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blurredcolour · 11 months ago

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II. "Just Had To Trust You."

"Trust" Series Masterlist

John "Bucky" Egan x WAC!Female Reader

The second half of August brings with it the horrors of the Regensburg/Schweinfurt mission, Bucky's absence in Africa, and two smaller missions in France. With this as the backdrop to your blossoming relationship, the pair of you find creative ways to connect with one another.

Warnings: Language, Alcohol Consumption, Death, Grief, Minor Bucky Injury, Blood, Scars, Minor Reader Injury, Hospital Setting, Inevitable Historical and Military Inaccuracies, Mature/Explicit Themes [thigh riding, inexperienced reader, allusion to male masturbation] - 18+ ONLY.

Author’s Note: Thank you all so much for the warm reception you gave part one. That combined with my evil brain has given us a full series! Just a reminder that reader has been given a brother for sake of plot. This is a work of fiction based off the portrayal by the actors in the Apple TV+ series. I hold nothing but respect for the real life individuals referenced within.

Word Count: 6713

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The day of August 17th dawned so thick with fog, it was difficult to tell it had even dawned at all. The walk from your quarters to the mess and then onto the control tower was fraught with anxiety – the fear that a vehicle might suddenly appear behind you through the milky atmosphere driving you to constantly glance back over your shoulder. Eventually, you decided to walk just alongside the road through the damp grass, listening to it squeak against the leather of your shoes, the only sound around you once you parted ways with your friends.

Cutting across the field in front of the equipment hangar, you gasped as Bucky stepped out of the mists in front of you like some kind of apparition from a ghost story. You gulped harshly at the way your stomach dropped in response to that mental imagery.

“Morning, doll. Seems like someone left the soup on the stove a little too long.”

You managed a chuckle, taking in his flight suit, his life jacket – or Mae West as the boys called them. He was flying today then. “I’m sure it’ll clear up soon, Major Egan.”

His lips twitched fondly, and he stepped closer to murmur in your ear, the fine hairs of his moustache tickling the delicate skin there. “See you in a few days, doll.”

“Take care, Bucky.” You whispered emphatically in return, and he stepped back to reach into his flight bag, producing the book you had lent him.

“I’ll have that answer for you promptly on my return, Lieutenant.”

You grinned softly. “I expect you will, Major.”

You turned to watch him go as he took long, easy strides to join his crew waiting on the truck to be driven out to their plane, disappearing in a swirl of persistent, pervasive fog. “I’ll see you soon.” You murmured after him.

Seven days.

Seven agonizing days of little news and empty skies passed as you impatiently awaited his return. The decision to send the group destined for Regensburg nearly five hours ahead of those bound for Schweinfurt had been catastrophic. It took almost seventy-two hours for the 12th to reach those who had made it to Telergma, and when numbers and names finally made their way back to Thorpe Abbotts, the cost of it all sunk in like a stone.

Rather than wasting the return trip to East Anglia, it was decided the survivors would undertake a retaliatory strike against some Luftwaffe bases in Bordeaux, one more hurdle to clear before they made it back to safety. It was mid-afternoon on August 24th by the time the droning of plane engines filled the air once again. Taking a steadying breath, you grit your teeth and forced yourself to focus on the keys of your typewriter as the brass all hustled outside to count the number of returnees.

‘Please let Bucky be among them. Please let him be unharmed.’ You had closed your eyes briefly to send up your silent prayer before launching back into your work.

It was nearly an hour later when, report finished, you tucked the neatly typed sheets of paper into their folder to deliver to Colonel Harding and stood only to meet the eyes of one Major John Egan through the window overlooking the Operations Room. He looked weary, sunburnt, with cuts and abrasions adorning his face and neck, unsteady on his feet, but nevertheless flashed you a brilliant, devil-may-care smile.

‘Thank you…thank you for bringing him back to me.’

You exhaled deeply for the first time in over a week, the folder nearly slipping from your fingers, contents nearly scattering across the floor. Mercifully, you managed to avoid that outcome, albeit with a fair bit of fumbling, tucking it securely against your side to prevent further mishaps. The next time you looked to Bucky he was smirking at you, eyes twinkling knowingly, before he gestured with his head toward where the washrooms were. Glancing at your colleagues, heads bent diligently over their work, you looked back to him and raised a finger to beg for one moment.

He nodded in silent understanding, sauntering toward the hallway casually. You took a moment before letting your desk mate know you were delivering a file and then taking a bathroom break. She nodded vaguely as you headed across the room to place the folder in the outbox before making your way to the washrooms. Furrowing your brows in confusion as you found the corridor empty, you barely managed to smother your startled cry as Bucky poked his head out of the janitor’s closet and pulled you into the cramped space with him.

“Bucky!” You hissed as he pressed you back against the door, his lips pressing tightly against yours, silencing any further admonishment you might have been able to summon.

Clinging the to straps of his harness, you rocked up onto the balls of your feet, pressing flush against him, a wordless expression of the gratitude you felt for his safe return. He had barely parted his lips when you mirrored the movement, welcoming his tongue with your own. A soft grunt of pleasure left his nose, his fingers digging into your hips tightly. The telltale tinge of copper seeped into the kiss, making you pull back sharply, groping for the pull string on the lightbulb dangling from the ceiling behind him.

You frowned deeply to see his lower lip was oozing blood. “You should go to the hospital, Bucky, you’re still bleeding…”

“M’fine.” He rumbled tiredly, cupping the back of your head gently as his thumb traced your left eyebrow.

You sighed softly, leaning into his touch as your eyes slid closed.

“My definitive answer is Blood Pressure.” He spoke in a hushed tone and your eyes fluttered open in confusion.

“What?”

His other hand left your hip to dig into the pocket of his flight jacket, producing the borrowed book, holding it out to you with a satisfied grin.

“You’ve already read the whole thing again?!” You gasped, eyes wide.

“Couldn’t very well keep you waiting now, could I?” He smirked and stole another kiss.

“I’m going back to my desk and you’re going to the hospital, please?” You looked to him pleadingly.

He sighed heavily. “That look is utterly unfair, doll…particularly in my condition.”

Your lips twitched slightly as you fought the urge to smile, doing your utmost to hold the plaintive expression until he huffed and pressed one last, copper-laced, sloppy kiss on your lips.

“Fine.” He conceded and you pressed your lips to his forehead tenderly.

“Thank you, Bucky.”

Slipping from his arms reluctantly, you peered out into the hallway before making a dash into the washroom, cleaning your face of his blood and tidying your hair and uniform before rushing back to your desk, hoping he would hold up his end of the bargain.

Judging from how well he healed over the next few days, you were fairly convinced he had done as you asked. His lips had healed to their normal supple perfection, though it seemed he would be left with a few scars across his nose, cheek, and forehead. Unfortunately, you had not been able to sneak a moment to confirm if he had indeed gone to visit the hospital or not. When your duties did not occupy you, it seemed that his did and vice versa. Passing glances or encounters while surrounded by colleagues seemed to be all the fates afforded you the rest of the week.

The effect it had on your mood was something that did not escape Mary, Vi, and Ruth – for despite your best efforts to conceal your activities, they had been onto you since you had returned from that eventful trip to the pub.

“We’ll just have to make sure you’re simply irresistible at tonight’s dance, then.” Mary grinned darkly upon your return to your shared quarters that Friday, a dangerous gleam in her eye as she closed in on you with Vi at her elbow.

“Oh yes, Mary, a little feminine revenge ought to remind the Major of his priorities.” She drawled, arms suddenly loaded with supplies – from where they had appeared, you were not entirely sure.

You landed heavily on your bottom upon your cot, staring up at them warily as Ruth laughed from her perch across the way.

“Just give in, darling, it’ll be less painful that way.” Came her friendly advice, though her words did not prove at all true.

There was next to no consideration for your comfort while your hair was combed and restyled, hisses of pain escaping your lips as a plethora of pins scraped along your scalp as they were pushed into place to secure the style they were creating.

“Beauty is pain, darling.” Vi pursed her lips in mock sympathy, but you were altogether relieved when they declared their creation stable and moved onto your makeup.

Somehow, despite their dedication to perfecting your look for the evening, and then freshening up a little themselves, the four of you still managed to arrive at the officer’s club before Bucky and many of the men. Securing a martini and your favorite spot along the wall, you forcefully shooed them off to dance with the early arrivals who quickly approached them. You glass was roughly a third empty when Bucky arrived with his best friend Buck and their tight knit group. All eyes turned toward him, as always, that infectious grin and magnetism making him ever popular.

Now that he had arrived, the party would truly begin. Taking a deep sip of your drink, you nearly choked as his eyes met yours and he made a beeline straight for you. Swallowing roughly, your eyes widened as he plucked the glass from your grasp to set it on a nearby table before holding out his hand to you expectantly.

“I’m not very good at this…” You warned him softly, voice a bit thick from your battle to swallow your drink.

“All you gotta do is hold on, doll, I’ll do the rest.” He winked and wrapped his fingers around yours once you finally set your hand in his.

Leading you onto the dancefloor, he pulled you close, one hand at your waist, the other holding yours out to the side. Bucky grinned at you warmly as he began to lead you across the floor confidently, and you clung to his shoulder, feeling the eyes of almost everyone on you. His actions were so public in contrast to the moments you had shared previously. So very declarative. It took a lot of strength not to hide against his shoulder from all the attention the pair of you were receiving. Even your friends were shooting you grins and nods and little victory signals from behind him.

“You got all dolled up tonight, is there a mission I should know about?” He teased gently, immediately pulling you from your thoughts.

“I was ambushed.” You huffed ruefully.

“Ah, so this mission has already been carried out.” Bucky smirked, lips stretching wider as you laughed softly, relaxing somewhat in his arms as he continued to lead you confidently. “You look gorgeous…can’t wait to get that lipstick all over my face again.” He hummed against your ear, and you smacked his shoulder playfully even as your pulse jumped at your throat, feeling his laughter shake through him.

“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long, Kidd thought it was the perfect moment to launch into an excruciating meeting about…well I wasn’t listening, quite honestly.” He smirked, making you shake your head fondly.

“You ought to listen to the man, he is your Air Exec you know…” You teased gently.

He hummed thoughtfully before shaking his head. “I was too busy thinking about how I’d rather be doing this, right here, right now, with you.”

You met his eyes briefly, startled by the transparency of his statement, before glancing away, teeth buried in your lip in a vain attempt to moderate your rapid heartbeat.

Bucky kept you on the dancefloor for at least five more songs, until your feet started to hurt, your legs getting heavy. “Let’s get you another drink.” He kissed your temple and slid his arm around your waist, leading you to the bar. He ordered a whisky for himself and another martini for you, finding a table in the corner and sitting in the chair right beside you. “For someone who claimed to be not very good at dancing, you held your own, doll.”

You smiled at him shyly. “Just had to trust you.” His resulting grin made you bow your head in response to its brilliance, shivering as his hand squeezed your knee beneath the shelter of the tablecloth.

Taking a steadying sip of your drink, you glanced at him through your lashes, biting your lip at his eyes had never left you, his fingers tightening where they still rested over your skirt. You glanced to the side, suddenly afraid you might forget how to breathe under the intensity of his gaze, sucking in a somewhat ragged breath as you watched another couple canoodling in the opposite corner of the room. There was nothing subtle about the way they were pressed against one another, despite the very public place in which they found themselves, and you averted your gaze yet again to watch the bartender mixing drinks as you sipped yours steadily.

The resulting loosening of your muscles as the alcohol reached your extremities gave you the courage to look in Bucky’s direction once more, taking in his profile as he eyed the dancefloor, toe tapping to the beat. His arm was slung over the back of your chair, an action you had no memory of, and he was slouched low in his seat, legs spread wide. His posture was altogether too inviting, and had you gnawing on your lip once more, yet unable to tear your eyes away despite the alarm bells ringing inside your head.

“See something you like, doll?” Bucky’s voice in your ear made you jump. Made you wonder when he had closed the distance.

You hoped, briefly, that the Luftwaffe might indulge you by dropping a bomb directly on your head right then. No such luck. Bucky’s hand slid higher on your leg to squeeze your thigh, forcing you to raise your gaze to meet his. His normally stormy blue eyes were notably darker, pinning you to the spot as his tongue darted out to wet his slightly parted lips.

“Come on.” He spoke suddenly, sliding to his feet and holding out his hand again.

Following him back to the dancefloor, you gasped audibly as he pulled you improperly close, his hand splaying against your lower back as his cheek pressed against yours. “After this song, meet me at our bench. I’ll be five minutes behind you.” His lips brushed against your skin as he spoke, making your feet clumsy.

Bucky simply pulled you closer in response, bearing more of your weight to keep you dancing smoothly as you somehow managed a nod in agreement, heart hammering in your ears. There was no mission tomorrow, the control tower would be relatively quiet, and therefore so would the bench outback where you had shared your conversation about Runyon’s book. As the band wound down their tune, Bucky shuffled the pair of you to the edge of the floor, kissing your cheek softly.

“Goodnight, doll.”

You exhaled shakily, nodding as you mentally reached down to the bottom of your toes to summon your voice. “Night, Bucky.”

He gave you a crooked smile and one more kiss on the cheek before releasing you gently, watching patiently as you lurched into motion, heading toward the door and out into the relatively cooler night air. Making your way along the road, you swallowed back a curse as your eyes met those of your Captain who was standing watch over the route to the women’s quarters.

“Evening, Ma’am.” You saluted quickly.

“Lieutenant.” Captain Miller nodded crisply watching you continue on before you cut around behind the barracks and circled back toward the control tower to meet Bucky.

Due to the necessitated detour, he was already there, waiting, hands on his hips, shoulders slightly raised with tension. You frowned guiltily and crept up to gently set a hand on his arm, feeling him jump.

“Sorry, I had to appease the dragon-lady, she saw me leave and I–”

He nodded once before kissing you fiercely, making you sigh heavily against his lips. Sliding your arms around his neck, you allowed your fingertips to brush against the curls at the nape of his neck. His chest rumbled happily, his tongue tasting so sharply of whisky as it slid along yours that you wondered if he had taken those five extra minutes to have one more drink before following you.

“Thought you’d changed your mind, doll.” He grinned against your lips before he began to nibble along your jaw, sending ripples of gooseflesh down your neck.

“Uh-uh.” You breathed, gripping the skin of his neck as your knees felt about ready to give out.

“Just hold on tight.” He tilted his head to suck at your earlobe, gripping your hips as he slowly sank down to sit on the bench behind him, pulling you with him.

His hands slid further down your legs, guiding them apart to straddle his thigh, pushing your skirt higher to allow you to settle snuggly against his broad quadricep. Your jaw dropped open as your core pressed tightly against him, a mortifying squeak-like sound escaping your throat.

“Yeah?” He smirked, kissing back towards your lips. “Figured by the way you were staring you might want to give it a whirl.”

If you had been able to speak, his mouth would have swallowed any reply that you could have summoned as it sealed tightly over yours once more. As it was, you brain was filled with static like a wireless that could not quite be tuned to a frequency. Your predicament only worsened as his fingers curled into your hips, ever so slowly rocking them forward against him, making you whimper raggedly. The sensation was only outdone by the feeling of him dragging you backward, the friction causing an unspeakable reaction to roll through your body.

“That feel good, doll?” Bucky rasped against your lips, and you nodded rapidly, mewling as he repeated the motion, though you also began to move of your own volition, chasing the feeling needily. “Sorry, didn’t quite catch that.” He teased and you tugged at the hair peaking out the back of his cap.

“Yes!” You gasped sharply before kissing him hungrily, your leg accidentally brushing against the bulge at the apex of his thighs, shuddering at the groan you earned from him in kind.

Perhaps it made you a wicked woman to take satisfaction in giving him pleasure, but it went to your head faster than any martini you had ever consumed. Digging the toes of your shoes into the grass, you shuffled closer to him so your thigh might brush against his length with each of your self-serving motions.

“Christ, doll.” He growled under his breath.

“Feel…good?” You panted teasingly, biting your lip at his ragged laugh.

“People underestimate you at their own goddamn peril.” He nipped at your chin, breath fanning hotly down your neck as you worked your body against his thigh with increasing need. “Try…this…” He grunted and tilted your pelvis forward.

You slumped forward against his chest, mouth gaping in a silent moan at the intense pleasure radiating from the new point of pressure. Legs nearly giving out from the blinding power of it, you were immensely grateful when Bucky obligingly kept on guiding your hips, continuing to pull the strings of tension tighter and tighter within your body.

“B…Bucky…” You gasped against his neck as your thighs began to tremble, on the precipice of something, wondering if this is what it felt like just before a B17 lifted off the runway.

“Go on, doll, it’s gonna be great.” He rumbled, pace not slackening, though his arms must have surely been aching by that point.

Inhaling sharply, you pressed your face tighter to his neck, desperately trying to smother your cry of pleasure as every string of tension snapped inside you with the force and brilliance of a fireworks display on the fourth of July. Melting against him, you were naught but a shuddering mess, underwear ruined, struggling to satisfy your body’s demand for oxygen as you gasped for breath. Bucky’s grip eased on your hips, his hands shifting to caress your back tenderly as he kissed down your temple to your cheek.

“As promised?” He cooed and you shivered at the feeling of his breath against your skin, every sensation still heightened.

“Better.” You licked your lips and dropped your hands to his chest, slowly pushing yourself up to sit properly, shuddering at the pressure against your still throbbing parts.

“Here, doll.” He carefully lifted you up to swing your legs across his lap carefully. “Take it easy.” He kissed your cheek tenderly, squeezing your side.

You sighed softly, swallowing thickly as you lifted your eyes to his. “People underestimate your sweetness at a great loss to themselves, Bucky.” Cupping his cheek, you guided his mouth to yours to place a gentle, appreciative kiss on his lips.

Feeling the curl of his smile, you could not help but echo the expression, breaking the seal of your mouth against his.

“Our little secret.” He teased, voice still raspy.

Hearing the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path leading up to the control tower, you tensed against him, frowning as you became acutely aware of the persistent problem that remained in his trousers.

“We should go.” He whispered and you nodded quickly.

“Sorry you’re still…” You trailed off, sliding onto oddly unstable legs, grateful for his bracing hands on your hips as he rose to his feet.

“Don’t worry about me, doll, I can take care of myself.” He pressed his lips to your ear after uttering his quiet statement, making you swallow almost painfully as your mouth went dry.

You lost all ability to function for a moment, swept up in the lurid possibilities contained in that simple phrase, before the sound of a door opening cut through the night, and your stupor.

“Night.” You whispered sharply before sprinting off towards the barracks, keeping to the edges of the field and hoping to stay out of sight.

Luck, it seemed, was not on your side, as Captain Miller called your name just a few feet shy of your quarters. You had been so very close. Turning quickly to face her, you scrambled for some excuse as to why you were not on the other side of the door behind you.

“Lieutenant, did you get lost on your way over here?” She arched an eyebrow coldly and you had to remind yourself the mechanics involved in a proper breath.

‘Inhale. Pause. Exhale.’

“No, Ma’am, I just…realized when I got back here that Vi had asked me to be sure she didn’t stay out too late, and that I had left without her.”

Captain Miller’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “And where is your Georgian, troublemaking friend now, hmm?”

The lie had come so naturally, had been so plausible, but now that you were wrapped up in it, it felt like it might just drag you down to the bottom like an anchor.

“I’m here, Captain Miller, Ma’am.” Came a cheery call from further up the path, you friend still cloaked by darkness but by some miracle, arriving just in time to save your hide.

