#then the lining of his lungs. then the one on his intestines. then on almost every one of his organs

[autistic-mandalorian]

I would love to hear this

Oh sure! Fair warning, this gets long, so it's under a cut:

So I have looked carefully at Maul post-bisection, specifically at where his abdomen ends and his prosthesis begins, and I believe that he was bisected between the L3 and L5 vertebrae, or just above his pelvic bone. Here is a diagram I drew on of where he was cut:

Image Description: The first image is a screenshot of Maul with his prosthetic legs from TCW. The screenshot is annotated to note where exactly Maul is divided between flesh and prosthesis. The second image is two diagrams side-by-side, one of the human body focusing on organs, and the other of the spine. Both have a line drawn around where the belly button is to note where Maul was bisected. End ID.

So in terms of what he lost, it was a LOT. Not just his legs, but most of his intestines, his bladder, his pelvis, his gonads, half his bones, most of his blood volume, and a lot of his abdominal and back muscles (as well as their attachment points, making the remaining muscles limited in their usefulness).

Image description: A diagram of the human musculature, from the ventral and dorsal sides. The diagram has a line drawn across it to show where Maul was bisected.

Fortunately for him, most of the organs in humanoids are located in the chest cavity (because the intestines need a LOT of room to work), so he kept his kidneys, liver, stomach, lungs, hearts, pancreas, gallbladder, etc etc. However, his intestines are interesting in that by getting chopped in half, his small intestine was actually disconnected from his large intestine. The small intestine connects to the large through the ileocecal valve, which is located on the left inferior side of the abdominal cavity. He got chopped right through the middle of the abdominal cavity, so he lost his entire cecum, the majority (if not all) of his ileum, and the valve that connected them. This means that anything he digested would just ooze into his abdominal cavity even after the giant wound repaired itself, unless he got surgery to reconnect them. We will say for the sake of the story that he fixed it with The Force while living in his trash hole.

Now, it is possible for people to be bisected like he was and survive, just only in a medical environment. It's an extremely rare and radical surgery called a hemicorporectomy. It's the last of the last resorts, because it leaves you with a lot of problems. Here are some of them:

Maul would need both a colostomy and urostomy bag, since his rectum and bladder are both gone. These would need to be regularly cleaned and emptied.

His missing intestines would also result in his not digesting most of his food fully, so he would need supplemental nutrients to help combat malnutrition. He obviously does not get these for most of his life (if ever) so he is almost certainly malnourished.

Due to his newfound Nightmare Castration, he would need regular doses of hormones or would risk osteoporosis. Which hormones is up to the reader (I nominate estrogen)

His spinal cord is, thankfully, fine--- it doesn't actually extend past L1-L2. However, he did lose the filum terminale, meaning his spinal cord is kinda unanchored in his spine and floating around, which isn't great and could lead to nerve issues down the line. Some of the nerves that were cut in his lumbar spine (specifically, the L4 lumbar nerve supplying the quadratus lumborum muscle) could also cause partial paralysis in his back, as well as some wicked back pain.

Shoutout to @necropocene for inspiration as well as the following headcanons:

Maul's lungs and other organs are constricted by his intestines being forced upward into his chest cavity, reducing his lung capacity

Maul suffers from chronic nausea

Maul's prosthesis needs to be very well-cushioned because the waist is not a load-bearing structure (too squishy!)

Now onto my specific headcanons for his prosthetics and mobility devices:

The thing about pelvises is not only do they let you use legs, they also allow your organs and muscles to attach to something rigid. For this reason, I think Maul should have two pelvises: one internal, being more like a metal frame that his abdominal and back muscles attach to, and one external and connected to his legs.

The lumbar spine and sacrum are what allow the spine to connect to the pelvis, so in order to use his prosthetic legs, I think it would be prudent to give Maul a prosthetic spine, Borg Queen-style. Now, this would admittedly be a pretty big infection risk (piece of metal sticking through the skin and all) but I think it's cool so I am invoking The Rule of Cool on this one.

Maul's legs are not something I spent much time on, because his canon ones are fine.

I do have headcanons for a wheelchair, though!

His wheelchair wouldn't be designed like your average wheelchair, because those are generally designed to accommodate people who have pelvises. His would probably look more like a plant pot or a baby bjorn, imo? It would have to support him without putting too much pressure on his torso, so I think a sort of foam well with a backrest, attached to wheels would be a good design.

I also think that his prosthetic spine should be able to dock with the wheelchair so that he can control it as an extension of his body, like the prosthetic legs.

Image description: Three pencil drawings on notebook paper. One is of Maul post-bisection, with each of his organs labeled and colostomy, urostomy, and gastronomy ports. The next two are of his wheelchair, which follows the description previously given. End ID.

And yeah, those are my headcanons! Thanks for asking :) I love talking about fantasy biology!

[sukoshininja]

Outta Time

"We're not gonna make it."

Lance gritted his teeth as he held his breath as he lined up the sights and delivered a clean headshot. He did not come this far to have it end here. He would see this through.  "We're gonna make it. We have to."

"Lance."

It was just his name. But something about the way it was said. Just one word, but the sadness, acceptance, and firm finality of it. It was the truth, and it hit him hard enough that he lowered his rifle a hair. 

No. He shook his head and repositioned the barrel along his cheekbone. No, they could fight this, they could still make it out. "We just gotta--"

"Lance."

Now inflected with brokenness, a pathetic urgency. Suddenly he had to remember how to breathe. He missed his next two shots.  

"They won't, not while we're still inside."

But the funny thing was, somewhere in his mind he knew that wasn't true. They had waited so long for a chance like this, a chance that they were never going to get again. His comrades, they'd have no choice. He knew it but chose to believe they would wait anyway. Because if he didn't--

"Lance." 

Oh. He knew a spirit shattering when he heard it. His lungs were convulsing. Was he breathing?  His hands were trembling so hard he could barely hold his gun. 

A hand reached out and guided the gun down. "It's over."

Lance wrenched his attention away from the advancing enemy to see the most devastating thing he had ever laid eyes on.

Keith looked at him so tenderly, tears running streaks down his face that was mussed with grime and blood. So this is what giving up looked like. 

"Breathe, Lance."

Casualties were a part of this great game known as war. They all knew it could come at any moment. But for some reason Lance didn't think the day would come when his card would be up.

Why was Keith holding him so tight? What were those sounds? Like a dying sheep. Wait. That was him. Oh he was sobbing. Screaming. 

Keith cradled his head against his chest.

"It mattered. Everything mattered," he whispered, soft and soothing despite coming from his cracked lips. "If nothing else, you matter to me."

There was a weight on Lance's chest, making it so that he had to gasp for breath. His heart to beat so fast he was sure it would burst. The corners of his vision started to fade to black as all the sounds closed in around him. 

Only Keith's rough voice, quiet and calming made a lifeline that Lance desperately grasped for, keeping himself afloat. 

"Holy shit. We're gonna die, and you'll never know because I never told you."

Lance's tongue felt too big for his mouth, dead weight and useless. Somehow, he managed to ask "Told me what."

"That your smile lights up the universe more than a thousand suns. That everything sucks to the point that somedays I don't want to get out of bed in the morning, but I do, because I get to see you, and when I'm with you everything is a little less awful. That I break every time you look at her."

Lance was able to focus his eyes. Too bright lights. It took all he was to look into those impossibly beautiful, red-rimmed watery eyes. 

"Lance I lo--"

*   *   *

They won.

Ten thousand years of oppression had come to an end with that blast.

Allura and Coran clung to each other as they watched the waves of radiation wipe out the end of the empire.

Hunk stood as still as a statue. Tears streaking down his cheeks. 

"They were still down there," Pidge whispered as they collapsed to their knees on the cold floor. 

It took everything in Shiro to keep his intestines from emptying out his mouth. The bile was there, bitter and biting.

It was necessary. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. That's what they would say. He would be applauded. A hero. But only the people in this room would see it as it really was:  a choice.

A choice that was easier than it should have been. Cruelly quick and almost as thoughtless. He had the rest of his life to mourn. He hoped it wasn't long.

my whumptober masterlist

[potatowithahat]

A Gift

A hannigram fic

Hannibal decided to get will a small gift for valintines

A Gift- nothing more, nothing less

This was too far. Hannibal had gone too far this time.

        “February 14th, 2014, 8:05 P.M. Will Graham speaking on behalf of the Federal Bureau of investigation. Start tape. Body was found at Sugarloaf Vineyard outside of Winchester, Maryland”

        Jack Crawford gestured for Will to come forward.

        “Another victim of the Chesapeake ripper?” Jack asked, gesturing to the body lying in the makeshift bed of roses Set deep within the thousand rows of grapes.

        The body was that of a young man. He had brown, curly hair that moved ever so slightly in the brease of the Vineyard, swaying as if to a gentle melody.

His hair had been cut short to emulate Will’s, most likely post mortem if the ringlets encircling his head had anything to say of it. There was a crown of thorns on his head, The spines digging into that line Will knew all too well.

        He reached up to touch the almost invisible scar on his own forehead.

        “Most likely” Will said, lifting the tarp to examine the rest of the body.

        He made a mental note to remind the interns not to disturb his crime scene.

        Not that he could certainly see why they had decided to cover it up.

The scene was… gruesome, to say the least. The man was splayed open, much like that of an autopsy cadaver, his guts scooped out and rearranged into a.. Scene?

        His pancreas was laid out like a twisted dinner table in the hollow center of the man. His third and fourth ribs had been carved and propped up to look like tiny people, plated made out of the lungs alveoli set out in front of them. In the center of the ‘table’ lies another bone figure, this time in the shape of a small girl, her ‘Head’ lying on one of the plates. The rest of the organs were laid around like grotesque party decorations. His small intestine was draped over the open carcass like party streamers, swaying in the breeze and making a sickening, squelching noise as it brushed against the other viscera. There were small dove feathers tied together with the man's vocal cords to replace the missing ribs, splattered with the blood dripping out of the surrounding muscles.

        The man's body had been meticulously dissected and rearranged into a macabre display. It was… a work of art, really. Each piece was delicately cut and placed with such precision that it had to have taken hours to cultivate. It was a gift. A gift hand-made and crafted specifically for him.

        “It’s disgusting” Jack chimed in from beside him, snapping Will out of his stupor.

        “...It's ostentatious” Will mumbles as one of the assistants camera flashes, forever immortalizing the scene.

        Hannibal would expect him to come home with a copy of that photo. He knew it.

        “The killer… He's showing off. Trying to impress someone” Will knew he had to tread lightly here.

        “Makes sense to leave it on Valentines then” Beverly chimes in as she leans forward to get some sort of sample

        “Trying to impress someone I'd do it today too. Only if they were another killer though" Jack gives Will a look.

        Will had to have great reticency to stop himself from saying something too revealing then

        “I’m sure” He mumbled, looking at the body once more

        “Hearts missing” Will looks around the group “Anyone find it?”

The silence after his question was practicaly deffining

        Will knew what he'd be having for dinner then.

        Will let out a sigh “How’d he die?”

Beverly looked up from where she was swabbing “Poison” she nodded to the man's face “Staining around the mouth. Classic silver poisoning”

        She stands up fully and points to his neck “There's evidence of strangulation too, but it's innocuous. His windpipe wasn’t crushed, so there was no damage other then the bruising”

        “Someones like Will then” Price chuckled and elbows Will in the side

        “What i do in my own home is none of your concern” Will frowns and walks around to the other side of the corpse “ and you three should know best that me and Hannibal don’t do that stuff” he repudiated “not all gay people are like that”

        Price snorts “I call bullshit. You can’t deny it forever”

        Jack shot Price a look “We’re not here to debate personal lives Jimmy. This is a death investigation, not brunch”

        There's a soft murmuring from the rest of the groop

        “That's what I thought” Jack looks up at Beverly “How long has he been out here?”

        “No longer then a day” beverly pokes at the man’s cheek “Though he’s been preserved somehow”

        Will frowns at that “How was he out here so long?”

        Beverly looks around “my guess is the vines obscured the body. And the smell was masked by the grape blossoms.

