#the final chapters part 1

[missbingu]

Hange is one badass and fearless woman. She took several colosal titans out to give time to the scouts. She really went in a blaze of glory.

[pastafossa]

Haunted (Matt Murdock x TRT!Reader, Fic, SFW)🌧️

Right, so close to 3 years ago, I had an ask in my box: 'what would happen if TRT!Reader/Jane Hind lost her memory just before returning to Matt after her three months away', aka: just before point where they both confessed their love and got together in mainline TRT. So I wrote up a fairly angsty, no happy ending sort of fic about it, which you can find here. But there just felt like there was more to the story, and the idea of a sequel wouldn't leave me alone, so I've worked on it in little bits and pieces over the past few years and I'm finally ready to unleash that into the world now that it's been edited to my satisfaction.

This will have a happy ending and hurt/comfort, once we swim through a lot of Matt Suffering. <3 Ship: Matt Murdock x F!Reader

Chapter Summary:

Leaving him like that shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did. You didn’t know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldn’t glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it.  He… shouldn’t have been alone. That was wrong, somehow.  There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that… that you’d made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting.  Matt was alone.  You’d left him alone.  It was the right choice, one you’d made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back. So… why did you feel so very sick?

Wordcount: 11, 805 words so, hilariously, about 3 times the length of Part 1

Warnings for this chapter: angst, alcohol, matt spiraling fairly badly, he throws some things, LOTS of TRT references and spoilers so I wouldn't do this one unless you've finished the Miami arc in TRT.

Sad Matt gif as a reminder that the angst is pretty heavy here because I'm really going to emotionally beat on this poor man for a bit.

At Ciro’s insistence, you gave yourself one month in Hell’s Kitchen. 

A month wasn’t much time, granted, but it would hopefully be enough to see if there was a chance of bringing back the memories you’d lost: memories of friends, of your life here, and of… of whatever it was that you’d had with Matt Murdock. Based on his grief over the loss of Jane Hind—not you, but her surely, the role, the mask you’d worn while here—his attachment to her had been deep and fervent, and those feelings appeared to have been at least partly reciprocated. The dangerously intimate photo you’d found in your memory box was all the proof you needed of that. 

Your past self had already been accustomed to his touch when the photo was taken, based on the way she’d allowed him to press his head tenderly to her temple, his dark eyes warm and fond as he'd smiled in her direction even if he couldn't see her, his arm draped over her shoulders. She should have been put off by the proximity, by such a blatant show of physical intimacy, but instead of looking distressed, she’d been relaxed and comfortable where she’d confidently tucked herself up against his side. Try as you might, you hadn’t been able to find any hint of discomfort, any clue that signaled the obvious affection she’d felt was an act, her shoulder angled in a way that made you think she’d wrapped her arm comfortably around his waist, her grin bright and so very real.

This couldn’t be you.

When was the last time you'd looked that happy?

When was the last time you’d let someone hold you close? 

And when was the last time someone had looked at you like… like they might… 

“Did I… love him, Ciro?”

“I believe that… you might have, yes. Him, and this city. That is why I encourage you to stay, for a time at least. See if the memories return to you. Even should you leave, it would be wise to know of the life you led here.”

Ciro had sent a check to your office, booking you for the month and clearing your schedule. Just like that, you were free to focus on looking for something that might trigger the return of your memories. Though what that something might be, you weren’t really sure. A more thorough examination of the apartment had been your first step. Unfortunately, there’d been nothing there that seemed familiar beyond the same cheap decor and calculated set pieces you’d always used. You’d quickly ruled those out. They were meaningless distractions meant to reinforce the lie of whatever pre-planned identity you’d taken on. In this case, that identity was Jane Hind—practical, professional, detached, likes sailboat paintings and the color grey. Based on the fine layer of dust you'd found coating everything but the kitchen counter and a neat stack of mail, no one else had spent much time here during your months away. That, at least, fit your pattern. You weren’t in the habit of making friends or putting down roots. There was no point in doing so when you’d just wind up cutting them loose and running again. 

What had unsettled you far more were the hints of connection you’d found quietly tucked away:

A fleecy stuffed bear holding a plush crystal ball, the threads connecting the two uneven as if hand-stitched. That kind of time and effort wouldn’t have been spent on anyone but a friend, and the bear’s prominent position on the counter lent it far more importance than any of the other decorations.

A tacky ‘Handsome Devil’ coffee mug, the curling red script and clichéd devil horns design bizarrely out of place amongst the rest of the plain white mugs in the cupboard. An identity like Jane Hind wouldn’t have been caught dead drinking from it, which meant someone else was here with enough regularity to have a mug of their own. Further digging revealed a second decorated mug, this one adorned with the name of the law firm co-run by Matt. You could have written off one mug, but two? Two was a pattern.

An entire drawer in the dresser devoted solely to a pile of dangerously soft shirts that clearly didn’t belong to Jane Hind, the fabric threadbare and worn. They looked about the right size to be Matt’s, though, the faint traces of scent a match for him. The fact that they took up an entire drawer indicated he’d visited often enough to need a space for his clothes. 

You’d… made space for him in your false life. That wasn’t something you did.

Or had you been the one wearing them? 

Maybe…?

You’d spent a long moment holding one of the shirts in your hand, rubbing at the fabric in hopes of stirring something. When that hadn’t worked, you’d even brought it up to your nose to inhale slowly, just in case the traces of scent brought some memory back. 

Clean soap. Salt. Copper. Faint cinnamon. 

All it had done was remind you of holding a grieving Matt in his kitchen after he’d realized your memories weren’t coming back. It was a gloomy enough memory, but ultimately unhelpful.

You'd tossed the old shirt on top of the dresser and moved on. 

While you didn’t know who exactly you’d been here in New York, the longer you searched, the more it became clear what had happened. You’d started to slip, your years of isolation forming a crack in your layers of armor. That fracture had allowed an attachment to form, an insidious connection worming its way in through the open gap like poisonous roots through crumbling pavement. You’d grown weak, and careless. There was no other explanation for why you’d broken so many of your rules, dominoes tipping one by one until it cascaded into a waterfall of mistakes. You’d slipped before, of course—loneliness was natural and expected, which was why you had so many contingencies—but you’d never let yourself get in this deep. Not until now. 

What you didn’t know was… 

Why?

Why here? 

Why these people? 

And why the fuck hadn’t you followed your rules and run? 

If there was an answer to be found in Jane Hind’s apartment, you couldn’t seem to find it, no matter how hard you look, no matter how many of her belongings you dug through. Even your memory box had failed you, the photo of you and Matt at the back of your stack of pictures an outlier you couldn’t explain, this fruit of an as-yet unidentified poisonous tree. You had no real leads, no faint ringing of memory to guide you beyond a vague sense that, somehow, this started with Matt. You didn’t even know where to begin. 

At least, not until some shaggy-haired guy named Foggy—what the fuck kind of nickname was that?—showed up entirely and rudely unannounced at your front door, dressed in a cheap suit and wearing a bizarrely determined look. Despite your doubts, you reluctantly allowed him in. He made it pretty clear he knew you, and if you were lucky he could tell you more about your life here.

“So I know you usually skedaddle when things get uncomfortable, which I imagine they are at the moment. How long are you trying to stay?” 

“One month.” You shrugged casually, a cover for just how warily you were watching him as he paced in your—in Jane Hind’s living area. He knew far more about you than you knew about him, a reversal you were uncomfortably aware of. That vulnerability was almost enough to trigger a retreat beneath that cold, brittle shell you’d used long ago, though you quickly caught hold of that instinct and buried it back down deep where it belonged. Still, you couldn’t quite hide the cool clip to your voice, your walls firmly in place. “Leaving after that. Don’t see the point in staying if the memories are gone. Truthfully I’m not sure why I stayed in the first place, especially once it was clear I was getting attached. No offense.” 

“None taken, my hopefully-still-friend-when-your-memories-come-back.” He abruptly swiveled on his feet to face you, squinting at you thoughtfully. “How badly do you want your memories back?” 

You thought of out-of-place mugs and hand-stitched psychic teddy bears; of faint cinnamon and a worn photo frame; of the way you’d held a broken Matt in his kitchen until he’d carefully pushed you away and asked you to leave, his face closed off and distant despite the tears on his cheeks and yours. 

You’d… been someone here. Someone cared for. Someone whose loss was mourned.  

Even if you left, you needed to know just who that someone had been, if only so you could make sure this never happened again. Not until you reached your island in the sun. 

“Badly enough to stay for the month,” you said quietly. 

“Then put some shoes on. We’re going on a memory hunt.”

Over the next few weeks, Foggy took you all over Hell’s Kitchen. 

You visited Jane Hind’s office, abandoned warehouses, and empty rooftops covered in thick blankets of snow. He reintroduced you to Karen, to your upstairs neighbors, and to a bartender who didn’t seem all that inclined to be introduced to anyone. You drank crappy beer and slightly less crappy vodka, played pool, and went to the zoo to stare for far too long at penguins, which Foggy refused to explain no matter how much you pressed. He had you focus on sights, on smells, on sounds that might trigger a memory. He joked with you in between, and he was just funny enough, friendly and clever enough, that for the first week or so, you were consistently cracking a smile. Hell, you even laughed now and then, much to your surprise. He really did know you, enough so that you gradually began to relax around him, just a little. He was likely hoping the addition of a friend’s voice would bring back what you’d lost, especially when paired with all the other sensations. 

But no matter how much you both tried, your memories remained lost. 

God, you hadn’t thought this would… would hurt as much as it did. Yet with every day that you failed to find your way back to who you’d been, the more that fierce ache, that old longing inside you grew. Your smiles became brittle, your laughter fading, until both finally dried up like withered, crumbling leaves beneath a bitter frost. You couldn't help pulling away really, not when your soul curling up in the dark might protect you from the agony of knowing that maybe, just maybe, you’d finally found what you'd always wanted. How fitting that it had been ripped away from your bloodied, desperate hands like so many times before, one more square for the filthy patchwork quilt of shredded lives and possibilities you’d been forced to leave behind. What was worse: even your memories of that seeming joy had been stolen, too, leaving you with nothing left to carry but the tattered scraps of a ghost and the photograph of a stranger wearing your skin.

It shouldn’t have been possible to miss what you couldn’t remember. Yet here you were missing it all the same. 

It didn’t help that Matt was avoiding you in every way that mattered. You’d thought about calling him if only to ask him questions about your life here, but you could never quite work up the courage to do it. He must have felt the same since he hadn’t reached out to you, either. And why would he? He knew as well as you did that your memories likely weren’t coming back. It made sense to cut that connection, tear it away like a weed before the roots could do more damage—something you should have done sooner, for both your sakes. What you hadn’t expected was just how good he was at dodging you, somehow absent no matter how many places Foggy took you to, places he swore Matt frequented with you when you’d lived here, as if Matt’s mere presence might be enough to trigger some memory in you. Had he been that important? Either way, it didn’t matter. You hadn’t seen Matt once since you’d walked out, doing your best to ignore his hitched breath as you’d opened the door. You’d forced yourself to ignore, too, the broken, agonized sound of grief that he’d let out as you quietly shut the door behind you, leaving him alone. 

Leaving him like that shouldn’t have bothered you as much as it did. You didn’t know him. This man should have been nothing more than a stranger on the street, one you wouldn’t glance twice at, much less feel some ridiculous sense of attachment or obligation to. Yet the memory of walking out of his apartment still left you shaken whenever you allowed yourself to think too long on it. 

He… shouldn’t have been alone. That was wrong, somehow. 

There was no memory attached to the thought, no blinking sign you could point to that would justify your growing unease. You just knew it. You knew it in the way you knew how to breathe, how to blink, knowledge etched into your very bones over and over by an unfamiliar hand. And no matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were unable to escape the feeling that… that you’d made a terrible mistake, broken something good, tilted the world on its axis until the whole of the city, the earth, the very sky hung just a little crooked like an off-center painting. 

Matt was alone. 

You’d left him alone. 

It was the right choice, one you’d made dozens if not hundreds of times before. Hell, it should have been even easier this time since there were no memories to hold you back.

So… why did you feel so very sick? 

Sympathy. 

That was all you were feeling. Matt was grieving a woman he’d cared about, one who’d died and left a cold stranger in her place. It was normal to feel for someone in that much pain, and no one should be alone while grieving. Maybe this was for the best. The sooner you were fully out of his life, the sooner all his friends and family could step in, and the sooner he could move on. He wouldn’t be alone, then. And even if he was, his loneliness wasn’t your goddamn problem. You had more than enough troubles of your own.

Protect yourself. 

Protect what you might one day have. 

All else was irrelevant.

You just… hoped he was doing alright. 

He did his best to avoid you, but that only grew more difficult once your ghost began to haunt his every step.

Even Josie’s quickly became off-limits—something he discovered one night when he stepped through the front door where he was promptly met with the familiar, comforting scent of you floating like a haze beneath the smell of cheap beer and sour sweat. His body went rigid the moment he recognized it, your presence across the room a sharpened knife that only widened the wound carved into him by your death. And if the scent of you was a knife, then your bark of laughter was a cruel twist of the blade, one that left him gutted and shaking there in the doorway. He drank in his apartment after that, waiting for that blessed moment when he would feel nothing, waiting for the very second the glorious shroud of night fell. Only then could he finally escape to the streets and drown himself in a far better kind of pain, taking his rage and his grief out on whatever piece of shit had the misfortune of falling into the Devil’s path. 

