bag out, heavy black leather slung over his shoulder, and stands holding Mallie’s hand. There’s a man above them, leaning over the railing for the walkway outside the second-floor rooms, smoking. The scent of cigarette smoke makes Marc’s arms prickle with a phantom memory of the heat of the daycare fire, of grabbing Ber to get him back out when the flames took hold.

Marc caught a news broadcast at a diner this morning, sipping his coffee while Ber entertained Mallie by making up stories about potatoes going on adventures. They think pet lib staged the fire to cover a break-in, bunch of records missing. Marc hopes the chaos is enough that no one gives a flying fuck about a single missing daycare pet and a handler who never made a name for himself for anything but doubting his own job.

Up the stairs they go, Marc carrying Mallie and Beringer the overnight bag. He unlocks the door and - well - they seemed to take the clean sheets bit seriously, he guesses. The beds are plain as plain gets - white sheets, white comforter, white pillowcases. There’s a small table between the beds, with a lamp and a phone to call down to the front desk. The lamp is lit, giving off a soft and homey glow. There’s another a small table and two chairs, one of those weird little individual-size coffee things that looks like a Keurig’s weird evil twin, a long dresser with a TV precariously perched atop it... 

“Oh!” Mallie wriggles down and Marc gives a little ‘oof’ as she accidentally knees him in the balls as she goes, closing his eyes against the flash of pain. “Daddy! Look!”

“Just a sec, honey,” He says, slightly strained. When he opens his eyes, he looks to see Beringer smiling at him. Their eyes meet, and Marc’s face heats. He wonders how visible all his blushing is - maybe it’s all in his head. “Kids,” He says, but Beringer just laughs.

“I know, it happens all the time. I run a daycare, remember? Or... I ran one.” He hums and while Mallie explores - opening every drawer one by one, exclaiming over the single Bible she finds in one - Beringer sits down on one of the beds. Marc sits beside him, watching his daughter. 

“If Hope isn’t... friendly to me,” He says in a low voice, “You’ll try and talk them into letting us go, me and Mal?”

“Sure,” Beringer says, easy as can be. But his smile fades, and he turns, laying his hand over Marc’s. It burns where they touch, the best kind of burn. Like it used to feel with Lucy, a long time ago. “Hey, they won’t. You were a handler, you know some stuff they can use.”

“Yeah, but-... this isn’t TV, you know? I can’t just... trade info for safety. They’d be right to just... whatever.” He doesn’t want to say it. Kill us both. He never lets that thought fully come together. 

The idea that anyone could see Mallie and want to hurt her... it’s terrifying, and infuriating. She’s so little, and she’s never done anyone harm. How can you see a little girl holding her favorite stuffies and ever want to cause her pain?

Then again...

“How could I do it?” He asks, soft.

Beringer, misunderstanding, swallows hard and leans over to get a better look at his face. “Are you... sorry you helped me?”

“Oh... oh God, no, no, that’s not what I-... I just wondered... how did I hurt them for so long? Even though I tried not to, it doesn’t matter. You can be the nicest handler there is, you’re still... you’re still being a monster to scared people who just want to go home, and you’ve taken away knowing where home is. They don’t even know what they want to try and escape to, and it’s my job to tell them they don’t want to run until they believe it. And that’s... shit. Ber, I’ve-... I’ve been pure evil for so long, and I hate it, and-”

Beringer’s lips are on his, warm and soft, and his words die in his throat as he opens his mouth a little. Beringer’s kiss is clumsy but increasingly confident, and he pushes forwards. Marc falls back.

Somehow he’s on his back on his bed and they’re still kissing. Beringer lays beside him, one hand to the side of his face, and there’s a pressure against Marc’s hip that has him fighting not to groan.

Mallie, in the bathroom, runs water in the sink and giggles at something. Marc can’t hear her when she speaks. All he can hear is his blood rushing in his ears, feel the warm weight of Beringer beside him, the movement of his tongue. But-

He puts his hands on Beringer’s chest and pushes, lightly, increasing the pressure until Beringer pulls back, looking confused. “Marc? Do-... do you not want to?”