        Of course it was. His husband always knew what he was doing. Will looks around “He's smart” he steps back from the body as he feels a buzz in his pocket “He knows what he’s doing. Most likely another chesapeake ripper case”

        Will turns away from the groop, much to the chagrin of Jack

         Will sighs as he puts his phone to his ear “Yes hanni?”

        He can practically hear the smile on Hannibals face, his strange accent thicker than ever “Did you like my Gift, ma colombe?”

        Why was this his life?

 “I'll see you at home hannibal” Will lets out a long sigh

“Oh good” Hannibal says quickly “I’m making Shepards pie. Picked up some nice pigs hearts from the butcher earlier”

“Im sure you did" Will sighs

Thank you so much for reading!!!

I am one hundred percent greatfull for every single person who takes the time to read the things I write!

This was actually written for an English assignment! So if some of the wording seems a bit off thats why.

I am also always open for any fic idea's/ requests!!! I absolutely adore getting them and write them as quickly as possible

As always if you enjoyed i have plenty more here on my tumblr and bacon over on my Ao3!

[foxholewriting]

Dr.Frankenstein's monster

Reanimated Heart/Male Reader - Angst/Hurt - Words/ 1,208

Pronouns - He/Him ; Pet Name(s) - None

Mention - Medical experiment, Eye removal, medical torture, disfigurement, brief reader death

Please PLEASE listen to the warnings even if they aren't the most intense scenes still pay attention to them. This is set if reader got stuck in the under market for the experimentation.

Note: The surgeon is an actual character just not called by a surgeon and depends on how I feel I might make a second part

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

The sound of a heart monitor beeping woke Y/N, a groggy fog clouded his vision as he tried to wipe it away but couldn't. It was like his entire body was lead, all his limbs were anchored down and an IV was attached to his arms wires and cords were attached to his body. It took him several minutes to notice he could only see out of one side of his face, he blinked a few times before primal panic set in. He had no idea where he was, he was naked, and his eye was missing. What was worse it didn’t hurt. The room was freezing cold, so cold that it almost burned his skin. 

Muffled conversation could be heard outside the room, nurses started to filter in and out carrying papers, others were holding little medical equipment bags. Y/N strained to try to understand what they were saying but it was almost impossible, it was like they were far away; a film was between them. Spots of black started to dance around his vision as a plastic mask was strapped to his face, a surgeon walking into the room wearing an all black uniform was probably an attempt to hide any blood or bodily waste on him. All that he did notice on him was that his hair was black and maybe a white streak on it, hard to make out with all his moving. 

After Y/N was knocked out it was time to start the second round of experiments, they had removed his eye mostly because they had a client that wanted the color but they also wanted to see if an eye transplant was possible. The underground heard about some new outsiders that showed up in the hollow but only one of them would be a worthy experiment, they had stalked him for sometime trying to find the perfect time to strike when Grede or Crux or Black was away. Who knew a simple mysterious letter promising to help him get back home was all they needed. 

The nurses pulled away some of the cords from Y/N’s abdomen, the surgeon barely spoke, only muttering a few sentences. 

“Bring the plague, switch it for the IV.” His idea was that the plague, supposedly, came from Y/N’s world and was a medical “phenomenon” which they took as a good thing. The nurses chirped in agreement and then swapped out the bags attaching a fluorescent green black liquid bag to the line. The liquid slowly dripped down leaking into Y/N’s blood stream spreading through his body, his abdomen was wiped down sterilizing it before the first cut. A simple abdominal cut was made, the skin being peeled back as the surgeon slowly went deeper each slice of Y/N’s body slowly changed him as the plague filtered through his body. 

He was very pleased once the cavity was open, all the organs working together perfectly. It quickly became a frantic scene as black started to bloom over the organs, the beautiful red being taken over by a black spider. The surgeon ignored it as he opened up Y/N’s chest cavity seeing the same black spider web pattern across his lungs and heart, the nurses looked between themselves. This didn’t look normal but they refused to interrupt the surgeon. They knew he had a short term bad for them but worse for Y/N. 

New organs were brought in from different creatures, each one slowly replacing an old organ, a new set of lungs, new intestines, new kidneys, and as he started to replace the heart which was the hardest organ to change, the artificial heart started to sputter. 

“FIX THAT NOW!” The nurses jumped when the surgeon screamed at them, the lungs started to falter from the irregular blood flow and the rest of the body was losing its color a mute black red started to spread. The operating room started to grow panic as they ran around trying to salvage the experiment but it was becoming harder by each passing second the new heart was in place but it wasn’t beating like it should have been, the surgeon quickly sew him back up then attached electric rods to his body thinking it was needed. 

The situation went from panic to all out chaos, the heart monitor flat lined, Y/N was seizing on the table, the plague bags were completely empty and the nurses were scared to touch the body. 

Y/N started to wake up but his entire body was numb, it felt heavy and light at the same time. He felt an animalistic hunger while this sickening need to eat something full of iron, not human meat but human heart. His head lifted only by a bit before it slammed back down. 

The surgeon threw his gloves on the ground, finally breaking into a cold sweat. He was sure that he did the surgery by the book of Dr.Frankenstien to bring back the dead. Which by his conclusion meant that if he were to replace Y/N’s organs there would be a way to bring him to a different dimension sure the logic was extremely flawed but it was a starter experiment being that Y/N was only the second person he did this to. He had successfully brought back others in other ways but he had found this book that seemed to be an easier method that just needed a bit of fixing. 

They needed to dispose of him now, if they threw him in the right place he would just be eaten and forgotten about. The nurses quickly took out the IV, the cords and wires dragging him out of the room. They gave up once they broke out into the cold air, deeming the dumpster outside the backdoor was good enough. 

Y/N’s body hit the ground with a thud as they scurried inside, it took several hours before all the drugs wore off as he slowly staggered to his feet. This time he woke up and could see out of both sides of his face, one eye was normal but the other eye was seeing things that weren’t like gold threads crossed with red threads. He reached out and plucked the threads they moved but burned his fingers, it took several more minutes to move his body looking around staggering towards Grede place. 

Over an hour later he knocked on the door having lost his key, phone, and even pants which took him an embarrassingly long time to pay attention too. Grede opened the door and somehow grew paler than she usually was, she gasped when she looked at him. Her hand jerked him inside, Crux and Black sighed happy to see him before both of their faces turned into a mixture. It was hard to say which expression was the most prominent one; disgust? Anger? Pity? Guilt? 

“What happened to you?” Black spoke first staring at the stitches that ziggaged across then at Y/N’s face then back at his abdomen. 

“Well at least you didn’t have exposed genitals.” Crux’s weak attempt at a joke fell deaf on the group, Y/N’s eyebrows furrowed then looked down. 

“THEY STOLE MY DICK!” 

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

@doubledeadstudio

Please enjoy the weird little experiment

[yuulina-vre]

Fear - Chapter eight

Summary: Y/N lives the life she always dreamed about. a job she loves, a fiancé that does everything for her, and a house she dreamed of. There are hiccups on the way, but Y/N's still pretty satisfied with where she stands in life. Though a word can be powerful, especially if it's said to the wrong person. Y/N would never have thought that she ever gets to experience how bad it can turn out. For her and the loved ones around her.

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Word count: 3.1k

Warnings: dead animal, descriptions of blood and disembodiment, vomiting

Divider by Firefly-Graphics

Series Masterlist // Masterlist

The scream rips the men away from the lifeless animal. “Was that Y/N?”

“Shit!” Bucky throws the gloves and the garbage bag away, scrambles up from his crouched position and almost faceplants again as he trips over his own feet. He barely catches himself, twists his wrist slightly as he cushions his fall, and runs back to the conservatory. He looks around, but his girlfriend is not in the conservatory, the kitchen, the living room, or down the hall. “Y/N? Where are you?” He sprints up the stairs, taking two steps at once. Behind him, he can hear Sam following him. Bucky turns at the top of the stairs to run to the bedroom when his eyes catch the light coming from their shared office. He stops abruptly, almost making Sam run into his back. He’s breathing hard as he quickly steps into his room, squats down, and sees Y/N sitting on the floor. She’s pale, almost white, as if she has died sitting down if it wasn’t for her breathing. It's fast but shallow, and Bucky knows she’s not getting enough air if she continues like this. He inhales deeply to steady his breathing and then speaks to his girlfriend. “Y/N! Y/N, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

But Y/N just stares ahead, a mask of horror on her face. Tears run down her cheeks, and sobs get stuck in her throat, making breathing even more difficult. “Baby. Look at me.” Gently he puts one hand on her shoulder, and the other softly cups her cheek. She doesn't react. There's no sign of recognition, no flinch, no stuttering breath, no eye contact. “Doll, you’re hyperventilating. Look at me. Try to breathe with me.” Bucky draws the air deep into his lungs, holding it for a moment before he ejects it again. He repeats it, trying to hold eye contact with Y/N, even though she doesn't notice him. The stiff woman makes no effort to copy him. Instead, her breathing gets worse and worse.

"Fuck!" Sam breathes out. His voice sounds raw, rough, almost hoarse. He sounds really shocked. Bucky looks up at him as he steps into the room. “What?” At first, he thinks Sam means Y/N’s state, but then he notices that Sam stares in the same direction as Y/N, with the same mask of horror on his face. Drawing his eyebrows together in confusion, he follows their gazes and draws in the air sharply.

A large German Shepard lies on the carpet, right between his and Y/N’s desk. The animal must have been beautiful when it was alive, but now its brown fur is drenched and sticky with blood. The abdomen has a large cut, skin splitting open, revealing the dog's organs that are scattered on the floor. The intestine is completely missing and instead hangs over the curtain rod like a garland for Christmas. The animal's head is smashed and no longer looks like a dog. The limbs are separated and neatly lined up next to the animal. Blood soaks the cream-colored carpet, leaving it lying in a large red puddle.

Bucky looks away bitterly and stares up at his colleague. Anger rises in his chest, and even though he doesn't want to admit it, fear is just as fast to grip his chest. "I thought you searched everything! What the hell is that?!" Angrily he gestures at what used to be a living animal. Silently he hopes the poor animal was dead before it was slaughtered like that. Sam also turns away and looks into his friend's eyes."I swear, I checked. There wasn't a dog here before; you saw me check it out. It was all clean. I don’t kno-," he leaves the rest of the sentence unspoken. Bucky also knows what his colleague is thinking just now. The guy is still here!

Bucky works fast. He looks at his fiancé again and hugs her, guiding her head into his shoulder, so she can't stare at the animal anymore. Then he picks her up. He’s careful since she’s still unresponsive and unable to hold onto him. He slips past Sam and carries her back to the bedroom. Slowly she starts to come back to her senses as he sits down on the mattress. Bucky holds Y/N on his lap, tightly embraced. “Doll, please. Listen to my voice. I have you. You’re safe with me; we’re both all right.” Sluggishly, her head sinks onto his shoulder, but her breathing remains erratic, though, Bucky thinks it already calmed down just the tiniest bit. He gently strokes her hair, hoping to soothe her. “Everything will be fine. I promise." He thinks for a moment, then pulls her closer to him and starts humming a song he knows she loves. They dance to it now and then in the living room if the moment feels right, and they’re both in the mood. He hums for a while until he notices that Y/N slowly calms down. At some point, he even starts singing the lyrics. His eyes flicker through the room, trying to gauge their surroundings. There’s nothing unusual, but Bucky has to admit that he has a bad feeling. But that could be because he just saw a dismembered dog in his own home. He doesn’t even want to imagine if that’s how Y/N felt today.

Y/N’s head gets heavier on his shoulder, causing him to look down. Her eyes are closed, her breathing flat. A small smile creeps on his face, and he softly kisses her cheek, holding her for a while longer. When Bucky’s sure that his girlfriend is deep asleep, he tries to be as careful as he can be while gently lying her down. He covers her with the duvet that Y/N took upstairs before getting dressed. Then he slips in right beside her, still pressing her tightly to his side. He keeps stroking her arm gently, soothing her in her sleep so she hopefully won't have a nightmare. He can hear his colleague's voice, who speaks frantically into his radio and asks for reinforcements.

Heavy footsteps echo through the house and deep voices bark instructions. I blink against the sun's blinding light but quickly close my eyes again. After ten minutes, I can feel my breathing deepening and slowly drift back into a restless sleep.