But Foggy seemed determined to shove the specter of you directly into his face. 

“You need to talk to her!” Foggy snapped, his voice only just shy of a shout. Matt ignored him as he headed for his office, desperate to retreat from your scent lingering on Foggy’s clothes. Foggy had taken you to a coffee shop that morning, one you’d frequented when you’d lived here, and now each inhalation was a vicious torment. It felt like breathing in shards of glass, the sharp pain of it throbbing with every stuttered, choked breath he drew in. If Foggy noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “Christ, Matt! You love her and we both know it. If you talk to her, it might trigger something—”

“Stop,” Matt grit out, reaching up to scrub his hand angrily over his face. He stalked his way over to his desk, still desperate to escape somehow, even if it was into his work. “Just stop, Foggy. I did talk to her, and you know what happened? Nothing. She didn’t remember anything at all. She’s gone, and you dragging this out is just making everything worse for all of us.” 

“So what, you’re just gonna roll over?” Foggy scoffed, crossing his arms as he planted his feet in Matt’s doorway. “Are you sure you actually loved her? Because I’m pretty sure she loved y—”

Matt slammed his fist down on his desk, the furious crack of it echoing through the office like a gunshot as he shouted, “Don’t you fucking dare!” 

Tension hung thick in the air as Matt’s chest heaved, his teeth bared, blood and adrenaline running hot in his veins as if Foggy were some sort of-of threat. Everything in him shook with rage, or maybe unshed grief, the burden of them both impossibly twisted and tangled beneath the sea of his guilt and his self-loathing until he couldn’t tell which was which. He just couldn’t—how was he supposed to force it all down when Foggy had just come so close, so dangerously close to shattering what few pieces remained of Matt’s crumbling armor?

It was bad enough loving you the way he did only for you to slip through his bloodied, desperate grasp like whispering grains of sand. What was worse, this entire disaster was one of his own making, a series of mistakes whose snarled, winding paths led inevitably back to him just like they had so many times before in his life. This loss of someone who’d truly understood him, accepted him, cared for him had already broken something inside him he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to repair. But that fracturing inside him would surely rise up to consume him if Foggy were right, if you’d truly cared for him that deeply before your memories were taken, so deeply that you might even have…

I miss you, sweetheart.

…loved him the way he loved you. 

Abruptly Matt’s surge of rage drained away and his head fell, leaving him feeling all the more empty and broken. He braced his arms weakly against his desk, drawing in a shaky breath as he forced himself to confess, his voice gone hoarse and ragged with grief. “I loved her, Foggy.” He lifted one shaking hand to his face. “God, I loved her so, so much. I can’t… I don’t know what to do without her now that she’s gone.” “I know, Matt,” Foggy said gently. “I know.” “I loved how she always smelled a little like coffee, and the way she always managed to wind up climbing into the oddest places for a case. She had one of the foulest mouths I’ve ever heard, but I swear she could use it to talk her way out of almost anything or to bring someone up out of whatever dark hole they were trapped in. She was… far kinder than she’d ever admit.” His lips quirked, but there was no humor in it, the expression miserable and gutted. You’d have likely argued with him about how kind you were if you’d been here. But there was no chance of that now, no matter how much the scent of you on the air told him otherwise. “Some days it felt like she was the only thing holding me together, like the only time I could breathe was when she held me in her arms. She was always there when I fell apart, or when it all… when it all started to hurt too much. And I tried to give her whatever pieces of me the Kitchen hadn’t already taken, to be there for her like she was for me, to keep her safe. We were finally going to make our relationship official when she came back, her and me, even if there’d… already been something there for a while now if I’m honest.” 

And it had, it had been there, this soft, tender thing that had developed slowly but surely between the two of you, a tangling that came by degrees rather than all at once. It had sprouted, grown, and blossomed so gradually that even now he struggled to point to any one moment where it had truly begun—the night he found you in the warehouse, maybe, or that first game of Devil Hunt, or when you’d both almost taken the leap before he’d realized you were drunk. But the question of where it began didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was there, something nameless yet still so good and warm and perfect, a connection nurtured in the low light and the blood-soaked soil of the Kitchen. You’d felt it just like he had, and you’d been willing to take that chance with him despite the baggage he carried behind him like an anchor destined to drag him down. You never would have agreed to kiss him when you came back otherwise. Now that chance was gone. 

“How much did she know before she left?” Foggy asked quietly, leaning against the doorframe. 

”She knew that I-that I wanted to be with her, but I never told her that I loved her.” Matt blew out a slow, heavy breath. “I was too scared of chasing her away, I guess. I thought maybe when she came back, if she still wanted me, I would… I decided that I would tell her. But I waited too long. Now she’s gone and I’ll never be able to tell her. All because of me.” 

He finally lifted his head, tipping it at Foggy. Neither of them dared mention the wetness on Matt’s cheeks. Even speaking about this—about how much he’d loved you only for him to ruin it—was almost more than he could bear, the edges of the wound still fresh and raw. Then again, maybe he deserved that pain after how miserably he’d failed you, just like everyone else in his life. “I miss her. And what’s worse is even when she’s right there in front of me, she’s not. She’s not, Foggy. Because I-I fucked up. I’m the reason the woman I knew, the woman I loved, died. I’m the reason she’ll never remember what we had, why I’ll never hold her again, and why she’ll leave New York at the end of the month like she does whenever she’s afraid of forming a connection.” He let out a bitter laugh, waving towards the windows, towards the place you’d once held dear. “I couldn’t even keep her here before. She almost ran last summer and the only thing that stopped her was being kidnapped. That was what slowed her down long enough for our thread to turn red, not me. She won’t let that happen a second time, not now that she’s seen what happens to people I care about. Do you understand?” 

The door to Nelson and Murdock creaked open, Karen’s voice making its way in first. Her voice was followed only a moment later by another’s, one still so familiar. 

“—I mean, winding up in a pool while chasing a kid sounds about right for me, so even if I don’t remember, I won’t argue—”

“I had to keep you here somehow.” Foggy’s voice remained quiet, but there was no disguising the ferocity in it now, the fervent belief. “Get out of your own head and talk to her, Matt. Fight for her. She would want you to.” 

No. 

No, no, no.

Your body may have been here, whole and real, but the woman who’d known him wasn’t. The song of your voice, your sweet scent, the flames of heat and stirred air currents around you flaring into a familiar shape: all of it was nothing but a lie, a snare for his senses, a ghost of his own making, and he wasn’t about to be caught by it again. 

He darted back around his desk, shoving his way past Foggy on the way toward the front door, his heart racing. If he was quick, if he just put up enough of a front, he could get out before they trapped you here with him like they’d planned. He wouldn’t relive this grief again, he couldn’t, not without falling apart. The moment he’d had with you in his apartment had been enough agony for one lifetime. 

“Hey, Matt.” You cleared your throat, shifting awkwardly on your feet where you’d stopped by the front door. Your stance was cautious and guarded, almost wary of him. It was just one more reminder of how uncomfortable he made you now. “Are you—”

“Heading out,” he said stiffly, only belatedly remembering to trace one hand along the wall as if his heightened senses hadn’t given him a clear map of the room the moment his adrenaline spiked. That spike was a curse all its own. It made the scent of you so much stronger, the lie of it fresh and present as it twined around him. His chest hitched just once before he forced himself to breathe his mouth. But that route of escape had been cut off, too. All it did was shift his focus to the taste of you on the air, and the taste of familiar fabric once so tenderly given. 

You were wearing one of his shirts. 

He fumbled for his cane, his hands starting to shake before he finally found it where he’d left it against the wall. He couldn’t let you see him like this. It wasn’t your fault that you didn’t remember him, nor was it your fault that he’d lost you. He’d done enough damage without adding a layer of guilt to what you were dealing with, too. But despite his attempts to hide what he was feeling, his face a hard mask, your fingers still brushed gently against his arm a moment later. It was an offer of help, or maybe an attempt to reach out, to slow him down, to connect. It was a kindness, a sympathy he didn’t deserve. Even now, you read him far too well, this touch the same as it had been that first night he’d met you when you’d gently brushed your hand against his arm. “Hey, do you need… I could walk you home.”

He shied away from your touch, finally managing to roughly unsnap his cane before going for the door. “I’m fine. I just—I have things to take care of. Excuse me.”  

He went straight home and showered, but no matter how many times he scrubbed, he couldn’t seem to wash the ghost of your scent away.

You slowly wandered around Matt’s office, taking it in. This was another place you’d supposedly frequented, a place that should have been familiar, and one you'd avoided until now.

Even though Foggy had assured you it was alright, it felt… almost wrong to explore a stranger’s space like this without them present. But you couldn’t help but brush your fingers across the battered desk and the small labels in braille you couldn’t read, run your hands along the chair for clients that you might have sat in once, and trace curiously the small seashell next to Matt’s laptop. The base scents of Matt were stronger here where he spent so much time, only partly erased by the smell of coffee and paper. The room was clean, cared for, and well-organized despite how rundown the office was. Important to him. You could tell that much, even if the scents and sights had failed to spark any memories.

Maybe… knowing his space wasn’t enough. 

This was about more than just figuring out who you were, now. For some reason, you needed to know who Matt was, too: this man Jane Hind had cared so much about and who’d cared so much about her. You told yourself it was practical. Matt was your best bet when it came to remembering who you’d been. But some part of you deep down recognized the lie. No, there was something in you inescapably drawn to him, a pull you couldn’t quite explain. Maybe that strange, unnatural gravity was what had started this whole mess in the first place. What was it about him that was so different, that had driven you to break every last rule you’d lived your life by for over a decade? 

And why… did you spend so long wondering if he’d ever climbed out his office window?

It had been twenty-nine days, and not a single memory had returned. 

Oh, there were beats now and then when you thought that maybe, just maybe something was coming back, but those moments were painfully few and far between. Even in those moments, you couldn’t say remembered anything, exactly. It was more a frustrating sense of deja vu, a fleeting little itch at the back of your mind like you’d forgotten something important, flashing road markers to warn you of the dark, empty gaps in your memory. That sense was probably driven at least in part by Foggy’s growing desperation as he frantically hunted for something that might trigger a return of your memories. 

But the rest of that feeling… the rest was all you. 

There was no denying a traitorous part of you wanted to remember no matter how ill-advised it might be. You wanted to remember this bizarre little family you’d stumbled into and then lost, just like in Los Angeles. You wanted to remember the love you’d had for this place, this city, this taste of mutual affection that had grown up around you after going so long without. After endless ages and ages of drought, of starvation, you hungered for even these bare crumbs of connection, something to tide you over until you found safe haven on the distant horizon. What a tempting thought it was to slither back into the life of this woman who’d been so cruelly murdered and replaced by a stranger wearing her skin.

Was this what a demon felt like when it took over a body? To walk around with someone else’s face, to speak with the unnatural voice of the dead, tormenting the loved ones that remained? 

That, ultimately, was why it didn’t matter what you wanted. Your presence in this city only spread rot and suffering. It would be better for everyone involved if you left like you should have long before now. Then they could all grieve without you tainting the very soil around them. 

Especially Matt. 

You’d seen him once or twice in passing as your time in New York wound down. Even at a distance, you’d marked the growing circles under his eyes, dark enough to be visible despite the glasses he always wore. The rest of him wasn’t doing much better. It seemed like every time he crossed your path, there was another bruise, another cut across his face or knuckles, a shifting canvas of pain painted across skin grown pale and drawn. He didn’t just look tired—that wasn’t what this was. This was something far worse, a haggard exhaustion, a weariness that couldn’t be solved with sleep, if he slept at all. This was someone being haunted. 

Probably because the ghost of Jane Hind kept crossing his path. But that would be solved soon enough. 

You’d already packed up your things, not that you had much to take. Just your bag and your memory box. You’d be leaving the next day. Foggy was still convinced he had a few more days, but you had other plans. You couldn’t give Matt back the woman he’d lost, nor could you give him a body to bury, a grave to lay flowers across, but you could give him what Jane Hind had carried with her until her dying breath. 

“I thought you might… want these before I left tomorrow,” you said quietly. “I… sorry, it��s… it’s a bag with my—with her things.” 

Matt took it carefully from you, the motion mechanical and stiff. He hadn’t really invited you the rest of the way into his apartment, the two of you now stalled out in the hallway just beyond the closed front door. He hadn’t taken his glasses off, either. It made it harder to read him, his face closed off and impassive, a wall of red glass placed firmly between you. Come to think of it, you hadn’t seen his eyes even once since that day you’d first come back, and you didn’t blame him. You didn’t like feeling vulnerable, either, though that was just a guess when it came to what he might be feeling. 

“It’s the shirts from her apartment, which I think are yours. And the stuffed bear.” You bit your lip and released it slowly, shifting uncomfortably on your feet. “And the… the mug, which Nelson said was yours, too. The one you used at her place. I also put the hoodie in there, the one she had with her while she was traveling. And…” You reached into your pocket, fumbling for a moment. God, you were bad at this, unsure of just how to do this without hurting him any more than was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t a concern you usually dealt with since your goal was almost always the exact opposite, a precaution meant to destroy any threads of connection they held with you. Unfortunately, he wasn’t giving you much to work with, though you didn’t miss his subtle flinch when you drew the key from your pocket. “I thought you might want this, too.”