An exhale of annoyance escaped Captain Miller’s nostrils as she whipped back to see Vi, arm linked with Ruth’s, sauntering over to your shared quarters.

“Thank you again, darling, for reminding me to come back on time.” She gave you a tremendous, edging on comical, wink and it was all you could do not to grimace.

You may have been off the hook with Captain Miller, but Vi would surely exact a price for this rescue.

“To bed with you all, then, ladies.” Your Captain grunted and the three of you delivered a set of sharp salutes before ducking into your hut quickly.

“All the gory details, now, darling, or Captain Miller will learn just what you’ve been up to, and I’m certain it’s far from innocent.” Vi grinned wickedly as she dragged you to sit on her cot between herself and Ruth.

You were reticent to share the gory details, wanting to keep the taste of him on your lips, the way it felt to be pressed again him, as just yours. But there was a part of you that revelled in the telling of the simplified, polished version of your encounter on the bench behind the control tower the pair of you called ‘yours.’ And it certainly seemed to satisfy your debt, both Ruth and Vi grinning, crowing in glee by the time you got to Vi’s rescue.

“Our darling dark horse, unexpected champion at taming the rogue Major Egan.”

You scoffed and shook your head shyly. “I doubt that I’ve tamed him, Vi…” You protested but she just smirked with a tilt of her head.

“I’m willing to bet money on that fact, but I suppose time will tell.” She winked dramatically and you just rolled your eyes.

Within four days, Bucky was on his way back to France. The target was an aircraft factory in Rouen near Paris. Of those chosen, you undoubtedly preferred the targets closer to England. The flying time was shorter and thereby so was the period of wondering and waiting. Strategically, you absolutely understood the importance of the targets deep in Germany, but if the Regensburg raid had carried any lessons, it was that those targets were invariably the costliest.

Hoping to catch a glimpse of him before he went up, you retraced your steps, following the same path you had on the morning of the seventeenth, cutting in front of the equipment hangar. The feeling of a leather-clad hand seizing yours and tugging you behind the building had you gasping in surprise before you laid eyes on your target, grinning slightly at your success.

“Morning, doll.” Bucky murmured and kissed you quickly.

You allowed his lips to linger on yours for several seconds before pulling back quickly to glance around, checking if you had been spotted. “Be safe up there, Bucky.” You swallowed and he nodded.

“Think you could wear that lipstick again for me later? It sure looked nice all over my neck.” He smirked broadly as your jaw dropped in response, lifting a hand to smack his shoulder.

“Don’t push your luck.” You chided, wagging a finger playfully, and he laughed brightly in reply, lips meeting your cheek before he strolled over to the waiting crew truck.

You watched him go from your obscured vantage point, waiting until the vehicle had pulled away before you turned to continue on your way to your desk.

“Lieutenant?”

You jumped and turned to see the post clerk, Petty, hurrying towards you with a letter in his hand.

“Letter for you, Ma’am.”

“Thank you very much, Sergeant.” You smiled. “Did you manage to get the boys first?” You asked curiously, and he nodded so quickly you were worried his head might fall right off his shoulders.

“Yes Ma’am, got ‘em at breakfast.” His boyish grin of pride was infectious, tugging at the corners of your mouth, briefly easing the tension that seeped into your bones on mission days.

“Well done, Sergeant. Have a good day!” You returned the quick salute he gave you before he hurried on his way, heavy bag hefted over his shoulder.

Glancing over the envelope you swallowed as it appeared to be written in your father’s handwriting rather than your mother’s – unusual. She was often the one to manage the letter writing and mailing process and he would add a paragraph or two depending on what was happening back home that he thought would be of interest to you. Swallowing down your sense of unease, you slid the envelope into your pocket to focus on the mission. The letter had already taken several weeks to reach you, a few more hours would not make any difference.

Shortly after noon, they were already back; Colonel Harding walking past the office muttering about Major Egan’s displeasure in the weather. It seemed only one plane had been able to drop their bombs, and not even on the primary target. Exhaling deeply to hear confirmation of his return, the ever-present feeling of the envelope in your pocket suddenly took on an immense weight. Claiming an upset stomach, which only garnered a knowing grin from your desk mate, you excused yourself to step out back, wandering to the edge of the field to tear into the flap with somewhat savage impatience. Heart in your throat, your shaking fingers pulled the folded paper from within its confines and your eyes began scanning across the page rapidly, your sense of unease cresting like a tidal wave.

I need you to be very brave for me now, dear girl…

Your father’s words blurred in front of your eyes behind a sudden influx of tears. You did not even need to read the rest of the sentence to know. Perhaps you had known all morning – since Petty had set the envelope in your hand. Your brother was gone. Most likely had been for weeks, for all the time it had taken the news to reach you, across one ocean and then another. An agonized sob clawed its way up your throat, and you quickly pressed a hand over your mouth to smother it, taking off running towards your quarters, trying desperately to keep your grief at bay until you could be alone.

Eyes barely open, running across rough ground, it was no surprise when your foot snagged on some unseen obstacle, wrenching your right ankle and sending your sprawling across the grass and partially onto a pathway. Your right knee dashed against something sharp, your hands flying forward to catch your body, the letter you had been clasping fluttering to the ground beside you. The gravel bit angrily against your palms as it chewed its way into your tender flesh, and you could feel the warm trickle of blood soaking into your ruined right stocking. The shock and pain of your collision with the earth overthrew your ability to control your emotions and a strangled sob of anguish, frustration, and loss flew from your lips.

“God…dammit…” You gasped out, suddenly furious with the universe at large.

You had never known a world without your brother. His existence was a constant you had apparently come to rely on, and now that he had been wrenched from this plane, you were not certain what you could believe in at all. Allowing just a few tears to escape began an unstoppable chain reaction, your shoulders shaking as you remained sprawled across the ground, clenching fistfuls of gravel as you gave into your grief. It was utterly self-indulgent. You were not the first woman to have lost a brother to this ugly war, but he was yours and he was gone.

‘Get. Up.’ The lone, rational part of your brain chided. ‘Your father needs you to be brave. You’re making a goddamn scene. Get. Up. You petulant child. What if someone sees you.’

Like some kind of prophecy, you heard the quizzical call of your name. You could only hope the owner of that voice was still far enough away for you to make your escape. Sniffling sharply, almost painfully, to try and stem the flow of tears, you tried desperately to struggle to your feet. Your knee throbbed in protest, your ankle wobbling unsteadily, your palms stung in pain, and all you managed was to roll onto your backside.

A pair of strong, familiar arms slid around your waist, pulling you back into a warm chest, the fleece of his collar brushing against your damp cheeks.

“I’ve got you doll.” Bucky murmured into your hair, and you shuddered, fighting back the urge to simply break down sobbing once more.

Holding out your hands awkwardly in front of you, trying to minimize the transfer of blood onto your respective uniforms, you leaned back into his warmth despite the fact that it was a sunny August day.

“Let’s get you to the doctor.” His voice was tense, wound tight with concern, and absent his usually playfulness as he slowly eased you to your feet.

“I’m fine.” You tried to protest, but an inadvertent whimper escaped your mouth as you tried to bear weight on your right leg.

“The hell you are.” He growled a little, pulling your arm over his shoulders, sliding his own arm around your waist, practically hefting you against his body.

As he turned to begin walking you down the path, you gasped to see your abandoned letter tumbling through the grass on the breeze.

“My letter!”

“I got it.” He grunted and set you down, fetching it quickly and shoving it in his pocket before lifting you up against him once more, helping you towards the hospital.

“I’m sorry…” You whispered, keeping your gaze on the ground as you hobbled along beside him, not wanting to meet the eyes of anyone you may have passed along the way.

“Got nothing to apologize for, doll.” He shook his head, assisting you through the doors and into the building that smelled sharply of disinfectant.

“What about the blood on your clothes?” You protested.

“Probably mine.”

You looked to him quickly, frowning at the mirthless smile he delivered – an empty attempt at his usual humor. You noted he did seem to be in one piece, thankfully.

“What on earth…” Gasped the nurse on duty at the front desk as she hurried forward to slide your other arm over her shoulders, leading the pair of you to a bed in triage where she quickly began to remove your ruined stocking and deal with your still-bleeding knee. “This is probably going to need stitches, Lieutenant.”

You nodded silently, frowning down at her as she began to pluck the debris from your hands.

“What’s happened, Lieutenant?” A new voice joined the conversation, and you looked up to see one of the doctors, denoted by his white coat, had come to stand beside the nurse while Bucky loomed in the background, arms crossed, brow furrowed as he watched on intensely.

“Got some bad news, sir.” You replied, seizing the inside of your cheek between your teeth to deliver a sharp, steadying bite to your flesh as your lower lip wobbled traitorously. “It made me clumsy, and I tripped.”

You watched Bucky’s face somber even further than it already was, his arms unfolding to fall at his sides, though his fists remained clenched. You looked away quickly as you were certain he had been able to do the math. To figure out just what terrible news had driven you to your current state and you could not endure his look of sympathy – not and remain collected.

“We’ll take good care of her, Major.” The doctor said in a kind yet obvious dismissal and there was a moment of silence before you heard Bucky approach the side of your bed, pressing his lips to your temple.

“I’m going to let that terrifying Captain of yours know that you won’t be working the rest of the day.” He spoke softly, for only you to hear, and your head whipped to look at him, startled that he would dare take on Captain Miller.

Your eyes fell on the lingering marks on his cheek and nose from the Regensburg raid, wanting to protest, but on finding you simply did not have the energy to fight him, you conceded with a nod. By the time he returned, no more than thirty minutes later, you were cleaned, stitched, and bandaged with a tensor wrap on your ankle and a set of crutches.

“You need to keep off that ankle as much as possible, Lieutenant.” Doctor McLean, it turned out his name was, instructed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem, Doc, I’ll make sure she gets where she needs to go.” Bucky chimed in and you looked to him, surprised he had returned so quickly.

“Thank you Major, with that in mind, you are free to go young lady. Keep to the pathways moving forward, please?”

“Yes, sir.” You repeated and used the crutches to rise to your feet, tucking them into your armpits to make slow progress toward the door.

Bucky followed along, patiently, removing any obstacles from your path before gesturing at the waiting jeep out front.

“Your chariot, doll.”

You looked to him skeptically. “I highly doubt this would be considered an appropriate use of army property, Major Egan.”

He shrugged. “No one else was using it, come on.” He guided you around to the passenger’s side, helping you onto the bench seat before taking your crutches to stash in the back. “You really, ok?” He asked quietly as he came to sit in the driver’s seat.

Nodding softly, you squeezed his hand as his fingers laced briefly with yours until he was forced to take it back to drive the vehicle. The trip to your quarters was markedly shorter thanks to the jeep, and you were unspeakably relieved to not have had to face it on crutches alone. Turning to thank Bucky, you blinked as he was already climbing out, bringing your crutches around.

“If you get caught in this area…”

“I’m assisting you to your quarters after an injury.” He insisted stubbornly and held them out to you.

You glanced around slowly before taking them, sliding to your feet carefully before making your way inside, once again grateful for his assistance as you hobbled over to your cot and sat heavily.

“Thank you, Bucky, you’ve been a really big help, but if you’re caught in here someone is going to murder you…”

He came to rest on his knees beside your bed, clearly choosing not to hear, or simply not caring about, your continued warnings. You pressed your lips together tightly, tucking them between your teeth as he produced your father’s letter from his pocket, setting it on the blanket beside you.

“I’m real sorry about your brother, doll.” He said quietly, forehead creased with unmasked sympathy. Your defences promptly crumbled, tears welling in your eyes and promptly spilling down your cheeks. “Hey, hey, shhh.” He shifted to quickly sit beside you, cradling you across his lap, holding you close as you turned your face to sob into his chest, fingers twisting into the fleece lining of his jacket where it hung open.

You lost all track of time in his arms, feeling safe enough to simply let your emotions run their course, have their way with you, in the privacy of your quarters. Thus, it was a surprise when you heard the gently clearing of Mary’s throat, lifting your head quickly to see her holding out one of her immaculate hankies while politely keeping her gaze on the rustic ceiling above.

“I have it on good authority that Captain Miller will be checking in on our darling Lieutenant shortly, so you may want to make yourself scarce, Major.” Her tone was warm and conspiratorial.

“Thank you, Mary.” Bucky spoke for the first time in a while, voice somewhat roughened by disuse. “I’ll see you for your ride to breakfast, doll.”

“Bucky, that’s really not necessary–”

“She usually eats at 0545.” Mary cut you off, clearly allying herself with him and against you. “Now I’ll take it from here.”

You huffed affectionately as he pressed his lips to your forehead. “You rest.”

“You, too.” You insisted stubbornly, feeling somewhat encouraged when he bestowed a smirk on you in response, sliding you from his lap onto the cot carefully and making his way out to remove himself and the jeep before your Captain could find him where he ought not to be.

“What was that you were saying to Vi and Ruth about not having tamed him?” Mary smirked, grabbing the hanky to begin dabbing at your cheeks with motherly roughness.

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

Read Part Three - "Trust Me, He's In Good Hands."

"Trust" Series Masterlist

Tag list: @gretagerwigsmuse, @precious-little-scoundrel, @rubyfruitjungle, @storysimp

#john egan x reader #bucky egan x reader #john egan fic #john egan imagine #mota fanfic #masters of the air fanfiction

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dragonnarrative-writes · 16 days ago

Text

Data Breach

Read on AO3

Word count: 12.8k

Alternatively titled "Lockdown."

CW: Public partial-nudity, references to sex work, Kidnapping, implied trafficking, threats of violence, anxiety/panic, body horror, brief mentions of medical trauma, character being hunted, brief mention of cannibalism, guns, knives

Notes: Naya "Bambi" Walker and Veronica "Bricks" Mason are my characters. Morgan "Sparrow" Voss belongs to @sentientcave.

I'm very excited because this is my first "complete" fic. And I wrote it within my first year of posting fanfiction! Thanks to everyone who has been here with me through it all!

The genetic and cybernetic enhancements that the public took for granted were a drop in the bucket. No one protested the same-day medical procedures for aesthetics and practicality and security. What harm is a microchip to automate one’s home, modified musculature that needed less exercise to maintain? Who was ever going to protest genetically coded locking mechanisms?

Soldier modifications are a violation of human rights. The deployment of those soldiers isn’t, unless they use their enhanced abilities to commit a war crime. But the process of modification, experimental and unregulated, driven by greed, desperation, a cold war that bled and screamed…

In the early days of accelerated genetics, on the heels of the prosthetic revolution, things had been hellish. Rejected limb grafts. Explosively contagious viral infections previously rare in humans. Incompatible bones and organs and structures drowning experimental groups in their own fluids. Hunting and prey drives that only became apparent on the battlefield.

The deployment of modified soldiers isn’t a violation of human rights. But if even a single civilian is caught in the crossfire, it’s a war crime.

What the governments of the world did to the men and women who served them - and the populations they were supposed to serve - was a flood of destruction that led to international court-martial and proposed executions.

Only proposed though.

Naya, green around the gills from her latest information dive, wonders if maybe those proposals had more merit than she’d initially thought.

The files she found about the modified joint task forces, the Ghost Team JTFs, are more horrifying than anything she’s ever seen. Bone and dental removal, replacement, and additions. Brain implants, deeper and more invasive than most civilian interface units, which go just under the skin. Increased metabolism, shortening of the digestive tract, automatic injectors with stim packs that keep soldiers awake and lucid through unimaginable horrors.

Her hands shake, spilling tea leaves on the counter as she disconnects from her VPN network. She’d stumbled upon the initial files surrounding what had been Task Force 141 days ago, had quickly skimmed and duplicated their contents to read and review on her own time. Those had been bad enough. Reading about a Scottish soldier, shot in the head and brought back only to have his body altered. Another sergeant suspended in a tank as his genetically altered body attempted and failed to process all of the poisons they wanted him resistant to. A lieutenant who’s frontal lobe was hacked through to make room for a larger processor. The Captain captured and tortured and changed for investigating what was happening to his unit…

And that was before the videos.

Finding more information on Ghost Teams is virtually impossible. Official reports, even the ones she breaks into, list the 141 as defunct. Her fellow archivists don’t have any other information, and aren’t willing to help her dive again.

>>>Flower: even if the GTs are still alive >>>Flower: it’s too dangerous >>>Flower: too many powers want them to stay buried >>>Flower: we’ll lose everything if we go digging >>>Bambi: you don’t have any contacts i could ask? >>>Flower: i‘m sorry bambi

There’s more security, when she returns to the original server, too much for her to feel comfortable to try to force her way in. Her bots identify a couple of devices on the network that might be exploitable - a printer, two coffee machines - but she leaves them alone, for now.

Instead, she trawls conspiracy theory forums for any mention of experimental modifications, missing soldiers, and questionable medical equipment shipments. Experience means her bots filter through everything, which saves her more than a few headaches, but also means that she waits hours before a possible hit. And that hit is a dead end.

The hours turn to days before she’s able to find an abandoned, locked forum with deleted answers to heavily coded questions. The last post is seven years old, ostensibly informing community members of upcoming changes to the forum. The veil over the warning of government surveillance is thinner than tissue paper.

It’s the closest thing she has to a lead, so she makes a new post and sets her bots to monitor it.

>>18|\/|48(Guest): GTJTFs producing new 141 units? Leaked production reports, new specs?

She doesn’t expect a response, but maybe an auto-responder will give her a clue of where to look next. So it’s jarring when she gets an encrypted email with a reply from “[email protected],” an hour later.

new units? have info on old units if you need references. let me know.

—

The middle city isn’t the safest, for all that the well-to-dos topside like to pretend that the truly unsavory elements aren’t that close to their picturesque lawns. Naya’s lived here her whole life, though she’s worked above a time or two. Even so, she’s never ventured this close to the freight shafts down to the docks.

The bar she steps into is loud and smells like liquor and motor fluid. It’s dim, and smoky, and she feels eyes on her as she makes her way to the bar. Her interface lights up with pings and an attempted ID and bank chip skim. All they get for their trouble is her least informative ID tag - Bambi.

The bartender, a large bodied person with the simple tag of Engine, operates behind the bar with four cybernetic arms. There’s no digital queue for her to log in to, or even a service request button on the seemingly organic wood bar. So she stands, hands folded on top of the bar for them to finish pouring drinks and notice her standing there.

Just as the barkeep’s attention slides her way, a warm body presses up behind hers. She stiffens as a the person jostles her to lean heavily on the bar. “Eng! Another for me. And whatever my cute new friend wants.”

A refusal is on the tip of her tongue, but when she looks up into slitted yellow eyes haloed by curled black and purple freeform locs, she gets an encrypted message.

>>>Bricks: Hello Bambi. >>>Bricks: Order a drink and come with me.

—

"They shouldn't be locked up. They're people, not mindless killing machines."

Across the table, under the dim lights, the woman called Bricks cocks her head. She’s a true cyborg, someone who’s modifications are probably keeping them alive. The cybernetics of her left arm extending well into her ribcage. She doesn’t hide it. Under dark overclothes, a slouching shirt exposes the metal of her collarbones, the servos that whir as she breathes. She swirls her glass of Jack and Coke with an amused look on her face as a barely muffled moan pierces through loud music.

Naya takes a deep breath to keep from fidgeting. It took three months to arrange even this meeting with the elusive American arms dealer, in the back of this dingy bar on a busy Friday. She wasn't about to lose the lead just because she could hear lewd comments and barely muffled squeals of pleasure from the nearby hall to the washrooms. The more concerning noise was coming from behind her, anyhow, the thump of knives into a dart board, distressed beeping from the unlucky mini-droid bound to the target.