Warm arms wrap around my middle. I hear the voices from earlier; they are very close, somewhere in the hall. But someone is talking in my bedroom. Groggily I open my eyes. My head hurts like hell, and now that the sunlight dispels the darkness, it's even worse. How long have I been asleep?

I try to turn around, but the arms around me prevent me at first. My eyes slip close again, and I whine a bit until the arms loosen their tight grip. This time I manage to turn around.I sigh in relief. I didn’t notice until I turned that my side actually started to hurt a bit, and now, lying on my right side, the relief is immediate. I open my eyes again, still blinking against the sleep and light, only to be met with a man's chest.“Hey, doll.” A kiss is gently pressed to my hairline. Bucky briefly turns away from me again. “Okay, thanks, Sam. I’ll leave the rest to you.” His head turns back to me, and I look into his familiar handsome face. A small smile creeps over his narrow lips. His blue eyes, however, radiate concern, mustering my face and looking over every inch. “How are you?” The voice is also dripping with concern but has something that sounds like relief. I slowly straighten myself and stretch my body as best as possible while still cuddling up to him. Then I entangle my legs with his and scoot closer to nuzzle into his chest. The whole time Bucky’s eyes stay on me. I look up at him and smile, but something must have happened while I look at him because, in the next moment, all the pictures pop up in my mind.

Blood, limbs, organs.

Without warning, my stomach cramps, and throw up. It splashes all over myself, and on the uniform of the man next to me. But instead of jumping up and getting to safety, Bucky stays put. One hand is on my back and soothingly caresses it, while the other strokes my hair out of my face. “Come on, doll, sit up. That’s easier. Just like that.” Bucky is Quick to help me sit up. I choke a few more times until the taste in my mouth and the constant choking brings tears to my eyes. “Think somethings coming up?” His hand runs over my back, his voice soothing and warm against my head as he presses his lips to my temple. How he can kiss me while I’m full of vomit and, in general, pretty disgusting is beyond me. I’m not certain if something coming up; my stomach seems to think so as it clenches uncomfortably again. I only shrug. “Okay, let's get you to the bathroom. Can you walk?”

I shake my head. If I know one thing, then it’s that I don’t have any control over my legs at the moment. Right now, I wouldn't even dare to wipe my nose. Everything feels numb and paralyzed. I feel his arms come around my beg and under my knees, and suddenly, he lifts me up. He’s mindful of my queasy stomach and the vomit on my own clothes. Instead of carrying me to our bathroom, which might be closer, he carries me through the hall to the guest bathroom. Probably because it’s easier to clean later. I also know that Bucky often goes there if he needs to puke. He claims that the smell won't make us both nauseous this way.

Softly he helps me down, and to the toilet, then he vanishes. He comes back after a few seconds, wearing a new shirt and sweatpants. Bucky has a hair band on his wrist that he quickly slips off to wrap my hair into a loose bun. “That’s better, huh?” he smiles at me again and continues with his back rubs as another wave of nausea overcomes me, and I puke into the toilet. The smell and sounds alone would make me vomit on a normal day. Now that I feel bad already, it's like it intensifies. My stomach clenches so hard that it hurts, eliciting a sob from me as tears fall. Between puking and crying, it gets harder to get any air into my lungs; my nose is completely blocked now.

The whole time Bucky stays with me and doesn't say a word except silently encourage me to keep going, that it will feel better soon, and soothingly strokes my back. A knock on the door makes me look up tiredly. Bucky locked the door when he returned, which is pretty foresighted since a few strangers are currently in our house. Bucky’s eyes instantly flicker to mine, silently questioning if I’m all right for a moment. I whine a bit, not really wanting anybody to see me like this, but who knows, maybe it’s important, so I nod. “All right. I’ll be quick, sweetheart.”Again, he kisses my temple. I have to smell so bad, but he still does it. I admire him for that resilience. Bucky gets up with a soft squeeze of my shoulder and quickly steps out of the bathroom-. I watch him close the door as a groan slips past my lips. A new wave of nausea hits again, but nothing comes up this time. With the back of my hand, I wipe away the tears that are caused by the corrosive taste and effort. I retch a few more times, but nothing comes up. Confident that I’m finally finished, I flush the toilet. Getting on my feet is another struggle. My legs are trembling and weak, but with a tight grip on the toilet, I manage to push myself up and stumble to the sink behind me.

I fill one of the cups with water and rinse my mouth thoroughly before spitting it out and splashing water into my face.I look down into the sink for a moment, then close my eyes and hold my breath. When I look back up in the mirror, I’m startled by the image of the woman in it. Shit! Is that me? She' looks nothing like me.

My hand runs over my cheeks. The woman in my mirror is pale and looks like a goddamn corpse.Hardly recognizable rings start to appear under the eyes, which only stare expressionlessly into the mirror. The otherwise green eyes, which sparkle like emeralds, as Bucky always claims, seem dull and pale.

Almost lifeless.

Somehow disgusted, I turn my gaze away from the mirror and feel the urge to bend over the bowl again. Instead of doing that, I take a few deep breaths, briefly wondering where Bucky’s now. I decided to strip out of my soiled clothes. I manage to get them off without getting any of the vomit in my hair. I throw them in a pile on the floor and leave the bathroom. The hall is empty, so I find it safe to stroll through it to our bedroom. The second I pass the office, I close my eyes, a hand on the wall to guide me past it. I don’t know if the door is open or closed, but right now, I don’t even care. I don’t want any chance to find what I found earlier again accidentally.

I hold my breath for the whole four seconds until I finally reach the bedroom. I don’t waste any time and quickly slip back into bed, this time purposefully on Bucky’s side. I see that he already switched the sheet, where some of the vomit had landed. It doesn't smell like bucky anymore, but his pillow still does. So, I grab his pillow and snuggle into it, inhaling deeply and letting his smell soothe me. There’s nothing to see or hear from Bucky, only the voices somewhere downstair sound silently up to me.

For a moment, I think I can hear Bucky's voice. I pull the thinner throw blanket for the feet of our bed up to my chin because I suddenly feel quite hot and just the look at our duvet makes me feel like dying of a heart stroke.

After about ten minutes - or maybe just a few seconds - Bucky comes back. I can hear him call for me in confusion until he steps into the room. “Ah, here you are.” He strolls over to me and sits down at the bedside.He pulls the blanket back a bit to reveal my face. His expression softens as he looks at me. “Here. Take the pills and have a drink. They’ll help with the nausea.” He hands it to me, but I shake my head. A grimace of disgust. I hate taking medicine, and pills are my worst enemy. After spiders. Even as a small child, I was never able to swallow any kind of pills. Strangely gummy bears weren’t a problem at all.

Most of the time, I feel worse after taking a pill because it takes me so long to swallow the damn things. I try to pull the blanket over my head again, but Bucky quickly grabs it firmly to hold it down. “I know you don’t like them, but they’ll help you. Come on, doll. For me?” Puppy dog eyes! I hate them!

He pulls this move, and suddenly I do everything he wants me to. So, I sigh, defeated, sit up as much as I can without disturbing my stomach, and do as he tells me.

It takes me a few tries and almost the whole glass of water, but I finally succeed. “Good girl.” Bucky smiles and strokes my hair, but I slap his hand away with a grumble. Then I arrange the blanket around me so I can lay my head on his lap. “What are you doing?”

“Going to sleep,” I grumble and wrap my arms around his hips so that I can hide in his stomach. Without any kind of warning, I start to sob again. I don’t know where it comes from, but suddenly, I’m a mess.

Slowly his hand brushes through my hair, as he has done so many times today, and immediately it feels a bit better. “Shh... All right. I know it’s a bit much today. I’ve got you, sweetheart.” He sits a bit longer like that, continuing his motions. “Doll, everyone else is leaving. Sam called someone to make sure the house gets cleaned today. He’ll be back around noon to make sure.” He pauses for a moment. “Would you like to come to the living room with me? Maybe watch a movie?”Still crying, I nod and let go of him. He unwraps me from my blanket cocoon and squats down in front of the bed. “Come here, pretty girl. Let me give you a ride.” Bucky knows I love it when he carries me around, and a smile creeps onto my face. I wrap my arms around his neck and press my thighs against his hips. Bucky is comfortably warm. I bury my face in his neck, letting the tears continue to fall. “Okay. All passengers are instructed to keep a tight hold and enjoy the ride. We arrive approximately in two minutes at our destination: Livingroom couch. We wish you a joyful ride!” Bucky announces it with a loud voice, sounding almost like someone from a fair. I have to admit that it makes me giggle despite the fact that I'm still crying. He’s ridiculous.

I feel him standing up and walking, getting down the stairs and into the living room. Bucky lets me slide off his back. Then he lies on the sofa and stretches his arms to me. They seem so inviting that I let them wrap me up in an embrace and lie down on his chest, legs wedged between his and the backrest.

It’s a little uncomfortable. So, instead, I slide one leg over his, and immediately, it seems more comfortable. He hugs me tenderly and breathes a soothing kiss onto my hair. He gently caresses my back while one hand fumbles for the TV remote. He switches the TV on, and some movie pops up that neither of us pays a lot of attention to. The pills he had given me before starts to take their effect, and I can feel myself getting drowsy and tired again. I feel him gently spreading a thin blanket over us as I close my eyes and bury my face in his chest. “Sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be here the whole time.”

Taglist:

@cjand10

[pinkkinoko]

Do you ever feel it? That bone-deep ache, the one radiating outwards, melting into the tissue and slinking towards the epidermal layer, reaching its tendrils into the wispy, thin hairs there so that they point, ever so defensively, as if creating a barrier, protecting you from some invisible poison that lies in the air.

Billy Hargrove is six feet in the ground but he feels it, in his bones, in the putrid flesh that’s curling around smooth ivory, he feels that ache. It’s seeping through the wood, leeching into the dirt, making the blades of short, freshly trimmed grass stand at attention in a way that speaks of stained jeans and paper cuts.

Have you ever wondered if the dead are somehow out there—somewhere? Billy Hargrove always prayed the end came like lighting, gone in a flash—It felt more like a record, though; the gentle fade of sound into crisp, crackling static, auditory texture almost as rich and tangible as the song before it.

Except, right now someone had scratched a nasty line through the vinyl—and it sounded like plastic wheels on pavement—

It smelled like sunscreen and birch wood, sweet honeysuckle on the curled end of a clef note. It was the sound of earnest love and young regret.

In the depths of a hole as dark as an oceanic trench, the remnants of teenage inadequacy swelled and groaned; organs shifted, intestines wrapping around themselves like a noose on a hanged man, lungs struggling to spread their thin casings over particles of black tar.

These small pieces seemed to resist their mending, but it was the heart that suffered most.

It seemed to refuse to beat, so tired and frail, lost in time in a cavity that spoke of boyhood but trapped in a membrane that crumpled with despair—aged infinitely by trauma.

However, it beat to the hum of those words, the tremor in the chords of this rasped apology—and it was on the tail of that phrase: “I’m so, so sorry, Billy,” that the muscle gave an earnest contraction towards life—squeezed, as it were, by the wheeze of air in those parted lips six feet above that almost appeared to crumble around the shape of his name.

Billy Hargrove opened his eyes, choking on the absence of oxygen, and haunted by the sounds of his sister’s despair—his vinyl was spinning, and the volume was deafening.

Thread I wrote for twitter; be it romantic or simply sibling-centric, I leave that up to your personal headcanons

[blubushie]

Question for you: how do you go about transporting a kill back to Matilda? I’m curious about how a roo would be quartered/split up, if their hides are any good for leather, what you do with the guts and bones, etc. Basically, what happens after you make a kill? -🐟

So first and foremost, Jack owns the roo ute we use for this. It has a "rack" in the tray what we use for hanging the roos and dressing them. For the sake of this and the fact you mentioned Matilda specifically, I'm going to explain how this works for a non-commercial hunt. Here's a video of how it works commercially if you want to see that.

This is a gambrel.

The hooks on mine are sharpened for better penetration. They go in the hocks and snag at the Achilles' tendon, like this.

So the first thing I do is hunt the roo.

