#the reason they lose their memories is cause their power is waning so they forcefully turn themselves human

[dragonichaven]

So anyways here’s my dragon quest oc Margaret/Megidogan!  They’re a demon god from another world that popped up into their world prior to the events of DQ2.  As a human they are a surprisingly pleasant person (mostly since she lost her memories too)

[theolddarkmachine]

Dead Space - an end, a beginning (A Prologue)

It starts the day the hero falls. Crashing in a blaze of glory of twisted metal and burning ozone, he leaves a scar on the Earth that changes everything.

And Keith sees it all.

Chapter 1 of 11

Tags: attempted Horror Elements, Zombies, Violence and Gore, Eventual Smut, Happy Ending i swear

Also on AO3

A/N: So I’ve been thinking about this fic for over a year now, and I thought that it would be great for a Big Bang. That being said, my schedule got fucked and I couldn’t hang with the Big Bang any longer. While a bummer, means I can post this on my own time now, which is far from a bummer lol SO, with that being said, please enjoy my attempt at the zombie au I could never get out of my head. Plans to update will probably be every other week unless my schedule gets back to normal sooner rather than later

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It starts the day the hero falls. Crashing in a blaze of glory of twisted metal and burning ozone, he leaves a scar on the Earth that changes everything.

And Keith sees it all.

“Shiro,” he breathes, as he watches the dust cloud begin to settle from where the bright light had crashed itself into the desert.

Sad news today as we report the loss of the Kerberos mission.

The news report plays itself like a broken, repeated loop through Keith’s head as he revved the hover bike’s engine. It snarls like a hungry animal before taking off, streaking through the night toward the dark bloom marring the sky and hiding the stars.

We’ve received confirmation that the cause was pilot error.

A memorial was held today to celebrate the lives of the three crew members lost.

Gritting his teeth against the scalding memories of the televised lies that battered themselves against the inside of his skull, Keith pushed the hover bike faster. Its growl keens higher, almost pained as if leeching off the bitter thoughts tickling the back of his tongue.

Keith had known that they couldn’t really be lost. That he couldn’t have really been lost.

He’s felt it in his gut like an undeniable truth that had wrought itself into his blood, and burnt itself into his bones until it was all he had felt. Shiro was alive. He was sure of it in the very way he was sure of the steady cadence of his own heartbeat as it battered its shape into the back of his ribs.

It was a truth that Keith had ended up fighting for.

One that he had ended up losing everything for.

At the end of all things, he had been the one to burn the carefully constructed card house of his own dreams down to the ground, and yet he couldn’t even find it in himself to regret it. After all, he wasn’t sure he could even want those dreams if it had meant abandoning his truth.

Abandoning Shiro.

“He never gave up on me,” Keith had snarled, teeth bared as he’d struggled against the tight hold of the guards, all the while his focus set on Iverson. “We can’t give up on him.”

Then, when that had fallen on deaf ears and on the broken on the back of a pitying stare,

“I can’t give up on him.”

“Son, you have to let him go,” Iverson had said, low and slow, as if speaking to a frightened animal. Keith’s sure that’s what he had looked like anyway, with the blood smeared across his chin and the edge turning his gaze into a sharp weapon.

“He’s gone.”

“He isn’t gone,” Keith growls in reply to the phantom voice that had plagued his nightmares, echoing his own past sentiment before he had been forcefully dragged from the Garrison’s ground. There’s a tang of deja vu that fills his mouth as he follows the very same path he’d torn across when he’d left, the bike carrying him across the dirt as he was blinded by his fury.

Now, his gaze is all too clear as he eyes the cloud that looms ever closer upon his approach to the point of impact.

Light, bright and domineering over the night, grows like a bleeding halo up from the dirt as he starts to cut his speed.

Nothing could surprise him about seeing the Garrison already there. Something dark and twisted moves behind his sternum, sinking its claws into the bone as it hisses that they must have already known that he would fall.

Slowing to a crawl, Keith cuts the power to the bike and lets it settle into a stop just outside the ring of light cast around the impact zone by the tall construction lights.

The white of the lighting dulls the scarlet earth of the desert, sucking the color out of the scene and turning it monochromatic as Keith pushes his gaze along the ground and over the large tent that stands as a center point of the light rigs.