You cautiously edged forward, daring to breach the ring of radiant heat that surrounded him, the closest you’d come to him in almost a month. He went stiff as you approached, his jaw growing tight as the gap between you both closed. Another step, and his head cocked as if he were listening to your footsteps, or maybe… maybe he was just waiting to find out what you had to give him. But he wasn’t telling you to fuck off or just set your gift aside, which was a good sign. So you hesitantly reached out and brushed your fingers lightly against his bicep, a signal so he knew you were about to pass him something. 

A breath.

He remained absolutely still amidst the sudden, crackling tension in the air as your fingertips skated gently down and around his forearm, stirring all the little hairs, his skin shockingly warm. All you’d intended to do to take his arm and guide it up so you could place the key in his hand, but you quickly found yourself distracted by a ragged scar along the back of his forearm, one your fingers seemingly made their way to on instinct. It was a deep scar, the original cut likely made by some sort of blade, the edges of it rough and uneven from messy stitching. Your curiosity got the better of you, so much so that you missed the way Matt had begun to hold his breath.

“Who fucked up the sutures on that?” You furrowed your brow, your thumb smoothly marking out the jagged line of it. “They did a terrible job. No offense.” 

Matt’s face fell and you only realized too late just who it was that must have patched him up. 

Before you could blink, he’d yanked his arm out of your grip as if your touch had burned him. “Don’t,” he grit out, his chest heaving as he put a few steps distance between you both. “You can—just put your key on the bench.” 

“How did you know—” “Because there’s only one thing left it could be.” 

You nodded weakly, taking a few steps back towards the little bench beside the door. That unfamiliar ache, that sense of wrongness was back, the weight of it settling uneasily in your chest like a stone until you almost wanted to retch. It didn’t help that Matt was just barely holding himself together while you were here. 

Best to say what you’d come to say and leave him be. 

You gently set the key down, and the quiet click of the brass against the wood seemed to echo in the hallway, a graveyard bell tolling with a looming sense of finality. What you were about to tell him would hurt, you knew it would, but maybe one day he’d find comfort in it. This—a sign of what she’d felt—was the real gift you’d truly come to give, the only true token of her you could offer. Your words, when you spoke, were almost as hoarse as his. “I thought you should know I… she wore it. The key. I asked them. She wore your key and she never took it off. Not once. Whatever you both had, she treasured it, and all she wanted was to get back to you. She didn’t leave you by choice, Matt. I hope that… that helps.” 

Of all the things you’d said and done, it was this that finally seemed to break him. His face twisted in a sudden wave of grief, and regret hit you all at once. You quickly took a step towards him, one hand out, though you weren’t sure what you’d do if he reached back—it wasn’t like you knew how to comfort him, and you sure as hell didn’t know if he’d tolerate you holding him again, nor whether he was someone that needed some sort of touch when he was hurting. But before you could take another step he’d flinched away from you, retreating quickly back into the darkness of his apartment, his voice ragged. “Just go. Get out.” 

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, backing away towards the door. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”  

It shouldn’t have hurt as you closed that door one last time. But you cried all the same. 

Somewhere within the apartment came the sound of splintering furniture and a hoarse scream wracked with grief.

“Look, Nelson.” You tiredly adjusted the strap of your duffle bag over your shoulder, reaching up to pinch at the bridge of your nose as if it would stem your growing headache. “I know it’s a day early. But another twenty-four hours isn’t going to make a fucking difference.” 

“I don’t need another day!” he pleaded, his arms spread wide where he’d blocked your front door, ensuring you couldn’t leave your apartment until you’d heard him out. You’d had no idea he even had a key until today and, not for the first time, you cursed Jane Hind’s apparent lack of common sense. You did not give out keys, or at least, you hadn’t before coming here to this ridiculous fucking city. “Just five minutes. That’s all. I’ve got one last thing to try.”

“Maybe I don’t want to try one more thing!” you snapped bitterly, dropping your hand. That anger was a good cover for the way something sharp and prickly had begun to catch in your throat, the incident with Matt still fresh in your mind. “I’ve tried for a month, and it’s gotten me nothing. Fucking-fucking bars and random rooftops and a shitty little duck, goddamn penguins and keys, and none of it did shit! Jane’s gone, ok? She’s dead. And I’m sorry, I know you all cared about her, but I’m done—”

“Have you climbed inside a thread?” 

“...What?” you asked in sudden bewilderment, your rage abruptly faltering in the face of pure confusion. “What the fuck does that even me—”

He let out a whoop, practically dancing on his feet. “Yes! I knew it! I can’t believe no one told you!” 

“Told me what?!” You chucked your bag back onto your couch in sudden exasperation. If this was thread-related, at the very least you could stay long enough to listen. “There’s nothing to climb!”

“Ok, so stick with me.” He rubbed his palms together eagerly, a bright light in his eyes. “Because I’m about to get really metaphysical.”

It took you what felt like hours to climb inside the shimmering honey-colored thread that lay between you and Matt—a thread that sang with his sorrow and your reluctant sympathy. 

It wasn’t right having your soul constricted like this, all of who you were narrowing down into something so small as you squirmed through a barrier that tasted and felt like dirt and earth, chasing after the sound of trickling water. There wasn’t supposed to be anything on the other side. It was an emotional connection, nothing more.

And yet here you were, standing in a place that had no reason to exist.

“Holy shit,” you whispered in amazement, spinning on your heels to examine your surroundings. “Holy shit, he was right.”

Despite the late hour, the air was full of a muted light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once, tinting the world a hazy, eerie green. High up above you roiled thick, sullen black storm clouds, silent flashes of red lightning carving their way between swirls of charred smoke. It wasn’t much light, but it was enough to see by.

And what you saw was heartbreaking. 

You stood in a dry, stony riverbed. The ground beneath you was cracked and brittle where the water had receded, leaving behind nothing but dust and broken branches. The river itself remained though just barely, the thin trickle of flowing water down the center of the riverbed a far cry from whatever immense force had carved its way through the landscape until the banks were a good ten paces from one side to the other. The terrain beyond the river didn’t look much better, wilted, drooping cattails dotted up the bank before giving way to endless forest that stretched farther than your eye could see. Like the cattails and scrub, the pine and fir trees stood withered and brown, casting their empty branches up toward the sky. 

If it had been beautiful here once, whatever had happened to you had destroyed that beauty. 

“Jesus,” you whispered. 

“Can you hear me?” Foggy’s voice sounded distant and far away, tinny like he was talking through a long tunnel. 

“Yeah. Can you hear me?”

“...Ok, if you’re trying to respond, I can’t hear you. But according to Matt, whenever you were here, it felt like memories. So poke around, see what you can find.”

You sighed and started down the riverbed. “Not super helpful, but ok. Let’s give it a shot.” 

The water was the most obvious place to start, and you made your way over to the thin stream that ran raggedly across the parched soil. Much to your fascination, you quickly discovered that what you’d thought was one current was actually two, one layered over the top of the other, each flowing in the opposite direction. The first of those currents hiding on the bottom was fairly calm, steady if a little restless, swirls of pale color that almost felt like curiosity, though how you understood that translation was a mystery. The second current seemed far rougher where it roiled atop the first, its section of the stream cloudy and thick with swirls of black and the red of an open wound. You hovered over the second current for a long moment, working up your courage, before you finally knelt and hesitantly brushed against it with one finger. It was just water. How bad could it be? 

The moment your skin made contact, your chest seized on a sudden swell of agony. Your mouth filled with the taste of grief, with the sound of an empty home, the lack of some familiar scent that meant affection and warmth and softness and safety, the ache of an old wound reopened just when it had started to heal. Alone, always alone, I deserve it, so many gone, he was right, when will I learn? There was no hope for comfort from that pain, no escape from the darkness into tender arms that could hold you just right when it all hurt. All you had to look forward to was more— 

You threw yourself backward, scrambling away from that terrible current as if what you’d felt might rise up and chase after you, snapping its teeth the whole way. You didn’t stop retreating until your back slammed against the dry soil of the riverbank. Only then did you stop, panting, your eyes wide in shock as you cradled your hand against your heaving chest. 

Emotion. It’s emotion.

That was what the water was. Matt’s emotion. Which meant the other current—one now shifting back to yellow despite a momentary surge of twisting, roiling black—was… yours. 

Right. So you could rule the water out. But if that was emotion, where was memory? 

Examining the rest of the river was the most obvious next step now that you’d ruled out the water. Based on what you could see, the original riverbed had been a mix of silt and stones of varying sizes, a firm foundation beneath a once-powerful river. Now, though, the grey, dried-out silt was covered in a strange sea of divots and dips, as if something—a lot of somethings—had been plucked up and removed. You traced one of the indents in the soil curiously, lifting your hand back up to consider the grit as you rubbed it between your fingers. Another glance around revealed the answer. 

The stones. 

There were still plenty of stones remaining in the riverbed, but the divots in the dry silt told you there’d once been far more. If that was what you’d lost, then maybe…  

You rocked up eagerly to your feet, pacing around breathlessly as you searched for a promising stone to start with. Eventually you made your pick, plucking up a stone just small enough to fit in your palm, flat and smooth save for a little groove in it as if someone had run their fingers over it endlessly. Strangely, it smelled like honey and herbs, the surface oddly warm against your hand like the brush of a thumb against your mouth. You waited for a long, impatient moment, and when nothing else happened, you tapped it a few times. 

Still nothing. 

And something inside you… cracked. 

“Fuck!” you screamed, hurling the stone back down the river in a sudden rage. The pain and the loneliness you’d been suppressing for the last month, the last year, the horrible, endless eternity since leaving your family in Los Angeles began to claw its way up your throat, the clouds churning wildly above you in response. A wild rain came next, each droplet sharp and cold and edged like the blade of a knife, bitter and biting as it beat against your skin. You grabbed another stone, one that tasted like shitty beer—Josie’s beer. You threw that rock, too, then another and another, throwing stones that smelled and tasted and felt like your shriek of laughter as he grinned and caught you against his chest, like torn flesh and a needle held by tender hands, like your face nuzzling fearlessly against Matt’s throat as he whispered comfort into your hair and held you close, like synced breathing and hearts and dances between binary stars as you both fell into sleep, fell into safety, fell into one another, phantom sensations that only made the fierce ache in you grow stronger because with every stone you snatched up it became clear that… 

You’d been loved. 

Not your identity.

Not the image you showed to the world. 

Not the walls you’d put up in front of him before he’d found some way past them. 

You. 

And he’d loved you with every part of him. 

You weren’t sure when you started crying, a violent, vicious stream of tears that was just as much a product of rage as grief. Here was someone who’d loved you fully, loved you despite every asterisk and bit of baggage and sharpened edge that came with being a broken hound, with being a former experiment still on the run. But you barely noticed your tears, spitting up at the unforgiving clouds and the howling wind, because you could howl, too, just as violent, just as much a threat as any storm in this place. “I want my fucking life back! I want him back!” 

You hadn’t wanted it before, or maybe you had and you’d just been too afraid to ask for it. But now? Oh, oh, now you were furious, furious and hurting and screaming, because you’d denied yourself connection all these years only to find it in the last place you’d expected. That was what this had been—home, family, love. That had to be why you’d stayed in New York, why you’d risked everything for these people, for Matt. You weren’t an idiot. You’d have run the numbers and the math, made your calculations.

You couldn’t bear to lose this. Not… not again. 

You threw stone after stone, hunting frantically as your fingers bled dry, desperate fury into the air, reddened drops disappearing before they ever hit the ground. The trickle of water in the center of the riverbed had churned itself into a frenzy, but you ignored it. There had to be something here that would trigger a memory, something that would let you remember being loved again, something big enough, important enough, so you grabbed and you grabbed and grabbed and grabbed and grabbed until at last, you found a stone the size of your fist. You snatched it up with a ragged sob, cradling it greedily against your chest as if doing so might let you carry it out of here, because you wanted it, you wanted him, wanted to remember more than anything in the world. 

“Let me have it!” you snarled, snapping your teeth at the howling winds of the storm as if you might catch this place between your jaws and tear it open until you at last found what belonged to you. “Give it back!” 

And with a blink—

He tore one of his bloodied gloves off, his hand shaking as he reached out to you.

You stilled the moment his fingertips brushed tenderly against your cheek, so very gentle, affection layered over blood and earth and hurt. And god, your skin was so terribly dry and cold, the beat of your heart uneven as it struggled to pump blood through your body, but he could feel you react to him, the barest parting of your lips as you dragged in a startled breath. He didn’t want to startle you further or risk you fighting him, so he let his voice drop into a whisper, soft as the brush of a feather.

“It’s me. I’m here.”

‘I heard you,’ he tried to say. ‘I heard you. I’m here.’

And your weakened heart… skipped.