I drive Matilda as close as I can get to the carcass. Sometimes I'm far enough out into the bush that this isn't possible, so I'm stuck lugging ~60kg/130lbs of dead weight through the bush back to Matilda. If I think this is going to take more than an hour, I field-dress the carcass on the spot to avoid any bacteria what might be in him spoiling the meat. Roos weigh a lot less without their guts and stuff, but the downside of field dressing is that I get completely covered in blood dragging it back because I basically piggyback the roo on my shoulders (both front legs go over my shoulders and cross at the wrists over my throat, I tie them with rope and wear the roo like a cape as a I hump it back).

I'm writing this assuming I haven't already field-dressed the roo.

Once at Matilda, I find a good tree that looks sturdy and I set up the gambrel. I snag the gambrel in the roo's hocks and use a pulley system to bring him up off the ground like this.

Once that's done and he's hanging upside-down, it's time to get to work.

I take my KA-BAR and start cutting around his throat. I use a sawing motion (I keep my knives sharp) until I hit the vertebrae. I make my way around the neck until the vertebrae is the only thing keeping his head attached. Once that's done I bring him up so that I'm waist-level with the semi-decapitated head. I get my machete, line it up, and swing. Usually it only takes one swing to either break or cut through the vertebrae. Rarely it takes two. I've never had to make a third.

I grab the head by the ears and chuck it into the bushes. I don't like looking at it. I repeat the same process with the tail. Cut, align, whack. The tail is left for Misty to chew on. Keeps her from trying to get into the viscera.

The machete gets put away for now.

Next I get the hopper choppers--a pair of cable cutters. I dock off the hind legs above the Achilles and the front legs at the elbows.

I use a gutting knife, like this. The hook is important.

I take my gutting knife, start at his knackers or her package, and start cutting in. I keep it shallow so I don't nick the bladder. Once I can get two fingers (right hand) in him and the knackers are removed, I put the blade between my pointer and middle fingers (still right hand) and snag the hook in him and slowly pull down like I'm unzipping him. The viscera comes tumbling out. I lower the roo so the stump of the neck almost touches the ground. I take the machete, align it with the bottom of the sternum, lay my shin over it, and use my body weight to cut downward. This cuts through the sternum and into his throat. Most of the viscera hits the ground at this point and I use the gutting knife to detach the intestines from the anus, then cut through the anus and downward until the cut meets where I've already carved. I make my way down the back wall of the body cavity along the spine, cutting the rest of the intestines, lungs, and heart free. This is the bloodiest part of the whole deal and usually the point when I get splattered.

The insides of bodies smell weird. Raw. I can't describe it.

The skin comes off next. I make a ring along the hocks and cut down, thigh-to-thigh, until I reach the groin. For this I use the tip of my gutting knife, since it's also a skinning knife. I work the skin on both legs free until I reach the arse, and then I pull downward. The skin peels off. It feels like peeling orange and sounds similar. If the roo is a real big bloke with skin that won't separate easily, sometimes I'll use a piece of rope to knot the hide and then tie that onto the hitch of Matilda and floor it.

It should come off in one piece, and I inspect the carcass to make sure it comes off in one piece.

When it comes to a commercial harvest, all I do it dock the legs, head, and field dress. I don't skin. That's the butcher's job. I quarter carcasses the way Jack does, which consists of treating it the same way I would a pig carcass.

I get my esky.

I take his foreleg, stretch it out, and use the KA-BAR to cut through the foreleg, around the shoulder, and separate it from the body. It goes into the esky. I repeat the process with the other leg. Then I take my knife and start under the hindquarters and come down the side, I grab the muscle here, and pull as I cut away along the spine. That's the backstrap. Goes in the esky. Next is the tenderloin. I cut down the inside cavity along the spine, grab the muscle, and cut it free. Goes in the esky. I take the machete, grab the ribs, and start hacking like I'm hammering a nail to separate them from the spine. Goes in the esky. Then I use the KA-BAR to separate the legs from the spine, and they go in the esky. After that I'm done and it's just a matter of cutting individual pieces of meat whenever I'm ready to make dinner. I'll wash off my hands, wash the meat and put it in the fridge/freezer, have a beer and maybe a smoke, and relax for the evening. I usually cook the tenderloins first since that's my favourite piece of meat on a roo. They cook fast and you have to eat them rare. Kangaroo meat doesn't withstand cooking to medium. Sometimes I'll use a skillet but in my experience they're best over a campfire on a grill. The wood smoke adds to the flavour.

The hide, guts, and head gets left behind for scavengers since it's no use to me. Very rarely I'll buy a fuckton of salt and lay the hide out and flesh it (scraping it with the skinning knife to remove any meat). Then I rub salt on it, roll it up, and shove it in a rubbish bag. I give the hides to Jack. Misty gets to chew on any stray bones, and I dock the tip of the tail, skin it, and give it to her as a treat which she loves.

And yes, kangaroo leather is great! It's ten times as strong as cow hide and my hat is actually made of kangaroo leather (except for the band which is 100% crocodile). Misty's lead is also made of braided kangaroo leather for added strength/durability. My vest, boots, most of my sheaths, and my quiver are all made of kangaroo leather.

[electrasev5nwrites]

Ninja Daily: Clarity 1

She could almost see 'Obi rolling his eyes at her for getting overly enthusiastic and dropping the cloaking genjutsu that he had painstakingly taught her.

But this was fun too, in a different way.

Aiko smiled absently, tapping her big toe inside her right sandal along with the beat of a rather chipper song. 'Obi hated it, but she thought the theme song for those silly princess Fuin movies was cute. It had been stuck in her head for the last fifteen minutes or so, but she didn't mind. She ducked under what seemed to be a pathetically slow sword slice and twisted under the shocked Ame nin's raised arm to stick him in the gut with an old-fashioned kunai, literally without missing a beat in the staccato she was keeping.

"Sorry, love." She lied casually, stepping in just a little closer and giving a nice, big scoop with some serious elbow action and muscle behind it. His stomach opened up with piteous ease.

He made a choked sound and dropped his weapon with a clatter to reflexively reach for his gut. She batted one arm away with her elbow and used her free hand to grab his right wrist. Immediately she pulled it around his back so that she could brace his torso up with her forearm when his knees threatened to buckle.

In the instant where he was hanging supported by her leverage, frightened blue eyes met Aiko's turquoise eyes, silently begging for mercy.

She shrugged.

"Nothing personal." With deft motions, she pulled her blade out and made a precise jab at the pulsating artery on his upper thigh. He had a minute left by the time she extracted her blade, tops.

The gut wound would have been enough to kill him, of course, but she wasn't a sadist. This had to look messy, but there was no reason to let the man suffer for the hours it would take for intestinal bleeding to finish him.

Excess cruelty served no purpose, after all. It didn't entertain her and it didn't make her target any more dead.

She left her new friend awkwardly collapsed face-up with buckled knees on the cement floor, tucking a bit of loose hair behind her ear with the cleaner hand as she meandered through the storage facility of one of Ame's newly re-occupied border outposts. She'd never been there before, so she would be forgiven a bit of curiosity at the surroundings.

'In a desolate way, Ame is beautiful.' She took a deep breath of heavy, cold hair, feeling crisp condensation coat her lungs.

It was very grey, for lack of a better word. This was one of the few places she'd seen where a cement bunkhouse wasn't totally out of place. The rocks were grey, the long grass was a strange blue-green color she had seen in no other flora, and the sky itself was tinted from low-hanging clouds ambling with the sluggish wind.

Ame was clearly a hard place. Of course, she could have already concluded that by assessing the apparent character of the people who lived there. They were an awfully cantankerous lot, as far as she could tell. Proud and stubborn, Ame refused to admit that they needed military assistance to keep out Kumo.

They were horribly wrong, of course, but it wasn't like allies were lining up at the door to offer help. Ame really only had one country who had expressed a willingness to offer them assistance, but Konoha's help would certainly come at a steep price.

'That's what happens when you don't play well with others,' Aiko sighed, patting down a bit of frizz. 'You try to launch one little takeover of the world, and suddenly nobody wants to play with you after school'.

Not that she had any room to talk, of course, but that was beside the point. She didn't know exactly what had happened a year and a half ago, but she didn't really care, either. She'd been asked to pop over, sabotage Ame's relationship with Konoha, and stop to get milk on the way home. So there she was, slaughtering her way through the more alert sentries at various posts. Dull. But the havoc later should be fun.

She wasn't there to kill everyone, of course. It wasn't like she and 'Obi had anything against these people in particular, just the idea of Ame allying with such a large faction. Besides, it would be awfully impractical to get rid of everyone in the vicinity when she needed the breach in security to be detected soon.

Aiko kneeled to pry the lid off what proved to be a container of munitions.

Naughty, naughty. Ame had been dealing with the technology-rich countries outside of the shinobi nation-states. It wasn't a surprise, but it was good to know. She patted the crate companionably, information confirmed. It wasn't crucial, but it was nice to see that Kotaka wasn't useless after all. She made a note to put a little more faith in his reports, although she really would have preferred to know his sources.

The storage area had been a bit of a detour, but she considered it time well-spent, even though it meant she had to move that much faster to her true destination. It was probably a good idea for Ame to have their outpost separated into a few bunkers instead of as one big, internally connected building. In theory, that design protected most of the base when one section was compromised.

In practice, Aiko was mildly inconvenienced because the buildings weren't helpfully labeled but also weren't adequately guarded. She ended up in the barracks by accident, calmly holding her breath and sliding past a pale-faced duo who were talking quietly at a small table. They didn't hear her steps and they certainly didn't notice the slight friction of chakra against reality as the genjutsu wrapped around her like a silk dress let them see what they expected to see.

That was a little thrilling, to be honest. Genjutsu wasn't a strength of hers, but 'Obi had been drilling her mercilessly in using genjutsu to hide for the last month and a half. She'd spent most of that time grouching that she would never get the damn technique down and that she didn't want it anyways. Now that she was suddenly competent, Aiko found all sorts of situations where it was useful.

In other words, she was getting lazy as all hell and she probably owed her friend an apology for being a poor student.

'I'm terrible,' she thought with a thoroughly inappropriate smile at her own expense.

Hypocritical or not, the technique worked like a charm to get herself in the control center. It was pretty nice, for an office in a little outpost. That was thanks to the fact that border control had been one of Ame's greatest priorities after their dust-up with a four country alliance two years back. As a result, they had all but poured their money into the base and lit it on fire.

Feeling strangely artistic, she carefully left a sixteenth of a bloody fingerprint on the inside of the door at a height that implied someone just a little shorter than she was. That was insignificant enough to look accidental. Aiko accidentally leaned a little too close and got a nose-ful of the cloying reek of iron and fear.

'Whoo, that's gonna piss somebody off.'

The inevitable forensics team would know it was from one of their people when the sample was compared. Even Iwa could handle that kind of detective work. Ame should do fine.

She left the office mostly untouched, doing her best to imitate the movements of an agent who was pressed for time, but attempting to ensure that they left no traces. The three bodies in the warehouse would be dismissed as a distraction from the intruder's real aim, hopefully, when all was said and done.

Even if they were really clueless, Ame would only be able to conclude that someone had commissioned an intelligence gathering mission.

If they were incompetent, they would think that Iwa had been the ones to break in, which was a violation of their current but shaky treaty. Ame should be leery about that, actually. A nominal ally sneaking around was much more hazardous than a known enemy. Their closest neighbors would be on Ame's shortlist of suspects, and Aiko had spent the night in a hotel not four hours away wearing the face of an Iwagakure kunoichi. Digging would uncover that and reinforce their paranoia in regards to their northern neighbors.

But if Ame's people were as good as 'Obi hoped they were, they would think that Konoha was framing Iwa in an attempt to pry apart their alliance.

(Aiko didn't bother fretting about the possibility that they would actually figure out that a third party had attempted to frame Konoha for framing Iwagakure. If Ame worked that one out, they deserved a pat on the back, no matter how much 'Obi would scowl and stomp around).