Shoddy fencing, nothing more than chain link and metal poles, stands between him and the makeshift camp, and every few feet stands signs that read MILITARY PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING in thick angry red lines.

It forces a chuckle from his dry throat as he pulls himself from the bike, and leaves it standing behind a dried bush.

Funny, he thinks as he pulls the bandana that hangs loosely around his neck up over his nose, and makes a grab for the knife that’s attached to his hip. With an expert flourish, he pulls it free of its sheath, and boldly steps up to the fence.

The Garrison wouldn’t have spared much personnel for this venture to avoid suspicion, that much Keith knows. Pair that with what little time had passed since the crash, he was certain that those who would be there would undoubtedly be busy.

Far too busy to notice him as he cut his way through the flimsy metal wire.

It gives without much pomp or circumstance, curling in like a dying bud as Keith pushes through the gap he’s created.

Silence, eerie and thick lays across the camp as he flips the knife in his hold, letting the flat of the blade press against the inside of his wrist as he moves quietly toward the tent’s opening. The well lit area leaves no shadows to cling to as Keith boldly walks across the dirt, gaze weary as he watches for any sign of movement.

The air is still, settling over him like a second skin and stalling the breath in his lungs as Keith pushes the tent flap to the side and steps in.

A beep, high pitched and steady, greets him as he lets the canvas fall closed behind him to trap himself with the scene set before him.

Bodies clothed in white biohazard suits lay across the ground, crumpled and twisted like marionettes cut from their strings as they surrounded a table at the center of the tent, almost like a macabre sacrifice.

The soft hiss of radio static provides a soundtrack to the quiet as he tracks the ring of bodies.

Only one is set outside of it.

Face tilted sideways, the Garrison officer stares up at Keith with eyes wide with frozen terror and mouth open around a silent scream. Darkness paints the inside of his gaping maw an unnatural black, coating his teeth with an odd grime and making the few inches of his mouth look like an unending depth.

Swallowing down the sudden spike of his own heartbeat, Keith tears his stare away from the officer, carefully stepping over him and making his way to the metal table, and the body that lays atop it.

Thick straps of old brown leather lay across the body’s chest, waist, and legs, holding it down like an animal.

Holding him down.

“Shiro,” Keith breathes, voice a harsh rasp as he takes him in.

He looks the same, and yet wholly different.

The harsh lines of time cling to his face and the scowl he wears in his sleep leaves him looking wane and aged. A scar, bright pink and tight with its newness, cuts its path across the bridge of his nose, leaving the skin puckered in a painful way.

The hair that sticks to his forehead with sweat is a startling white.

But it’s him all the same. Keith can tell by the solid cut of his jaw, and the full bow of his lips, and the lone freckle that marks his skin just below his ear.

“Shiro,” he says again, the name soft and reverent as he reaches forward to brush the hair back from his brow.

Keith’s fingers barely brush his skin, but the heat radiating off of him still licks at his fingertips all the same.

Growling lowly, he takes his blade to the straps, jerking the sharp medal through the leather and letting them fall limply at Shiro’s sides.

“I’ve got you,” Keith says in reassurance, both for himself and the prone man before him as he pulls him into a seated position. A small sound, caught between a gasp and a moan cracks the quiet around them as Keith settles Shiro’s arm along his shoulders and pushes his own around his waist.

Double checking his hold, Keith drags a steady breath between his teeth and then stands, carrying all of his weight.

Carefully, he pulls him along, making his way over the bodies and taking special care to avoid the officer that lay in front of the entryway.

The night is still silent as he pushes them through the tent’s opening, and something about the harrowed stillness raises the hair on his arms. A small trickle of icy fear slowly traces the knobs of his spine as he pushes them quicker across the dirt and through the fence.

Something’s wrong, he thinks, cutting his gaze back and forth across the open earth in search of the reason for the sudden blooming burn of a stare at the center of his chest.

The shadows just outside the lights grow deeper, darker, turning more dangerous as as he pushes Shiro’s lax body onto the back of his bike.

Climbing on in front of him, Keith tugs the bandana from around his nose and pulls Shiro’s arms around his waist. With a quick movement, he ties the fabric tightly around Shiro’s wrists to keep his hold around him.