He wasn’t sure if he reached for you or if you reached for him. All he knew was it was the sign he’d been looking for. In a heartbeat, he scooped you up off the floor, stealing you back from that dry, filthy cement and crusted blood that had tried to take you from him. He cradled your cold body against his chest, then, held you there where it was warm and where you were safe. You made the softest little noise, the sound choked and dry, but there was no disguising the heartbreaking relief in it. He pulled you in further, pulled you up until you were curled up in his lap, not an ounce of air left between your bodies, your head laying against his shoulder.

He would never let you touch the floor of this place again.

“D…” you mumbled, not one hint of fear in you despite what he’d just done, the blood on his hands and the burning heat of violence that still lingered in his bones. You wearily slid your head over, inch by inch, until you’d buried your face against the sweat-slick line of his throat, nuzzling in against him with a hoarse sigh that only made him hold you tighter. You inhaled slowly then, heedless of the blood and dirt and sweat that coated his skin, your fingers coming up to hook weakly in the collar of his shirt. “You came.”

And you… smiled.

He buried his face against your hair and let out a shaky breath. As he did, he dug down past blood and dust and dirt, dug and dug until he found the sweet, familiar scent of you, a scent he never wanted to leave him again.

The stone fell from your limp hands, a ringing in your ears you could barely hear beneath the sound of the water nearby, frothing and wild. 

The increased sensory feedback had been bizarre, and there was… there was no reason he should have been covered in so much blood, his body burning as if he’d been fighting before coming to you. But…  

“Hey, you in there?” Foggy called. 

“D.” The letter felt strange, and yet… natural, as you cradled it on your tongue. “D?”

And you knew what came after that letter, shaping the word again in your mind. 

You knew. 

You… remembered. 

“Always,” he’d said. 

“Always,” you whispered, casting your eyes up the riverbed towards another large stone. “Always, D.”

He didn’t know what you were doing or why you’d climbed inside the thread. 

“Always, D.”

All he knew was that it hurt. 

“You’re stuck with me, unfortunately for you.”

He’d thought catching your scent, hearing your laugh, being forced to take back the key he’d given to you had been the worst of it. But no. It was far, far worse having to relive these memories of your time with him over and over and over without pause, his senses filled with you: with your touch, with your scent, with the taste of you on the air. He heard you whisper, laugh, and sigh; felt the brush of your fingers in his hair and your body shaking with laughter when he snatched you up during a game of Devil Hunt and the safety of you as you’d held him so tenderly after his fight with Foggy. All of it was a reminder of what he’d lost, what he’d never get back. 

“Don’t you give up on me, Matt. Ok?”

He was in agony. There was no blocking you out like this, no escaping your memory no matter how much he tried to push back or retreat, until he wound up trapped and spiraling in his kitchen. 

“Kiss me when you come back.”

On and on it went, memories snapping at his heels until all he had left to hide behind was rage. He swept his arm across the counter, glass shattering as he screamed himself hoarse. Eventually he found himself backed up against the wall, sinking down as he hitched out something like an agonized groan, his hands over his ears, his eyes shut tight. “Don’t do this to me, sweetheart, please—”

“Adoringly yours, because I do adore you, you ridiculous man...”

“Leave me alone,” he whispered. “Just leave me alone.”

“...Remember that. if nothing else.” 

In hindsight, it was a really bad idea to give back your key.

“Matt!” you shouted, pounding frantically on his front door. “Matt, let me in! It’s me, I swear, I can-I can—”

Silence. 

And you weren’t willing to wait any longer. This wasn’t something you could explain through the door, out here in the hall where the neighbors could hear. You needed to get inside. You knew he was in there somewhere. 

Red threads never lied.  

You wiped the blood away from your nose and took off for the stairs. It was only one flight up to the roof, and sometimes he left the rooftop door unlocked. Even if it wasn’t unlocked, you’d use the key under the mat. You didn’t remember everything. But you remembered that. And if the key wasn’t there? You’d break that fucking door down.

He sat unmoving in his meditation pose on the floor, the sound of your attempts to get into the apartment distant and far away. Meditation had been the only thing left he could think of that would allow him to escape the pain and the memories of you that had flooded his thoughts. Like this, with his mind and his focus withdrawn until it lay deep within himself, he’d hoped he’d be far enough away from the world that the ghost of you couldn’t reach. 

Yet even deep in meditation, his instincts were set off by the crack! of his rooftop door slamming open.

He was on his feet in a heartbeat, his heart racing as he bared his teeth, his body prepared to face whatever threat had just broken in. The sensations of you, at the very least, had quieted during his meditation, which should have left him enough space for some small margin of peace as he threw himself into a fight. But that peace was nowhere to be found, because you were here again. 

He recoiled from that thought the second it crossed his mind. This wasn’t you, that much had become painfully clear. You’d passed away somewhere far beyond his reach, away from the home, the life you’d lived here. The woman that stood on his landing now was nothing but a ghost, a fading memory and a terrible reminder of what he’d had and lost, what he’d earned by daring to reach for something good. There was no undoing it, no washing away the blood on his hands. If anything, how he felt for you had doomed any hopes of you staying long enough for him to reform that connection with you. He knew how you operated—hell, you’d tried to run on that hot summer night so many months ago after seeing just how much he’d cared, even if you’d ultimately changed your mind. At the time, he’d thought it was Destiny, the hand of God ensuring you remained in the Kitchen where Matt could keep you safe from the Man in the White Coat, here in this place where you both might… might shape something good out of all the broken pieces you’d both been left with. He knew better, now. Even the hand of God couldn’t break the curse Matt placed on those he loved. You would leave, leave like all the others, and he deserved it. 

The only question that remained was why you seemed so, so fucking determined to make him suffer. 

“Matt.” Your voice cracked as you stumbled down the stairs. “Matt, I—”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone, sweetheart?” he grit out, reaching up to fist his hands tightly in his hair. He’d never known you to be unnecessarily cruel, but there was no other explanation. “God, I-I can’t—you can’t keep doing this to me.”

“Matt, just let me—”

“Do you even care how much you’re hurting me?” He hitched out a broken laugh, something bitter and tormented, the sound absent all humor as you made it down the stairs. “All those months, all I wanted was for you to come back. I begged. I prayed to God, over and over again, that he would bring you back to me. And now that you’re gone, you just won’t leave. I can’t get away from you no matter what I do. Do you know what that’s like? To lose someone you love only for their ghost to haunt you every time you turn around?”

A soft intake of breath. 

There it was. Now that he’d said it, you’d leave. There would be nothing more frightening to the You he’d first known than a word like love. 

“I just…” His breath hitched again, something thick building in his throat. It was just another sign of his weakness, the same weakness that had gotten you killed. 

‘I warned you, kid,’ came Stick’s voice, so smug that Matt bared his teeth. ‘I fuckin’ warned you the night I opened up her eye. But you didn’t listen.’

He started to pace wildly, ignoring your voice as he hunted for some opening through which he could escape, flee from Stick’s voice hiding in the corners of his thoughts, from your ghost. With every step his movements grew more frantic, more furious as his rage built like a rising wave: rage at himself, at God, at the monster who’d taken your memories and the possibility of a life for you here with Matt, and at you, too, because you just didn’t get it. “I just want to grieve, and God can’t even give me that much, can he? Is that what this is? Punishment? Revenge? Congratulations. Job well done. You can go.” 

You tilted your head as you watched him pace, the same cock of your head you got when considering your potential routes forward. As far as he was concerned, the only route he’d give was a route out the door.  

“I don’t know why you came back, and at this point, I don’t fucking care,” he told you hotly, nothing but burning smoke and thick venom in each word. “We don’t have a red thread anymore. There’s nothing to keep you here. Leave. Now. I’m not asking.”

Your soft response was a single letter, one that struck directly at the open wound inside his chest. 

“...D.” 

He snatched up an empty beer bottle from the kitchen counter in a sudden rage, turned, and hurled it past you. 

You didn’t so much as flinch as the bottle came within inches of your head. Nor did you react to the distant shattering of glass, the sound of it barely audible over his anguished roar. 

“Leave me alone!”  

And then he froze in sudden horror at what he’d done, his heartbeat almost drowning out the soft sound of your steps. All he’d wanted to do was scare you away, frighten you away so he could break where you couldn’t see, because it had hurt, it had hurt to hear you call him—

Wait. 

You’d… you’d called him…

“My Devil Man, my Saint Matthew,” you whispered, the touch of your hands cool and endlessly gentle as you cupped his face. His skin was wet, damp beneath your thumbs as you swiped them across his cheeks, when had he started crying? You brought his head down until you could lay your forehead against his, the taste of salt hanging in the air. Your voice grew achingly tender, so longed for that he swayed helplessly on his feet, wanting nothing more than to be held like you’d held him so often before when he was hurting. “I’m so sorry, D. I’m so sorry I left you alone, sweetheart.” 

He closed his eyes tight, his breath growing shaky. You couldn’t know that he was two steps away from crumbling in your arms, fractures widening with every breath. He had no energy left to fight your touch, your misplaced mercy, but giving into the lie was another thing entirely. He couldn’t bear to hope again, not when it would crush him if he were wrong. “Foggy told you to… he told you to call me that, didn’t he? To see if you’d remember. But I can’t—you’re going to leave me, you’ll—” “Do you remember what I said before I left? Because I do.” You swiped your thumb gently against his cheek, your uneven breathing skipping and falling into rhythm with his as his hands shakily rose. They hovered hesitantly a few inches away from your face, terrified that you might vanish beneath his hands like a ghost. “I don’t leave my box behind, and I won’t leave you behind, either. I told you that you were stuck with me after Nobu. I meant it. It’s really me. I know you’re tired and hurting, sweetheart, but listen to my heart. What does it say? Truth or lie?”

…Steady. 

Truth.

Could it really be you?  

He held his breath as he dared at last to touch your cheek, stirring the fine hairs as he stroked his way along the familiar shape of your face, one he’d traced so often in his dreams. Your skin was damp with tears just like his, another sliding down to bump against his thumb as your lips quirked up into a brilliant smile. And the moment his trembling fingers passed your lips, you kissed the tip of each with a warm fondness, a mirror of that night you’d held his broken, torn body and he’d kissed your fingers and palm. 

“How much do you… do you remember?” There was a ringing in his ears as the world beneath him seemed to roll beneath him. “Everything?” “Not everything. Some pieces are still missing, with Foggy and Karen and my job, but I-I remember enough. I remember you, and what I had with you.” Your voice grew fierce and fervent then as you drew in a sharp breath, preparing yourself. “I remember you, D. And I remember that I love you. I love you, Matt Murdock, all of you, so, so much. And I will never leave you alone again.” You loved him. 

You loved him. 

The weight of it—being forced to let you leave the city, the ensuing months alone, the agony of the past few weeks thinking he’d lost you entirely, and now this, this, knowing you loved him like he loved you—hit him all at once, and with a sudden groan he started to drop. You caught him in your arms, the two of you sinking to your knees as you held him tight and he wound desperately around you in return. Only then did he start to fall apart in your arms, shaking in your hold, his grief, his hurt, his relief spilling out in choked gasps where you’d tucked his head down against your neck. He fisted his hands in your shirt as you both rocked, and a ragged moan tore free from him, spilling against your skin when you lifted your hands to trail your fingers lovingly through his hair. You knew, you remembered just how to hold him when he was hurting, a balm across every last wound. His shivering, touch-starved body remembered your touch, too, drowning beneath the sudden surge of good, warm, safe, soft after months of nothing but pain, so much so he couldn’t help but gasp out your name. 

“I’ve got you now, D,” you whispered, burying your face against his shoulder until he could feel the heat of your tears against his shirt, too. “I’m here, now. You’re not alone. I’ve got you, Matt.” 

“I thought you were gone.” There was no way for him to truly sync his breathing with yours, not with the way you were both crying, but still his body tried on instinct, tried and failed over and over again. He closed his eyes tighter, burying his face deeper against your throat as he pulled you in even closer, until there wasn’t an inch of space between your body and his, where he could feel every beat of your heart against his skin, as if to make up for the way he’d almost… almost chased you away. “I thought you’d left me and I was alone. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t try harder, and that I didn’t-I didn’t go with you, but I couldn’t—I’m so, so—” 

“Hey, hey, it’s ok.” You kissed shakily at his hair, his shoulder, and whatever other parts of him you could reach, your breath, your tears, your absolution washing over him like rain. “It’s not your fault, D. It’s not your fault sweetheart. None of this was your fault.” 

“But—” “Hey. Listen to me, before you get any further down in that hole.” You lifted his head from your shoulder, cupping his tear-stained face in your hands again. For a moment you both simply breathed with one another, your forehead to his, soaking in the contact, the affection that you’d both dearly missed and needed. “What happened to me outside New York, my memory loss… all of that is not your fault. It never was, D. There are-there are a lot of things we’ll have to deal with in the future, things I need to tell you. Consequences of what we’ve done, and—but this isn’t one of them. Never this. You’re what helped bring me back.” “How? I didn’t…” He let out a breathless, watery little laugh. “I didn’t do anything but try to chase you away.” “Some part of me couldn’t help but be drawn to you. I remembered, deep down, I think.” You gave an amused little huff. “And once Foggy showed me how to get into our thread, all your memories are what brought me back, helped me remember, because I could feel it, how you loved me. That was the key. Speaking of which…” You leaned in to nuzzle up against his cheek, your voice lowering to a whisper. “I think I made you a promise, you ridiculous man. And it’s one I intend to keep.” 