"You want me to set up a meeting with the Watcher," Bricks drawls, sitting back in her chair. Her pointed cybernetic nails drum against the table. She doesn’t bother to whisper, but both of them have been disrupting any listening devices in range. "So you can make sure that Price's monsters are being treated humanely?"

"They're not monsters," Naya hisses.

"You've never seen them." It's not a question.

"I don't need to see them to know they shouldn't be kept locked in cages."

Bricks freezes with her glass halfway to her lips. Her eyes narrow. “Cages?”

“That’s what I saw.” Gritting her teeth, Naya hisses. “Look. You know what it means to be augmented, what extensive modifications are like. But without anesthesia? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even my worst enemy.”

“You’d be surprised what I would wish on my worst enemy, sweetheart.” Bricks chuckles and throws back the last dregs of her drink. "But you know what? Fine."

"Fine?"

"Fine. You want in so bad? I'll set up a meeting with the Watcher, and Price."

Well. That was easier than expected. "What'll it cost me?"

"Oh, your whole life, probably. Your whole world view, certainly," Bricks chuckles. She gives Naya an obvious once over, gaze lingering on her breasts. "But you don't owe me any more than a quick flash of your tits."

That does make Naya’s confidence falter. "W-what?"

"You heard me. C'mon, give me a little peek, and I'll send a message right now. You can have Price's monsters off their leashes by the end of the week." Bricks grins, slit pupils pulsing wide with interest. "We don't even have to go anywhere, just pull down your shirt a little bit."

"I'm not..." Naya looks around, furtively. "This isn't exactly priv-" She flinches as she's interrupted by a loud moan, followed by a cheer from the rest of the bar.

"You're asking me to let your hands get real dirty, sweetheart." Bricks stands and circles the table to crowd Naya against the wall. She dips down to breathe into her ear. "And unless you want word to spread of a cute, clean cut, little topsider digging into illegal soldier mods, you're gonna pull your tits out and take the money I give you, after, Bambi."

There’s something behind the predatory look in the taller woman’s eyes. A challenge. She’s called Naya’s bluff, hasn’t she? When she refuses, Bricks will send her off with a laugh and a pat on her ass. And she’ll be back at square one, unable to face the danger of diving deeper again.

But Naya’s never been accused of knowing when to back down.

It’s the work of a moment to have the various video feeds in the room start a ten second loop. Her bots use movement patterns to make the video seem natural to anyone not looking closely. Bricks makes an interested noise when the video feed from her cybernetic eye continues showing Naya’s darting eyes and regular breaths. Her organic eye takes in the way Naya’s hands come up to unclasp the front of her shirt.

She takes a deep breath before hooking her fingers into the neck of her undershirt. She looks down as she inches it down to reveal the scalloped edge of her bra, instead of looking to see if Bricks is aroused or amused or some other, worse thing.

Before she can truly expose herself, a warm hand touches her wrist. “So eager. Not even gonna give me a little tease?”

>>>Bricks: Nice trick with the cameras, but you’re going to call attention.

Naya tips her chin up and immediately regrets it when Bricks leans down to meet her. Her breath shivers between their lips. When a metal arm comes up to block her view of the rest of the room, she turns her face away.

>>>Bambi: It’d be more suspicious if I let everyone have a clip for distribution.

“Smart girl,” Bricks whispers against her temple. “Take the credits.”

The fund transfer Bricks initiates has a public comment attached. ‘Classy. Could almost be the real thing.’ Naya glares up at Brick’s smirking face as she accepts the transaction. Two hundred. It feels like too little and too much money at the same time. Almost immediately, she gets inquiry pings from six other patrons the bar.

“And that’s your alibi,” Bricks chuckles, stepping back so quickly that she barely has time to put herself to rights. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”

��

Naya tries not to fidget in the freight elevator, down, down, down, into The Throat. Bricks's arm is a possessive weight on her shoulder. On the other side of the lift, a startlingly tall man stares at them through the holes in a cloth sack. When she meets his eyes, something writhes where his mouth should be.

"Eyes to yourself," Bricks growls when he takes a half step in their direction. Her cybernetic arm crackles warningly.

The man visibly considers his options before making a guttural sound. A thick appendage, tongue or tentacle, Naya can’t really tell, pokes out from under the hood. He mutters something she doesn’t understand in under-tongue. Bricks hisses something back, pushing Naya behind her as she takes a threatening step forward. The man flinches, then crowds himself into his corner. He doesn’t even look in their direction for the rest of the descent.

When the doors open, Bricks holds her back until the man leaves, then steers her out into the street. Naya's been under-city before, but not in this bloc. The air is just as stale and hazy as she remembers, but this shaft doesn't see as much vertical commuter traffic as some of the others, so the street is dark instead of lit with neon. The faintest bit of light filters down from straight above.

Groping for something to say, she asks, "Did you know that guy?"

Bricks snorts, keeping an arm around her's waist as she steers her along. "Yeah."

“What did he want?”

She gets an uninterested shrug. “The same thing any bottom dwelling opportunist wants.”

It’s not hard to imagine what she means. When she doesn't say anything else, Naya searches for another topic. She swallows her pride and forces herself to say, "Thank you for setting up this meeting."

"Don't thank me yet, sweetheart. You're gonna hate me soon enough."

"I know it's dangerous for you," she insists as Bricks draws her down a side street. Dangerous is an understatement, if the Ghost Teams are so far gone that they’re experimenting on human beings. "Even if things are hard, moving forward, I appreciate your help."

Bricks doesn't answer. Instead, she knocks on a barred door. It opens a crack, and she and the other person hiss low words at each other. A shining green eye looks Naya up and down, the door shuts, and Bricks draws her away.

They stride, briskly, back to the main street. Bricks asks, "Do you have a respirator?"

"Yes."

"Put it on, don't speak."

Wordlessly, Naya unfolds the mask from her pocket and covers her mouth and nose. Bricks pulls a dark scarf from her shoulders and wraps it around Naya’s head and neck, and then drops a poncho over her head. Somehow, the mercinary looks bigger in just her thin shirt, the muscles and metal in her shoulders more pronounced.

Ten minutes into their silent walk, a man melts from the shadows and starts walking on Naya's other side. Though she can’t see much under his baggy clothes, his gait speaks to digitigrade modifications. When she glances up, he has a faceplate under his own hood. His voice, when he speaks, is robotic. "Bricks."

"Roach."

“You’re looking smug and determined.”

“I’m on a very… interesting job.” An encrypted message gets passed between the two of them, and Naya frowns behind her mask. She shouldn’t be able to tell that a message was sent, though, so she bites her tongue. Bricks smirks down at her, then turns her eyes forward. “What’s on your mind?”

"Shadows are hunting you. Seven thousand credits."

"That's insulting," Bricks dismisses. "Mace take the job?"

"That's insulting," Roach parrots back. Somehow, his metered and inflectionless voice sounds amused. A flurry of encrypted messages flows between them. Once those have finished, he says, "Come see us when your business with the Watcher is done." And then he fades away into the shadows again.

"Good job," Bricks whispers. "Stay silent. Keep taking deep breaths. Walk straight ahead. Don't run." And then she ducks down a side street, leaving Naya alone in the dark.

Fuck.

She keeps putting one foot in front of the other. Measured. Brisk, but unhurried. A couple of people pass on the other side of the street, then a man passes on her side. Under her poncho, she palms her pocket knife, but no one spares her a second glance.

After a full minute, Bricks slides out of the next alley and falls into step with her, a cigarette that smells like real tobacco between her lips. In her cybernetic hand, she has a twitching, bleeding length of what looks like an octopus tentacle the size of Naya’s forearm.

"You can talk now,” she says. “But you don't want to ask about this."

—

The respirator makes a lot more sense when Naya is led to a shaft to the Belly.

She’s never been to the middle level of the true undercity. Technically, no one should live in this industrial level, so there’s very little in the way of individual commerce and amenities. There is an abundance of dead “topsider tourists” every year, mangled and hacked to drain all of their resources before anyone can realize that they haven’t come home.

This lift is much smaller, just big enough for her to stand behind Bricks as the woman primes her arm. The edge of a plasma knife glows blue from within the mechanics of her bicep. When Naya activates the plasma in her own knife, Bricks looks over her shoulder at the near silent hum.

“You ever use that before?”

“Once.”

That earns an interested noise as the other woman faces forward again. “On a person?”

“…No.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” is all she says about that as the elevator shudders to a stop. “Stay behind my right arm. If I tell you to drop, you fall to the ground and don’t move until I tell you.”

When the door opens, it’s into a pitch black alley. The only light is the obscured gleam from with Brick’s left shoulder. Something in the darkness hisses. Bricks strides forward, and Naya has no choice but to follow after.

They walk for a few minutes without incident before Bricks knocks on a nondescript door. Next to it, a biometric scanner creaks open and scans one of her eyes, then one of her metal fingers. Naya flinches at the noise of a series of locks grinding open.

A stern faced blonde woman is on the other side of the door when Bricks gestures Naya inside. She’s not wearing a respirator, but then, neither is Bricks. The woman doesn’t say anything, so Naya doesn’t either. She just waits for Bricks to finish securing the door, then returns to her spot just behind her.

“Watcher,” Bricks greets with clear good humor. “I brought you a little something.”

Naya huffs a surprised breath from her nose, but stays silent. The Watcher. The overseer of at least one of five active Modified Task Forces. She looks so… normal. A woman in her mid forties, maybe, face lined with stress but open. Naya feels a little thrown off. When the lights flicker, however, she catches the red shine of a cybernetic eye. Whatever mods she has, they’re hidden so well that Naya can’t even sense them.

The Watcher’s eyes scan her for a moment before she’s looking back to Bricks. Naya only has a moment to wonder why she hasn’t been pinged before she asks, “Alive?”

“You always pay more when they’re alive.”

What? Naya stumbles backwards until she hits the door. “What?”

Bricks throws a grin over her shoulder. “I told you not to thank me.” Turning back to the Watcher, she says, “Thirty thousand credits. Had a run in with the King on the way here.”

“No one told you to bring her alive. Fifteen, and we void the Shadows bounty on you.”

“Twenty five. You want her alive, trust me. And I can handle the Shadows on my own.”

Naya gapes at the two of them. A quick glance over her shoulder and query to the door confirms that the locks won’t open again without a lot more force than she could manage, even if she wouldn’t have to fight Bricks to get out. And the Watcher… isn’t motivated to let her live. Fuck. The little knife in her hands feels less than useless.

“She wanted to meet you,” Bricks continues, crossing her arms. “And Price.”

That makes the Watcher pause and look over Naya again. “Oh?”

“She used his name,” Bricks confirms. “Real skilled code-breaker.”

“Hm.” The Watcher frowns, then says. “Thirty thousand is a low ball offer, then.”

“She thinks you’re keeping the task force in cages,” Bricks chuckles. “I want to watch when she sees them for the first time.”

That gets a huff of amusement. “Thirty thousand and a show… Deal. Bring her.”

When the Watcher turns away, Bricks looks back at Naya with a surprisingly gentle smile. “Good job. Now comes the hard part. Let’s go.”

“What’s going to happen to me?” she doesn’t want to walk forward, but there’s not much else to do. She tries to stand away from Bricks, but it’s hard in the narrow hallway.

“Nothing, now,” Bricks laughs. “Got you through the door alive, and Watcher can always use a code breaker.”

It’s hard not to feel stupid. Naya struggles to keep her voice even. “So this was just… a bounty for you?”

“Better me than König.” Bricks wiggles the tentacle that she’s still holding in metal fingers. “And better now than when an actual bounty was on your head. Diving into secure government information brings out the worst kind of trouble. The Shadows would have killed you in your bed. Kortac would have chipped you, if they decided keeping you was worth it. This way, everyone gets what they want.”

“Except me,” Naya points out.

“You’re still alive, for now,” the Watcher points out from a few steps ahead, without looking back. “Considering the problems you’ve caused me, it’s tempting to kill you myself. But Bricks is right. I can always use a Breaker.”

“I don’t do that professionally,” Naya protests weakly.

The Watcher doesn’t break stride. “You do, now.”

They get into another elevator, big enough for eight people. There aren’t any floor indicators, but as soon as the doors close, it starts to descend. Wrapping her arms around herself, Naya shivers. At this rate, she realizes, she may never see the sky again. She’ll be locked in a cage next to the 141, underground, let out to circumvent code for… what? To support more killing? More human experimentation? If she doesn’t cooperate, will they experiment on her? Put a processor in her brain to erase everything about her except for her skill?

Tears gather in the corners of her eyes, and she can’t help a sniffle.

“None of that,” comes the surprisingly gentle voice of the Watcher. When she approaches, she puts a gentle hand on Naya’s shoulder. “You’re here now. There’s no going back. But we take care of our own.”

Bricks snorts. “For given values of taking care of. You are keeping the boys in cages after all.”

“That’s not helpful,” the Watcher says, producing a tissue from her pocket and dabbing at Naya’s eyes. She pushes the makeshift hood back and gently removes her respirator, scanning her face with hard blue eyes. Eventually, she asks, “Why did you come here, Bambi?”

Shoulders coming up around her ears, Naya gets the feeling that because I’m an idiot isn’t the answer she’s looking for. She looks down at her sensible shoes, bracketed by the Watcher’s own worn work boots, and confesses, “Bricks said I could meet with you, and Price. And… I thought I could… encourage you to treat the modified soldiers more like people than animals.”

“And I suppose this encouragement was going to come with a threat to leak records to the public?” The Watcher’s mouth twitches into a sardonic smile when Naya looks up at her again. “Bold.”

Bricks chuckles. “Naive.”

“Hopeful. And some of the best plans are the simplest,” the Watcher dismisses.

Naya wouldn’t call her plan to connect to the building’s intranet and threatening to disrupt all of the life support systems “naive.” Now that she’s locked in, it feels like a distinctly hopeless course of action. She’ll have to think of something else, fast.

The Watcher steps away as the elevator comes to a stop. The doors open into a large control room, huge observation windows giving a 360 degree view out into dimly lit halls. Bricks ushers Naya out, heavy hands on her shoulders, until she pushes her into a chair facing a window to the left side of the room.

“Did we miss feeding time?” Bricks grins and pulls a puzzle ball from her bag. Her cybernetic hand twitches and whirs as it clicks through combinations.

“Luckily for Bambi, yes.”

Before Naya can ask what feeding time entails, something drops from the ceiling on the other side of the glass, startling a yelp from her. It’s a man, tall and lean, slitted eyes shining a red orange as he stares at her face through the glass. He’s half dressed, only in loose pants. Thick, dark streaks of something wet cover his chest and splatter down his legs. The grin that splits his pretty face puts three pairs of sharp canines on display, stained red.

The Watcher pushes a button, an intercom. “Gaz.”

“Who’s this cute little thing, Laswell?” Naya shivers as Kyle “Gaz” Garrick looks her up and down. He looks just like his personnel file, except for a wildness around his eyes that changes his face from welcoming to something dangerous. “Could practically smell her from the street.”

“Back away from the glass, you’re filthy. What the hell did you roll in?”

The man ignores the Watcher, face going soft as he leans down to get on a level with Naya. “Hello, honey. Such a pretty girl, what are you doing down here? You a friend of Bricks?”

Something about his crooning voice makes Naya’s hair stand on end. At the same time, she finds that she can’t look away from the man’s eyes as he tilts his head. They’re such an interesting color, and he keeps shifting ever so slightly in ways that draw her eyes to follow. He jerks quickly to one side when her eyes dip down to the red and brown splashed down his chest, then smiles when she looks back at his face. His teeth - even the extra ones - are perfect and red. Naya’s heart beats a little faster.

A loud pop and sudden flash makes Naya jump as Gaz reels back with a snarl.

“I told you not to touch the glass,” the Watcher grumbles. “Clean up. Make yourself presentable. And remind the others to put their masks on.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” he hisses. With one last, sweet smile to Naya, he turns and strides away before leaping up to grab an exposed beam and hoist himself into the shadows above the observation room. He disappears in the space of a moment. No matter how Naya squints, she can’t tell where he’s gone.

“Don’t look any of them in the eye,” Bricks whispers from close behind, chuckling at the way Naya jumps. “They’re predators, sweetheart, and you’re the sweetest bite of prey they’ve had in a long while.”

“Bricks,” the Watcher (Laswell?) chides. “Get her keyed in. Bambi, you’re not to be alone in here. We’ll get you interfaced with security so you know how to do a lockdown sequence before you’re introduced to the Task Force.”

When she’s handed an interface chip, Naya blanches. “I can’t, I don’t have a hard disk reader. Why do I need to know the facility’s lockdown sequences?”

“There’s no where in this facility that they can’t get,” Bricks replies, distracted as she opens a floor panel to extract a series of wires, and what looks like a very robust integration cable. “And if you’re going to work here, you’re going to need to be able to keep them from dragging you off and eating you.”

“Bricks.” Laswell snaps. To Naya she explains, “Everyone who works here needs to know how to lock down in case of emergency.”

Naya gapes. “Emergencies? They can - They’re not -! They have full access to the facility?”

“Of course. They can get out of the facility, too,” Bricks snickers. “Who’s going to stop them?”

“Bricks!”

“All of the records say that they’re severely restricted.” The tight squeak in Naya’s voice is undeniable. “What do you mean they could eat me?”

“Old records,” Laswell answers without looking. A terminal lights up under her fingertips. “The only way the SAS would let us keep the facilities without bomb chips. Let me know when you’re ready for input.”

“The part about eating me?” Naya flinches as Bricks circles behind and pushes her hair up to expose the port beneath her left ear.

“If you’re as good as I think you are, you don’t have to worry about that,” Bricks says, shoving the cable into place. “Go.”

“What-”

Laswell launches the integration before she can get the question out. Naya’s whole body jolts, brain flooded with sudden input. She doesn’t dive into the data so much as she’s dragged under the tidal wave of the facility.

The whole structure unfolds around her, five floors, twelve stories down, three shafts up, two elevators, one stair. She’s in the observation tower, which descends three more floors. Heat, cooling, air filtration, power, food storage, office of Watcher One Kate Laswell, office of Bravo One John Price, research labs east and south, conference rooms, break rooms, sleeping quarters, inventory, directory of personnel.

Access Denied.

It’s nothing to shuffle the alert away. Asset Records. Veronica “Bricks” Mason, Gary “Roach” Sanderson, Mason “Mace” Ward, [Redacted] Nikto, Morgan “Sparrow” Voss. The list goes on. Task Force 141. Kyle “Gaz” Garrick, John “Soap” MacTavish, John “Bravo One” Price, Simon “Ghost” Riley. Vital statistics steady, duplicate identification signals, three dead copies, one living set. Security, kill switch overrides. These doors won’t close, but they’ll tell the observation tower that they have. Interesting.

Diving a layer deeper, she observes three separate security records. One is distressingly familiar, the records she’d found before, that spurred her to find Bricks, full of echoes of old code, now that she can see it. Then the one with logs going to Watcher One Kate Laswell, current and accurate. Except that the third log indicates security discrepancies and pings to KGKLJMJPSR. She logs the discrepancy on her own, internal system, a reminder to see if she can piggyback on someone else’s clearance.

Now that she’s thinking about it, she scans for what her clearance is supposed to have access to. It’s the second level, the one that doesn’t actually close the security doors surrounding the servers, sleeping quarters, and the observation tower. Well, that won’t do. She makes a digital copy of KL’s access and patches it into her own.