She lazily picked papers up nearly at random, leaving her scent in case Ame would think to check what had been touched that way. It wouldn't matter that it was hers, since they wouldn't know her personally. It took a great deal of time and experience to memorize an individual scent and not just follow a trail. There was no reason for any Ame shinobi to know her off-hand. All they'd know was that a female shinobi had been poking around. She paid special attention to information on orders in regards to the other nations, holding Ame's protocol about Rock-nin at borders and the records of contract for the longest time out of personal curiosity.

It was mildly interesting to see that Ame wasn't treating Rock with more caution than they were Suna or Kiri, who were understandably peeved about their tiff in the not-so-distant past. That wasn't wise of them, was it?

'This Konan woman must not be much of a politician. Too straight forward, I think,' Aiko decided disinterestedly. It was true on the surface, at least, that it was logical to be most wary of the countries that Ame had recently engaged in armed conflict with. Rock had been the only one out of the great shinobi nations who had stayed out of that scuffle, so Ame must have decided that Iwagakure was their most probable was a one-dimensional way to look at things.

'Ugh.' She blinked back excess liquid and shook her head. Aiko felt a headache coming on. 'I should hurry out of here.'

Now that the adrenaline-filled part of the mission was over, she was losing interest. Still, the mission had to be finished. It was her job to leave the impression that Konoha was framing Rock for illegal entry that undermined Ame/Iwa relations.

Speaking of that…

Aiko dug around in the left-most pocket on her hip pouch and extracted a tiny glass bottle. She held it up to the light to see the dry corpse inside one last time.

'How on earth did he get one of these?'

She pursed her lips and shrugged, carefully tipping out one kikai bug onto the thin carpet right by the edge of the desk she knelt in front of.

The bug had died of natural causes—old age. They occasionally just did that, and fell wherever their master was. Any shinobi who looked around this room would be able to tell that there had only been one intruder, a female with a petite build. The bug clan was notoriously sneaky. So Ame wouldn't be surprised to 'discover' that an Aburame had gotten in the premises, though Ame wouldn't be pleased about it either.

'And there goes Konoha's hope of convincing Ame that the threat from an Iwa/Kumo alliance is more important than their pride,' Aiko sighed. She didn't really care one way or another, but it was a little shocking that the lives of so many people could be affected by something so fragile.

Or not. Maybe it wasn't that fragile, judging by the faint presence she was noting flicker on the edge of her awareness. Maybe Konoha had actually planned a mission like the one 'Obi was having her fake. Wouldn't that be funny?

She repressed a snort as she crossed her way across the lines of barbed wire and miles of icy marsh that made up the no-man's land between Ame and River Country. That was awfully convenient, but then, Konoha and Ame were running out of time for their respective goals.

She'd left a slight scent trail leaving Ame to River (although only an expert would be able to tell) because a Konoha nin wouldn't have gone directly through the border at Fire Country, but they wouldn't really go through Rock Country either. Nice neutral River country left plausible deniability for any party. Coulda been a Suna mission, even, if it weren't for the fact that Suna and Kiri were outright refusing to take part in Konoha's less than selfless efforts to keep Kumo from taking Ame. If Ame didn't formally ask for Konoha's protection, then Kiri and Suna couldn't be forced to take part in helping them. Konoha was crippled, until Ame pulled their collective heads out.

'Ugh, why am I wasting time thinking about this? It's not really my problem.'

Apparently, 'Obi was operating on the same wavelength as the Hokage, because there really was a Konoha-nin creeping towards Ame.

Or at least, she assumed it was a Konoha nin heading north through River. Aiko stopped leaving an intentional trail at all when she veered off course to meet with the approaching chakra signal. It would be a pain if this asshat managed to make it into the Ame border-post and do damage control.

'Like what?' Aiko snickered at her own dramatic thoughts, licking her lips. 'I don't even know how he would figure out what happened. Still, it's an unnecessary loose end.'

As soon as she saw him, she circled downwind, to the west of the traveler. He wasn't marked, but Konoha wouldn't have sent a hitai-ite on a mission like that anyway.

'No one I recognize,' Aiko thought wryly, wishing she'd made a cleaner kill earlier and hating the obvious stink on her arm and shirt. There was always a risk of running into a dog-nin when dealing with Konoha, and blood carried a strong scent.

She could have killed the sentries without the fuss, of course, but it was supposed to look like a hack job by an infiltrator who accidentally drew too much attention. Aiko hadn't had a problem with the men she'd run into, and could have ambushed them like an infiltrator should. But that didn't fit the profile she was attempting to imply. An Aburame who was canny and practiced enough to pull off a mission like this would already be well-known, and there wasn't one of those with Aiko's physical profile currently active. So she was portraying someone talented but inexperienced, a girl who managed to sneak past most of the security but had to fight for her life against a rather good Chuunin.

'This guy is definitely not a Chuunin, though. I wonder what that scarring is from. Very distinctive.'

In an odd way, the horizontal lines marring her new find reminded her of 'Obi. Except this guy's scars made a sort of rough triangle with a tip across the bridge of his nose that stretched and expanded over his left cheek, instead of decorating a neat half of his face. Odd, though not particularly important.

But the Konoha nin didn't seem to be a dog-man. No matter how obvious the stink of blood was to her, he was visibly ignorant.

He was skilled, however, even if he did have beady black creeper eyes. He picked his way rather expertly through the marshland, not leaving a physical trace of his presence. Like a veteran, actually.

'He has a lot more experience than me,' Aiko noted, more interested in an accurate tactical analysis than her ego. 'I can't afford to let him have a fair shot. It would be pathetically cliché for the young shinobi to underestimate someone cannier.'

It was almost a shame to unceremoniously kill someone that good, but she couldn't have him undermining her work. Aiko shrugged, picking a single senbon out of her leg holster and twirling it between her middle and forefingers as she examined her target to pick her shot.

'All that muscle might be enough to put the needle penetration off if I get the wrong spot. He's not in bad shape. What is he, in his mid-thirties?' Aiko gauged, eyes flicking over his lithe form for weaknesses. 'Definitely from Konoha, with that chest armor. They really prioritize that.'

Her target stopped suddenly, clearly alert.

She didn't know how, but he knew he was being watched. Did he have a chakra sense that was better than her suppressing? That would be odd, since his suppressing wasn't as good as her sensing. It was more likely that indefinable seventh sense that occasionally pricked the back of your neck for no apparent reason that had alerted him he was in danger.

'Oh, pooperscoop.'

Aiko pressed her lips out in a pout, slipping the senbon behind her ear like a schoolgirl would store a pencil. Now that he was alert, it would be a pain to get that perfect shot. And she hated unintentional messiness. There was no point in doing something sloppily when she could expend minimal effort and still get precise results by switching tactics. Her next tactic wasn't hard to choose, seeing as there was one obvious resource all around her, curling into her lungs and kissing her lips damply.

'Well, do you know where I am or not, sweetheart?' she wondered curiously, circling just a little bit as the sluggish wind shifted. She was still wearing her genjutsu, but no technique was perfect. A fellow infiltration shinobi was more likely to be able to spot the cracks in the technique than a random nin.

"Kai!"

Aiko jerked in mild surprise as the burst of chakra washed over her. Usually she could maintain her technique through one of those disruptions, but he'd really gone full-out with the power he'd put into the technique. Not bad. She was right, he was experienced. Special Jounin at least, if not a full Jounin. Konoha's Jounin were nothing to sniff at. Their standards for promotion seemed to be set higher than many other countries'. She should be wary and professional. Still…

"That's cheating!" Aiko faux-pouted, cocking her head slightly and letting him drink the sight of his killer in for just a moment.

Oddly, the man outright gaped. She might have thought he was leering, if it weren't for the fact that he seemed stuck on her face and hair and hardly glanced below the collarbones. (Not that there was anything to see, clad as she was in a high-necked but sleeveless top with pants). He looked more surprised at seeing her than he really had any right to, considering he'd just attempted to disrupt a genjutsu. Had that been luck? Did this guy just occasionally freeze like a startled deer and check for genjutsu?

'I'm definitely not telling 'Obi I got caught out by a complete lunatic,' she thought morosely.

Now that he'd seen her, he definitely had to die. She wasn't much good to 'Obi if the whole world knew about her, after all. Her hand slipped into her hip pouch for a smoke pellet.

Wow, he didn't even tense. Was he an idiot or what?

Generally, one took evasive action when an opponent was possibly reaching for a weapon. This man must be particularly clueless. Or trusting. It wasn't as if she had a mark of affiliation on her person. Maybe he wasn't willing to attack a stranger met within a country that was technically on peaceful terms with his own, if loosely.

That was… somewhat reasonable, actually.

Didn't matter. He'd kill her in an instant if he knew the mission she'd just completed. It wasn't particularly sporting to make the first move, but should that really matter in a fight to the death? Having had a chance to fight back wouldn't make the loser less deceased. Aiko had no plans of being that deceased shinobi.

Ah, well. Philosophy later, fighting now. Her hand darted like the head of a snake, snapping the pellet down with enough force that it burst open and spat a fat billow of scentless purple smoke. Aiko didn't bother repressing a smile and a cheeky wave in the instant that her upper torso was still visible, before she faded into genjutsu again and let the smoke cover her.

She didn't move an inch. No one other than a total idiot would expect someone to remain in the same position after using a smoke pellet. It was an absurd, just plain stupid strategy. Sure enough, as the smoke dissipated, the poor reasonable bastard of a Konoha nin clearly thought she'd merely moved into hiding.

'He really shouldn't be surprised that I would use the same trick twice,' Aiko assessed critically. 'Silly. Are Konoha nin just showboats or something? No point in re-inventing the wheel when you have a technique that gets the job done.'

No wonder 'Obi had been careful to keep her away from Konoha nin, aside from the whole 'they'd kill her on sight thing'. He probably didn't want her to pick up bad habits.

With preternatural ease, she took hold of the mist clinging insistently to the air as a preemptive strike. It was almost too easy, really. It was a second's work to condense it into actual water—a trick that was nicely timed with the instant that her unknown opponent opened his mouth wide. "U-"

'It's like he wants to help me kill him,' Aiko thought, bemused. That didn't stop her from taking control of her element and bastardizing a water bullet to send it shooting down the Konoha nin's throat before he got out more than a syllable. His jaw clamped shut and a hand shot to his neck, but she was already flooding his lungs. Clinically, she tilted her head and watched as panic set in. He wasn't even looking for her anymore, preoccupied as he was with the fact that he was about to drown.

Dispassionately, she waited and watched while consciousness fled and the poor sap collapsed. He had the presence of mind to turn his face to the side when he fell, probably in hopes that she would get sloppy and bored. If she were in too much of a hurry to wait until he was actually dead, he might cough up the water even in his unconscious state. With his head to the side, it would spill out. It was a little trick, but it would have saved his life, had she been careless or rushed.

'That's a tactic straight out of the warnings about passing out drunk,' Aiko thought, charmed by his hopeful attitude. He was a cutie. 'Well, buddy, that was a nice try.'

She let the genjutsu slip away and stepped forward, delicately tilting his chin up with her clean hand so that he faced skyward. His eyes had fluttered shut when oxygen was cut off to his brain, and he almost looked peaceful. He laid still and quiet on his back without so much as a scuff or wrinkle on his clothes.

That was the way she preferred to operate. Nice and clean. Aiko gave his shoulder a fond pat as she rose, finally releasing her hold on the water and glancing curiously at the rings on his hand. She had waited long enough that he was definitely dead, so it had merely been her impulse towards perfectionism that had led her to thwart his last-moment plan and not any practical reason.

Finished, Aiko cast her senses out. She wasn't sure if she thought Buddy was operating alone or not. On one hand, Konoha nin did tend to travel in groups, so he very well could have back-up. Then again, it was often easier to get in and out on a stealthy mission with as few people as possible.

She didn't sense anyone… There could be someone who was very sneaky, but it didn't seem likely. Aiko wasn't a half-bad sensor.

'Well, if he had someone who was meant to help, I think they're running late,' she decided perfunctorily, tossing her head and distractedly unclipping her hair. It was going to kink up terribly if she left it like that for long, and she had plans for the night that didn't involve a bad hair day. She didn't give it another thought, casually loping back on her path to the point where she'd diverted to meet Buddy.

'If Ame really has anyone as good as me available to check this out, they are going to be so fucking confused when they find that body,' Aiko thought with unkind amusement as she went through the motions of leaving a slight trail in the direction she had initially intended to go.