“I do,” Marc says, a little hoarse. He throbs between his legs, and ignores the way he feels like a fucking teenager again. “I really do, Ber, I swear, but-... listen. I don’t want you to do anything... not yet. Just. You’ve never-... you’ve never even-”

Beringer snorts, and for a second something in his face shifts. It’s a different expression than Marc has seen before - colder, almost... analytical. And then it’s gone, again. He’s not even sure he really saw it. “Marc. I’m a daycare pet but I’m not a saint.”

“You-... what do you mean?”

The toilet flushes in the bathroom.

“Handlers, first,” Beringer says, shrugging. Like it’s no big deal. Like it doesn’t matter at all. Marc feels suddenly frozen from the inside out. He knows about what some of the handlers get up to, sure, everyone does, but... but he’s never talked to someone about it before. Not like this. “And later, you know... we’re in there in our little room a lot, and it gets... really boring on the weekends.” He laughs, putting his hand on Marc’s again. “Why do you think I liked you coming to see me so much?”

Marc gently pulls his hand back. “Holy... Marc, we can’t. I’m... not yet, we can’t. I was... I was one of them. I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”

“You’re not hurting me-”

“But I might and not even know it. You might not even know it. I’m just-... let’s just... breathe, for now. When we get to Hope, we can talk about it again, okay?”

Beringer swallows. He looks... worried. Young. “Marc... you’ll still take me, though-”

“Yeah, of course. And we’ll talk about it then, Ber, promise.” He takes Beringer’s hand again, and pulls it to his mouth, kissing his knuckles one by one. Watching Beringer’s nervousness shift back to a smile. “I like you. But I think you need to know you’re safe before you decide how you feel about me.”

Beringer takes a deep breath, as if to answer, but then the bathroom door opens and Mallie comes out without clothes, wrapped entirely in a towel, and declares cheerfully, “Bathtime!”

Marc laughs, and Beringer does, too. He gets up to go help his daughter get a nighttime bath before they start getting her ready for bed. He doesn’t see how Beringer’s expression changes again while he’s gone.

By the time they come back out, Ber has the TV on, relaxed back against a pillow he claims is hard as a rock. And hey...

They at least have HBO.

-

@astrobly @burtlederp @finder-of-rings @whumptywhumpdump @boxboysandotherwhump @wildfaewhump @whump-tr0pes @hackles-up @orchidscript

[tired-of-being-nice]

hello ^-^ having established a bit of a presence i thought i'd take a leap and post an actual snippet of writing!!! fingers crossed this is good :)

yes i do have a complex world built out in my head around this and pronouns for all the characters. no the characters do not have names. we exist

hero: he/they

villain: cey/cir

minion (who is really more like a lower ranking villain in the hierarchy* but i needed a shorter name): they/them *i TOLD you i had a complex world built out around this

It's not a bad decision, to start with. Hero sees two people, curled around each other, lying in an alleyway late at night, and he kneels down to try and shake them awake lightly and ask if they want a blanket or something. Because he's a hero, and that's what heroes do--help people.

As soon as his fingers brush an arm, the two immediately leap awake, springing apart from each other and into alertness.

"It's not--we weren't--" one sputters. The other just snarls, bright blue eyes narrowing and oh fuck, that's Villain, that's Villain and Minion, he is dead, he is dead, he is so totally...

...not dead, somehow. In fact, he's very much alive, alert, and standing upright, which is possibly more than he can say for the two in front of him.

As Hero watches in a mixture of shock and pity and maybe the tiniest bit of glee, Minion and Villain struggle to stand, then struggle not to look like they're leaning on each other, and finally apparently give in and sort of collapse in on each other and lean against the wall.

So. Not exactly the most threatening.

Hero doesn't walk any closer, though. Instead, they spend about 5 minutes in deeply awkward silence before saying "....So...do you...want a blanket, or something?"

"What?" Villain says sharply, fixing a glare on Hero that is then immediately undercut by a yawn.

"A blanket. I mean, if you're going to be taking naps in alleyways..."