And with one small tip of your head, and a single slow breath… 

“Kiss me when you come back.” 

…your lips brushed against his for the very first time, tender and achingly soft, and so full of love that it would have stolen his breath away if he’d had any left at all. 

It wasn’t the first kiss he’d envisioned months ago just before you left, something triumphant and wild. Nor was it anything like the first kisses he’d imagined before that, the first kiss he’d thought this journey with you might lead to. And God only knew he’d considered kissing you for the first time more than was healthy.

Your first kiss with him was, instead, shaky and gentle, tasting of salt and tears and the fading shades of grief retreating like streamers of night before a welcome sunrise. Slowly, and then more surely, his lips began to move against yours, finally allowing himself to truly taste you for the first time, his eyes slowly falling closed as your fingers ran fondly through his hair, you, it was really you, you remembered. With a quiet moan, he breathed you in deep, calling your grace, your love deep into him until it settled there against his heart, knowing that, no matter what else might come, he would never lose it again, one of his hands rising to tenderly wind around your throat, his other hand finding yours so he could lace his battered fingers tightly with yours.

It wasn’t the first kiss he’d expected, but it felt perfect all the same. 

Because all that was left was him… 

And you. 

[reds-skull]

Bringer of Demise

[FIRST PART] [AO3]

I'll be honest, I wasn't that confident with the first chapter (probably because it's been a while since I sat down to write something) but I like this one much more. The angst is definitely helping lol

Here's chapter 2: Like a House Fire

“Simon-” Soap jumps as the door slams behind him. Ghost grunts, walking further into his room to sit at the desk, reports now laying forgotten. Not that they need them anymore, with Novikov’s arrival.

Soap takes a sit in front of him, the bed creaking when he leans forward to look in Ghost’s dark eyes. “Talk to me, mo chridhe.”

Ghost slides the mask off his face, and throws it on the desk with so much force some papers fly and land behind it. Soap waits as he stares at the wall for a minute or two, lost in whatever dreadful memory the Doctor brought forward.

“Novikov was the one that tested me. When they brought me back from Mexico.” he starts, voice carefully monotone. “Went through regular shit at first. How long I can use Limbo before I have to stop. What happens if someone shoots at it from the outside. See if sound travels, if comms work.”

Soap holds his tongue, ignores the questions that float to his mind about the process. It’s more important for him to listen to Simon.

“Didn’t really have a problem with those. Expected them, really.” Simon shakes his head, bitterness bleeding into his voice, “it started going wrong when Shepherd came into the picture.”

At the mention of that name, Soap’s jaw clenches. General fucking Shepherd, the man behind Graves’ leash. Ran like a coward after his dog died, still off grid even after Laswell got the go-ahead from CIA to start a search for him. Soap remembers the few meetings he was in, how Shepherd would address Ghost. Spoke to him as if Limbo wasn’t tearing itself apart because of his orders.

Ghost never told him much about the bawbag, Soap never asking. Felt wrong, with how little he willingly gives Ghost about his own past.

“What did he do?” he asks, a little hesitant to hear the answer.

“Novikov wasn’t pushing me hard enough, according to him. Because he was afraid of what my powers would do to me or to others, or for a different reason, I didn’t bother finding out. Don’t know if the Doc tried to resist. It doesn’t matter.” Simon lets out a mirthless laugh, “you know the rest.”

Soap nods. “Ye think… he will do it again? Push ye to…”

“I’m not worried about me, Johnny.” He leans closer to Soap, and it dawns on him that Simon’s not as angry as he is terrified, “there’s nothing new Novikov can tell me to use Limbo on that would break it like last time. But you… they never found your limits, have they?”

“... You know they didn’t need to.”

“I don’t think that ever satisfied Novikov, or the higher-ups.” Soap frowns, Simon’s voice lowering to an almost whisper, “I think they were just as tied up in red tape as you.”

He doesn’t respond to that. He doesn’t think he needs to, they both know Simon is right.

Soap’s memories of that time period are… muddy at best. And it wasn’t because of the shot he received to the head, the day he died.

In the weeks following it, Soap felt like everyone that knew what happened there was walking on eggshells around him. Not many knew, they tried to sweep it under the rug immediately to avoid an international incident, but those that did…

When Soap refused to use his powers on field, his Captain was irritated. Said he’d go to the higher-ups, get him written for insubordination.

The very next day, the Captain took him to the side and asked him to tell him. Fuck the higher-ups when it comes to his own personal curiosity, eh?

Soap refused, obviously. The Captain let it go, eventually, but Soap always wondered if he was trying to send him into impossible situations to see just how much destruction he can survive.

“I’m not going to let him do anything to you, love.” Simon’s voice makes him refocus on the present, “Novikov tells you to jump, you ask me how high.”

Soap scoffs fondly, the anger that has bubbled up in his chest subsiding, “they’re gonna write ye up, LT.”

“Don’t care. They won’t boot me out anyway.” he answers smugly, scarred lips quirking up in a way that makes Soap want to explode the rest of the world, if only to keep him safe.

He returns the smile, “sound awfully certain of yerself. Should I ask Price if the power went to yer head?”

Simon huffs, “just the facts, Johnny. Not only I’m legally dead, they wouldn’t want someone like me strolling around civvies in case I go off and send a couple hundred to Limbo.”

“Sometimes I forget just how much off yer heid you are, Simon Riley.”

“Takes one to know one, and all that.” Simon moves to get up, when something pulls at his leg.

A few dark hands started petting at their boots, so gently they didn’t notice. Soap smiles, leaning down to return the favor with his left hand.

“Look, we made yer friends worried.” the hands wrap around his fingers, chasing the little white flames.

Simon shakes his boot, loosening the residents of the void’s hands, “you know that’s not how that works.”

“Well, they react to our emotions, you never know!” he turns back to the hands, “don’t listen to him, he’s just grouchy ‘cause I’m not holdin’ his hand.”

He’s happy to continue playing with Simon’s “friends” until a shrill sound cuts through the air. Soap watches Simon grab his phone from his pocket.

“It’s Rudy.” he taps his phone and sits down next to Soap, “Rodolfo?”

“Fantasma. Is Soap with you?” Rudy greets, voice hurried.

Soap takes Simon’s wrist and brings the phone closer, “aye, what’s wrong?”

“All of our revenants were woken up by our Reapers, I… I assume it happened to yours as well.”

Christ, must be later than midnight in Mexico right now. Getting dragged into your Reaper’s realm in the middle of sleeping… can’t be fun.

“Affirm.” Ghost says, “I assume yours asked about Fate and Lumity?”

“Yes.” there’s someone talking in the background, and Soap realizes it’s Alejandro, giving out orders, “some of our revenants chose Fate. We’re in the process of reprimanding them, but… It’s more important that I tell you what we gathered.”

Simon and Soap share a look. Anything would be helpful at this point.

Rudy continues, “the ones that chose Fate didn’t give us much. Apparently their Reaper just left, only saying they chose right. It is mine that explained the most.”

“You did say your Reaper was chatty…” Simon mutters.

“It is.” Rudy sighs, “my Reaper didn’t get mad when I chose you. It said it was expecting it.”

Rudy’s Reaper… Reaper of Matter… is on Lumity’s side?

“The Reapers are… in a state of disorder.” he pauses, mulling over the words. “... My Reaper said this hasn’t happened since before the age of revenants.”

“Did it say what’s Fate’s goal in all this?” Simon asks.

“No. I don’t think it knows.” Rudy begins talking in Spanish to someone on the other side, far too fast for Soap to understand. “-Jabón y Fantasma?”

They can hear some rustling before Alejandro’s voice comes through, “Hermanos! You landed us in a real shitshow this time around, eh?”

Soap smiles sheepishly, “good teh hear ye, Ale. Sorry about the mess.”

“All good. Well- for now.” Alejandro hums, “I have a feeling that is due to change at any point.”

“Ye said it…”

Rudy turns the phone back to him, as he says, “whatever it is, you can call us. We’ll continue to update you.”

“Appreciated, hermano,” Ghost answers, “same goes for us.”

“Don’t be strangers. We’ll talk later.” Ghost and Soap say their goodbyes as Rudy hangs up.

So the Reapers themselves don’t quite know what Fate is planning… he didn’t think it was possible, but Soap is even more unsettled. Reapers are volatile as it is, though before they could’ve trusted them to not meddle in their “boring human affairs”.

A Reaper even Reapers can’t foresee… how can they prepare against something like that?

Soap eventually returned to his own barrack, long after daylight faded. Sleep evaded him for most of the night, burning moths fluttering around his cot as he tosses and turns, flames occasionally charring his blanket.

When morning finally comes, he finds himself in the revenant training grounds along with Ghost. Anxiousness drips down his spine as they wait for the Doctor and his assistants.

Ghost knocks their boots together, and Soap calms. He’s not going through this alone, unlike any other revenant.

He begins to hope Novikov has simply forgotten about them when the man is late. Unfortunately, he doesn’t. Almost 20 minutes after the tests were supposed to start, the man comes hurrying down the training grounds, the papers in his hands miraculously not flying away in the gentle breeze.

“Sergeant! Lieutenant! I apologize for the delay.” Novikov calls when he gets close enough, somewhat out of breath, “yesterday’s incident had us sifting through reports all night, as you can imagine.”

The Doctor pauses to take another deep breath, and flips through the folder he brought, “as I’m sure you understand, this will not be a standard revenant test. I will not be redoing your basic tests, Lieutenant. As for you, Sergeant…”

Novikov turns his bespectacled grey eyes to him, and gives him a small smile, “I understand that I will not be able to test your limits here, but the records of the Verdansk incident are enough.”

Soap’s back straightens, and he can’t help but growl, “ye know about it?!”

He can count on two hands the amount of living people that know the whole truth behind his Reaping, and about half of them are in the 141.

“Laswell has allowed me access to the files. I’ve known about the incident beforehand, of course, theorized Konchar had-”

“Don’t ye dare say that fuckin’ name.” he snarls, flames flickering within his clenched fists. It doesn’t stop the stream of blurry memories, of melting skin beneath his fingertips-

Soap forcibly exhales, coercing his flames to die down.

Novikov doesn’t seem offended by the interruption. On the contrary, he looks… intrigued.

“I’d like to test the difference between your hands, to start. I have only been made aware of the changes in flame color, and the markings, of course.”

Soap glances at Ghost, who gives him a nod.

“What do ye need me to do, Doctor?”

“This is most intriguing… the flesh of your left hand is cooler than your right, but the flames are considerably warmer…”

Soap feels the ground between his fingers crumble to ash. So far, The tests are quite… boring, if he’s honest.

He’s had his own morbid fascination with his own powers, for a while. Wondering how it compares to other explosive compounds, trying to run the numbers to find the closest approximate. He thought, if he could find an equation, he could control his powers better.

Soap gave up on it soon after. Didn’t have enough data to work with, and generating more meant using his powers, and well…

Novikov lifts his pen, “very good, Sergeant.” steamin’ Jesus, he’s not 5, is he gonna give him a sticker next? “Now, Lieutenant, remove any clothing on your right arm, if you will.”

Ghost, who up until now stood motionless in his best imitation of a statue, stares at Novikov for a long moment, before slowly removing his glove and tucking it into his belt. He steps closer to Soap, rolling his sleeve to reveal pale, scarred skin.

“Now, with your left arm of course, I want you to attempt to explode the Lieutenant’s arm.”

Soap notices the assistant with the heat-sensitive camera aim it at Ghost, “it’s not gonna do anything to him, Doc.”

“Then there shouldn’t be any problem demonstrating it.” Novikov doesn’t look up from his papers. Bawbag.

Ghost offers him his arm silently. Soap knows it won’t do anything to him, they bear marks to prove it.

Soap takes the arm. White flames wrap harmlessly around it. He focuses his powers to his left hand, the air around them distorting.

It feels fundamentally wrong to try and hurt Simon. His breathing picks up, fingers twitching as the flames climb higher and higher.

“-it’s as if they’re trying to reach equilibrium. The flesh cools the flames, the flames heat it in return-”

Ghost doesn’t react, not that Soap can see with his vision tunneling on their joined limbs. The fire burns, searing, scorching, mutilating-

“-You may stop now, Sergeant-”

He can’t hurt him, how could he ever dare hurt him? Why isn’t anyone stopping this?

Like a bystander watching a house fire, Soap is helpless in front of the flames. He can almost smell the bubbling flesh from here, the melting of everything in the face of unending ruin-

“-ohnny. Enough.”

Soap jumps, the world rushing back to his senses. He turns his head shakily, to see Novikov’s gaze boring into him.

“Ah’m not- I can’t-” he mumbles, words barely forming on his lips, “Ghost-”

“You’re alright, Johnny.” Ghost’s smooth voice is steady as ever, but his eyes betray him, “it’s over.”

Novikov affirms, “We got all we needed, Sergeant.”

Ghost lifts his hand towards him, and Soap barely suppresses a flinch as it trails down his bicep. “You’re alright.” he repeats.

Soap nods, feeling like a bampot all at once. Of course Ghost is fine. They already knew this, he told Novikov as much not 10 minutes ago.

Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid. Soap grits his teeth, “what’s next, Doctor?”

Novikov takes a while to answer, and Soap avoids Ghost’s perceptive gaze as they wait, “I have received approval for Limbo, Lieutenant. I’d like to see the changes it went through first-hand.”

“... Understood. We will need to put some distance between us.” Ghost grunts.

The Doctor waves his hand, “naturally. You’re familiar with your limits, I’ll leave it to your judgement.”

Soap feels Ghost urge him to move, and they begin walking.

“Johnny-”

“Aye.” Soap huffs, “sorry, LT.”

“What for?” Ghost hums, “you did nothing wrong.”

He doesn’t answer to that. If Ghost didn’t see his fuck-up, he’d rather not bring it up.

“If you need to stop at any point-”

Maybe he’s easier to read than he thought, “Ah’m solid, Simon.”

“You froze there. Don’t think you can hide it.” or maybe Ghost knows him too well by now.

They come to a stop, facing one another. Soap bites the inside of his cheek, “I’m- I’ll be fine as long as Ah don’t have to repeat that.”

“You won’t.” Ghost assures him, “ready for Limbo?”

If there’s a place to find peace of mind, it’s the void, “aye. Been a while since we paid our friends a visit, hm?”

Ghost chuckles, “only you’d call them that.” He raises his voice, shouting to Novikov, “Limbo out in five!”

The Doctor gives them a thumbs-up, so Ghost closes his eyes.

Entering Limbo never got less jarring. Soap gets used to it faster if he expects it, but the shift from the colorful, lively world to the still void is an odd one.

Still, once he gets accustomed to it, he can’t help but smile. As weird as it is to say, he missed this place.

Limbo’s victims are docile, chasing after bright moths with no sense of urgency. Like shooting stars, they paint the dark skies of Limbo with radiant yellows and oranges.

This might be the only good thing Soap’s powers have ever done.

He catches Ghost staring at him, his eyes a glowing white, “what?” he asks with a small grin.

“Better?”

“Aye.”

“Sergeant!” Novikov shouts, though it sounds muffled as it enters Limbo from the other side, “try to explode something!”

Soap frowns, “is he talkin’ about yer friends?”

Ghost mutters, clearly unhappy with the disturbance, “don’t know.”

“What do you want ‘im to test it on?!” Ghost shouts back.

“Any material will do! I assume you’re standing on something, correct?”

Soap looks down, at the solid black ground. “What is this made of, anyway?”

The way Ghost hums back tells him ‘fuck if I know’. He crouches down, placing both hands on it. The texture is almost like a glass pane, except his fingers can’t get a grip on it no matter how much he tries.

Before he can hesitate, Soap flexes his fingers.

Nothing happens.

“Huh.” he tilts his head, “suppose it makes sense.”

“How so?” Ghost kneels beside him, sliding a finger over the undamaged surface.

“My powers have to come into contact with a material to explode.” Soap shrugs, getting back on his feet, “void’s made of nothing, no?”

“Hm.” Ghost casts another look around Limbo, and blinks.

Soap catches himself before his knees buckle from the rush of color and noise back into the world. Ghost hooks an arm under his shoulder as a precaution, but he assures him he’s stable.

“Absolutely outstanding! This is the first time you couldn’t explode something, is that correct, Sergeant?” Novikov half-jogs to them.

“Uh… Aye?”

The Doctor’s eyes gleam with wonder, “Incredible! If only there were more Revenants of Destruction in this base, I would be able to test if this is a result of a relation between your Reapers, or a consequence of your powers mixing… Alas, this is not the purpose of my visit.” 

Novikov’s assistants are absorbed with the testing equipment they brought, some looking like set pieces of a low budget sci-fi movie to Soap. He’d love to nick one to take apart, but the shite’s probably so delicate even his fingertips would burn and destroy them.

“Now, for the next test, I’d like you to-” a shrill noise cuts Novikov off, and Ghost pulls out his phone.

Soap pouts when Ghost answers. Why does no one ever call him?

“Affirm. We’ll be there in fifteen.” Ghost ends the call, “we need to go to a meeting with Laswell.”

Novikov’s eyes dim, “ah, I see… I suppose we can continue this afterwards.”

“You’re invited too, Doctor.” Ghost grunts, making both Soap and Novikov swing around in surprise.

When Laswell finally shows up on screen, she seems different from what Soap remembered.

Dark eye bags, pale, hair more grey in some places. He almost didn’t recognize her, and looking around the room tells him the rest of the team thinks the same.

The rest, except Price, “how are you, Kate?”

Laswell sighs, more hair falling off her tight bun. “Let’s get to work, John.”

As she brings up several images on screen, Price reports in their mind, “someone attacked Laswell and her wife in their home two months ago. She got off with minor injuries, but her wife… her concussion was severe enough that she barely talks most days.”

“Did they catch the fucker that did it?” Soap thinks back. If they didn’t, he’d gladly volunteer to put the bastard six feet under. He owes Laswell that much.

Price stops him from continuing to plan a revenge, “Kate killed him, son. She’s trained for field work, an everyday burglar doesn’t stand a chance against her. Now focus up.”

Soap huffs, “yes sir.”

“-we found signs of Shepherd’s work around Urzikstan. Supposedly, he’s working with one of the resistance groups there.” blurry satellite images pop up on screen, convoys and remote buildings hidden between green hills.

Gaz frowns, “either he suddenly grew a moral compass, or there’s a catch.”

Laswell nods, “it’s possible it’s a false lead, but with recent clashes between Urzik forces and the Russians, I’d like you to personally investigate it.”

“We’ll get it done, Laswell.” Price says, his authoritative voice on full blast.

“No one I trust more than you.” Laswell smiles, in a way Soap has never seen. “Now, obviously as you all are grounded, I wouldn’t just send you on what could potentially lead to nothing…”

She begins talking to Novikov, “we’re working on tracking the missing revenants Graves and Shepherd trafficked.”

The Doctor nods, adjusting the frankly huge glasses on his nose bridge, “many of them belong to rarer kinds of Reapers. If they were to fall into the wrong hands…”

“We can’t allow that to happen.” Ghost finishes sternly.

“Commander Karim has been working to find them, but there’s so much she can do while also fending off Russians.” the screen switches to a compilation of names and passport photos, each listing both a date of birth and Reaping. “This is your official reason to be sent to Urzikstan, boys. Whatever intel Graves has left behind him regarding the revenants’ location, we need it.”

“When are we up?” Price asks.

“1600.”

Gaz whistles, “brass’ knickers are all twisted up, huh.”

“Miss Laswell, if I may.” Novikov pipes up, “I have yet to finish the renewed revenant test of Sergeant MacTavish and Lieutenant Ghost. I will not be able to give you an accurate recommendation before that.”

The fuck’s he talking about?

“I understand, Doctor, but it’s out of my control.” Laswell exhales, “this is why I invited you to this meeting. Based on what you do know, what is your verdict?”

The entire room swivels to stare at the Doctor. Novikov scrambles to flip through the papers in his hands, before speaking with an air of defeat.

“Considering my current understanding of Lumity, and the state of Sergeant MacTavish and Lieutenant Ghost… I recommend that until further testing, they should be separated as much as possible on field, if their powers are to be used.”

… What?

[nishicchikouchi]

If I had a nickel every time an MC I know, let themself be stabbed on purpose so that they can defeat their enemy, I'd have two nickels, which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[anominous-user]

triple threat end card but with the honkai inpact trio. and also bald TT.

[eddiestightywhities]

When there's now this thing in your life, a new thing between you and another person, a thing you can't quite put your finger on to be able to try and describe it.

When you start to become so comfortable with this person that they start to become your person, and before you're really aware that anything has changed between you, you've just suddenly become one hundred percent theirs.

When you then get so close to that person that you don't really realise that things have shifted so significantly between you, because it's so infinitesimally and yet so dramatically all at once, and because everything just feels so damn right all the time and exactly the way you feel things are supposed to feel, so why would you ever think about changing it?

When it dawns on both you and that person—maybe one of you gets there before the other, maybe both at the same time?—that the two of you have moved on from being just friends and are morphing into something else, so seamlessly and with such ease that you don't have to question it, because it is just a thing that sort of is now.

When your touches become lighter, lingering things, softer and warmer and more frequent than before, and occurring much, much more and in a very different way than with anybody else in your life.

When you and your person and this thing that you now share become more wanting and more needy, and yet somehow so unerringly steady, and also so wonderfully and assuredly grounding and immovable, all as one, all at the very same time.

When together, you become more.

When you find you have found your way to your person, and to this thing, the thing that you now mold and nurture and that molds and nurtures you, slowly; unwaveringly; absolutely; discovering that it's helps you to move in new ways and to unfold as a person, to breathe, to settle into yourself.

When you have this thing (all of these things) in your life and realise that this is it, this is the thing they've been writing about throughout the ages.

When you realise that this thing—your thing—is a thing called love.

[duskyashe]

CAMP NANO DAY 1

Calling All The Monsters part 4 chapter 1

[First] [Previous] [Next] [AO3]

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Jason was more than ready to get this over with. Unlike the others, he'd known he wasn't fully human for years, pretty much ever since he'd come back from the dead. Looking back on it, he'd even known the others were slowly changing, too, he just hadn't had the words. He hadn't known there even were words for the feeling of slowly finding his footing among others that were just as inhuman as himself. Well, other than relief.

As soon as Dick confirmed when and where the kid was willing to host tutoring sessions for all of them ("He said he wanted to work with each of us individually, first, but that he was willing to work with groups of up to three at a time if B was more comfortable with that," Dick said with a thoughtful frown, cowl held loosely in one hand. "Personally, I think the first meeting should definitely be two of us, but the rest should be played by ear, but it's your call, B,") Jason was nearly vibrating out of his own skin in anticipation. Answers to all his questions about himself, from his first fully conscious thought after his dip in the Pits to a reaction he'd had to something just last Tuesday, were just out of his reach and he could feel his frustration and impatience building in the back of his throat. Grimacing, he swallowed the urge to vocalize his feelings before taking a deep breath. It was only an hour more before Condor and Starling would be meeting up with their new tutor, he could hold out that much longer. He could.

"You alright there, Jay?" Steph asked as she entered the cave. Her long blonde hair was braided tightly against the crown of her head in preparation for getting in costume.

He shakily let out the breath he'd taken and nodded in her direction. "Just anxious," he said, meticulously going over his guns yet again. He was mostly suited up, himself, just needing to mask up and slip his gloves on. He'd initially had his gloves on, but cleaning his guns was easier and more grounding barehanded, so off they'd come.

She gave him a searching look. "You really believe Phantom, don't you?" Steph asked after a moment.

Jason paused his movements and let out a sigh. "Yeah. Yeah, I do," he replied, setting his cleaning rag to the side and finally looking directly at her instead of just from the corner of his eye. "Look, I'm pretty sure it was fairly obvious to B, Dick, and Alfie, and maybe Tim saw it, too, but I didn't come back from death the same as I was before. And I don't mean "the trauma of my death changed me"," he said with finger quotes, rolling his eyes at the same time. "I mean I literally didn't come back fully human. At the latest, I've known I wasn't fully human since shortly after everything that happened with Tim, but it's far more realistic to say I've known, at least on some level, ever since I first came out of the Pit." Jason sighed and ran a hand through the tuft of white hair that liked to fall into his eyes. "Looking back, almost every single fight between me and another member of the family, except Damian, started because I either misunderstood something someone said or took insult where none was meant, because I reacted based on instinct and emotion first instead of logic, and while I've gotten better at thinking crap through before I respond, interactions between all of us for the past year and a half have been noticeably less tense and have resulted in a lot less bloodshed. That's not all on me, and neither is it all on the Demon Spawn finally starting to get a clue."

"Alright," Steph said, the gears in her head almost visibly turning. "Putting aside you knowing years ahead of us that it was possible to start out human and end up not, what do you mean by almost every fight between you and a different family member except Damian? Are you saying the fights between you two were that different than all the others?"

He blinked at the blonde in incredulity for a moment. "Steph… Damian's from a warrior culture," he said slowly, praying he didn't need to spell it out for her. She just blinked blankly back at him and he let out a soft curse under his breath. No luck. "Out of the entire family, only four of us have been trained by the League of Assassins, and B didn't exactly keep up with the cultural practices after his stay with them. Cass may have picked up on a lot of those practices from her sperm donor and whatever other trainers he allowed her to train under, but she didn't have all of them and didn't really understand what she had picked up or how to actually apply it. I was the only one who, in Damian's eyes at the time, was cultured and spoke a familiar language. He saw me as someone who was reliable, and a part of me saw him in a similar light due to my own experiences with the League right after my resurrection. Fights with the Demon Spawn were more like training spars while fights with pretty much everyone else were basically honor duels." How has this not come up before now? Are the others just as clueless about this crap? Jason wanted to shake some common sense into some of his siblings, maybe scream a little in frustration. If the only ones who knew anything accurate about his and Damian's relationship were literally just the two of them, he was going to be so disappointed in his family…

Steph looked like she was going to say something more on the subject when Bruce and Babs entered the cave, Babs heading to the Batcomputer while Bruce walked over to the two of them.