Of course, that would be more amusing than the original plan. She half-hoped that Ame was more than competent, just for the entertainment value.

'God, my head is killing me.' Aiko made a face, rubbing her palm against her temple in an ineffectual attempt at soothing the pain while she waited for her friend to meet her and whisk her away.

[storytellersbook]

Death By A Doctor

Continuous beeping and the sound of a body breathing were the only sounds the doctor could hear. He looked down at the woman he had tried to save, but only failing in the end. This woman was alive but without a mind. Brain dead, that's what it was called. He had been unable to save the very thing that separated humans from the animals that were used for examination. Now she was powerless, unable to even breathe on her own. She was taped to monitors and had multiple tubes stuck in her body. Anything could happen to this woman - pain, pleasure, and they won't even know it was happening. She was breathing, heart beating, but with a still mind. Like people call the brain dead, this person was a vegetable. This person only needed the basics for its body to live so it could lay there and rot. The doctor knew this. He knew that he had trapped this woman on the line between life and death. He knew that there was only one choice to make. However, he didn't dare to make it. Like every other person in his profession, he took an oath. An oath that stopped him from harming his patients. However, as a strange excuse, someone who is unable to think for themselves can be killed. It made no sense to the doctor. Every part of the body was working - the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, both intestines, and even the gallbladder, not that it mattered. But not the brain, the most complex organ of them all. It was all there, not harmed at all, but it didn't wake up the body. Why? He and all of the other doctors didn't know. Studying the brain was dangerous, you never knew what card it might pull in this game of life or death. However, now there was a stalemate. The brain was too weak for itself to play when the doctors held it away from death by the machines its body was connected to. In a way the doctors won; they kept the person from dying.

As a consequence, they turned a perfectly good human into something that could be compared to a fruit or vegetable. The hard work was done now. The doctor could do nothing more for this person now. There was only one thing he could do to treat his patient: kill them. It was just a switch away, but it would free her from this world. It seemed like an easy decision, but it stayed undecided in this doctor's mind for almost a year now. That car crash a year ago caused this. Everyone was alright besides her. Everyone except the doctor’s sister. Now he could only stand above her, helpless to help her. She was healthy, alive only a few hours before. She was eating lunch with the doctor, both of them catching up after years of not seeing each other. However, as the two walked out, that’s when it happened. A car sped through the red light and hitting his sister as the doctor walked on the crosswalk behind her. After slamming into her and another vehicle, everything stopped for the doctor. The two drivers were fine and only saw it as an inconvenience. But for the doctor, time seemed to stop as he frantically worked to get his sister’s heart to start again.

But now the very oath he swore to stand by kept the doctor from freeing his sister’s soul from this brain dead trap that he had put her in. “Why is this decision so hard to make,” the doctor thought to himself. He knew that she would never wake up, but the doctor wanted her to. That's what he devoted his life to - saving people's lives. However, now putting his sister to her death for her own good was a paradox in his mind. He knew it was the right thing to do, and he knew that he had to do it, but he didn't want to. No one wanted to. But now was when the decision had to be made. However, it wasn't a decision anymore; it was an order. An order made by the doctor's high-ups, and if the doctor didn't do it, they would only get someone else to.

Turning his gaze towards the machines, the doctor quickly found the switch that needed to be flipped. He stared at it for a moment; such a little thing could kill a person or keep them alive. The doctor placed his finger on the small plastic lever, hesitating before pulling it down. Moments later, the small quiet room was filled with alarms. But the doctor did nothing; he just stood over the soon to be-corpse. It didn't take long, but quick beeping turned into one long, continuous note. As the line on the monitor, the body was now still and unmoving. Seconds later, the doctor turned his gaze from the corpse and down to his watch. He repeated the words he spoke many times before: “Time of Death: 10:37 pm.”

[katabby]

.

.

.

Dead dove, do not eat

"You know what they think I am, kid?" the being spoke. "They think I'm a monster."

He stood over the small boy, face melted, limbs distorted and looking like the very bringer of nightmares. But the boy was unafraid, staring back at the being with a blank, almost numb expression.

"They wouldn't even give me a chance.. the way they gave you. Yet, you act like you don't want it. Why is it? Why won't you accept their love?" the being asked, kneeling down to look the boy right in the eye. He didn't flinch.

"The love they give is not what I need. It's dull, it doesn't feel real anymore. They forgive me for every issue, even when it's repetitive. I've tried so many times, yet they don't give up."

"Or perhaps it's you who clings too hard."

The boy went quiet, staring at the being curiously, awaiting his next response. But they simply stared at eachother, the only sound being the cold, winter air that flew in through the boy's window.

The being stood up, bones creaking and cracking as he did. He extended an arm to the window, to the midnight stars, as if to seize the Moon.

"My home is beyond there, child. It is cold and lonely. My stomach is empty and my bones fragile." The being looked back at him yet he didn't seem the least bit disturbed. "That is how you will become if you continue taking their love for granted. Buried deep beneath soil, as simple fertilizer for weeds."

"Will the bugs enjoy eating my flesh?"

"Oh, yes," the being told him, nodding as he did. "They will feast upon your skin and lay eggs within your intestines. Your lungs will become the incubator for maggots and your liver the breeding ground. You will be forgotten by land dwellers and soon disappear with time beneath stranger's feet."

"But I will be useful?"

The being went silent, staring at the boy before a look of curiosity came over him. "What are you getting at, small boy?"

The boy smiled cheekily, his eyes squinting. "I want to die, dear creature. I wish to become nothing, but to be worth to the smallest creatures of land. I want to become specks so small, scientists won't identify me. I want to become nothing. Life under ground doesn't sound half bad."

The being stared at him simply. He had no words for the boy. So he covered the boy's eyes gently with one boney hand and stuck his finger into his stomach, digging around until he pulled out the line of his inner intestines, pulling the pink inner flesh out with ease. He watched as the boy collapsed onto the floor, a puddle of blood quick to form, before crushing his small, pitiful skull with a dislocated foot, showing no care for the splatter of brain matter and skull shards that now coated the bedroom floor.

[radiomurdeer]

The song that played was unfamiliar, an anachronism that itched at his ears. The impossibility of the situation drags a smile to his lips, each corner pulled wide and stretched as a little laugh escaped. Absurd to stand over the man that had towered over and terrorized him all his life. Tension in the muscles of his arm, of his hand, fingers splayed and hooked like claws.

When had his father gotten so small?

Growing up the man had been a mountain, the pristine snow hiding the blood and shit beneath. An avalanche ready to crash down at the slighted of sounds, ready to bury anyone in its path. The cruelty that dropped from the crag off his mouth had been unceasing to those he deemed lesser. Alastor had known him for a monster and had left his mother in his shadow, left her to be crushed and discarded like trash.

Vitriol spewed from ruddy drunk lips, spit flying as the cornered animal tried to puff itself up. It wasn't anything Alastor hadn't heard before, in one ear and out the other. Nothing worth listening to, not with another in his head whispering so lovingly. Alastor soaked up her praise, let the mortar seep into the cracks of his soul.

Something extraordinary. Extravagant.

For a man who had been so liberal with his fists, his father certainly couldn't take a hit. A blow to the throat to shut the hateful sludge pouring out. The man clutched at his neck, choking and fighting for air. Alastor was not above kicking him while he was down, forcing breath from the man's lungs with a well-placed blow to the stomach. Mundane for now, but Alastor reveled in turning the tables. Blow after blow, each in a place where Alastor had suffered before. Openly on the face for him, and then under sleeves and clothes for his mother. There's a significance in the blows, but he doubts the man was intelligent enough to see it.

A soft shoe shuffle as Alastor spins, dancing to the simple tune. Tiptoe through the tulips indeed, as he tapped his way though the blood, mind whirring, gyroscope spinning so fast as to careen off the tracks entirely. Not a question of what to do, merely so many options as to what to do next.

He planted a firm foot against the crook of the man's elbow, gripping the wrist and pulling, twisting it muscles and ligaments frayed, staining his shoes and pants further. Someone screamed, voice reaching a fever pitch. Alastor couldn't tell which of them the sound came from. The urge to eat and consume was there, lingering.

Ignored. Alastor didn't want to keep the hands that had hurt his mother so, wanted no part of them. Let them rot in the compost heap, with the other trash. Discarded, thrown carelessly aside to clutter and stain the expensive flooring.

He had no such compunction about the rest of the man though. Alastor knelt down beside the refuse that thought itself a person to tear open the shirt, buttons flying and clattering on the ground. The diaphragm moved in rapid breaths, up and down as the man sobbed, trying to reason with a son that had long ago disowned him.

A finger ran down the center of the stomach, a coroner marking a corpse for autopsy. Let Alastor do your job for you, good sir. Alastor's eyes burned, leaving saline tracks that dripped into his teeth. Grief and rage and so much emotion for one small human heart.

It's so, so, easy to cut a line down the center. To pull and pry apart as the sound of the man's screams mingled with a song so wildly inappropriate and joyful it swung back around to the perfect soundtrack.

So much blood, almost impossible to see what lay beneath the fat and flesh, welling up around the organs. Alastor was struck by just how similar it was to the animals he'd torn apart throughout the years. Is that all this man was in the end? Alastor licked his lips, salivating. He'd always been fond of liver.

The intestines needed to be removed, ropes and ropes coiling and spilling to the floor around them. Make way for his hands, seeking under the rib cage for what Alastor had decided to start with. Though the blood pooled around him, Alastor didn't pay it any mind, remained unrushed. Something told him he'd have all the time in the world to get his fill.

Shadow would emulate the future pretense by splattering crimson paint on the white canvas of the wall with each movement he made. Her strength reveals his real nature as he slaughters those who have taken from him. If he could glance behind him, he would see the monster's edged, hard antlers growing as it picked him. Initially, it would be little.

It was only barely emerging from its little seed. However, the evil mother took note and contaminated his soul like an illness.

A duty, a justification. A type of service.

All for a woman. Now that was satisfaction.

Of course, to make sure he knew she was with him in certain aspects, the appearance of flicking lights as he carried on his crime as if creating horror films for his mistress. She would let comments fill in the gaps where static did not remain in his mind.

" Your ferocious wrath makes an old gal like me quiver at the heart. This is the one? Hm? I'll set the stage for you, darling. "

It was as if an echo had taken a keen note. A new mother to applaud him in his attempts, no matter how wrong or correct it was to twist between the lines as you plunged your feet into them.

The phonograph, which was still there in the house, suddenly turned on. The needle scraping on the surface, playing a wicked melody. Why not dance as you brought on demise? Insane hymn for serial murderers.

Tiptoe Thru' the Tulips with me.

Although different from the original. A few years too early for the rum of a feminine vocal.

Now, now, child. When you obtain retribution, you will remain hungry. Malnutrition is caused by such factors.

While she was starving, it was evident that he had his own starvation long before her power was placed upon him.

" Why don't you make this one extraordinary? Extravagant? "

[thinkin-bout-milgram]

Shidou MV Details

Alright! So I (admin Saturn) did some frame by frame examination on Shidou’s MV. I don’t necessarily have any theory that comes from this but I do have some interesting information/clues!

Now the image above that I’ve written over is taken from 3:35 in the MV. This is that tag that comes from the flower person. (Shidou’s suspected romantic partner that he’s trying to save via organ harvesting) 

Interestingly, everything on this tag is the same as on every other tag that ca be seen in the 2:24 section of the video. This could be from an ease of animation stand point, a way to represent how dialed in on this person Shidou is, or even have some broader theoretical implication on his crime that I couldn’t tell you. 

Taking a look back at the actual contents on the tag though, the first thing to point out is the ‘Who:’ section. It’s very clearly in cursive and to the best as I could trace on edited image, I think it might say Rue Kar... something. This could be the name of the dead person, a surgeon that was operating on then, an organ donor, really any number of potential people. 

(And I’m putting the unedited version in just so y’all can get a clear look) The next thing on here is the ‘Organ:’ section which (to my best guess) says magen. Now! That meant literally nothing to me at first, however with some googling, I learned magen is german for stomach. 