"I was not," Villain says icily, "taking a nap."

"For the record, neither was I," Minion chimes in.

"Passing out, then. Whatever," Hero says. Up close like this, and without the vision-blurring adrenaline that usually accompanies any interaction with either of them, they both look....more human. Like, if you ignore the green circuitry patterns under their skin, Minion looks...well. Exhausted, mostly, like they haven't slept in weeks. And Villain--sure, the bright blue blood is weird, but its blood. Cey're bleeding, from a scratch along cir cheek, and a little from cir lip too.

A memory flashes into Hero's head--a fight earlier today, a quippy one-liner and a solid punch in the face. Villain deserved it, cey did, but--

"Did...did I..." Hero trails off without finishing the question. There’s probably a lot of heroes Villain fights with, it probably wasn’t their punch that…..

Before Villain can answer, Minion does, stepping in front of cir a little (still clinging on to cir arm tightly). “Yes. You did.”

[tired-of-being-nice]

i know i promised shelie but....i was hit by the writing bug for levi instead. i hope y’all like it!

cws: mild violence and mentions of hunger/starvation. also, kinda religion? its about demons

Levi was a demon of Wrath. He’d made that choice a long time ago, and most days, he didn’t entirely regret it. Wrath was easy to find in the world, so he rarely wanted for food. And draining humans of their wrath often was really more good then evil, although Levi didn’t consider themself good by any means.

But draining Wrath was a dangerous thing to do.

This particular evening, Levi and Flora were dozing on a bench. Well, Flora was dozing, head resting on her friend’s shoulder and knees tucked up to her chest. Levi was trying very hard to not give in and hug her.

A shout from the sidewalk distracted him, and he glanced up to see a man striding down the sidewalk, yelling into his phone with no respect for the time of night. Other passersby glared at him.

Levi grinned and gently shoved Flora aside. “Stay here, Flors. I just spotted dinner.”

Flora mumbled something unintelligible and closed her eyes again. She was a Sloth demon, so being sleepy wasn’t uncommon for her, plus it had been a while since she’d gotten a chance to eat.

Levi stood up and made his way over towards the yelling guy. Now came the tricky part. If he could just brush against him a little bit, he’d be able to pick up a little wrath, but...

It turned out he didn’t need to worry about that. The guy whirled on him and glared. “Why are you following me? Planning to steal something, huh, creep?”

Levi stammered, their mind racing as they tried to come up with a plausible explanation, but Flora was the charmer, not them, and—

The man’s fist collided with Levi’s face, and Levi reeled backwards in simultaneous pain and delight. Half of him wanted to cry from relief—it had been far too long since he had gotten to siphon wrath from anyone, and this was like a metaphorical anger hamburger with hatred fries. The other half wanted to cry from pain because fuck he knew it didn’t take demons as long to heal as it did humans but it still took a while and it really hurt.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Levi stammered.

The guy shoved him and Levi staggered again, casting a nervous glance at Flora back on the bench. If this guy tried to hurt her—

But no, apparently his anger was spent (you’re welcome, everyone else) and he stormed off again.

Levi let out a shaky sigh and collapsed on the bench. The initial relief of being able to feed had worn off, and all that was left was the throbbing pain in his face. Definitely going to leave a mark tomorrow, that one.

“Levi?” Flora said in her small voice, sitting up partway. “You’re hurt...”

Levi sighed and closed his eyes, leaning his head back and trying to take deep breaths. Flora squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.

It was going to be a long night.

[whumptywhumpdump]

Oh wow... Oh shit!

I'm so glad I was finally able to read this, it was so good, omg!

I don't even know what to comment on, but Beringer working with pet lib to escape? Him leading the other pets when everyone is too scared to function? Making sure all the kids are safe. Worrying about the pets in other levels. Setting some fires himself!!! Rescuing Mallie's loveys! They're going to Hope!!! Marc is leaving!

Argh, this is all so great!!!!