"I had a feeling you two would still be down here. Steph, go get changed, I'll help you with your hair pins before you head out, okay?" Bruce asked. Steph gave a sloppy salute and skipped off to the changing rooms, though Jason could tell she wasn't going to let their conversation drop that easily. Bruce took a moment to watch Steph go, and Jason got back to cleaning his guns as he waited for his father Bruce to say his piece. "Are you alright, Jaylad? You usually aren't this anxious before an op, especially an information gathering one like this."

Jason finished rubbing down the last part that needed attention before quickly reassembling his guns. "At the beginning, back when the Demon Spawn first came to live with us, did any of his interactions with the family stand out as different to you?" Jason asked instead. He switched to checking his hidden ammo pouches, making sure everything was topped off. He wasn't expecting a fight tonight, but he needed something to keep his hands occupied.

A hand, scarred and familiar, caught his attention as it came to rest on his own. "I've always known yours and Damian's relationship was special to both of you. You both got each other in ways the others are still trying to understand. And yes, I'm aware a large part of that is due to your time with the League, I'm not as blind to your dealings with your siblings as you all seem to think I am," Bruce said with a chuckle. He brought his other hand up to gently raise Jason's head, making eye contact soon after. "I'm grateful you were able to give Damian a small slice of his first home when I couldn't, Jason. While I wish neither of you had ever been in the situations that lead to you both being with the League, I'm grateful those experiences were able to bring you two closer together as brothers."

He stared at Bruce in shock for a moment before clearing his throat and looking away. "Damn it, B, warn a man before you bring out the emotion talk," he said, stalwartly pretending his eyes weren't misty.

Jason saw Bruce smile out the corner of his eye as his father patted his shoulder with the hand that had been on his cheek. "My bad, sorry about that. Finish getting ready then meet by the Batcomputer for a quick briefing," he said before walking away.

As Jason finished checking his ammo pouches and slid his gloves back on, he couldn't help but smile to himself at the faint, almost tangible, warmth in his chest. Things had really changed in the past year and a half, and for the better, at that.

=============‹«⟨·•★•·⟩»›=============

Danny was both excited and nervous for what this evening would entail. He'd been obsessively going over everything he'd ever been taught about the various non-human beings that called Earth and its various pocket dimensions home in preparation for this night. He didn't know who he was meeting with first, nor did he know how many of Batman's clan he was meeting with, so he and his Fright had probably gone a bit overboard with potential lesson plans. He just wanted to give the Bats a good first lesson about their various species and the instincts and abilities that are a part of them.

He was waiting at the rooftop shrine where he met with Raven, once more sitting cross-legged about a foot above the roof. It had been almost two weeks since he and Raven had set up these lessons, and he was eager to get started. The current plan was that for the initial lessons, if everything worked out during this first one, Danny would be meeting each publicly known member of the Batclan at that exact shrine for basically what boiled down to essentially bookwork before eventually moving on to hands-on training with their current and future abilities at a different, more secure location. He had to admit, it was a pretty good system for having been developed at the drop of the hat between two beings who didn't even know each other yet.

A sudden burst of flame on the corner of the roof drew Danny's attention to Condor's arrival. Y'know, Danny thought with eyes wide with awe as the hooded form of Condor stalked out of the fire with a predatory grace, little tendrils of fire chasing after him, if we'd known Condor literally appeared in a burst of flames at times, lich would have been the last thing we thought of. It's so freaking obvious he's a phoenix that in hindsight I feel like an idiot.

The faint rustle of feathers against fabric had him turning around just in time to see Starling drop down from on top of the shrine and land in a stooped crouch, feather headdress flowing in the breeze as her head tilted ever so sightly to the side, the hood of her own costume shading her face enough to make the florescent red lenses of her full face mask stand out starkly.

"We aren't late, are we?" A soft, almost lyrical voice asked from behind Danny, brimming with power and potential but holding nothing but eagerness and nervousness. Condor's voice was most definitely masculine, but it was almost impossible to tell if it were tenor, baritone, or bass as it seemed to be all of them at once. It was captivating and bone chilling all at once.

Danny looked over his shoulder, more sure in his assumptions of the species of these two vigilantes than ever before. "Not at all, you're right on time. Shall we begin?"

=============‹«⟨·•★•·⟩»›=============

HEY EVERYONE!!! So sorry for the wait, I meant to get this chapter finished and published back in May, but, well... That obviously didn't happen (⁠^⁠～⁠^⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ also, you may have noticed something different about this part (⁠ ͡⁠°⁠ ͜⁠ʖ⁠ ͡⁠°⁠) yes, that's right, part 4 of this series has been broken into chapters!!! This will mainly come into play on AO3, as part 4 will be a multi chapter fic over there (as well as actually have a title (⁠；⁠^⁠ω⁠^⁠）) but I thought it was important to acknowledge it here, too!

[vinelark]

every time you post a fic snippet i start giggling and kicking my legs

ok ok, twist my arm 🥰

“We could break into Hood’s lair,” Tim is saying, almost to himself. “He’s got his own little setup. Or I’ve got contacts at the GU labs. Or, ugh, you could call Batman and maybe he’ll be cool about it, but let’s keep that at the end of the list for now—”

They’ve left the gannets behind, but two other flocks of seabirds a mile out seem to have taken up the chase. Kon is getting ready to fly back toward land when the obvious Plan B hits him. “Or I can dunk you.”

“—unless absolutely—what?” Tim says. “You can what?”

Kon slows, keeping an ear out for more birds in the vicinity. “I can dunk you in the ocean.”

“What,” Tim says again.

“To wash the stuff off,” Kon explains. “Then it’s not airborne.”

“No!” Tim says.

“Why not?”

Tim pokes Kon’s chest, which obviously does very little. “So many reasons! Mostly shark related!”

“I can out-swim sharks,” Kon says confidently. “Okay, hold your breath—”

[ask-my-memoir]

Kaine: "You shouldn't just walk up on someone like that...."

The stranger has identified himself as "Kaine."

Kaine's character page may now be accessed!

[ @ecoxlar-maybe / @ask-amaryllis-academy ]

[1/2]

[ravetillyoucry]

PUPARIA

Chapter 17 - Absentee

prev - chapter 1

The dark, uncharted corner's of Hosah's mind once served to be quite comforting, but even now, the sense of familiarity in his dream he'd always found himself back in had began to slip. As the plot thickened, so did the miles of dense and viscous mud that pulled him down and kept him in place, soon he'd be unable to move completely, it was just a matter of when. And when that happened, he was sure to suffocate under the weight of his own deep rooted mental struggle that even he couldn't reach or understand in the depths of his sleep.

The shifter awoke with a start, gasping for air that had been there the whole time, as his mind and soul had once again connected with his physical form, reaching the blinding light in the sky which was consciousness. It was just a shame he'd happened to have been rustled back to life in the belly of the night, surely now being unable to fall back asleep after years of struggling in his dream's time, although just a few hours in the world he resided in.

To Hosah's surprise, the man laid next to him was also awake, and staring at him with wide eyes and a flushed face, his reading glasses having slipped down to the tip of his annoyingly perfect straight nose.

"Bad dream?" He asked, turning over and leaning down onto the shifter's level.

The three inch tall figure rustled between the various sheets and blankets sat breathless for a few seconds before being able to respond accordingly, "Not necessarily, just, knocked the wind out of me."

"Watching you shrink in your sleep in real time is so surreal." Teddy spoke without really considering what the shifter had to say about his previous question.

All Hosah could think to say was, "How long have you been awake?", as the bedside lamp remained on as it did when he'd first fallen asleep hours ago.

"Oh, I haven't slept yet." The giant said these kinds of things so casually, you wouldn't think it were a real health concern if tone was the only thing to go off of.

Then again, Hosah was similar in that right. They could both worry about eachother as long as they neglected the ability to worry about themselves first, a nice balance.

Quiescence like this had become a reoccurring theme in the shifter's life, in a world that moved so fast and attacked him so viciously, it was nice to find a safe haven in the ornately decorated apartment. At first, he found it garish and tacky, but he'd come to appreciate every single object that Teddy held onto so dearly. Soon, they'd probably have to do a little clear out as the Hosah got all of his things officially moved in, but for now, he could enjoy all of the clutter, even if it annoyed him at times.

Teddy turned to lay on his stomach, his face leaning against his folded arms as he edged down the bed which was already too small for him, just so he could be at eye level with the shrunken man that sat beside him.

"You should go back to sleep." The giant put on a tired voice, but Hosah knew he wouldn't also be going back to bed even if the shifter decided to.

Instead, he shrugged and stood to his full, minute size, "I'm awake now. And it's not like you're drifting off anytime soon." Hosah leant forward with his arms crossed, his eyes squinting in the dark as Teddy's form blocked all light from the lamp beside them, "You should read to me. You're always reading."

"Hmm," Teddy hummed, his smile poking out from underneath his bare arms, "I don't think you'd like it; it's not a story or anything. Trying to learn greek."

"Jesus christ," The shifter sighed, "You know enough languages, you're so greedy for.. Knowledge."

"That's a good thing! Everyone should be greedy when it comes to learning, get with the times, we have all this information right in-front of us, the New York public library is one of the biggest in the world," Hosah wasn't really listening to what exactly the giant was ranting about, but he enjoyed the sound of his voice nonetheless, his accent poking through with his melodic intonation, almost acting like a lullaby to the already sleepy shifter.

"Keep talking, I might be able to fall back asleep," He said as he climbed his way up the giant's arm, who'd now turned to lay on his back again, making his way into the space between the collarbones.

The vibrations from Teddy's contracting diaphragm as he laughed proved to be extremely satisfying, shaking through the shifters whole body, feeling every hum rattle his innards, "What, am I boring you?"

"Mm," Hosah lay flat against the exposed skin multiple shades lighter than his own, "Don't stop, it's nice,"

"Okay," The giant whispered, a hand inching closer until it coincidentally fell right over the sprawled out shifter, a finger stroking up and down the protruding spine almost as rhythmically as his speech, "Tell me about the dream you had,"

God, where should he even start. "I have the same one every time I shrink in my sleep. It's like.. I don't even know. My body freezes up and my blood freezes, it's like being mummified whilst still being alive or something."

"Sounds more like a nightmare." Teddy commented, the movement of his hand stopping, his grip around the shifter's waist tightening just slightly.

Suddenly, Hosah didn't really want to talk about it anymore. It always made him think of his uncle, despite the lack of connection between the two, whenever he was sleeping he always felt like his soul was only half of himself, his unconscious form being partially the man that came before him, like twins that were conjoined at the hip, two minds fighting for control over one body.

His dad always told him how much they looked alike. The few photos he had of his brother, Hosah would confuse them for his own. Even when looking in the mirror, he'd see glimpses of the man in the pictures, in the corner of his eye when he wasn't really paying too much attention. Before it scared him, he didn't particularly believe in ghosts or any sort of supernatural entities, but there were times where he truly thought there was a wandering soul fighting for his bodily power. But now, the thought was more comforting than anything, so much so in fact that the shifter found himself addressing his uncle when monologuing in his head, or even just when speaking to himself out loud, expecting a response from someone that was never there in the first place.

".. Hosah? Are you asleep?" The giant whispered, his voice gentle and velvety on the ears, although the humming of his chest beneath the shrunken figure he addressed was anything but soft, shaking him to his core.

He debated not saying anything, but in the end, Hosah decided to just tell the truth, "No, I'm just thinking."

The room fell into an expectant silence, the shifter holding his breath as he tried to fight the unusual urge to carry on and verbalise what exactly he was thinking about.

"..What's the date?" Hosah said in a sigh.

"Um," Teddy sat up, instinctively holding the shifter to his chest as he did so, and checked his phone, "September twenty ninth.. Why?"

"That's right. It's the anniversary of the day my uncle was declared dead. Twenty eight years." He spoke quietly, almost being completely unheard if the giant hadn't trained his ears to pick up on the, close to, silent voice by now. "..He'd probably been dead a while before everyone decided he wouldn't be coming back, but, you know."

The finger that once rested perfectly in the space between the shifter's neck and upper back moved to ruffle the hair on his head, "I'm sorry. Were you close?"

Hosah wished he had a glass of water or something to spit out for dramatic effect, "Do I look older than twenty eight?!" He choked.

"No- wait," The hand from underneath the shifter moved frantically, his shrunken form now up close to the giant's face as he laid sprawled out in the cupped palm, "I didn't hear the last part of what you said properly,"

Hosah laughed as the warm breath ruffled through his hair, raising a hand to just barely touch the bridge of the giant's nose, "Sure, sure, It's your birthday soon anyway, you'll be the old one."

"Oh, god, right," Teddy's smile dropped slightly, his eyes lingering off into the distance.

The shifter sat up onto his knees, his palm now able to fully rest on the face in front of him, "What, do you not like your birthday?"

"Well, I don't dislike it," The giant exhaled sharply, "I've just never really celebrated, it's a lot of pressure, I feel like this it's the one day I have to do something and I have to have the most fun possible, then I get stressed out about it and end up not doing anything at all."

Hosah wasn't really sure how he could fix everything, how he could make it all better, but god would he try. "What would you want to do?" He asked.

The prospect of doing anything he'd like for one day was one that brought the light back into Teddy's expression, putting that 'up-to-no-good' smile right back onto his face.