Giving the knot a sharp tug to test its hold, Keith finally settles his hands on the handlebars. Revving the engine, he almost jumps at the sudden loud snarl of his bike as it’s amplified by the stiff quiet.

Without sparing a glance back, Keith lets the bike fly across the dirt back in the direction that he came. It’s a quick trip, only made to feel long by the worry that grips his lungs in a crushing vice.

At every turn he imagines an official finally catching up with them, and at every turn he’s met with nothing more than the shadows painted across the ground by moonlight.

Cresting over the small hill that separates his part of the desert from military land, Keith finally lets his breath escape between the cage of his teeth. The hiss of it is loud, even over the sound of the engine roar as he starts to slow their speed, finally bringing the hover bike to a halt just outside the barely there shack that was home.

Unease clings to him as he leverages Shiro off of the seat, holding tight to the hands still tied around his waist. With Shiro’s weight fully supported against his back, he’s able to move a bit quicker as he gets them both to the front door.

Throwing one last look over his shoulder, Keith stares into the darkness that stands behind them, unpunctuated by headlights or movement.

The sense of foreboding feathers out through his veins before he sighs and pushes them through the door.

The air trapped by the wooden walls of the shack is cooler than that of the outdoors, but its still dry, burning Keith’s throat with every quick breath as he moves Shiro through the small living area and toward the bedroom.

It’s a small space, not necessarily meant to be a home, but it always worked for him. Having been the only thing he’d inherited from his father after his death, it had become something like a sanctuary.

With a short grunt, Keith maneuvers Shiro’s unmoving frame through the doorway into the even smaller bedroom. Shuffling slightly and inelegantly, he gets the unconscious man seated atop the worn blankets of his bed before finally untying his wrists.

Gently, and with infinite care, Keith leans Shiro back against his pillow. In the darkness of his room, he looks less gaunt, the shadows of the room masking the lines that mark his face. For just a moment, he almost looks like the man he had been before he’d been lost to the vast expanse of space.

Moving quickly across his room to the bathroom tucked in the corner, Keith wets a washcloth, pointedly ignoring his reflection in the mirror before returning to Shiro’s side.

“What happened to you?” He muses to the quiet of the room as he carefully wipes the washcloth over Shiro’s skin. Dust and dirt collects on the wet fiber as he repeats the motion across his temples and along his hairline. Deep rust stains the light washcloth where it catches dried blood from a wound hidden beneath his hair.

The soft touch pulls a sound, low and desperate from Shiro’s lips.

Keith tries to ignore the lightning that zings through his veins when it sounds a lot like his name.

“Shhhh,” he hushes, dragging the cool cloth over the bridge of Shiro’s nose thoughtfully. Losing himself to the repeated motion, minutes, or maybe hours pass before Keith finally drops the washcloth on the side table before pushing himself up. Letting his gaze linger just a moment longer on Shiro’s face, Keith exits.

Carefully shutting the bedroom door behind him, he makes his way to the shoddy table that’s pushed into the corner. Dropping himself down into the lone chair there, he reaches for the communication radio that takes up about half the table’s surface.

With a quick twist of the dial, he powers it on. Loud clicks and hums fill the small space as it comes to life, catching on the radio frequency for the Garrison.

It wasn’t always the best connection, but it’s all Keith has now as he slowly turns the knob ever so slightly until the static picks up a tinny voice.

“—gone——rogane—— gone,” Keith hears the frantic official say into the staticky waves.

“—gone—— all dead——help,” the voice continues, fading in and out and growing ever more panicked. Something in the way the official trips and stumbles over his words causes Keith pause as he cuts his gaze toward the bedroom door before leaning in closer. Turning the sound up, he tries to make out more.

“Send—— they’re dead—— help—”

The transmission cuts off with a blood curdling scream. It’s filled with anguish, and cuts deep into Keith’s bones as he pushes back from radio, quickly turning it off as he snaps his gaze back to the bedroom door.

Time clings to Keith’s skin as he stares at the worn wood, waiting long enough to make sure the sound hasn’t woken Shiro. After several minutes pass, he turns back to the radio, carefully turning it back on and lowering the volume.

This time the only sound that greets him is static.

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