WIJ Day 6: Hold On

CW: Pet whump, fire, burns, panic, referenced past burns, some internalized dehumanization, BBU

Marc Sonders, Maliyah Sonders, and Beringer made their original appearance in Telling Time. This is for the @whumpmasinjuly prompt for day 6: Hold On

-

554897 takes the third shift, shooing the other daycare pets off to their beds in the tiny, cramped dorm behind the child development center. Only one adult really needs to be awake during these midnight hours, anyway - someone to handle night feedings, hand out cuddles if there are nightmares, change diapers or offer glasses of water and a sense of safety to tiny little people whose lives are entirely held in someone else’s hands. 

He knows how uncertain that can be - to know anything could happen, and you have to hope someone cares enough to help. 

There is always someone awake in the daycare at Facility 001. And 554897, who everyone calls Beringer, volunteered to be awake tonight. 

He’s the one who knows how important tonight is, after all. The others couldn’t have been trusted with the truth. Beringer is the only one who can keep his mouth shut when a handler starts asking inconvenient questions. 

It’s never the right handler asking, anyway. Easy to lie to all the wrong ones.

He learned that lesson a long time ago.

Beringer pads on silent bare brown feet over brightly colored rugs in the shape of rainbows, hearts, happy faces, and flowers towards the big windows that face out towards the parking lot. There’s a temporary tattoo of a green triceratops still wearing slowly away on the inside of one wrist peeking out from beneath his long-sleeved plain beige pajama top. The temp tattoo was a gift from one of the daycare kids. It’s flaking off like pixels dissolving on a screen, leaving the image of his skin and blood beneath.

Dissolving like the image of the smiling compliant perfect pet he’s always had to use to stay alive in a pit of vipers, laced with a couple harmless garden snakes. Took him a long time to be able to see the difference. 

To figure out which garden snake will carry him away from here without swallowing him whole. 

He keeps one hand closed around the tag that dangles from his collar, so it won’t jingle. Around his wrist is a colorful bracelet made with giant beads by Handler Sonders’ daughter Maliyah. Marc Sonders had come by last weekend shyly offering the gift. Beringer had played innocent surprise with the talent of a natural-born actor. It had been his idea for Mallie to make one as a way to bond with him, he’d sent the little ziploc-bag of beads and plastic ‘string’ home with her. He’d expected it, and he’d wanted Marc to be the one to bring it. Made a production out of trading, insisting Marc wear it for me, when you come to see me. 

He hasn’t taken his off, either.

Beringer tries not to think too much about why.

He steps carefully around the occasional small air mattresses, each one with a child laying atop it, a blanket and pillow from home and a stuffie for comfort, too. They run the gamut of bunnies and puppies and kitties and bears, clutched in itty bitty arms. Along the walls are infants in cribs. They sleep with grunts and huffs and groans, shifting and moving their little bodies. He smiles at the sound. He might hate a lot of things here, but he really does love the kids. 

He fights how his throat wants to close. 

He’s going to miss them.

Time for regrets when you have what you want, he reminds himself. For now, only look forward to the future.

It’s sort of an exciting feeling just to have one. 

His eyes scan over the sleeping children with fondness. Some of them he has known since they were four months old, tiny infants he could hold in his arms turned into wiggly toddlers who never sit still. Some, like Mallie Sonders, will go on to real school soon and leave him behind. 

Beringer is always the one left behind, the one who cannot leave. Seeing them as big brothers to new classroom charges, big sisters, big siblings who smile and wave or give hugs and keep on growing, where Beringer can’t see. 

Can’t shepherd them, can’t help shape the grown-ups they’ll be.

The nanny pets are the lucky ones, he thinks, the Platonics who get to watch their children growing all the way through. Even some of the Romantics get to bear their own, hold infants in their arms that don’t get taken away at the end of the day. Daycare pets are damned to lose their babies after just a few short years, again and again, until they grow numb to the grieving.

But Beringer isn’t going to have to lose his any longer. He won’t have to watch them walk away, won’t have to give high-fives with tears in his eyes to eight-year-olds who barely remember his face. 

Not anymore. 