Why would this japanese MV have german names for organs? Couldn’t tell you! I’ll leave that for the theorists to figure out! However, I am almost certain that this is in fact meant to be read in German because of the additional very small writing underneath. Taking just the shapes that I could make out and comparing them to a german anatomical name list, heres what they look like to me in the order that’s in my first picture. 

1. Magen - Stomach

2. (???) Gehirn - Brain

3. Leber - Liver

4. Lunga - Lung

5. Niere - Kidney

6. (??) Herz - Heart

7. Gallenblase - Gallbladder

8. Zwolffingerdarn - Duodenum (small intestine part)

9. (?) Bauchenspiecheldruse - Pancreas

My theories as to why theres this list: (and nothing concrete, I’ll leave this to the theorists and future MV’s to explain) Could be a list of organs this body needed replaced or could be just a list of organs as a sort of checklist for medical peeps?

Adding on to this, 9 items in a category is also seen as the number of unique flowers (I believe? that I counted at least, correct me if I’m wrong here) that are flashed against that black background which could suggest the flowers represent organs instead of patients that some theorize? Now how exactly a person would transplant a brain is above me.. pretty sure it’s impossible so I don’t know what that’s about, however these could instead be organs that are beginning to fail rather than organs Shidou is transplanting? The logic doesn’t quite flow here though, just figured pointing out this correlation (not causation) could help others theorize.

But anyway, last thing on the front of this is a big ol XX XY with the XY having a slash through it. Now... 2 explanations for this cause it’s kinda counter to my logic. Either this is indicating biological female by crossing out the XY or indicating biological male because its the one that marked.... Either way kinda an odd system but I won’t fault them!

And then some additional things I noticed, if you look at the papers that turn into the tags, they all have the same grey lines on them indicating these papers all hold the same information. This could have similar explanations as why all the tags are the same.

And then last thing! All the tags have the same black backside with a number 7 on it and some unintelligible writing. 

Heres two good shots of the back, something to note is that the part has the N, like the number indicator, looks to be the same type of font as the one that indicates prison cell number. Maybe they just reused the font but it does seem sort of odd to me? Especially because Shidou is prisoner number 5. Just something odd.

But anyway!! Sorry that got so long, that’s what I have discovered here, please let me know what y’all think!! I’m not quite one for the strong theories but I like to think I can pick out some interesting details :)

[redwhump]

Vampire Vivisection

The latest chapter of Kane & Jim inspired me to finally finish this. I kinda still don't like it, but I also never like anything I write so oh well. It's kind of inspired by me thinking about the function of an inaccessible room from a video game called Vamp/ire the Masq/uerade: Blood/lines (slashes because I don't want this to show up in searches for the game) and what would happen if the player character didn't escape before ending up in that room. But I wouldn't consider this fanfic for the game. Especially when I definitely break the rules of how vampires work in V/T/M in several ways in this.

Contains: gore, vivisection, death wish, medical/experiment whump, vampire whumpee, human whumper, starvation, dehumanization, use of "it" to dehumanize

Ash's limbs and neck were strapped tightly onto the cold steel table he was on. His torso had been strapped down similarly, as he waited alone in the dark room, until the human arrived and released those straps to cut into him. He struggled, but the rest of the straps had held. He screamed, as the human had cut him open shoulder to shoulder, then in a straight line down the center of his torso, down his abdomen. The Y-shaped incision which now cut across Ash's body to reveal his insides had made struggling all but impossible. Moving was difficult with so many muscles severed. And it hurt. Every little twitch of the muscles of his torso was agony. Even as the human began sawing through each of his ribs, he fought to stay still. His arms trembled uncontrollably in their bindings, and his head tipped back, lips parted as if to scream, though there was no air in his lungs to produce the sound. Tears ran down the sides of his face into his hair from the corners of his eyes. He didn't breathe. He didn't want to find out what it would feel like to try.

The human stuck his hand into Ash's guts. He wished he could pass out, but despite the pain, this wasn't enough damage to do it. He wished he were still human, because at least then he'd just die from this. It hurt so much. Beyond the pain, it felt viscerally wrong to have someone dig through his insides like this. The human moved methodically through his organs, examining each one, though the overwhelming pain made it hard to tell what exactly the human was doing at any given time. As the human worked, occasionally making small cuts with a scalpel or drawing something out with a syringe, he spoke. Ash, for the most part, couldn't process the words. It was almost like listening to a foreign language, though he knew he should have been able to understand the words being spoken.

"...the subject's intestines appear ordinary, though empty…stomach contains no acid…its heart appears healthy, though it does not beat…"

Ash twisted his face to the side, pressing his cheek to the metal table, as he felt the human's hand inside his chest. If he had air in his lungs, he would have whined as the human ran his fingers, warm even through the glove he wore, over his exposed heart. Ash could feel the beating of the human's heart in the man's fingers, thrumming through his own heart. He was so thirsty it hurt. For a moment, as the human touched his heart, as he felt the man's heartbeat against his own unbeating heart, the hunger was the only thing he felt--the incisions, his ribs, they didn't matter, they'd heal, as long as he fed, he needed to-- Then the human's fingers drew away, and the pain hit him again. Ash squeezed his eyes shut, his arms jerking uselessly against the straps holding them. His teeth clicked as he snapped his jaw shut. The human's warm hand grasped Ash's chin, turning his head up. When he opened his eyes, he found himself looking up at the human above him. 

"I would like you to breathe for me," the man said in a tone that sounded more like a command than a request.

Ash gritted his teeth, staring wide-eyed at the man above him. He blinked. His shoulders tensed as he felt the fingers of the man's other hand inside his chest again, though not on his heart this time. He closed his eyes, head twitching, turning away as much as the straps and the man's grip would allow. It would be worse if he breathed. He wanted to beg the man to stop, or maybe to just kill him instead. 

"If you breathe for me, I'll give you blood once I'm done. It's been some time since you last fed, has it not?" The human's fingers moved inside his chest, in an almost stroking motion. The stroking sent a shiver down Ash's spine, which flared into more pain from the slight movement of his back muscles. All his muscles went tight, and he fought to relax as that made the lain even worse, even as the pain made him want to tense up even more.

Blood. The human was promising him blood. Did he believe him? No, he decided through the haze of pain. But…if he did it, this might end sooner. Maybe. The human could just keep him open like this until he did as he was told. Or for some other experiment that might be even worse than breathing would be. At least he could control this. breathe as shallowly as possible, or do whatever else made breathing a little less agonizing. So he complied. He drew in a shallow, stuttering breath, and then let out a hoarse scream as he exhaled. There was a moment of stillness, where neither Ash nor the human moved.

When Ash didn't inhale again, the human flatly instructed, "Keep breathing until I tell you to stop."

Ash sobbed, but did as he was told. He breathed in. Then out. Short, sharp, shallow breaths that nevertheless made his chest feel like it was on fire. He whined at the pain, but kept breathing. Please. Please let me stop. Please. Please just let this end. Please just kill me. He tried begging out loud too, but most of it cane out as incoherent pained noises rather than words. He thought he managed to whisper "please" a few times, even if the word was slurred by pain and the effort forcing himself to breathe took.

"That's enough," the human said, after what felt like an eternity.

Ash sobbed as he exhaled, and didn't inhale again. It felt strange, to be relieved at pain that was among the worst he'd ever felt, but excruciating pain was still better than even more excruciating pain. A warm hand cupped his cheek, moving his head so his face pointed upwards again, and he wanted to lean into the almost gentle touch. He didn't.

"Open your mouth," the human ordered. Ash opened his eyes, his eyes blurry with tears, to see that the man held some kind of tube up to his lips. He obeyed, and the human stuck the tube in, holding it steady with one hand. With the other, the human reached for a bag of blood that was attached to the tube and hung it on a hook above him. Ash's fangs itched. The human undid some kind of clamp on the tube, letting the deep red blood flow down the tube.

When the blood flooded into his mouth, Ash was certain that he had never tasted anything better. It's never as sweet as the first time, Jack's words echoed in the back of his mind. He'd been wrong. He didn't need to be told to swallow. The blood ran dry far too early. When the human tried to pull the tube from Ash's mouth, he found he'd been biting down on it without thinking. He let go reluctantly. He would have gladly torn the tubing and the bag apart and licked off every drop of blood if the human had let him. He couldn't tell if he was imagining it, but the pain felt slightly duller now that he had fed, though he knew not enough time for any of the mess that was his body to have healed significantly. If the pain was the sun, it felt as if a thin cloud cover had obscured it slightly.

The sound of the human's footsteps retreated a short distance away. There was the sound of metal scraping against the concrete floor. Ash turned his head to look. The human sat down on a chair, a small distance away from him and penned notes on a clipboard, occasionally glancing up at Ash, though never looking at his face. Just the slowly healing wounds. Ash could feel the blood now flowing through him slowly knit him back together. He felt something itching, or perhaps burning, in the sawed-off ends of ribs, as his body began regrowing the front of his ribcage. He turned his head away from the human, staring at the blank wall on his other side. He had no way to tell the time, but it felt like several eternities passed before the pain abated enough that he could begin drifting to sleep. Still strapped to the table, he fell asleep as the human sat a few feet from him, observing how his wounds closed.

---

So that was something I guess. For the record, I'm like 99.99% sure breathing with the front part of the ribcage would be impossible, but I decided I don't care because the idea of a whumper observing a whumpee's lungs without the ribcage in the way seemed fun. Also random fun fact, the document I wrote this story in is named "viviaection" because i misspelled the word and couldn't be bothered to fix it.

[wh6res]

dreams come true | yuta

"soulmate or not. i don't shoot blanks." — ny

[ part of the my bloody valentine collection ]

tw. gore, blood, murder, death, killings, mentions of illegal organ trafficking, violence, mentions of stalking, minor character deaths, weapons (a knife and a gun), almost (??) suggestive content but nothing happened

disc. this is rlly fucked up and yuta is unredeemable. i dont condone such acts. this is all a work of fiction and meant to entertain.

wc. 5k

every time you sleep, the void is sickening. it was all you could see, lightyears and lightyears away of pitch black that made your head dizzy and your stomach dry heave. you've always wondered when you'll start dreaming about your soulmate's memories. they were like little secrets, another way for two people to be intimate without even being together. their days were flashing before their soulmate's eyes in the form of a dream. it's as if you spent the day with them!

you loved it, the whole concept of it. it sounded so wholesome and sweet and jesus fucking christ, you've always been such a hopeless romantic.

it was sweet until it turned sour. you loved it until you hated it. it was romantic until it turned downright terrifying.

you wake up covered in cold sweat, panting and gasping as if you've run a whole marathon.

moonlight seeps through your glass window, slightly left ajar for the midnight breeze to pass through – you walk up to it, pull it shut, and draw your thick curtains together. you exhaled, breath shaking as you tried to anchor yourself back to the ground.

with the only source of your light disappearing, darkness envelops you whole. for once, you craved the void. you want that void back if it meant never seeing something like that again – something straight out of your worst nightmare.

"119, what's your emergency?"

"uhm, i think… i think i just witnessed a massacre."

you reiterate everything you saw in the dream – the mahogany door, paint chipping off the drywalls. the doorknob was rusty, so were the hinges, and it made an ominous creak when pushed open. the light switches on, the first you see was a bunch of dirty ice coolers in what should've been the living room, it wasn't even the slightest bit organized. they were everywhere, and the floor looked grimy and disgusting, like there's a stain they can't seem to scrub off. only when your soulmate has stalked closer did you see the labels haphazardly taped on top of the ice coolers.

kidneys. livers. lungs. pancreas. intestines – you nearly vomited on the floor, trying to relay everything you saw to the operator on the other end of the call.

then came the gruesome parts.

their deaths.

they were five people in total. men clad in cheap t-shirts and pants, wearing all these similar leather jackets. some were well-built, ripped in the arms and thighs, but some were skinny, the jackets hanging on their small frames.

they never stood a chance against him.

your soulmate is agile, quick on his feet with outstanding eye-hand coordination. only equipped with a butcher's knife, but it was all he needed to take them down and send them knocking on inferno's gates. he was skilled, knowing when to pounce and where to slash his knife to maim but never to kill. by the time your soulmate was through with them, everything is bloody red. all the victims' eyes widened as they sputtered and choked on their blood – not dead, but dying...

because your soulmate wasn't done yet.

a killer should have a modus operandi, should they not? so he took out a desert eagle, stood before the bleeding bodies, and shot two bullets straight into their eyes. the finishing touch? carving a frown on their faces with his butcher's knife.

the operator only told you one thing after she's made you describe the place for them to track the crime scene down.