"Let's go on a date. Like, a real actual date at a nice restaurant or something."

Great. Sounds perfect. Making a public display of his romantic relations was probably the last thing Hosah would ever choose to do himself, but if that's what the giant really truly wanted, who was he to deny him the right to do what he pleased on his birthday of all days. The thought of anyone else knowing how he felt towards Teddy terrified him. Sure, there was the possibility of facing bigotry, which the shifter was far too used to to even consider that aspect to be the worst part, but the real thing that scared him so deeply was the chance that his stalker would target the one thing in the world the shifter actually loved and cherished at this point in time. So far, Teddy hadn't really been mentioned in the countless letters of empty threats made towards his life, but the prospect of the person hellbent on getting him seeing their relationship and deciding to specifically try to destroy it was a thought that kept Hosah awake at night.

Despite all his worries, the shifter just couldn't voice his concerns. He didn't want Teddy to get the wrong idea, it's not that he didn't want people to know about them, not that Hosah wasn't extremely proud of the person he was with, and it would kill him to know that's how the person he loves the most perceives his feelings on the matter.

Instead of saying what he truly felt, the shifter gave his best, most convincing smile, patting the giant's nose as he spoke, "Cool. I'll look into some places we could go, make some reservations, whatever you want," .

The conversation had long shifted from the matter, but even in the seemingly sweet moments, Hosah still thought about his uncle, and what he'd do if given the privilege of living that the shifter currently held, and took for granted. He never knew the man, which made him even more curious to know what he'd do if put into the situations he'd found himself in. But most of all, Hosah wondered if he'd be proud of the person that continued his legacy in the form of taking his name. There was no way to answer these burning questions, but god could he hope the truth would lean one way rather than the other.

-~-

When it came to actually beginning to plan for the occasion, Hosah was completely and utterly stumped. It was clear he didn't go out to eat in the city often for various obvious reasons, as when he actually sat and thought about where exactly he knew to take Teddy, he couldn't name a single place. Now that they were off work for the day, the pair of detectives decided to do some loitering around Manhattan to seek out some potential options for how they would spent the upcoming October nineteenth.

The mall was a new edition to the general area, as far as Hosah knew since he'd never actually cared to really pay much mind to it, and this particularly day seemed perfect to give it a chance, especially since word of an integrated shifter-friendly area had been spreading around like wild fire. The shifter himself had the great pleasure of overhearing plenty down right cruel opinions on the matter, what a waste of money it was, how 'those people' need to just suck it up and control it as if they wouldn't already being doing as such if it were possible. As much as it pained him to just ignore these kinds of people, it was probably the better choice to make, it's not like they're particularly open for discussion or changing their views either way, so Hosah didn't really feel the need to bother himself by entertaining the idea of that possibility, even though he so desperately wanted to be the one to show them the truth, to change their ways, it just wasn't an option, at least not for an actual shifter like himself.

As foretold, Hosah's eyes instantly landed on the various different kids of fencing around the walls, with signs all around telling people of Teddy's height to watch their step, and on the contrary, some images more to his own scale saying that shifters should try walk alongside the walls. Then, his gaze rose, from the space on the giant's shoulder, the whole shifter section was visible. Tiny replicas of identical concourses covered by a thin glass wall. Looking back at the doll house adjacent shopping centre almost made Hosah feel normal sized, despite the lack of actual people utilising the space.

There were many different integrated spaces being put into place for shifters nowadays, with those in power even going as far as to encourage people to live their lives in their small forms as a variety of different shrunken towns were created around different places of the world, despite imminent disaster lingering around every new welcoming space that existed. It had barely been five years since a similar structure was built back nearby his hometown, and some unsupervised serial killer in the making had already come over with a kettle of boiling water in an attempt to kill everyone who dared utilise what little they were given. Hosah was sure he'd be seeing that face again across the table from him in an interrogation room after hearing of the incident on the news.

This, however, seemed to be going swimmingly. Both Teddy and the shifter himself stood, mesmerised by the sight for a moment. He wondered what the giant actually thought of it all, it was something he'd been meaning to ask actually. There were a lot of different things to debate with non-shifters, their stance on whether they even really saw you as human at all being a telling one of how they'd treat you. Of course, he has no worry that Teddy would be that type, given how he'd been with the shifter so far. How he got so lucky, Hosah would never know. Maybe it was to make up for all the terrible things that had been going on, a beacon of light that'd stop

him from just completely giving up.

"You should go check it out." Teddy commented, turning his head toward the shifter, although given his position on the shoulder, neither of them could properly see each other's face, "The, I don't know what it's called, the shifter-space?"

The title the giant had given the size appropriate add on to the mall lightened Hosah's mood, having it being soured by all the memories of how badly these kinds of things usually went despite their good intentions.

"Hm, there are some things I need, I guess.. Okay, yeah, I will check it out." Usually, Hosah didn't bother with any accommodation to his size, preferring to just ignore the fact all together, pretending like it wasn't a big deal to be only slightly bigger than someone's thumb whilst living amongst those that weren't as vertically challenged as himself.

What was on his list again? Right, new clothes, for a start, and maybe some stuff for the apartment if there were any shops like that in the newly built shrunken mall. Lately, all his things hung loose on his body as he'd uncontrollably been losing so much weight. That reminded him, he had another therapists and doctor's appointment coming up later in the week, how fun. It's not like he didn't want to get something nice to wear whilst celebrating Teddy's birthday either way, so it did really seem like things were finally working in his favour after all, he just hoped there weren't some crazy shifter hating folk waiting to run up and cause a scene.

The giant looked around briefly, before quickly and discreetly shuffling his way toward the integrated so called 'shifter space'. The flight of stairs appointed to the section that Hosah would have to hike went up at least six feet, nothing to Teddy as he was already about four inches taller than that, but quite the trek for such tiny legs, surely. It was much easier to let the shrunken man slip down from his hand right where he needed to be, they just needed to time it right when the various employees and security guards weren't hanging around and watching over the area.

Letting Hosah slip down from his palm onto the little balcony and parting ways wasn't going to be easy. His brain felt fuzzy, along with the rest of his body as the giant felt himself almost trembling as he reached his hand out to allow the shifter into his grasp. He'd be fine, surely. They'd be separated for maybe an hour at most, there was security pacing back and forth around the area almost constantly, but he still couldn't help but feel as though he was about to make a terrible mistake upon letting Hosah go, even if it's just for a short while.

Teddy wasn't sure what to do with himself. As the pair parted ways, they both looked back at each other once, but it was Teddy that looked back two times. It reminded him of the greek myths his latin teacher was so interested in, at the time, he was frustrated that Orpheus had gone such a long way just to fail at the last moment, but he could understand where he was coming from now. He wandered aimlessly, despite having supposed to be looking out for places he'd like to eat on his birthday, he couldn't see the positives in anything at the moment. All he could do was worry deeply.

He found himself in a tech store, strolling through the aisles upon aisles of televisions, looking at all the fancy new flatscreens that had began to rapidly grow in popularity. Teddy preferred his big clunky thing, he thought it looked a lot nicer than the sleek and modern design of the LCD systems, as did most 'vintage' things, to be honest. All of the screens were set to the news, in sync as the reporter's voice echoed all around him.

A familiar voice, in fact. And no doubt about it, a familiar face. What a pleasant surprise to see Arthur Emily facing him from the other side of the screen. It would've felt surreal to see someone whose house you were just in a few days ago on the TV if Teddy wasn't already far too used to it given his father's career.

"Well, it's just a waste of money, Emily. I mean, I'm sure many of you can relate, you've been to the hospital and had an insane medical bill, or you've got a relative waiting and rotting away waiting for some kind of aid in the back end of their life, and this is what our taxes go to? You see what I'm saying here? It's ridiculous, we're working American citizens that actually provide for our country and society, what do those shifters do aside from get killed and drain our money on being inclusive toward them?"

Eugh. The political figure spoke as if the people he was arguing against the basic rights for weren't even people at all. And what business did Arthur Emily have being the opposing side to the argument, besides the fact having someone he can have in his hand gets him hard to the point where he's willing to pay for such kind of attention, of course. He was a comedian, a radio host, someone to make the argument for shifter rights look ridiculous, that's what he was. It made him so, uncontrollably frustrated, but even worse, it made him feel guilty. Guilty he held the privilege of being his height.

"It's an infringement of human rights, to not allow a group of people equal chances just because of their genetic makeup, I mean, I thought we learnt this with the equality act, right? We're all just people, shouldn't we be blaming our government for the mess of a world we live in rather than the people that are trying to get by alongside us? It's those in power that are the enemy."

"That's what I'm saying, can we even consider them to be human? The spider you crush just for being in your kitchen doesn't get accommodations in your city, so why should these shifters that are wiped out just as easily?"

"Why not? If we're punishing those whose only crime was to be small, then god, are we overdue for an armageddon."

Yeah, that was about all Teddy needed to hear before he'd gotten a gist of what the debate was over and how it would end. As much as he disliked Arthur Emily, he had to admit, he was on the right side of history with his argument. The prophetic perfect tense used when describing the mortality of shifters was disturbing to say the least. It was a given that they were to die in possibly the most gruesome and horrific ways, so much so that these events weren’t even being reported on, they were just expected, so normal that they might as well have already happened. Maybe that’s what caused such a change in heart in Mr Emily, being face to face with death in the form of his… ‘Friend’.

Meanwhile, Hosah was more struggling to find sign of human life in the small section of various shops that catered to shifters and shifters alone. He’d seen maybe three other shifters in the past twenty minutes, other than the single cashier in the only shop he’d been in. Two teenagers using tech-decks as size appropriate skateboards had passed him by not too long ago as they took pleasure in all the empty, smooth floors they had to ride around on. As annoying as it was, Hosah couldn’t be annoyed. They reminded him too much of himself and his older brother. Oh, how he missed the nineties, being a teenager, and being able to spend all day riding skateboards and loitering, despite how much his parents hated it.

Entering the only other clothing store that seemed to even be open, Hosah told himself it was here or nothing, not that he’d have any alternative choice on the matter anyway. The last shop’s smallest size in men’s was a small, which wouldn’t have been a problem if Hosah wasn’t below average in every way of the word. How even the smallest of clothes hung loosely around his body, even when buttoned all the way up, his chest still poked out, his painfully sharp collarbones drawing in all the attention despite how badly he’d wanted to cover them, to cover his entire body. He wanted to change for the better, so, so badly, but he’d grown used to seeing himself all disheveled and sickly. As embarrassing as it was to exist in this form, it was all he really knew anymore.

There really wasn’t much in Hosah’s preferred style. V-necks and scarves paired together was an insanely popular male fashion trend, but the shifter himself hated the hipster style. Same with skinny jeans and graphic tees, all the shifter wanted was a nice button up, or even a nice woven sweater. There was nothing wrong with dressing like a grandpa, in his eyes. Honestly, what there wasn’t much of was a real point to this all. He’d searched and searched but again, everything just looked far too big to ever fit him comfortably. It was frustrating, not only because everything was grossly up to date with the latest fashion, but because Hosah had been hit with this inexplicable feeling of guilt and disappointment in himself as he felt inadequate and unable to impress Teddy.

The sudden realisation of the feeling brought a hot flush over his entire form, he’d never felt this way about anything, never mind a single person.

If just his clothes were going to cause this much stress, god, please help him on the actual day.

[fantomette22]

NEW FIC CHAPTER TOMORROW GUYS!!!!

👀👀👀

[missbingu]

Hange is reunited with Erwin & the other scouts. She doesn’t have to fight anymore. She can rest.

[pttucker]

I activated the [Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint] right away. And then, bore witness to a message I had never seen before. [Applicable individual is a 'Character' from a worldview you are not familiar with.] …A 'Character' from a worldview I wasn't familiar with? Almost at the same time, bright light suddenly shone out from the naked man's eyes. [Someone is activating a power not registered with the system!] Circular disks were vigorously spinning above his retinas. [An existence of another dimension is spying on your true nature!] [Warning! This power cannot be fully blocked by 'The Fourth Wall'!]

What???

Now we have whole entire different universes showing up? With their own absolute beings???

.

.

Wait.

Could it be...?

I gotta go check something.

.

.

I freaking knew it!

Oh man, first Dokja asks if there are unseen readers out there reading his story and now he literally encounters the main character of another novel from our world.

We are really straining the Fourth Wall here.

...The Fourth Wall that didn't answer about the readers and didn't answer when Dokja asked if they'd run into Jae-Hwan again...

[deus-ex-mona]

how long will chapter 5 even be my g o s h

[moonshine-nightlight]

I slept through my class today because I stayed up reading nothing's wrong with dale from start to finish. I love it so much

lol as someone who's done that before, while I feel bad for u missing your class, i rly appreciate the compliment!

its later in the night than I'd hoped but final chapter of Dale will be out shortly!

[lyraoctaviawrites]

✨Into the Phantasm Part 1 Update✨

Chapter 19 is done and it is finally not actually god awful anymore! Let’s fucking goooooo!

Can’t believe I’m actually on the last chapter again. It’s cool that I made it this far but hoo boy, this one is gonna be a doozy…

Totals:

Word count: 107,923

Page count: 378

Read the first three chapters here ❤️