He has spent so many years in just these few rooms, staring through the crayon-scribbled drawings and painted papers at the parking lot outside, wondering at the suggestion of trees just a little further than he can see. 

Maintenance probably assumes he’s the lucky one, since he gets to see anything at all. 

The floor-to-ceiling windows all along one side, marked with the construction-paper flowers and plastic ‘stained glass’ projects they’ve made, are cold against his hand as he looks out, grazing fingertips along the glass. Beyond the parking lot, the fence winds around the perimeter, seven feet of concrete topped with razor wire - not to keep anyone out, but to keep potential runaways in. 

The gate the employees badge through before they can park - a little station where a man usually sits inside reading magazines and thrift-store novels while casually ignoring the gate going up and down and up and down again - is simply standing wide open.

The man who usually sits there is gone.

554897 smiles, a small and private expression. 

That’s step one.  

There’s a deep breath behind him, and he turns, scanning the sleeping children until he sees little Jill Frugelmann, stretching her arms over her head. She yawns, eyes fluttering open, seeing Beringer and smiling hazily at him before she slides right back into slumber.

He smiles back. 

Maliyah Sonders pushes a blanket off herself and heads for the little bathroom off in the corner, never even looking at anyone. She’s the earliest fully potty-trained kiddo he’s dealt with so far.

The back of his neck prickles above and below his collar as he says nothing, waiting and waiting. It’s hell, staying in this holding pattern. He’s waited so many years for something to change - and it’s been weeks since the notes started appearing in Laira Grant’s lunchboxes, notes he answers in his own slightly childish scrawl and sends back.

If it had been a trap, he’d have been hauled away, downstairs to be refurbed or just handed over the maintenance, chained to a mop bucket for the rest of his life. If it had been a trap…

 But it hadn’t been. He’s sure of it, now. 

He’s sure because he has to be, because if he’s wrong the consequences are… not unimaginable, exactly. He can imagine them very well. But he doesn’t want to linger too long, or he’ll lose his nerve.

A flash of light catches his attention and he looks back outside. It’s coming from the parking lot, slightly off to the left. If he squints, he can almost see them out there, a group of four or five. There’s another ten scattered around, getting into place. He sees shadows moving, silhouettes that don’t resolve into details.

The light keeps going. One deliberately slow flash, then a quick one. A pause. Three slow flashes. A quick blink, two more slow. 

N. O. W.

It’s the sign he’s been waiting for.

He gives one last mournful look at the latest round of art projects - macaroni glued to paper, some paintings and drawings, tissue-paper flowers. He’d been so proud of how well the kids had done with all of them. At least some of the parents have taken photos, anyway…

Right on time, the scent of smoke starts to settle slowly downwards, piped through the vents. The first round isn’t real smoke, but it’s meant to look and smell like it, and Beringer moves fast towards the bedroom the daycare workers use in the back.

He sticks his head in. “I smell smoke!” His voice is a little too flat to sound sincerely surprised, but they’re all asleep, the other five, some until he literally shakes them to get them to start swimming back to consciousness unwillingly. “I smell-… there’s a fire, come on, we have to get the kids!”

223654 groans and swats at him, pulling a blanket over her head. Beringer has to yank it off, irritated, even as the others wake with shouts of alarm as the scent of smoke gets stronger, the haze a little more complete. It’s not real, yet - Beringer knows how real smoke feels when it stings your eyes, although he isn’t sure why he knows that - but it will be, and he’s on a time limit before people could get hurt.

“Hold your effing horses,” ‘654 mutters, then goes still. She pulls the blanket back and blinks, looking upwards. “D’you smell smoke, ‘897?”

“Yes. That is why I just woke you up at 2 a.m., you piece of dull cheese, come on! We have to get the kids!”

“Right, right-… darn it… oh, heck-” ‘654 finally manages to essentially just roll off the bed onto the floor, but she’s on her feet a second later. Around him, the others murmur in worried voices. This is new, unexpected. There’s no direction from a handler, no one but them to take care of their charges in what they believe is an emergency.

Beringer swallows, squares his shoulders, and steps up.

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