Just as she finishes, four ID tags simply labeled “Ghost” enter the lowest observation tower floor. That’s a glaring red security alert, and it only doubles in urgency as he accesses the hatch to the system port cable.

“Oh, that’s bad,” she hears herself say aloud as she gropes, blindly for the cable in her neck. “Ghost is accessing, I need to disconnect before he-“

Three more security alerts come up as the ID tags for Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap appear around the top floor of the observation tower, their floor. Naya quickly circumvents the overrides on the blast doors, and half observes rolling shutters covering the windows as Laswell makes a startled noise. Unfortunately, Ghost finds her while she’s distracted.

And he is a ghost, sliding between the layers of Naya’s own security code like a cold breeze. He rifles through her ID cards before she can even try to lock down. When she tries to lock him out of her interface, he slams through so fast it sends her reeling. Unfortunately for him, and for her, he trips over her Brain Blast in the process. The packet of musical theater data explodes to override everything she’s connected to, knocking her out of her connection to the facility and blaring Ohmigod You Guys through the speaker systems of the facility.

“What the fuck,” Veronica Bricks Mason shouts, covering her ears.

“Sorry, sorry,” Naya yelps. She manually reopens her access to the facility and cuts the sound. Her head spins with new information that she doesn’t have time to let her organic brain process. Ghost is nowhere to be found, but she doesn’t wait around to see where he pops up again before locking herself down and physically removing the cable from her neck. “Ghost tripped my security protocol.”

“You shouldn’t be able to influence any part of the facility,” Watcher One Kate Laswell observes. “Which means you’re every bit as good as Bricks says you are. Why did you lock down the tower?”

“Just this floor,” she answers absently, looking around as her interface flashes and labels new data points about her surroundings. It takes a moment for her to filter through everything enough to focus. “Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap were approaching as Ghost tapped in on the bottom floor.”

“I should have charged more,” Asset:Mason chuckles.

“Maybe you should have, Veronica,” Naya replies without thinking.

The woman just laughs. “Oh ho ho, you’re even better than I thought.

Watcher One Laswell drums her fingers on the table. “You don’t have a hard disk reader. Can you still access the facility without a hard line?”

Naya has to shake her head before she runs a quick system check. A ping to the 141 Facility gets a happy little ping back. “Yeah. My, um… my interface is a bit more robust than standard.”

Watcher Laswell nods. “Noted. Reset the security settings.”

Naya almost does it on autopilot, but stops herself. Running a quick check, she shivers. “They’re still out there. Three of them.” When Laswell only nods, she nudges the blast doors and security shutters to open. It takes a moment, but eventually they start to rumble to life.

Worryingly, when she can see through the windows again, Bravo One, Gaz, and Soap are no where to be found. The only active vitals in the facility say they’re right across the glass from where Naya is sitting. It sends a chill down her spine. Diving through the facility systems, she had felt untouchable. But she’s been outmaneuvered again. Unless…

She stands and leans closer to the glass, looking up into the shadows above.

Three pairs of eyes shine down at her from the darkness.

“They’re up there,” Naya whispers. When Laswell simply answers in the affirmative, she activates the intercom with a gulp. “Um. I’m sorry about the noise.”

“That’s quite alright, sweetheart,” a deep voice answers. “Ghost has a way of startling pretty girls. And I quite like a bit of theater.”

Well it’s not Gaz, and there’s no hint of a Scottish accent. “Are you… Bravo One? John Price?”

“You are a clever one.” One of the pairs of eyes squints and tilts. Another shuts, and doesn’t open again. Soap’s tags move a short ways away as Price continues. “Bricks says you asked to meet me.”

“Yes, sir,” Naya says, and then remembers too late that Bricks said not to meet their eyes. She tears her eyes away and jumps at the sight of John “Soap” MacTavish standing a few feet down the hall in front of her.

He looks good, surprisingly so. His hair is long, braided mohawk shining. A gleaming scar is the only indication of the wound that almost killed him. He’s healthy, big and bulky and dressed casually in black joggers and a tight black tshirt. Bright blue eyes with crossed pupils scan her face with interest. When he grins at her, his sharp teeth flash with titanium augments.

“Gaz wisna exaggeratin,’ ye smell quite nice, Bambi,” Soap purrs.

“What part of ‘masks on’ don’t you all understand?” Laswell grumbles.

“They’ve already got her scent,” Bricks snickers. “Did Ghost get your tags Bambi?”

“He did,” Price confirms from above. “Naya Walker, also known as Bambi. Computer scientist, you’ve sold a couple of database systems. Quite impressive.”

A pit opens in her stomach. Ghost had access to her system for less than three seconds. Her throat is tight when she says, “Thank you, sir.”

“So polite,” Gaz chuckles from above. “Come say hello, doll.”

Naya chances a glance back at Kate, then looks back at Soap, then up at the single pair of shining eyes above as Price’s ID winks away from your awareness. “I’m not sure I have clearance for that.”

“You didn’t have clearance to know about this facility,” Gaz points out. “And yet, here you are. Pretty as a picture.”

“Jesus,” Bricks mutters as Laswell makes a startled sound. “We really should put a bell on you.”

And then a huge hand presses against the glass next to Naya’s face. She startles backwards and runs into a huge, solid body, and yelps as a strong arm catches her about the waist.

“Caught ya,” a fourth, deeper voice rumbles above her. His other hand catches both of her wrists and immobilizes her as she stares at dark brown stains up to his wrists. “Been teasin’ us f’ months, dippin’ in an’ out ‘f m’code. So careful, li’l fawn. But not careful enough.”

“Ghost,” Laswell says. The whine of a plasma weapon being primed pierces through the otherwise silent room. Naya squeezes her eyes closed.“Hands off. That’s my Breaker.”

“’S’at so?” Ghost bends down, so far down, it seems, to drag the tip of his nose along Naya’s temple. “Seems she moight be mine, since I invited ‘er.”

“Speaking of,” Bricks interjects. “I’ll take my finder’s fee, now.”

“Bricks.” Laswell hisses.

“Transfer’s cleared, Bricks,” John Price says with a chuckle. “Pleasure doing business, as always.”

Like Gaz and Soap, Captain Price is bigger than his file made him seem. They’d shaved him, when they had replaced some of his bones with metal, but now his facial hair is as full and vital as the rest of him. This close, Naya can see the mechanics whirling within his eyes.

Leaning against his free side, Gaz licks his lips with a tongue that seems too long. But she only sees them for a moment before she’s being turned around, still wrapped in Ghost’s arms.

On the left side of the room Bricks lounges in a chair, tossing and catching and cycling through the combinations on her ball. She’s grinning like she’s gotten away with murder. Maybe she has - she’s been paid three times today for possibly the easiest bounty of her career. Across from her, Laswell holds a glowing knife in a loose grip by her side, shooting an annoyed glare at the other woman.

“What the hell is this?” Laswell hisses.

“You told us to stop hunting your techs,” Price chuckles.

“Bambi is mine,” Kate reiterates, glaring out the glass.

“Just a wee taste, Watcher,” Soap burrs from somewhere. “Ghost is code breaker enough, ye dinnae need another.”

Naya feels her entire body go cold. She takes a deep breath, reconnects with the facility, and runs Flash_Bang.exe.

—

The underground building has a straightforward layout, but that’s dangerous. Naya flicks away the alert when Ghost manages to patch his way back into the facility and silence the music - fuck, it only took him twenty eight seconds? - and ducks under a desk in the office she broke into, one floor down.

It’s hard to stay one step ahead of him, but her spiders and bots repair the five second camera feed loops as soon as he forces the cameras back online. He only wastes time breaking a third of the bot codes before he seems to realize that they’re replicating and switches to tagging, leaving them to run their processes.

It takes two agonizing seconds for her to open the audio relay from the observation tower without revealing her location to Ghost’s sweeping pings.

“-vilian running wild and scared through a secure facility, John.” Kate snaps.

“I thought she was your new breaker,” Gaz snickers. “Not really a civilian.”

“Nae,” Soap interjects. Naya is glad she doesn’t have video to see the nasty smile she can hear in his voice. “Watcher’s right. We cannae let her get too far.”

“She’s fucked the cameras,” Ghost chuckles. “Could get them back online, but it’d take some time.”

Price hums. “Location?”

“West labs’re pingin’,” Ghost answers. He sounds pleased. “Don’t mean much. She’s got bots spoofin’ her IDs.”

“Smells like she’s gone to the east wing,” Gaz purrs. “Lots of classified documents that way, Laswell. Hate to think of what she might come across if she makes it down to the third floor.”

There’s a tense silence before something slams. Eventually, Laswell hisses, “Fine. Bring her back. Alive and unharmed.”

“No promises,” Soap laughs.

Naya scrambles from her hiding spot as she confirms that the cameras in this south wing hall are looped. She needs to get back to the north side of the facility to get to the stairs that might take her up and out. But first she needs to get them off her trail… Somehow.

There’s a janitor closet two doors down, and she spoofs the signal to unlock the door just long enough to slip through it. She looks for bleach and prays it will be enough to mask her scent, then curses to herself when she realizes the bleach will be an obvious mark of her presence. She can’t just erase herself in the physical world the way she can, digitally.

An encrypted message alert calls her attention.

>>>Bricks: Soap will run at you directly. Gaz likes to ambush. Good Luck!

“I c’n see that, Bricks,” Ghost rumbles.

“She’s already at a disadvantage,” the mercenary chuckles. “Poor little thing, you’re going to eat her alive.”

“Oh, she’s not as harmless as all that,” Price laughs. “Took over the whole facility, gave Ghost the slip-“

“I let her go,” Ghost interrupts.

“Set up the meeting so there’d be no one here but us. Got her hands on the codes she thought would let her take control of us, the mindless killing machines.” John continues. He chuckles. “She’s a smart little thing.”

“She got the deadswitches?” Bricks sounds genuinely surprised.

“Command codes. The first ones,” Ghost confirms. “Duds, since we don’t have the chips, but she don’t know that.”

Well, she does now. Naya grabs three bottles of bleach and puts her respirator back on as her mind races. Part of what made soldier modifications so disgusting were the control processors. The irony of finding out that the 141 had somehow removed theirs was not lost on her. They’re already as free as she’d hoped to help them be, and they’re using that freedom to hunt her like animals.

The IDs for Soap and Gaz are still a floor above, moving slowly, following her trail. Ghost and Bravo One are still in the observation tower. She opens one bottle and rolls it back down the hall she came down, then jogs the other way, splashing the bleach as she goes. The observation tower in the center of the floor has mirrored glass, spiking her heart rate every time she catches sight of herself out of the corner of her eye. It’s so jarring that she almost doesn’t realize Gaz and Soap are coming out of the nearest elevator.

She ducks into an office just as the bell dings around the corner.

“Ach, that’s nae very nice, Bambi,” Soap calls. When he speaks next, it’s muffled, likely by his own respirator. “Ghost, she’s scent bombed the whole steamin’ floor. Where is she?”

“Don’t be lazy, Johnny,” Ghost chuckles. “’Ardly a hunt if there’s no challenge.”

“She’ll want the stairwell,” Gaz says. “Lock it down.”

“Already done,” Ghost says. “But locks aren’t exactly a deterrent, if you ‘aven’t noticed.”

“Bottle rolled down this hall,” Gaz says. “So she probably took the other.”

“Aye, that’s what she wants us to think,” Soap chuckles. “I’ll clear this side.”

Naya holds her breath as heavy footsteps start toward her hiding spot, then go so light she almost can’t hear them. She watches the light under the door and resists the urge to flinch at the appearance of a shadow. The man - Soap’s ID sits like a brand so close to her own in her interface - lingers by the door for a long moment then moves on. He’s so quiet that she keeps the map of the floor up to watch his progress. He’s listening for her, she realizes, stopping at each door. She’s lucky that the air circulation vents are above the door, or he might have heard her heart racing.

When Soap and Gaz each turn corners to start investigating the south wing, Naya finally lets herself take more than the shortest breath. She eases the lock open with a flinch at the mechanical click, but neither Soap nor Gaz change their trajectory. When she opens the door and peeks out, the hall is empty. So she eases her way out, crouches low, and shuffles as fast as she can to the stairwell.

She gives the locks three scans before coding them to unlock. The light turns green without incident. She waits for a moment. Soap and Gaz move just a bit farther away. Naya breathes a silent sigh and eases the door open.

“Got her,” Ghost says. “She’s in the stairwell.”

Above her, a door slams open. Naya yelps and starts jogging down the stairs before she can hear what Captain Price yells down at her. She brute forces her way through the lock codes for the third floor and pulls the door open, throwing her bottle of bleach at the wall before slamming it shut. She trips every proximity alarm she can, leading west through the third floor as she throws herself down the next flight. At the fourth floor door, she creates a signal loop, mindful of the door sensor she’d overlooked before. She hears Gaz and Soap slam through the second floor door open just as the door to the fourth closes behind her.

Too late, she realizes that she can’t hear into the tower anymore, and the map of this floor is all static in her interface. The schematics she had before are corrupted - Ghost’s doing, most likely. She can still see the locks on the doors, the terminals connected to the intranet in the various offices. It will have to be enough.

She darts into the eastern wing of the floor and realizes that no, it won’t be enough. The layout is different than the upper floors. The observation tower has no windows in this direction to speak of, for one. And the cameras are few and far between. The doors are also farther apart, and low pile carpet gives way to hard linoleum.

When she turns the corner, she gasps and ducks. Not that it would have helped any. She’s faced with a gymnasium, weight machines and benches and treadmills like a normal gym, except with weights so large it’s almost comical. There’s no one here, but the open space feels like a threat all the same. She turns tail and jogs back toward the observation tower.

As she turns south, she realizes that the tower has no windows on this floor. It’s not a relief, not really. Even if no one can see her, she’s trapped. Gaz and Soap are still looking for her, one floor up. How long will that last? The bleach trick can only work for so long, probably. And Ghost is good, it’s only a matter of time before he breaks into the camera bot code and finds her. How is she going to get up, past the first floor, let alone the next twelve flights of stairs to the streets of the Belly.

God, how is she going to make it home?

Her vision blurs with tears before she can finish taking her next breath.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she whimpers before a hiccup jolts through her. Her breath shudders from her throat as she swipes at her eyes. “No, no, keep it together, it’s gonna be okay. I can figure this out, I can. I can, it’s okay.”

“Bambi? Talk to me,” Brick’s serious voice comes through, suddenly, fuzzy but definitely there. “Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

Naya sobs, she can’t help it. It’s a few seconds before she can force more words out. “Why did you do this to me?”

“You asked me to bring you,” Bricks reminds her with a soft chuckle. “Didn’t know you were gonna try to take over the whole facility, or I might have set something else up. But if you come out now -“

A hand touches Naya from behind and she screams, throwing a HardReset packet into the space before she can even wonder if that would have any impact on Soap or Gaz. When she whirls around, though, a man she doesn’t recognize is slumped against the wall, barely keeping the weight of a bricked cybernetic leg from dragging him to the floor. Her interface has a moment to tell her this is “Mace,” before she’s darting around him and running again.

“Fuck!” the man shouts. “Watcher what the fuck- No, I’m on the fucking training floor, why the hell-“

“Bambi,” Bricks shouts, “Do not go into the w-“

She slams the connection shut and tries, unsuccessfully, to wipe her tears away. The distraction is probably why she doesn’t realize she’s heading north, but she knows her mistake as soon as she hears the stairwell door open.

She screams again, right in Gaz’s face, can’t help it now that she’s finally made noise. She dodges his reaching hand and bolts, knowing she can’t outrun him, but what else can she do?

“Shite. Ghost!” Soap calls. “Lock it doon!”

Naya dives through a blast door as it slides shut, ignoring the myriad of voices that shout at her. Through the panic, she terminates all of her bots and slams all of her processing power into separating Ghost from the security access from the floor. He puts up a fight, but another BrainBlast and FlashBang gives her the two seconds she needs to take control.

An alert flashes.

<<Message from: WatcherOneKL. Accept?>>

Sitting on the floor, panting and sniffling, she gulps a deep breath. Someone pounds on the door, but it’s solid, and Ghost can’t get past her bots to regain control. She’s safe.

—

In the observation tower, Price frowns at the data pad in his hands. “Ghost, Bricks. Where did you say you found Ms. Walker?”

“Found us, really,” Ghost mutters, focused on the 3D hologram of the facility. Bambi’s ID markers dance all over the place. He’s running algorithms to try to find a pattern, but she’s three steps ahead, it seems. “Set out a lure and she tore through it like tissue paper. An’ then she made a forum post lookin’ f’r information on soldier mods.”

“Scrubbed everything clean,” Bricks adds. “We couldn’t find her for days after she blew through everything. I got lucky that I found the forum post, it didn’t even trigger Ghost’s spiders.”

Price hums. “And… did either of you confirm which hacker group she’s a part of?”

“Didn’t really have time,” Bricks answers with a shrug. “As soon as I confirmed who I was, she demanded to meet Laswell, and you.”

“Interesting. Any of you ever hear of a group called the Archivist Collective?”

Laswell frowns. “Collective for Anarchy?”

“No.” Price shakes his head. “Archivist Collective. It’s the only thing coming up with her background check. And she’s not a known member of any of the major hacking groups.”

Bricks shrugs. “Obviously, she’d use another alias.”

“No,” Price says again, walking over to show Laswell and Bricks the data pad. “None of her aliases are connected with anything but this Archivist Collective. And their only mission is to ‘Counter censorship through the collection, preservation, and dissemination of contested and classified texts.’”

Ghost makes an interested noise and leaves the hologram to start another terminal whirring. “Let’s see what they’ve got then -… oh.”

Bricks sits up from her sprawl. “Oh?”

“They’ve got an archive. Barely any security at all. Hosted on the GaiaPet: Craft servers.”

“GaiaPet?” Kate frowns. “Isn’t that a… virtual pet game? Where people make things with voxels? Procedurally generated…. They’re definitely robust enough servers for cyberattacks-“

“It’s jus’ a fuckin’ library,” Ghost grunts, navigating through. “Huge text files, embedded images. Some of it’s definitely classified. But tha’s oll… Oh, shite. Jus’ found our records.”

Bricks looks from the terminal in Price’s hand, to Ghost, and back. “Wait. John, you said she sold a couple of database systems. She’s got to be working with some data brokers, at least.”

“This says she developed and sold literal systems,” John says, horror dawning on his face. “A spreadsheet editor and a UI designed to organize complex data sets. As far as I can tell, she doesn’t sell information. Everything she’s got, besides those systems, is open source.”

“Oh, fuck,” Ghost breathes.

Kate strides up to look at his screen. “What?”

“She’s got an active account on GaiaPet. A pet frog named Señor fuckin’ Snuggly. Her last login was today, and her chat with the AI said ‘Wish me luck, if we can’t get those soldiers released, we can at least get the information out there.’”

The silence in the room is palpable. And then Bricks says, “Bambi? Talk to me. Those sound like tears, sweetheart.”

—

Naya keeps her arms wrapped around her knees until she stops shivering. In that time, two more message request alerts pop up, from BravoOneJP and GhostSR. All of them are marked maximum priority, and she has no desire to touch them. She can see the signal burst of Bricks trying to talk to her, but she’s muted the feed so that she can just have… a single second to breathe.

Her interface pushes everything away to prioritize an SOS signal, then automatically begins transcribing the subsequent Morse code message.

SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give code for control stop. Confirm stop. SOH. West wing dangerous stop. Battle androids stop. 15 active 20 inactive stop. GSR give-

She minimizes the message and sucks in the deepest breath she can, holds it, and forces herself to focus on her body. If she thinks about fifteen battle droids on this side of the door while modified soldiers hunt her on the other, she’ll start screaming and never stop. A part of her wants to lay down and just… give up. A big part. The whole part.

She opens the message from Laswell.

Bambi: You’re in a hazardous section of the facility. Ghost is standing down, for your safety. You will have to establish connection with the control tower to gain codes for control of battle -

Naya deletes the message and opens the one from Price. It’s more of the same, a demand that she open communication, a warning that the west wing of the floor is dangerous. She almost doesn’t open the message from Ghost, but… she doesn’t have much to lose.

She jumps when the message contains an audio file.

“Bambi, fuck, we didn’t know you was a literal archivist. Bricks an’ I fucked up. This is a truce, a suspension of hostilities. SOH. The training floor you’re on is fuckin’ dangerous, Bambi. Too dangerous for me to try t’ take it from you. You gotta take control of the droids. I can’t fuck wit’ ‘em while you’re in control of the space. I managed to confirm shut down of 20, but there’s 15 more. I c’n try to send the control codes this way, but the codes expire every 2 seconds. Better if you open comms. If you can’t, Morse confirmation, I’ll send the codes. Once you grab one, the rest will come for you. You’re fuckin’ fast, I know you can do it, but if you have an issue, open the door an’ Soap and Gaz’ll support.”

She’d rather be shot full of holes by military grade turrets than open the door. Her map of the facility is complete again, and she can see four IDs on the other side of the barrier. Soap, Gaz, Mace, and the redacted asset, Nikto, mill around, pacing between the blast doors and the central tower. But no one is pounding on the door or trying to open it, physically or otherwise. When she checks, her bots are idly cycling through access code randomization, but there’s no attempts at a breach.

Maybe Ghost is telling the truth?

She sends a Morse message.

Received stop. Hold for confirmation stop.

The answer is immediate.

Received stop. Holding for confirmation stop.

Does she want to open the comms? What if it’s a trap? Without knowing how long the code chains are, she’s at a disadvantage without a direct link to the tower. But if she opens connection to the tower, how can she guarantee that Ghost won’t command the androids to terminate her? On the other hand, if he is telling the truth, and the codes expire that fast, there’s no way she can locate and override that many machines that are actively trying to keep her out in time. And they are definitely trying to keep her out - her spiders have been able to confirm twenty units on standby, and fifteen empty holding stations, but there’s no sign of the other droids.

With a shaking breath, Naya opens the comms.

Brick's voice is the one she hears first. "Oh, thank fuck, she's back. Bambi? Can you hear me? Sweetheart, I need you to keep the blast doors static. If they cycle, they might start a lockdown sequence, and that will get the droids moving.” It takes two tries to get the words past her tight throat. "I don't want to die." "I'm so sorry, dove," Captain Price croons. "We’re gonna get you out of there.” "I won't tell anyone, I promise," Naya babbles though gasps. "I just want to go home." "You're gonna be okay, Bambi," Ghosts voice is surprisingly gentle. “Cleverest breaker above and below the city, yeah? Gave Soap an’ Gaz a proper chase an’ knocked Mace on ‘is arse. Coupl’a droids don’t stand a chance.”

“I’m not - I don’t know how to fight,” she whimpers.

“Who said anythin’ about fightin’? Pretty girl like you don’ have t’ lift a finger. Laswell?”

“Working on it,” the woman mutters. “Bambi, I need you to try to give us cameras without initiating any other processes. That’ll help- oh. You are fast. Give me a few seconds to find the nearest droids and we can give you the serial numbers.”

“She’s so small,” Price notes, somewhere in the background. “Possible the droids won’t even register her as a target.”

“I think we’ve fucked up enough today that we don’t need to risk it,” is Brick’s bone dry reply. “Sparrow is going to beat all of our asses.”

“Well, we’re about to give Bambi control of thirty-five full combat units,” the Captain points out. “Might not be much left of us to kick.”

Laswell breaks in. “Ghost-”

“Got em,” Ghost answers. “Bambi, ‘ve got a bead on the nearest units. ‘ow do you want to do this?”

Naya takes a couple of deep breaths and tries to hype herself up. It’s just code work. There are other variables, but at the core of it all, it’s just code. Yes, many of the variables have potentially painful and fatal consequences… But in the end, she can either do the code or not. And if there’s one thing she can do, it’s code.

“H-how,” she clears her throat and blinks back tears. “How many bits, per unit? For the key, I mean.”

“Forty ninety-six.”

Oh, just the highest security rating in the world, she thinks to herself, a little hysterical. She nods to herself and talks through the urge to giggle with nerves. “Okay. That’s seven hundredths of a second per unit, with the key. That’s… not so bad. I can probably handle them in batches of 5. Can I have the first hardware address? Morse, please.”

It takes a second, but the information comes through. It only takes a moment for a spider to highlight the machine in the network. Very quickly, her bots are able to identify and tag seven other units on her map. She shoots a summary data packet back to Ghost.

“Are these all droids?”

“Yeah, that’s half of ‘em. Laswell, she was able to identify all of the A-27 units, do you have eyes on any of the E-243s?”

In the background, Price mutters, “Kate hasn’t even laid eyes on all of the 27s.”

Another data packet comes through, and Naya is able to tag seven more dots on her map. Fifteen battle androids, and two of them just down the hall and around the corner on either side.

Naya takes another hiccuping breath. “How fast can they move?”

“A-27s are closest to you, they’re about a meter per second. The 243s move at about 4 per second.”

“Okay,” she says, holding her breath through another hiccup. She has two of her bots run movement simulations, and decides she’ll focus on the closest two A-27s, then the closest four E-243s. She has the processing power to do it, between her own interface and the facility. But… “I’m going to need these six keys first, but I have to let the doors cycle. How long is the lockdown sequence?”

Bricks makes a concerned noise before answering, “Fifteen seconds before you can open the door.”

So, if she messes this up, she’ll be dead for about 11 seconds before they’d be able to retrieve her body. Wonderful. “Ghost, I need all of the codes at once, in two packets, with the keys in this order. And then the next set of keys as soon as you have them. There’s a half second delay, so I need them as soon as they’re generated.”

Laswell sounds genuinely concerned when she asks, “Is that going to give you enough time?”

Naya runs the numbers again, and realizes that she’s fallen into a very peculiar state of calm. “I should have one point three seconds plus a little wiggle room per key. That’s plenty, for the first part. And if the first part doesn’t work… I don’t really have to worry about the rest of it.”

Captain Price’s voice is stern as he gives commands. “Gaz, tell Nikto to power up the cutter, in case we need to get you through the door. Bambi’s going to override the droids.” He’s quiet a moment, then, “Ghost says she can do it, and from what I’m seeing up here, I’m inclined to believe him. But the resets she did mean the door is going to lock down before she can open it again.”

Ghost says, “Ready to send the next round of codes on your mark, Bambi.”

Naya squeezes her eyes shut and sets her bots to be ready to receive and engage the keys. She takes one long, deep breath. Another. Lets all the air out in a huff. “Mark.”

As soon as the packet comes through, her interface is a flurry of executables and intrusion alerts. Her bots are fast, but the activation of the keys isn’t instantaneous. Just as she was warned, as soon as the first set of keys starts running, all of the droids set themselves to Active:Seeking, Objective:Eliminate. But almost as fast, they’re all placed back into Standby:HoldPosition in a wave that flows through the entire wing.

"That's all of em," Ghost sighs, four seconds later. Something creaks, probably the chair he's sunk himself into. "Fuckin' 'ell, she got all of em. Don' think she even needed me to provide the third set of keys. If she don't run screamin', I want her runnin' the damn-" Naya's heart spikes as an alert pings her interface. Her voice squeaks when she calls, "Ghost? There's two units coming online. They’re not listening to me, I can't stop them. What do I do?" Before she can hear his response, the power to the hall cuts out. Naya holds in a scream as everything goes dark and then red with emergency lighting. Captain Price's voice is overtaken by static, and then she loses the tower completely. Somewhere, in the darkness, she can just barely hear the whine of attack units Riley and Merlin priming their weapons.

—

“Goddamn it,” Kate snarls. “It’s the 9s. They’re jamming the signal.”

Bricks jumps up from her chair. “Bambi’s in there without access to the system?”

Ghost makes a disagreeing noise. “They’re active because she’s not an authorized user. They’re jamming anything that isn’t local to the wing, I should be able to patch- Johnny!”

“We cuttin, LT?”

“Forward these packets to Bambi, nothing else.”

“Aye - fuck!”

—

A message request from SoapJM flashes on Naya’s screen just as she finds out that these new droids can move at thirteen meters per second. When she opens it, she gets an immediate key packet. Every bot she has gets set to receive, but the keys are expired, so she has to wait an agonizing three-quarters of a second before the next ones come through.

Just as a next packet arrives, a blue beam of light slices across the end of the hall, then a second from the opposite side. She barely has time to match the keys to the hardware addresses before two furry muzzles round the corner, guns glowing from their shoulders. Naya has only a moment to recognize the controversial K-9 battle units before they both take a step in her direction. And freeze.

It’s an harrowing second of silence, two, three. She doesn’t even breathe.

With a whir, mounted turrets power down and withdraw back behind artificial fur. The K-9s change their status to Standby:AcceptNewObjective with identical head tilts. The one tagged Riley wags its tail and trots forward, tongue lolling like the average bio-dog. Merlin approaches with a little more hesitant body language, though Naya can see the way it’s integrating her tags into the authorized user list in its software.

She flinches away from the door at the high pitched whine of a plasma cutter on metal. Hastily, she sends an ‘All Clear’ message back to Soap, just as the lights come back on.

Captain Price’s voice resolves with renewed connection to the control tower. “-both of your necks. What were you thinking?”

“Oh, suddenly we’re all about vetting assets?” Bricks laughs. “You recruited me with a bag over my head.”

“You were an establlished CIA asset,” Laswell grits out.

Bricks scoffs. “And Sparrow and Nikto?”

“We wasn’t wrong,” Ghost interjects. “Bad intel aside-”

“No intel!” Captain Price half-shouts.

“-she took the facility from me twice and disarmed 15 droids in less than 4 seconds without any formal training. She’s good.”

“None of that matters if she’s dead,” Laswell snaps.

Naya clears her throat. “I’m not dead.”

“Bambi!” Bricks sound downright cheerful. “Doors are almost done cycling, you’re almost out. Hold tight.”

Petting a hand over the soft fur of Riley’s head, Naya feels for the lumps of it’s internal machinery. Of course, she can’t find it - K-9s were built for stealth and surveillance, to blend in with any other dog. These ones are modified for combat, but they’re still adorable.

It’s almost hard to believe that they were going to shoot her, less than ten seconds ago.

The blast door’s status changes to ready, an almost cheerful ping in her interface. She barely gives it a thought before initiating another lockdown sequence, then queuing two more behind it.

Ghost notices. “Bambi?”

“I need a minute, please,” she answers, then cuts the camera feeds.

Merlin eventually comes and sits just out of reach, tail thumping once against the ground. Naya pulls up it’s configuration settings and examines the personality controls. Calm, but friendly, alert, reserved, breaks “arbitrary dog rules” at a rate of 6%. Riley: open and playful, eager to please, breaks rules 17% of the time. Both locked to 141 facility 4th floor, west wing training center.

Do Not Remove.

—

When the blast doors open, Naya is standning a few feet back. Riley and Merlin lay on either side of her feet, solidly in a sleep cycle. Her fingers dig into the opposite sleeves of her cardigan as Soap and Gaz come into view, along with a fully functional Mace, and a fully helmeted cyborg she can only assume is Nikto.

“Steamin’ Jesus, bon,” Soap says taking a step forward. “Ye gave us a wee fright!”

“If you get within three feet of me,” Bambi says, pausing for a deep breath. “I’ll shoot you.”

Three set of eyebrows shoot up. Nikto’s faceplate remains unchanged. Gaz looks at the others before answering, “We’re sorry we frightened you, love. We didn’t know Bricks hadn’t-”

Naya interrupts him. “I would like to leave now.”

“Well…” Soap says with a shrug. “We can take ye back t’ Laswell?”

“That’s fine. Riley, Merlin, up.”

When the dogs “wake” and stand, Mace says, “They can’t pass that door.”

She takes a step forward, flanked by the dogs. “I think you’ll find that they can.”

“Nae, Bambi,” Soap says gently. “They’re hard coded-”

Riley’s turret activates as soon as Soap takes a step toward her. Naya takes another deep breath, and repeats, “If you get within three feet of me, I will shoot you.”

“Well you certainly won’t be doing that with the dogs,” Gaz scoffs. “We won’t touch you, but you really should come with… us.”

The dogs cross the threshold of the door with her, and the plasma cannon in Merlin primes with a dangerous, high pitched sound. When the stunned soldiers don’t step back, the dog’s chest panel opens with a blue glow.

“Three feet,” Mace says, taking two big steps back, hands in the air near his head. “You got it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gaz says aloud, taking his own step backwards. “The doors are open and we have eyes on her. She’s got the 9s with her. Well sir, it seems she’s taken a liking to them.” He pauses. “Soap did tell her that, but apparently she doesn’t really care.”

Naya rolls her eyes and enables the cameras in the hall. “So you’re all allergic to just saying things outright?” The muted audio feed is a flurry of activity, but she just gestures down the hall. “After you.”

—

In the end, everyone ends up in a second floor conference room. Naya stands by the far wall, Riley and Merlin a deadly guard panting in front of her feet. The other eight sit and stand at the other end, fidgeting and clearly searching for a way to break the silence.

Bricks tries first, “Sweetheart-”

“Give me a reason not to overload the filtration systems,” Naya interrupts.

That makes everyone flinch. Laswell clears her throat. “What-”

“Because,” Naya nearly shouts, “I could shoot at least two of you, but then you really would kill me this time. But if I backflow and spark the air, that would kill all of you.”

“Kill ye, as well,” Soap points out.

“I thought I was going to die about five times in the last hour,” Naya says, much calmer than she feels. “Mention me dying again and I’ll fry your interface.”

“Ghost just aboot did tha’ already,” Soap mutters.

“Need a hacker for an op. Thought you was a professional,” Ghost finally admits after a moment of tense fidgeting. “Way you ate through the files I laid out, blew through a 256 like tissue paper. Couldn’t find you after… Figured you knew what you was doin’. And y’do.”

Naya’s eye twitches. “And you couldn’t send me an email? Set up an interview?”

“I did try,” Bricks points out. “But you said all the keywords that tend to get a person fast tracked to a very classified meeting.”

“A very classified meeting where you sell me, twice and then hunt me for sport?”

“Everything sounds bad when you say it like that,” the other woman chuckles.

The air circulator over the door falls silent. In the ensuing silence, Naya can hear the servos whir in Bricks’s arm.

“Clearly, we made mistakes,” Laswell admits. “So. What do you want?”

“I want to not have been sold and hunted for sport. Barring that, I would like a time machine. I’d love to know what you consider an equitable offer, Watcher One.”

“What the fuck did you do?” Mace hisses at Captain Price.

“Apparently we made a tactical error,” the man grumbles. “And then a series of compounding tactical errors.”

“You did not ask Nikolai,” Nikto says, matter of fact. It’s the first Naya’s heard his voice, human and heavily accented. “Or Sparrow. She will not be pleased, I think.”

“None of Nik’s contacts c’n do what Bambi c’n do,” Ghost counters.

“Bambi can kill every person in this room,” Naya says, voice flat, emphasized by the glow of two plasma cannons. “Bambi can turn this whole facility into a goddamn crater. Bambi can post videos of the human experimentation to the holonet.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Gaz says. “What human experimentation? No one’s experimenting on anybody.”

“I saw the videos!” Naya yells. “People in cages, people on operating tables, awake, screaming, crying. I saw people eating raw meat, off of leg bones, eating people!”

“Oh fuck,” Ghost says, voice wavering. His face is stricken when she looks at him. “Bambi, that weren’t for you to see, fuck, ‘ow deep did you fuckin’ go? I didn’t even-”

“That’s the job,” Bricks cuts in. “That’s why we needed a hacker, because we’re trying to stop that from happening, and we can’t get through their walls or exploit their vulnerabilities.”

“Oh, that’s just the “bad guys”?” Naya scoffs. “Okay. Why was Gaz covered in blood when I arrived?”

“Blood!” Soap yelps. “That was hydraulic fluid an’ oil! One of the bikes is actin’ up, and our mechanic isnae aroond!”

“It was in his teeth!”

“He’s bonnier than he is graceful!”

“Oh, fuck you, Tav!”

“You said you couldn’t promise to bring me back alive! Ghost called it a hunt!”

“Ah was jokin’!” Soap runs and hand over his mohawk. “We’re a right frightful lot, and sometimes we sneak aboot, but mostly people just cannae always hear us coming! Ye’d think we could catch one wee little civilian withoot incident!”

“You’re the one who was running through a secure facility,” Captain Price points out.

A plasma cannon discharges into the wall above his head. The whole room freezes for a beat before Naya hisses. “If you ever even think of implying-”

“Any information you find about Makarov and his dealings, you can make public,” Bricks interrupts. “Who, what, when, where, how. All of it can go into your archive.”

Laswell scowls. “Now hold on-”

Bricks talks over her. “We don’t have anything you want that you can’t just outright take, Bambi. That’s what you came here for. Information, and to get people out of cages.”

Nikto looks at Bricks and snorts before muttering something under his breath in Russian. Mace crosses his arms, leaning back in his seat and doing a much better job of keeping his thoughts off of his face than Soap and Gaz. The sergeants look horrified. Ghost looks about ready to throw up. Captain Price and Laswell share a sour, resigned look.

“You’ll have our backing,” Laswell sighs. “You’ll need something a bit more secure than the GaiaPet servers, or you’ll be tracked. But yes. You can disseminate the information.”

There’s a long moment of silence. Naya considers her options, arms around herself. The air circulator kicks back on. Eventually, she says, “I want an advance. Thirty thousand credits, plus however much Price paid.”

“Done,” Bricks answers.

“And… I want seventy five credits an hour.”

“…Fine,” Laswell agrees.

“And I keep the dogs.”

Captain Price makes a disagreeing noise. “Those are government property.”

“Either I keep them, or I set them to self destruct and detonate every android on the fourth floor.”

Nikto says, “You are a bloodthirsty hind.”

“I’m really not,” Naya says. “But I’ve had a very long day. Do we have a deal?”

“Don’t think we have much of a choice,” Captain Price concedes.

Just then, the door to the conference room opens, and a brunette peeks her head in. Morgan Voss, “Sparrow,” as her ID tags her, nods at Laswell. “Just got in, didn’t know there was a meeting scheduled. What did I miss?” Her eyes drift up. “What the hell happened to the wall?”

#dragonnarrativewrites fanfiction #all 141 of them #cyberpunk au #cod fanfic #merry crisis have some horror #if you see any formatting issues: no you don't #this was so much fun to write and rewrite #and an absolute B!&@% to format on ao3 and tumblr #my first long one-shot!#thank you to everyone who has commented on and shared my work #thank you to everyone who read it and left me a like or a kudos #thank you to everyone who's ever sent me an ask or DM #thank you to all of my friends in the discord #this is possible because of all of you - my friends #started the year with slasher handler and ended with this #feels good dot jay pee gee

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missacidburn928 · 6 months ago

Text

My brain did that dialogue driven thing again...

I am choosing to leave the characters up to you. Whoever you feel fits the role is who is should be. I'll leave who I'm feeling after the dialogue driven words my brain wouldn't shut up about until I wrote it out.

----

"Come on, baby. Hear me out. It's been 2 weeks already. You know she meant nothing to me. It was a stupid bet. I couldn't let him try and punk me like that by refusing."

The idiot has stopped me in my escape by placing his ridiculous frame in my path. Forcing me to confront him after I made my declaration of the end of our relationship and my intentions of never gracing him with my presence again.

As much as I do not want to. No matter how much I want to turn and just run away from the pain seeing his stupidly handsome will give me. I need him to get the message that we are well and truly over. Which is going to require some bravery on my part as I look him in the eye.

"You know what hurts the most? That you weren't even the one to realize how good you had it once it left you. No your little jesters had to point it out for you before it even registered in that thick skull of yours. God, I'm so pathetic to have given myself to such an asshole. Wait, no that gives assholes a bad name and some of my favorite people are assholes. You're just a vapid narcissist fool who can't see past his own ego to save himself. I am so thankful your carelessness and lack of self restraint pulled the e brake on your twisted carnival ride. Allowing me to walk away with my self esteem still intact. So please just go away. I meant what I said when I told you I never wanted to willingly lay eyes on you again. The sugar sweet apologies still perched in the back of your throat. I hope they turn to ash and poison. Slowly suffocating you in your delusions until self preservation takes over and you finally. Leave. Me. Alone."

I give myself a moment to catch my breath as my words sink in. I can already tell they are barely penetrating his thick skin. Movement to my left catches my eye. A body frame and gait I know all too well walking my way. With one quick look in their eyes I know my escape is not only imminent but will leave a devastating blow.

"There's my favorite human."

My shaking hand is quickly engulfed in warmth. Easing the tremors and replacing them with a sense of safety and ease as I am pulled away from my waste of space ex, into the embrace of my best friend.

"Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long, sweet face. You know how chatty my boss can be."

A kiss is placed upon my forehead. Extinguishing any remaining anxiety like a xanax to the bloodstream.

"Not at all. As always your timing was impeccable."

A throat is cleared beside us.

"Can I help you man? Me and the lady were just on our way home. Cozy date night ya know."

Eyes filled with barely restrained rage and hurt stare daggers into me.

"Him. That's whose bed you're warming now. Should have figured he was more than a friend this whole time. You know what, fuck you. You'll never have all of this again."

"So you can listen."

He steps forward.

"Fucking bitch."

I am smoothly pulled behind my black knight.

"I know that most of your brain cells are located in your biceps but I'm gonna need you to take a step back from my girl before I have to do something rather ungentlemanly."

"You against me? I don't care how big you think you are you couldn't land a punch on me if i gave you a free-"

Before he can finish his sentence, the sense as well as his consciousness is knocked out of him by a firm fist to the jaw. As soon as he hits the cold ground I am scooped up and carried valiantly over the limp body of my ex.

"Now what did you have in mind for dinner? I'm suddenly feeling rather ravenous and I'm not quite sure if food will be sufficient enough."

---

The pairs of men my brain came up with: (Let Me Know Yours)

Ex!Ransom & Bestfriend!Jax

Ex!Billy Hargrove & Bestfriend!Eddie

Ex!August Walker & Bestfriend!Will Shaw

#dialouge blurb #poc reader #poc author #ramblings #ransom drysdale x reader #ransom drysdale x you #jax teller x reader #billy hargove x reader #eddie munson x reader #august walker x reader #august walker x you #will shaw x reader

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anamelessfool · 2 months ago

Text

A Naming (part 2 of 5)

Rated Teen, Papa Emeritus II’s Son and Family

Tags: Halloween Hijinks, Eldest Kid Anxiety, Suburban Dad Secondo, Disabled Secondo, Post-Retirement Life, Magic Rituals, My AU with Seocondo being Papa from 2001-2008

CW: Underage Drinking

Paul is at the party. He gets a little too over his head. And he can't completely blame the punch.

Dedicated to @kissingghouls thanks for cheering me on you’re my little Hell Pumpkin🎃 I’m on AO3 with all my other fics but Tumblr gets mad at me when I post links check out #anamelessfool halloween tag for the prev chapter

The first thing Paul noticed when he approached the house party was that he was the only person not in costume. Even the most leather-necked of linebackers attempted something with a Ghostface mask perched on their heads. Everyone around him looked big, capable. He distracted his nerves by typing in his phone.

Paul L: I'm here

Dana: 🙂

Music thudded softly from within as he climbed the stairs. If he didn’t look to either his left or right he could pretend that he was confident about his choice of no costume. Yes, it was some sort of defiant, anti-establishment sort of thing. But they had just witnessed him exit a car driven by his father and piled high with little kids and their sugar-fueled screams, so perhaps the rebel act wasn’t very convincing.

Dana waved from the front door, ushering him in. He darted in like he was escaping some oncoming storm, and she the only chance at rescue. Inside the fairly large house was packed with most of the upperclassmen shouting over some punk rock cover of Monster Mash. “Hey, so happy you’re here.”

“Thanks for inviting me,” he replied, and at once he slowly removed his hands from his hoodie pockets.

“A freshman… You invited a fucking freshman?” Right. Dana wasn’t the only person here. A sour looking boy tossed the hair from his head, his mouth a thin line.

“Relax, he's cool,” said Dana with a small smile. Paul felt a warmth flood his entire body. “He’s most of the orchestra pit.” Dana was the lead role for the fall play. And midway through Act II he could get a clear view of her singing at the front of the stage. She was just as beautiful now, all dolled up in some kind of half-hearted witch getup that gave her the excuse to have glittering goth makeup.

“Yeah well what do you play then?” Asked the older boy.

The better question was what Paul didn't play. His father was a prodigy on piano but dabbled elsewhere. Paul took after his grandfather Nihil, who somehow despite his foggy brain took to every instrument like a duck to water. “Guitar, bass guitar, piano,” Paul listed and his confidence started to crawl back. “All percussion. Some violin. Trumpet. I'm learning saxophone because Mr. Baxter needs one for the Spring show. And…that's it. So far.”

“Wow, no wonder you’re a shut in,” quipped the boy before melting back into the crowd.

“Asshole!” Dana jokingly swatted at him as he left, then turned back to Paul with a wince. “Sorry. Hey. Make yourself at home. Go get some punch, okay?”

“No, he’s right I’m…not really out there…”

“First time for everything, right?” Dana held out her hand and he took it, deciding he’d be okay with dying right then and there. He floated along beside her as she led him to the punch bowl and ladled him a glass. “Just have fun, Paul.”

Yes. He was going to have fun. He didn’t dare want to let her down, and that fifteen foot walk from the foyer to the dining room was one of the greatest things that had ever happened to him. Partygoers wandered in and out around him but their voices were muffled from the pounding in his ears. The music felt miles away, at the bottom of a lake. At last he recognized someone coming towards him, an older kid named Brian who he spent most of his time with in the orchestra pit.

“Yo! You came!” Brian grinned. “No costume?”

“No time.”

“That’s cool. Hey… you want a little…excitement…” Brian whipped out a flask from his jacket, leering.

“I mean um…” Maybe it would do something with his nerves. And he didn't want to spend the rest of his life known as the fucking freshman invited out of pity. He was cool. Talented. Able to hold his liquor. He was supposed to have fun: Dana’s orders. “Um, sure.”

He tipped the punch down his throat, perhaps a little too fast. There was very little burn at all to scold him. As Brian kept talking to him, his mind kept floating away. He squeezed his eyes shut, leaned against the wall but nodded all the same like nothing was the matter. A stupid smile began to creep across his face as Ben talked and kept introducing him to the girls that wandered by. How may Poison Ivy costumes were there? At least five. Or was he meeting the same girl over and over? The red cup creaked in his hand as he held it like some sort of safety rope.

“Since dawn of time the fate of man is that of lice…” His father's voice unmistakably seethed out from the playlist. Paul looked desperately for the exit but the windows and doors swam unsteadily in front of him.

“What, you scared?” asked another girl dressed as Poison Ivy. Yes, he had seen at least three others in the past hour. “It's Ghost, you ever heard of them? You like metal?”

“HELL SATAN! ARCHANGELOOOO!”

“Yeah a little bit,” Paul said. “I don't think they're real metal.”

“His name’s Secondo, actually,” explained the kid who had attached the aux to his phone. “Yeah, he's out. His brother is in. They say now he's a…hey man what’s up with you?”

“Yeah, I know him,” Paul slurred with a slight giggle. “That's my uncle. Haven't seen him much, though.”

The kid peered suspiciously into Paul. “You…know them?”

Paul flashed a fuzzy smile and moments after speaking he wished everything was a dream. “Yeah. The guy singing. He's my dad.”

“What?” yelled the kid, and more party guests wandered over. “What, he's your dad?!”

“He uh…got sick. Retired.”

“He will ascend to the heavens! Above the stars of God! Hell Satan!”

A few phones whipped out from pockets and Paul watched in growing horror how every one of these upperclassmen started typing into search engines. A boy held out his phone and Papa Emeritus II glared out at them all. “This? This…is your dad?”

Paul smiled painfully. He decided never to drink ever again. “Yeah.”

“Yeah, I've seen him around! Holy shit!” A girl laughed and flashed another photo for them all to see: A photo of his father in shades, flanked by two women dressed as sexy nuns. “Is one of these girls your mom?”

“And he like, chops up dead bodies now,” said another kid. “You got dead grandmas in your freezer yeah?”

“Well, uh, my dad doesn't chop up the bodies, that's my mom’s job—” This was going nowhere, but the spiked punch made Paul plod on. “Yeah there's um a big difference between mortician and funeral director ya know my dad sorta just handles the documents….for the state….” He ended his statement with a careful sip.

“Holy shit this kid is a fucking riot.”

More partiers began surrounding him, and through his dizziness he was completely certain they were there to laugh at him. Voices swam in and out.

“Who’s that? Oh yeah, the gravedigger kid…”

“Wait, have you seen the music video? And your Dad was in that? Dude there were naked chicks in that video dude!”

“Yeah, uh…I guess…yeah…” Paul was ready to die. He waited for some holy lightning bolt to come down from on high, but if anyone noticed that his own mother was also featured in that video he would do the job himself.

The Aux kid was fully grinning. “That’s amazing dude, amazing, he’s literally Satan, dude—“

“He’s sorta boring, actually,” Paul threw in. His solo cup was thoroughly demolished. The sugar mixing with the alcohol was making his stomach turn. Perhaps vomiting would deflect all of this attention to the more ordinary embarrassment of destroying someone’s living room carpet.

“That means he knows spells.” Dana emerged from the shadows, flanked by some equally attractive friends. Her black lips pursed as her heavily-shadowed eyes gleamed. “If he's the devil he knows spells, right?”

“It's not real,” stammered Paul. Her gaze made him weak. “Well…it's…sorta real…”

“Real? It's all fucking real, no way! Have you seen him do spells?!”

Every morning, an odd musical chant. Every evening, another droning mantra. The man would not shut up about the weather and piles of his journals were scattered around the house. No flicks of wands or fairy dust or leaping demons. No fireballs or bursts of healing light. Just the sound of his father droning syllables and a disgusting collection of animal skulls and jars filled with rusted nails and weird smells. “Yeah, I guess…” And of course, Paul would not shut up. He could not, with how everyone was paying attention to him. He had to get out of this. And the only way out was through. “I can do them too, you know.”

***

Sandra was snuggled up on the couch with the on-call phone when Paul returned.

“How was it? So happy you went.” On the television two men chained in a filthy bathroom argued and came to the realization that yes, one of them would have to amputate.

“It was alright. Any…calls?”

“No, just little ol’ me alone,” Sandra replied, sitting up. “And Ed checking in to tell me the guys brought all the kid cousins out for a late dinner.” She rubbed her eyes, refocusing on the men screaming on the television. “The sequels didn’t compare to this one. Gratuitous. Real fear is all just head games, ya know? It’s all just…in the mind.”

“Yeah well, good night then.” Paul hugged her then walked down the hallway, glancing quickly back as he passed the door to his room and silently slipped into the office.

Secondo always kept a lamp softly illuminated in the corner. Paul moved soundlessly across the beige carpet to arrive at the TV hutch. His fingers trembled as he gently untangled the red ribbon across the knobs. Secondo was miles away surrounded by screaming children in a busy pizza place but still Paul was certain he’d hear the smallest disturbance. Maybe not his flesh and blood father but the Eye would.

The hutch opened and light shone across the crystal skull in its nest of dead flowers. The strong scent of frankincense and charcoal wafted across him, fleeing into the air like a freed spirit. In Paul’s heightened mind everything inside seemed much more foreign and terrifying than usual. Some sort of large, milk-white snake floated in a jar in the far back. There were stacks of rocks, rose petals in a stone urn before bundles of feathers arranged in a bouquet. A few mummified hawk claws hung on a string. Daggers were arranged like surgical instruments on top of a rabbit skin. A series of small journals were crammed where a VCR should go. And buried deep within, the golden goat head of Baphomet peered from behind a collection of railroad spikes, their arm raised as if scolding him for daring to do all this.

The topic of the admonishment was not necessarily betraying his father’s trust. The deepest shame the statue bestowed on Paul as he rummaged around it was the fact that all of this trespassing was done in the name of impressing some mortals the boy decided was worth the cost.

Paul knew his father barely worked with every material in his collection, but he had to make a good impression. His new friends wanted to see some magic, so a decent show of arcane wisdom was essential. He chose a thin deer’s tibia as his wand. An oddly shaped chunk of rainbow obsidian would make a decent centerpiece. He collected some chalk into his hoodie pockets along with a few dried rose petals and a black candle.

Now for the book. Paul was so distracted with worrying about his plan that he hadn’t really sat down and considered exactly what kind of magic he’d actually want to do. There were too many books on the shelves for him to skim through in the small scrap of time he had before his mother checked on him. He struggled to unwedge one of his father’s journals from the VCR shelf, and at last he had a sample of what he actually could do.

The front of the journal was dated: Oct 1999- March 2000. Inside was a mishmash of charts, sketches and the impeccable script handwriting of Secondo himself. Beautiful, but incomprehensible. Long strings of text were arranged in lattices, grids, and atop each other in a flurry of swirling ink. Some pages were perfectly mirrored, others held odd anagram symbols and ciphers.

All In all beautiful, but worthless.

There was not a whole lot of time. Dave was waiting down the street with everyone in the car and he had to think fast. Paul knew that luck and destiny were huge components to magic rituals so perhaps the book he picked out was the one that he needed to use. He’ll figure out which page later. He tucked the journal into his back jeans pocket and closed the hutch, carefully retying the red ribbon to the best of his memory. He turned to go and his father’s framed diploma fell off its nail and onto the floor.

Paul sucked in a breath. Nothing in here was an accident. Everything had magical Significance. He picked up the frame, staring past the large crack on the glass: …conferred upon MICHAEL LEIDER The degree of MORTUARY SCIENCE AND FUNERAL SERVICES. Paul returned it to its nail, apologizing to the piece of paper before sneaking out the room once more.

After climbing out his bedroom window Paul met up with the car of kids waiting for him. They squeezed him in the back between the door and an athletic junior boy, who leered at him as Paul attempted to get on his seatbelt. It was Dana’s warm smile from the passenger’s front seat that finally calmed his nerves.

“I thought you lived at the funeral home,” A boy stuffed in the opposite corner of the backseat called across the car.

The car lurched forward and Paul gave up on finding the seatbelt buckle. “Nobody lives there, my mom’s family owns the place.”

“So like, you ever see a ghost there?” The boy beside him had eager bright eyes but his breath absolutely stank.

“Well, everyone there is dead so like their soul’s moved on somewhere else so there really wouldn’t be any… y’know, ghosts—“

“Come on,” chided a kid from the hatchback trunk. He reached out and grabbed Paul by the shoulders, the other boy beside him hooting.

“Fine, yeah, I did see a ghost.” Paul’s voice was terse as he stared hard at the road. He had been mostly sober for an hour now, psychically punching himself for ever getting involved in a caper this stupid. Too late now. “It was…some old woman. By the freezers. She had old time clothes on.”

The reverent awe that descended on the kids in the car would have made a past version of himself swell with pride. But now he just felt sick.

A little too sick.

Like it? Reblog it! Thank you!

Next chapter is in comments!

#ghost band fic #domestic fic #halloween fic #papa emeritus ii #dad secondo #ghost scenes from the void #my art #anamelessfool halloween

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fushiglow · 9 months ago

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a short fic for the prompt: satosugu + first time

hope you enjoy the prelude to come get your honey. it's probably not as fluffy as you hoped, anon, i'm sorry!! satosugu trying to heal the rift using their bodies is important to the original fic, so i wanted to establish that dynamic here and i really love the result

still, thank you so much for the opportunity to return to this special fic 🫶 listen to 'my only love' by porij while reading!!

If Suguru hadn’t been awake, straining to hear them, the footsteps padding along the hallway would have been inaudible. Satoru was back late again. Blinking into the blue light of the alarm clock on his nightstand, Suguru frowned. At approaching 3am, he wondered why Satoru hadn’t simply booked a hotel. Actually, he wondered why Satoru bothered coming back to the dormitories at all these days. It certainly wasn’t to see Suguru, judging by the way he crept around the place as silently as the grave. It was a thoughtfulness Satoru only showed when he thought no one could see him. Suguru saw him though. Always had. He saw Satoru then and cursed all the times he’d pestered the boy to be more considerate of others. He wanted the Satoru from before back. He wanted the Satoru who wouldn’t have thought twice about barging into his room at some ungodly hour. He wanted the Satoru who would have crawled into bed with Suguru and held him, personal space be damned. But things had been different since the summer. There was a distance between them that hadn’t been there before, and Suguru didn’t know whether it was he or Satoru that was the cause of it. Maybe it was both. The pair of them had always been joined at the hip, closer than was perhaps typical for boys their age. Part of Suguru had always known, but he’d felt no rush to acknowledge it. After all, they were the strongest. They had all the time in the world. Until Satoru died. If Satoru hadn’t recognised the shape of the thing between them for what it was back then, Suguru knew he did now — he knew, precisely because Satoru didn’t come to his room anymore. It was such a Satoru way to care and, against his better judgement, Suguru resented it. They’d been given a second chance, so why had it driven them apart instead of together? Why, when Suguru wanted nothing more than for Satoru to be selfish, had he chosen to be selfless instead? The soft click of Satoru’s door in the hallway beyond echoed around Suguru’s brain like a gunshot. The terror of it was enough for him to decide it didn’t really matter who was at fault. A thousand nights spent staring at his bedroom door, wishing for Satoru to walk through it, wouldn’t bridge the chasm between them. If Satoru wanted to be selfless, Suguru would be selfish in his stead.

He didn’t knock; didn’t want to lose his nerve during the wait. When he opened Satoru’s door, it didn’t surprise Suguru to find the Six Eyes already locked onto him. What did surprise Suguru, however, was the rush of fiery want that burned through him at the sight of Satoru’s strong torso, all smooth planes and hard edges in the low light. It incinerated any lingering anxiety he felt. ‘Hey.’ Satoru’s voice was uncharacteristically soft, though he didn’t look the least bit ashamed by his halfway undressed state. ‘Did I wake you?’ Suguru’s gaze caught on the summer skies captured within Satoru’s eyes, twin pools swirling with concern and curiosity and something else entirely. His body moved across the room of its own accord. There was no resistance when Suguru brought his hands to those broad shoulders and pushed Satoru down onto the bed. There was no resistance when he climbed into Satoru's lap and seized that angular jaw in a bruising grasp either. Blinking up at Suguru, wide-eyed and unguarded in his awe, Satoru was unexpectedly docile. It fed shameful ideas in Suguru’s mind. He wondered if Satoru would let him take anything he wanted; if he could find the limits of this limitless boy. So, perhaps Suguru wouldn’t have said it if he cared about Satoru less than he did. 'Stop me if you don’t want me to kiss you, Satoru.’ In hindsight, he probably should have waited another moment — but Satoru’s lips fell open in a silent gasp and Suguru could resist no longer. It wasn’t Suguru’s first kiss, but he could tell it was Satoru’s. Not that it mattered when Satoru had always been a frustratingly quick learner — when he was enthusiastic enough to make Suguru preen, almost overwhelmingly eager as he grabbed at Suguru’s pyjamas, grinding their bodies together with a muffled moan. It was such a relief that Suguru couldn’t find it in him to slow things down. He chased his salvation with the same ferocity that Satoru chased whatever it was he was seeking in Suguru’s body. As they gathered speed, Suguru knew they were fooling themselves, but the thrill of falling into each other subdued all rational thought. Reaching terminal velocity, Suguru made a promise to himself. They would talk. Satoru deserved his heart and his mind as well as his body, and Suguru wanted to give it all. He wanted to give himself to Satoru entirely. Not yet though. Not when he felt happy for the first time in months. Not when it would only shatter the fragile peace he'd finally found in Satoru’s arms. They would talk. They would. Just not yet.

if you wanna submit a prompt or request, head over to my retrospring — make sure to read the guidelines first!

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haveafuckingfanfic · 4 months ago

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*Wisdom Saga Spoilers*

CW for spoilers and TW for mental health, PTSD, S1 and Su1cide.

Many people have probably touched on this, but in the last minute of the song ‘Love In Paradise’ we hear about Odysseus’ time on Calypso’s island. He clearly is still clearly struggling with the death of Telemachus and the rest of his crew.

These lines stand out to me:

“‘Odyseus?’”

“‘All I hear are screams…’”

“‘Ody, get away from the ledge.’”

“‘You don’t know what I’ve gone through! You don’t know what I’ve sacrificed! Every comrade I long knew, every friend, I saw them die! All I hear are screams...’”

“‘You will be fine dear, come back inside dear. Love of my life comeback~

‘Every time I close my eyes…’

‘~to paradise. I know your life’s been hard, I’ll stay inside~’

‘All I hear are scream!’

‘~your heart.~’

‘All I hear are screams!!~’

‘I love your mind dear, all of our time here. Life would be so much worse if you had died.~’

‘~Just let me close my eyes!’

~Please stay away from harm. Stay in my open arms.’”

Jorge captured the affects of PTSD so well. As a PTSD survivor, it hit home. The depression that sets in after a traumatic event is very intense and can be overwhelming. For survivors, we enter a stage of our bodies and minds trying to make sense and process what had happened. This is shown by the lyric above where Ody says he hears the screams of his crew over and over.

Often time we don’t understand that the event we went through was even traumatic at all. In an effort, our brains replay the events as a way for us to process it and it often just ends up causing *more* pain without proper help. Without help, we can dive into depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. This is clearly shown in Odysseus as well, since his brain isn’t processing what happened he then blames himself for the deaths of his crew and doesn’t know to how to live and cope with such a large tragedy.

This is also where the behavior of pushing others away comes in. This is a common behavior when you are depressed. It’s something that feels too large or traumatic to ‘burden’ others with. We withdraw the more our brain loops and struggles to understand.

If your brain doesn’t comprehend the trauma or make sense of it, it searches for escapes. Thus where suicidal ideation, hyper-sexuality, and self harm is introduced. It serves as a distraction, a way to cope or a way out of the pain. That’s why we find Odysseus contemplating and attempting suicide. He wants a way away from the way his mine plays and replays his trauma. He sees no other way out and is driven to the cliff. There’s a level of exhaustion that comes with constantly dealing with trauma, that exhaustion will also fuel suicidal thoughts.

And to circle back to the beginning, with PTSD survivors we experience a heightened sense of danger. Our fight or flight is on 24/7, so we will be slow to trust and quick to be on guard. Odysseus is showing these symptoms too, he does not trust Calypso and is quick to let her know that he doesn’t trust her.

So to cap this off, I feel so incredibly seen as a PTSD survivor. The things we go through when we are coping with our trauma and what comes with it are demonstrated clearly in this song. Thank you Jorge💗💗💗

#the wisdom saga #epic spoilers #ptsd #actually ptsd #si tw #tw sui ideation #suic1de #epic the musical #epic fandom #odysseus #athena #epic the wisdom saga #calypso #epic discussion #jorge rivera herrans

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sturionic · 2 months ago

Note

Yo im looking for some advice

I want to come out of my shell and start contributing more to the world around me after years of being shut down and silenced

Im not good at speaking or forming sentences in conversation or delivering my true thoughts

I want to be confident enough to speak instead of nod when peers say something to me

Its agonizing being this way. I want to do so much and i want to be a part of the community and help the people around me but that is quite difficult when i am too scared to speak or do, despite how badly i want to

I know youre just some guy but i admire your dedication and outlook. My head and heart are full of potential but something is holding me back

You dont gotta psychoanalyze me or anything but if you have anything to say id love to hear it, even if its critical

Hey anon <3

Indeed lol, I am just some guy, and I won't psychoanalyze you. But I can say one thing confidently: You being “this way” is a testament to your resourcefulness. Silence is a strategy that has worked for you at some point (and may still be useful at times in the present.) Try to see yourself this way as you read these next bits: a fundamentally resilient & resourceful person who is simply learning how to apply these tactics with more nuance.

The best analogy I’ve heard about anxiety is that it’s like driving a truck through deep snow. For whatever reason, your brain has been driving the truck down the same path over, and over, and over again. As a result, the snow on this path is compacted and very easy to drive on.

You can’t erase the path. It’s already there, and your brain knows the way well. What you can do is break a new path. It’s slow and difficult work, but eventually you can make an off-ramp from your usual highway: one that is just as smooth and wide and compacted. When you’re in a moment of profound anxiety, a split-second turn down an easy safe path is much easier than breaking new trail through dense snow.

In the context of community organizing, the way to start building off-ramps is to start very small. (Sending an ask like this is actually an incredible step to take - you made a decision to safely and deliberately seek out contact, and thank you so much for putting your trust in me there. I hope you admire yourself for it as much as I do.)

Local libraries and community centres often have low-pressure events & programs that are essentially ways to just get out and coexist with other people. Some examples I love and attend frequently: my local library’s writing sessions (sitting around a table in silence for two hours, working on whatever writing project you want) and my community centre’s ‘gardening work bees’ (same thing, but out in the garden.) Or maybe there are more activity-driven ones that will speak to your desire to help in a more tangible way: picking up litter, doing grocery runs for disabled folks, etc. The point is to get your brain to start building a path that associates other people with safety, rather than danger. Because it's fundamentally true: we're safer as part of a community.

Once you feel more up to the ‘talking’ bit of it, here’s a hot tip: start with seniors. Old people are often very lonely and have a lot of talking stored up, so socializing with seniors is easy mode: you just get to sit back and listen to a bunch of cool stories from their lives. (Little kids are exhausting but another fun socializing bet. Again: not as much talking on your end, a lot of listening, a lot of fantastic games, very safe except from small flailing limbs.)

And then you keep working your way up from there, slowly and surely building your off-ramps reinforced by safe, mutually caring, and rewarding experiences.

Let me clarify: this is critically important work, and not just as a way to build up to activities more popularly perceived as activism. Even if you’re not organizing a food drive or whatever, you are still benefitting the people around you. If you benefit from working silently next to someone at the garden, then they are also benefitting from you - just you, existing, as a quiet and unthreatening human being by their side. We all need this. This is the basis of community, and the essential building-blocks for community organizing.

I hope this helps, and my inbox is always open to you!

#asks #community #community organizing

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altschmerzes · 8 months ago

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🌹🌹 Wriggle Up and/or New York Minute pleassssse 🙏

yesssss okay new york minute has taken over my brain for a moment so i'll go with an excuse to share some of that one

('new york minute' is my first fic for the bear, btw, it is a cousin michelle from the christmas episode pov of The Whole New York Debacle. as always i am really really anxious taking my first try at character voices, and picking a pov character who is a minor side character in one (1) episode has been both freeing and anxiety provoking LMAO. so. here's this.)

(also it's.... long. we know this about me and clips.)

As soon as Carmy is under her roof, safely tucked away in her guest room, Michelle takes what feels like her first full breath in since Christmas. It’s not like everything is magically okay now - Carmy certainly isn’t okay, and he’s just one little piece of the whole fucked up puzzle, but she’s finally done something about it. Michelle has found the one piece of that puzzle that she can do anything about at all and she’s done it. That’s the part that’s driven her the most out of her mind - knowing that things need to be done, that nothing is alright in Chicago, and not knowing what to do. Who to try and help, never mind how.

Natalie has Pete and her friends from school. She’s got a home and distance and she’d mentioned while on a walk with Michelle, looking away like she wasn’t sure what the response would be, that she had started therapy after Thanksgiving. And Michael has… Well. When they talk on the phone, Natalie doesn’t have a lot to say about Michael that’s encouraging. Michelle is worried about Michael but it’s not like she can do anything about that. They were close when they were younger but the older they got and the more Donna took a shine to her the more strained her relationship with Michael got. They were a competition of their own, really, or at least a battlefield on the war between their mothers.

Grandpa Berzatto, right? Michael Berzatto. A looming figure gone before any of her generation was born, and so of course the oldest grandchild is named after him - both of them were, at the beginning and the end of the same year, one down each branch of the family tree. Michael and Michelle. They thought it was funny when they were younger. Used to tell people they were twins, when they were real little. It’s not like that anymore. At least Richie is there, though. At least Richie is always there.

Thank god for Richie, said almost no one ever and Michelle several times over the course of her life.

One time, she was seventeen and going out with a guy who was far too old for her and a massive asshole on top of that. When she finally dumped him and his reaction scared her enough to tell them what was going on, Michael and Richie got a baseball bat and a tire iron out of the garage and broke every window and light cover on the guy’s car. Richie took one of the pieces from the tail-light to wood shop class the next day and while the teacher was off making sure some sophomores didn’t lose any fingers using a table saw, he sanded down the edges and put a hole through it, then gave it to her on a keychain. Michelle still has it somewhere. Michelle still has that keychain somewhere and Richie still has Michael and so that’s one thing she doesn’t have to worry about not being able to fix.

So there’s nothing to do for any of them, because Natalie is going to be okay in ways that even Michelle isn’t, and Michael is out of her reach, and Donna is out of everyone’s reach. (Donna needs help. She’s obviously suffering and needs some serious help, but Michelle learned long ago with her own mother that there’s no forcing help on someone who won’t accept it and will stop speaking to you for months if you try to push it anyway.)

But Carmy… Carmy is in her guest room and it’s still pretty early but she thinks he’s asleep and this she can do. This, him, Michelle can help.

(Michael caught her on the way out, when she and Stevie were leaving. She was worried for a moment, because he had that intense look on his face that meant trouble could be coming, and when he said heard you asked Carm to come stay with you for a few days in New York she steeled her nerves for one last explosion for the road. Michael was silent and Michelle was silent and he still had a hold of her arm but he wasn’t squeezing or anything so she let him keep his hand for now. And then he just said Good. Get him the fuck out of here and do not let him come back. Then he gave her a hug so tight she couldn’t breathe and kissed her on the cheek and said love you, Mitch and he was gone.)

#there is so much like. woe. this VAST NETWORK OF HEADCANONS IVE DEVELOPED be upon ye #in this fic #about the specifics of like. how is cousin michelle related to them. what's their relationship like. did they grow up together etc.#gav gab #gav answers #define-lying #writing liveblog #ask box games #fic: new york minute

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soobrat · 4 months ago

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this isn't whining, this is an explanation and a request for information. if not, I may not be active anymore

So recently I've become a more disciplined and driven person. If you don't know, I'm in college and I have a job. I've recently realized my dream and have set aside hours of my time to dedicate to it. I've also put more time towards things like skincare and exercise and meditation etc. Why am I saying this? Because after hours of productivity, I have a gap. Free hours where I don't have anything that needs to be done. This is where I decide to write for you guys. And every time I do, I wonder if it's a good use of my time. I wonder if I should use that little time for video games instead.

You are free to ignore this, but just being transparent, that makes it more possible that I don't log in again. I used to be afraid of addressing this head on as to not offend or upset you guys, but honestly vitriol and annoyance would be better than the embarrassing silence I'm met with. This isn't coming from high levels of emotion, I'm actually very calm and kind of excited to finally get this off my chest. These are just the facts of what's going on in my brain.

If you just want to know what to do to guarantee I'll stay, scroll to the bottom of this. If you don't care that much, that's cool too.

I'm working on Mosquito part three because I realize it's been much too long since it's been updated. I'm busy, but still. And I can't even have fun with the story I admittedly really like because the entire time I'm overthinking. You see, when a story doesn't get notes, that in itself isn't the problem. The problem is what's in between the lines. Did this not get notes because people didn't like it? Does this topic bore them? Do they not like idol/celebrity aus? And while I'm writing, I can't stop nitpicking what I think is causing the eerie silence.

I used to be spoiled. Fics like loosen up, brat/slut, oblivious were very well received. I would be reblogging feedback constantly, see notes fill up my notification center, I would get the message. I did take a lengthy hiatus and stopped updating as fast, but when I finally came back, people would never guess my follower count by my engagement.

Don't be fooled though, this number has been hovering around this for possibly a year, maybe even longer. It dips and then rises by a few and then dips again. Repeat. I started to think that this just wasn't a lot of followers. In the grand scheme of things, it ain't. But then I look on my dash and see a writer thank their readers for 300 followers. I click on their page and a fic they posted yesterday have ONE HUNDRED times more notes than a fic I posted several months ago. And it's not just a fluke, most of their fics are this way. People who have been writing as long as I have and have a similar follower count (I assume) have very high note counts as well. Some of them even have spotty posting schedules and have had lengthy hiatuses.

Again, I want to stress that this isn't coming from heightened emotions or jealousy. Honestly it's mostly confusion. Wondering if I did something wrong. The closest I've gotten to getting emotional is with the embarrassment. I see other creators get flooded with asks and response to their normal posts just talking about their day. And when I do it, radio silence. Again, this sometimes happens with writers with a fraction of my follower count.

I'll make a confession. I have been sending myself anon asks. Which ones are me? That's for sherlock holmes to deduce. Why did I do it? I've already admitted it, it's embarrassment. I feel embarrassed when I post something and am met with crickets. I honestly feel pathetic.

I am diagnosed with anxiety so I'll chalk up the following to that: I have come to the conclusion that I annoy you guys. Even that I annoy other writers since I don't have many writer friends on here. It's gotten to the point where I feel like every interaction I make with anyone on this website in any way is annoying someone. When I changed my theme and no one commented on it at all, My mind automatically went to "God the theme is obnoxious and embarrassing" and I already want to change it despite all the time I put into it.

Can you see now why I dread opening up Tumblr? I dread opening up docs of my fics for this reason. Idk how to transition so I'll just pivot to my next point.

My fics have a head scratching amount of notes. This started around when I posted Industry Babies and Amusement, when I was genuinely shocked by the lack of notes. I stopped Mortal Sin out of embarrassment because I posted a part and it only had ONE note for DAYS. Let me show you the best performing recent fic:

This is Mosquito pt. 1. I'm very proud of this! It made me so eager to continue the series. In hindsight, this is still a negligible amount of notes, and a chunk of these are ICYMI reblogs from me, but I'm still happy about it. Here's part two even with a lot of ICYMI reblogs:

I'll be honest, this was a head scratcher. This has barely budged since then, too. The message I ultimately received is that people won't read if there is 0 smut. Well? That fucking sucks because this is a slow burn fic! And honestly I don't want to throw in Soobin randomly fucking random girls just so people will read.

I also recently posted the final part of FUML. Final parts always get the most notes (I always assumed people just skipped to the last part which always perplexed me) and here's how that did (with ICYMI reblogs):

This is so so good and I'm so grateful. And it got a lot of notes very fast.

Now I did two requested fics, mind you this is the amount of notes they got with NO ICYMI reblogs:

Now, I'm about to say that this is pretty damn good, because I actually think so and I'm thankful for it. But every so often I kinda sit there and think about how it feels like I'm begging for pocket change. This feels so conceited and ungrateful of me. But remember, the reason why we're even talking about this is because my time has become a lot more valuable, and to be frank, the notes are making writing fanfics seem like a bad way to spend my time.

I'll be sad to go, but after all this, you have to understand while I'm hesitant to stay. I'd have to be a narcissist to think anyone actually sat and read through all this so I'll do a little TL/DR:

The lack of engagement has changed from a little disappointing to mixed signals being sent about what you guys want (hence all the polls)

The lack of banter and casual asks or just engagement to my casual posts has made me a little embarrassed compared to writers with similar follower counts or less followers

The simple act of not liking a post affects the overall notes and can harm the chances of a fic being posted, or send a message about what you want to see

I get the unreasonable feeling I annoy you guys and other writers so frankly it makes opening tumblr or interacting with this blog in any way just. not. fun.

I forgot to add this in the doc but to be frank (again), it kind of annoys me to see a fic get little to no interaction, and then I reblog a picture of an idol and all of a sudden my followers are acting. Juuuust being honest.

As a reader who doesn't want to see you go, what can I do?

Be honest! Now, I'm not asking for lengthy dissertations on why my writing is bad. I'm not looking for writing criticism. What I am looking for is for the people who are silent readers or just straight up scroll past what I post, tell me why. Don't be afraid to hurt my feelings. Is it my posting schedule (or lack thereof)? Is it because you just don't feel the same as you did when you read my older stuff? Or do you just never bother with pressing the buttons? The silence is worse than whatever you have to say.

Let me know that you always press like on my fics, but are just a bit shy and don't like leaving comments or asks. This is totally fine by the way, knowing you exist is enough.

Be more active from now own, reply to posts, send asks, reblog and just keyboard smash in the replies. ANYTHING is good. Don't take this as me scolding you, just as a suggestion in case you wanted to know how to help.

I won't be sending myself anons anymore (yeah... if you missed that, scroll up the the indented section) so if you see my blog in it's natural dead state, disrupt the deadness! You'll actually make my day.

If this flops, I'll still proooobably use my main acc. But honestly I'll probably just be on my poll acc (@kpolls ) because it's actually really fun lol. See you all on the flip side!

Mal

#txt #nct #kpop #smut #stray kids #anon #kpop smut #the boyz #angst

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mydisenchantedeulogy · 4 months ago

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Where the Tainted Kiss [Chapter Twenty-five] Head or Heart [Vaas Montenegro]

A/n: I am so very sorry for how long it took me to write this. I've rewritten this chapter so many times, it's driven me insane. Honestly, I'm still not happy with it, but it turned out better than my other outlines. Please enjoy.

Thank you all who have been patient and supportive of this story.

Warning(s): Vaas being Vaas, guns, anxiety, blood, death, fear, OC, mixed emotions, breakdown, language, threats, tears.

No Minors Allowed!!

At the first sound of gunfire, Olivia McKenna jerked awake in a panic, sitting up so fast that for a moment her brain felt like a bowl of soup. Her heart was racing. Liv darted her eyes around the crate, searching for the source of the noise, but of course, she could not see much. One thing she did find strange was that the door was ajar. But why?

She remembered staying up late with Vaas as he confided in her about Jason; about how one or the other was destined for death. Liv recalled her revelation, staring down at the man who kidnapped her, whose insanity infected her like a virus. But then what? The joint relaxed her enough to fall asleep. She drifted off, leaning against the wall of the crate as Vaas rested on her thighs. He must have moved her when he left.

How sweet of him.

Liv turned up her eyes, ran a hand over her face, and then tottered to the opening of the crate. As she peeked out, expecting to see the interior of the red shipping door, she was shocked to see the courtyard instead. It was still dark out, and yet the compound was strangely empty. Open wooden crates were lying around, and a bonfire raging, reaching high into the starlit sky as though everyone packed up and left in a hurry. Liv was bewildered.

She stepped out and crept down the ramp, anxious that she was going to get caught, but no one even uttered a word. Then Liv noticed why. Shoved beside the corner of the building and a crate was the body of a pirate. At first, she thought he was asleep, drunk, or high, but she noticed bullet holes in the building and upon closer investigation, she noticed blood staining his red shirt.

Before she could make heads or tails of the discovery, she heard gunshots in the distance. Her heart began to race.

"But I feel it right fucking here. This feeling in my chest tells me that he is coming for me."

Jason. Could it be him?

Liv squatted beside the crate, listening to the chaos that was unfolding across the compound. It felt like she was in the middle of a battlefield, regarded as a prisoner of war, or worse, one of the enemies. Reaching up to her neck, her fingers brushed the torn grimy cloth, and in fear of being mistaken for a pirate and shot down, she untied it and tossed it to the ground. For a moment, she felt free, but that meant nothing if she could not escape.

The front gate was closed, likely locked up tight. So how did the Rakyat - or Jason - get inside? A hole in the border, perhaps. Liv groaned. It would be too much of a risk to run through the warzone in search of it, especially when she did not even know if it existed or not. To make matters worse, as she mulled over her options, a fire had broken out in the adjacent buildings. The gunfight was getting closer to her.

The main gate. I don't have much of an option.

The console was inside one of the buildings, she knew. It was the only way to unlock the front gate. But she feared what lay in wait for her. Would the Rakyat consider her friend or foe? They left her to the mercy of the jungle once; they might just shoot her this time. Like it or not, she was alone.

It's fine. I can do this. Find the panel; find the way out.

She would figure out the details of her way back to the mainland afterward. Liv took an uneasy breath and peered into the wooden crate. It was empty aside from some foam inserts, but the dead pirate had a 1911 semi-automatic lying near him. It would do. Having a gun was better than not having one. Liv reached for it, but no sooner had she grabbed it, had a loud unexpected voice startled her.

“Jason, look at you. I mean look at you.”

Vaas. Her blood ran cold. Where was he? It sounded like his voice was coming from all around her. A PA system no doubt. He must have still been inside the building she wandered from.

“Stupid motherfucking white boy. You come here in MY fucking jungle and you think you’re a fucking warrior. You think you know what it takes to kill?”

Liv tightened her jaw. Warrior this, warrior that; he was obsessed with the notion. What bullshit did Citra fill his head with? And then there was Jason. He was falling down the same rabbit hole into madness, chasing the same ridiculous concept.

Checking the magazine to make sure it had bullets, she took an uneasy breath. Of course, she would have to face Vaas to open the door; it was like a damn video game. Liv was getting pretty fucking sick of being yanked around. If push came to shove, then she was ready. She turned and darted back into the storage building, ignoring the crate, and rounded the corner into the room with the abandoned cars. There was a set of grated stairs that she had not noticed before when Vaas brought her in. They lead up to what she hoped was the control room.

Liv crept up the stairs, gun positioned down with the safety off, making it to the top and around the corner before someone grabbed her from behind. She squeaked in fear, attempting to turn around, but a throaty laugh made her halt.

“¡Mierda (shit)! What the hell are you doing outside your crate?” Carlos asked.

He released her, and Liv swung around to face him. Her first thought was to shoot him, but he did not seem hostile. His gun was at his side, so she too kept hers down. If she could go about this peacefully, then she would.

“The door was open,” she admitted.

Carlos grunted in annoyance, cursing beneath his breath.

“We are getting our asses mowed down out there.”

Liv gave him a look as if to say ‘And I should care, why’? She was not in the least bit sympathetic.

“Is it the Rakyat?”

“Snow fucking White,” Carlos answered.

One man was causing so much chaos? Liv could not believe that. There was no way he could have survived the things he had.

“I'm in Hell. I have to be.”

Carlos snorted. “It was all good until you came along, gringa (foreigner). Un paraíso (a paradise).”

She was sure it was. Liv merely flipped him the bird, then peered down the hall. There was a door at the end, propped open, but she could not see what was inside. Carlos mistook her curiosity for concern.

“Worry about yourself, princesa (princess). This fight isn't yours.”

So, he was down there, waiting for Jason. Liv bit back a rude remark. It was her fight though. She was as much involved as Jason was, maybe even more. Just because she did not have any friends left to save did not mean she didn't have any to avenge. Tightening her grip on the gun, she tightened her jaw.

“He might die, might not, is all I'm saying. But you won't be the one to pull the fucking trigger,” Carlos stated. “As much as he likes you, he won't let you intervene in this fight. It's beyond the two of us.”

“This warrior shit again,” Liv snarled.

Fuck it.

“What then?”

“We'll wait it out. Vamos entonces (Come on then). Before someone puts a bullet in your ass,” Carlos suggested.

It took Liv a moment to realize what he meant, and as much as she wanted to see the confrontation, she knew he was right. Vaas would kill her before he ever let her take away his moment with Jason.

"He's coming, querida (darling). We are the same, he and I. It can only fucking end when one of us is truly dead."

She sighed. Was he warning her? Or saying goodbye. In the end, she reluctantly chose to follow Carlos and let fate do as it intended to. If Vaas died, she was finally free. A part of her, however, was wailing, begging for him to live.

Carlos led Liv downstairs and back to the crate, to her dismay, closing the door. So long as the bar was not pulled down, the crate would remain unlocked and could be opened from the inside. Quietly the two waited in anticipation, hearing nothing for a while, until rushed footsteps broke the uncomfortable silence. Even though she did not need to, Liv held her breath until the footsteps receded.

Then what she heard next could only be described as utter chaos. Jason began to shout, saying things that made no sense to her. He rambled like a madman, then the bullets began to fly. He went through an entire clip of a machine gun, halted, then began to fire again. How many bullets was he going to waste? Was he even hitting anything? All Liv could picture was Jason in a Stormtrooper uniform failing to hit anything. As comical as the image was, she could not muster a smile. Her nerves were too screwed up. By the time it was over, she for some reason felt sick to her stomach. The outcome was weighing on her like a wet blanket.

Waiting for what felt like an hour, Liv nearly gasped in fear when Carlos yanked the latch up and opened the door. It made such a loud squeak that her ears rang. He held up his hand to halt her, peeked outside, then motioned for her to follow him. She did not know if she wanted to. With a deep breath, she tottered outside the crate for the last time and into the warehouse. Carlos went right, so she followed him.

The air was stagnant with the scent of gunpowder, growing stronger as Liv ascended the stairs. She noticed holes in the walls, holes that were not there earlier, diverting her attention only when the toe of her shoe hit something at the top where Carlos had first snuck up on her. It was a used 1ml syringe. She curled her nose in disgust, ignored it, and walked behind the brute down the hallway to the room at the end. The two hesitantly entered. Even if he did not seem to care, Carlos let out a groan of remorse at what he saw.

“Fóllame (fuck me). Hand of fate, you crazy motherfucker.”

What did he mean? Liv shoved past him, seeing both Vaas and Jason on the floor. Neither of them were moving, but only Vaas had blood around him. She could not believe it.

“A-are they dead?” She asked.

Carlos checked on Vaas first, pressing his fingers against the pulse point at his wrist. He groaned, then went to check on Jason. As he did, Liv hesitantly wandered over to the former, staring down at him. She gently nudged his arm, but he did not move.

He's dead, isn't he?

Tears stung her eyes. She was not sure if she was crying because it was over or because she didn't want him to die. Either reason she believed. She stared at Vaas long enough in a zoned-out state that when she heard Carlos curse beneath his breath, she swore he tightened his jaw. Liv glanced over at the brute to see him raise his 44 magnum and point the barrel at Jason, who was holding a tribal knife in one hand; half of the blade was covered in blood.

“What are you doing?” She asked in a raspy voice.

“Finishing him off,” Carlos answered. “The fucker is still breathing.”

Jason was alive. Liv widened her glossy eyes.

“Why? He won. Vaas is dead.”

What sense did it make to kill him now? Revenge. She took a step toward him to stop him, content with using the gun if she had to, but a hand weakly grabbed her leg. Liv squeaked in surprise, glancing down to see that Vaas had moved.

“So quick to…count me out, no?”

How was he alive? For a moment, Liv was relieved, but then the feeling was replaced with an extreme sensation of anger.

No. No…no.

Raising the gun, her hands trembled. She pointed the barrel at him, but instead of anger or shock, Vaas simply grinned.

“I always knew those fucking tears were genuine. From the heart, yeah?”

Tears. Liv almost did not hear Carlos shout for her to stop, lost in her thoughts. What tears?

Lying on his back, Vaas weakly raised his hands to his head, lifting his fingers to give the impression that he had horns.

“Monstruo (monster).”

“I'm not a fucking monster…I'm not.”

“I don't w-want you to die. Please stop…please.”

Liv tensed.

“Shut up. Just shut your fucking mouth,” she hissed.

Why did he bring that up? Why did it matter? Liv placed both her hands around the gun, begging herself to prove him wrong, but the barrel of a 44 magnum touched the back of her head and she froze.

“This won't save you, puta (bitch),” Carlos sneered. “You pull the trigger and you will die right here.”

“Ey fucker!” Vaas shouted. He motioned with his hand for Carlos to put the gun down. “Don't interrupt. The grown-ups are talking.”

What sort of game was he playing? Did he not think she would do it? Liv tightened her jaw.

“It takes a monster to kill a monster,” she uttered.

He laughed weakly.

“And you are that fucking monster, huh?” Before she could answer, Vaas did it for her. “No, not you, querida (darling). You aren't like me.”

Even with a gun pointed at him, he was still underestimating her resolve.

“You don't know a damn thing about me, Vaas.”

“Show me,” Vaas ordered. “You want to be a monster. ¡Muéstrame! ¡Vamos! (Show me! Come on)!”

Liv tightened her jaw in irritation. She was not afraid of him, but her hands trembled. Tears slid down her heated cheeks and her stomach churned. Vaas was right here; he was on death's door. He was at her mercy, and yet she was hesitant for some reason. Her time on the island crossed her mind like a reel of memories, silent yet nonetheless intense.

She hated to admit it, but she was drawn to Vaas in more ways than she should be. It was a terrible realization, even more so when she realized that he walked her through her trauma. She forgave herself; she let her dad go. Her lip began to tremble. He was right, she was not a monster. Perhaps it was in her eyes; eyes that stung with tears as she tried to force herself to be like him, just as Jason had.

“You bastard,” she sobbed.

The gun felt like a weight in her hand, growing heavier and heavier as her strength failed her. Liv realized it was easy to set herself up in that mindset; that she had to kill Vaas to be free, but she could not go through with it. Her morals would not let her take his life, even after everything she went through. She slowly dropped to her knees, letting the heavy gun slide to the floor in front of her. No matter how hard she tried to get her feelings together, she couldn't.

Wiping away her tears, she glanced at Vaas to gauge his expression, but to her shock, his eyes were closed and his body was still. Liv could tell based on the shallow breaths that he took that he was still alive; he had merely passed out. The fucker. He did not get to make her feel this way and then pass out. An air of annoyance washed over her and like the flip of a switch, she lunged at him, straddling his waist. Despite Carlos’ protests, she drew back her arm, tightened her hand into a fist, and punched Vaas in the chest.

Her wrath knew no bounds. Liv did not care where she hit, so long as her fist made contact with the man below her, stopping only when she missed and struck the floor beside his head.

“Fuck!” She shouted.

Her hand was covered in Vaas’ blood and her knuckles burned. If anything, it just made her more angry that he was not awake to listen to her.

“You psycho fuck,” she wept. Reaching down, she buried her fingers in his shirt. “Wake up. You have no idea what you've done…what hell you've put me through. I want–”

A fresh bout of sobs wracked her. For a moment, she could not speak. No matter how hard she tried, nothing came out but her cries. Liv did not find her voice again until Carlos slid his hands beneath her arms in an attempt to move her.

“Don't fucking touch me!” She lashed out, jerking away from him.

She wasn't done, but Carlos did not care. He jerked her up, holding her back.

“Calm the fuck down. He can't hear you. You're acting loca (crazy). Breathe.”

For fucks sake. She was having a mental breakdown, wasn't she? Liv took a deep uneasy breath, but it did little to calm her trembling body. She supposed she did look crazy, attacking an unconscious man who was bleeding out.

“Are you good?” Carlos asked.

Honestly, no. Liv shook her head, but luckily he let her go. She watched as he walked over to Vaas and began to strip him of his tank top, using a knife from his boot to tear the fabric. As he was wrapping the strips across Vaas’ abdomen where he had been stabbed, she heard the sound of footsteps smacking against the grated walkway outside.

A moment later, Yada stumbled in, holding his hand over a wound on his side.

“Fuck me,” he uttered, taking in the scene before him.

His eyes met Livs for a moment as though he was debating her involvement before Carlos shouted for him to help.

“He's bleeding out. We need to take him to the Doctor.”

Doctor E.

“Will he make it that far?” Yada asked.

“The fuck if I know,” Carlos retorted.

Yada cursed beneath his breath and helped him lift Vaas, supporting his weight.

“And Snow White. He alive too?”

Liv darted her eyes to Jason, then back to Carlos, giving him a pleading look that said ‘Leave him be. Please’. He thankfully listened.

“We need to go. This place is fucked.”

She considered staying behind. The island would no doubt be liberated by the Rakyat and in a few hours it would be swarming with them, but she was not sure she could trust them. The sad truth was that she trusted the pirates more. Liv swallowed hard. She had a choice to make.

Glancing around the room for the first time, she noticed a control panel in the center with multiple TV screens surrounding it. Some of them were broken, riddled with gunshot holes, but she could make out sections of the compound. One of them pointed at her shipping crate. Liv snorted, then walked over to the panel to look it over. There were a series of buttons; one of them read ‘main’. She pressed it down, then turned. A shelf in the corner of the room held multiple items, one of which was a can of red spray paint. An idea came to mind.

Before she left, taking her gun with her, she sprayed a message on the floor for Jason to see. ‘Break the Cycle’. She opted not to leave her name. After all Olivia McKenna was meant to be dead.

Hurrying outside, Liv was pleased to see that Carlos and Yada had not yet left her. They had loaded Vaas into a Scavenger with an open trunk bed and were talking to another pirate who had somehow managed to live. By the time she made it over, he walked away, heading back into the compound.

“There are others?”

“A few. With Vaas on the verge of death, we need to step back and take a look at the damage. Go into hiding,” Carlos answered honestly. He paused for a moment, then sighed. “You coming, princesa (princess).”

Honestly, she had nowhere else to go. There was a chance Vaas would pull through and there was something she wanted to tell him. She hoped that she would not come to regret this.

“For now. I need to see if he lives or not,” Liv retorted.

Her answer was cynical, but Carlos could respect her resolve. He nodded, then motioned for her to get into the Scavenger. Liv sat up front while Yada sat in the bed with Vaas. They planned to take a patrol boat to the north island, and then drive to the doctor's house. She knew nothing beyond that.

For the most part, the trip was safe. Carlos stayed in contact with an unnamed pirate who had eyes on the roads. A large handful of territories had been liberated and were now taken over by the Rakyat, but there were still pirates hidden about, lying low. By the time they reached the Doctor's house, the sun had risen. Liv slid out of the front seat and stretched her sore back. She was exhausted, both mentally and physically, but felt slightly better after her breakdown.

The house the Doctor lived in was gorgeous. It looked like a mansion compared to the shacks on the island. There was even a greenhouse situated to the side, where the Doctor himself emerged moments later, swaying a bit.

“This is…a pleasant surprise I must say,” he stated, as she and Carlos approached. “Am I hallucinating?”

Liv raised a brow. One hard look and she realized that he was high. His blue eyes were glassy and his pupils were dilated.

“Jefe (boss) is in the back. He was stabbed,” Carlos told him, ignoring his question.

Doctor E sucked in air between his teeth.

“A patch-up. I'll go grab my bag, wherever I might have left it.”

Liv was in disbelief. This was Doctor E? An elderly, unkempt man who seemed to sample a bit too much of his product. She waited until he strode away before she turned to Carlos.

“Are you sure about him?”

“He works better when he's high,” Carlos simply answered.

Whatever. It was not her life that was on the line. She sat down on the front porch out of the way while Doctor E, who later she learned was called Alec Earnhardt, attempted to save Vaas. He managed to stop the bleeding and sew him up, but he had lost quite a bit of blood, which with a transfusion might save him. It was honestly up to him now.

Liv thought in some cliche manner that her blood would be needed, but luckily Doctor Earnhardt had it handled. Vaas was, ironically, a regular blood donor. In a place like the Rook Islands, she reckoned giving blood was not a terrible idea. It was more weird that the old man kept the bags in his fridge next to his produce.

A short while later, Doctor Earnhardt joined her on the porch, cleaning the blood from his hands with a wash rag.

“Are you hurt?” He asked.

Liv hummed, then realized that he meant the blood on her hands and clothes.

“It's not mine.”

She reckoned that he was used to such remarks, or he simply did not care, because he said nothing in return. He was silent, watching the pirates talk amongst themselves, then turned his eyes to Liv again.

“You don't belong here miss, not with these chaps.”

He was right. She didn't.

“Neither do you, by the sound of it,” Liv retorted.

She was referring to his accent. He sounded like he was from somewhere in Europe, Britain most likely.

Doctor Earnhardt snorted softly. “I'm right where I am meant to be, I assure you.”

Liv was not sure what he meant. She watched him faintly smile, then walk back into the house. If she had known that this was the first and last time she would talk to him, she would have asked him to come with her, though she doubted that he would have followed.

Walking down to the Scavenger, she crawled into the front seat, taking a look back at Vaas. He looked like he was in an eternal conflict with himself. His brows were knitted, eyes darting back and forth beneath his lids. Liv wondered if he was dreaming. Whatever was going on inside his mind must have been chaotic. If only she knew.

The sound of the door coming open turned her attention to Carlos who sat behind the wheel.

“What now?” She asked.

“We lay low for a while. Fuera de la red (off the grid). Then we will see,” he answered.

Liv hummed. Reaching over to the radio, she cut it on, surprised to hear ‘Mama Morenita’ playing. An air of nostalgia washed over her.

“Mama Morenita is the best song on the radio, no?”

Carlos snorted and started the engine. Vaas would agree.

#vaas montenegro x oc #oc #far cry 3 fandom #far cry 3 fanfiction #vaas montenegro

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