"double-check all your windows and doors."

because you couldn't be too sure, not when you have been granted a front seat to the sad face slayer's most recent endeavors.

the detective eyes you with a certain pity. maybe that's why you don't bother meeting his eyes. you sit still on a chair, camera blinking red behind him, the interrogation room is freezing even with the thick jacket you're wearing.

seven billion people in the world and you're soulmate's a ruthless serial killer who took it upon himself to purge the world of evildoers – he was playing god, no wonder the detective is looking at you like that.

"uhh…" he's awkward, fidgeting in his seat. "and you saw this all in a dream?"

"yes."

you've known him only minutes ago. mark lee was his name and he seems to be a subordinate of a higher, more experienced detective named kim doyoung. you don't know whether to feel offended or not for having a doe-eyed newbie taking care of the case, but you pushed it at the back of your mind, knowing his superior is watching on the other side of the two-way mirror.

"did you have, like, other past instances where you dreamt of him? of what he…" mark looked like he was going to throw up. "what he does to his other victims?"

you shook your head. no. "i've mostly just heard of him on the news. i don't think i have the stomach to find out in-depth what the killer does."

mark takes out a folder, features walking the fine white line between looking apologetic or wanting to say me too. "i'm, uhh, really sorry to hear that."

there's a sudden pregnant silence encapsulating the interrogation room. it felt like you were mourning for something, the chains of dread dragging your heart to the ground as it pounded against your ribcage. mark looked like he wanted to say something, but you swore his eyes darted towards the camera in the corner and decided otherwise.

"anyway…" he trails. flipping the folder open in one swift motion. "past sightings have given us the sad face slayer's name."

he slaps down a picture of a man, his hair raven and a permanent scowl etched on his face. the quality was shitty. it looked like it was a screenshot taken from zoomed-in cctv footage.

"nakamoto yuta, twenty-five, japanese, and has slipped one too many times past authorities that at this point, it's practically a talent."

and just like that, it made sense why you're here.

your lips pursed in contemplation, palms quaking as your fingers reach forward to inspect your soulmate's picture. "and… you want to use my soulmate connection –" you glowered. never had a sentence sounded so fucking cursed and utterly wrong. "– to catch him?"

mark can't look you in the eye. "yes. he's very elusive. his killings have been happening cross-country and, as you can see, have garnered national media attention. the police are hanging by a thread here. a month in his case and all we got is his MO, name, and that he has this weird god complex on him. if we can't catch him by the end of next month…" he shrugs. "the feds are going to interfere, sooner or later."

"so…" you trail, urging him to continue.

"so, we need as much information about him as we can get and your dreams about him will be able to provide that."

fucking great.

the much newer revelations of precisely who it was on the other end of the soulmate connection put a significant damper on your mood. you'd like to think your new little cop buddy who follows you around gives you the least bit sense of security, but alas, it doesn't. not when you've seen first hand how yuta took down five men all at once without breaking a fucking sweat – you absolutely refuse to call him your soulmate, you'd never accept a person with his nature as a soulmate.

you try to hide the bracelet mark handed you last two weeks ago, during your time spent in the precinct's interrogation room.

"please have this on you at all times until we catch him, okay? this is for extra measures, just in case something happens to the cop assigned to guard you. just press the little button here and we'll be there before you can even finish shouting 'help!' – hey, i was just kidding! what's with the face?"

considering you're now probably being hunted alive for snitching on a serial killer? mark lee, that was not funny at all.

"do you have to get inside the lecture with me?" you whine, shielding your face with your hair when you notice people shooting glances at the rather handsome cop they assigned to you. "it's not like he'll attack in broad daylight! and in a fucking classroom, for that matter."

jaehyun looks just about ready to hurl you out the window. "lower down your voice," he scolds. "serial killers don't pick a time and place, sweetheart. he kills when necessary and if it's fucking necessary to murder everyone in that classroom to get to you? he'll do it in a fucking heartbeat."

you sigh when the chair next to you screeches against the floor, the aforementioned male taking his seat right next to you. jaehyun felt more like a babysitter than a cop, who seems to have a habit of constantly inputting his not-even-needed opinions on the most superficial things.

are witness protection protocols like this?

it was a good thing that overgrown bat doesn't come hanging around in your apartment, but he does have the police car parked right across the building's entrance. judging by how meticulous and thorough he seems to be, he won't miss any face that comes in and out of the building.

you didn't forget exactly why you're under witness protection. for the cops to waste one good officer to follow you around, you needed to be valuable and being valuable meant sleeping through nightmare-induced dreams of what your soulmate does for a living. the scenes are so gruesome, so graphic and utterly gory, that you dart towards the bathroom first thing after waking up in cold sweat, draining all of dinner down the toilet bowl.

after dreaming of him in action a few times, you've now completely understood what detective lee had said regarding yuta's god complex. it was unsightly, yet there was a twisted sense of heroism to it. if there's one thing, he only gutted the bad guys – but that didn't make nakamoto yuta any less of a bad guy, himself.

i need to ask you a favor [sent 2:05am]

JJH: what? [received 2:10am]

often the nightmares were too much. too much that you thought of escaping its horrors by never getting a wink of sleep ever again – until you realized you're a witness and is probably the only chance for the seoul police department to catch that bastard.

buy me sleeping pills? [read 2:08am]

when you peep out of the window, you find an empty spot across the road where jaehyun usually parks the police car. twenty minutes later, you answer the knocking on your door. he used that little "code" he did for you to know it was him. jaehyun was glowering and muttering about how he wasn't some errand boy when he shoved the plastic bottle in your hand yet, you still thanked him nonetheless.

the pills worked like a charm. you managed to stay asleep throughout the whole night, ceasing those episodes of yours where you jolt awake in the middle of dreaming about the sad face slayer's memories.

life continued for you. it became a little bearable, but that didn't mean the horrific murders you see in your dreams are something you can get used to – you don't think you'll ever get used to the sight of him slashing his victims, the blood trickling like a goddamned waterfall.

today the dreams were different. anticlimactic, per se, if you compare it to the violence so utterly present in his memories.

the first you see were black gates, then it shifted to him ordering coffee in a café (amazing what a simple black mask can hide). it switched to him walking on a sidewalk, then he arrives at his destination, an apartment building – it wasn't too rundown, nor was it extravagant.

the serial killer takes the elevator and walks up to a mahogany door –

your room number is a blaring sight.

you couldn't be wrong, not when the 506 with the missing zero in the middle was a sight you saw every day, going and coming home from university.

that was your front door.

he was at your front door.

you jolt awake, ignoring the icky feel of sweat making your clothes cling onto your skin. ice creeps up your spine and freezes you over when you notice with a sinking realization.

those black gates are from the university you attended. that café is your favorite study nook. and that sidewalk is a route you take every day.

you clamp your hands on your mouth as tears roll down your cheeks in rivulets. you pull the comforters up above your head, fear gripping onto you with a vice-like grip as you sob.

it was in the dead of night, moonlight grazing the confines of your room and hours away from dusk. you finally utter those three words in a frightened whisper.

"he's stalking me."

as if having the overgrown bat jaehyun following and annoying you around wasn't enough, you now have another person keeping watch over you. mark lee, unlike jaehyun, may not be as ripped with muscle, but you heard from your cop buddy that the young detective has a few black belts under him. people at the precinct said that if they have to choose one person who can ever come close to the sad face slayer's agility, mark lee's your guy.

"you gotta be shitting me," you mutter, leaning close to jaehyun to whisper like high school girls talking about gossip. "he doesn't look the type!"

jaehyun, in turn, plays along and copies you. "yeah, true. he gets that a lot, i think,"

"guys, i'm literally in the back seat. i can hear everything."

the change hadn't been too drastic. at least mark was there when jaehyun proved to be difficult, pulling him towards the other way when the older male tried waltzing into your class again. "you don't need to sit next to her in her class! are you serious? there's one exit and entrance and we're on the fifth floor. breaking into that classroom will be the end of nakamoto's serial killer career!"

you shoot mark an appreciative smile, one he quickly returned before hauling jaehyun around the hallway. "we'll just be at the canteen, okay? press the 'lil button on your bracelet and we'll be right there!"

shaking your head with a slight smile on your face, you entered the classroom, sat in your usual spot, and did some of your readings from our other class to kill time. you hardly hear the screech of the chair next to you as it was pulled back. not like you cared much for whoever sat down next to you, but you can't deny there's that feeling of missing jaehyun when he used to force his way into the lecture.

"settle down! settle down, people!"

the professor enters and the class begins.

you were meticulous with your note-taking system. it's thorough, leaving no room for information to slip you. having already printed hard copies of the powerpoint presentation and simply jotting down some extra key points mentioned by your professor.

you were just about to raise your hand for a question when you feel something warm graze past your arm. you absentmindedly look down.

the breath is sucked right out of your lungs.

hi, soulmate

there, scribbled with an ominous red crayon on a small piece of paper. it was almost laughable how innocent it looked but when you follow the ring-clad hand, up the black hoodie he's wearing, and finally to his face—

"hi! i'm yuta."

his cheshire smile spikes up your heartbeat. it makes you want to throw up, makes you want to slam your head against the desk. the fight or flight hormone you have is making you restless, eyes pinned on the serial killer sitting next to you, scared that if you avert your gaze, he's going to take out that desert eagle and shoot you until your skull caves in and the bullets in his magazine empties.

"but judging by your reaction, i don't think introductions are needed, hm?" his tone is easy, conversational even and it shoots a freezing jolt of fear right up your spine. it makes you sweat profusely because you don't fucking know what to do, your thoughts in complete and utter disarray.

"just press the little button here and we'll be there before you can even finish shouting 'help!' – hey, i was just kidding! what's with the face?" you swallow, sneakily pressing the button without breaking eye contact with the serial killer sitting in front of you.

"look upfront. now." yuta orders and you nearly snap your neck as you turn your head with lightning speed.

"i thought i was above the soulmate rules, but here we are. my soul is either too tainted or too great to be tied to such trivial things, but oh well, we learn to work with what we have. surprisingly, i learned to like dreaming about how your day went."

you feel something sharp poking at your thigh and when you look down, he has a silver butterfly knife pointed against you. the precision of the angle he held it with doesn't slip your notice. one slice of that knife, no matter how small, and he'll be spilling your guts in this classroom.

a fat tear rolls down your face.

"can you imagine how much my heart broke when i learned you were spying on me? leaking information to that snobby detective? to those incompetent cops? bad baby, that was very bad of you."

"yuta—"

"you think the cops can save you from me?"

his other hand comes in contact with the nape of your neck, holding your head in place as he leaned down to invade your space. he scoffs, and you can picture that terrifying cheshire grin you've seen one too many times in your dreams.

the knife digs through your coat, the tip hardly poking your skin only because he doesn't want to drive it into you yet. how did he even manage to get inside the university? not to mention the weapons he possessed? shouldn't anyone be suspicious when they see a man dressed in all black, clad in jeans and a hoodie, into a university—

he even dressed the part. with that hood drawn up and carrying that one notebook, he looked fairly normal. someone who can easily blend in with the crowd.

you eye your professor, willing him to look at you but your soulmate is having none of that. you squirm when he drives the knife further, at the base of your stomach. with his other hand, he twirls a lock of hair around his finger. "now, now, soulmate. you don't want half the people here to get hurt, do you? unless... that can easily be arranged—"

"no!" you whisper, head jerking to the side to look at him humming in satisfaction. damn. out of all the faces he's seen contorted with fear, yours is his absolute favorite. with those pleading, glassy eyes and parted lips, yuta is tenting in his sweats.

"thought so," he chuckles. "let's get up. we're leaving. that old crook doesn't care if students just up and went in the middle of his lecture."

you don't want to think about how he even knew that because it implied attending the lectures a good amount of times. it's with sinking realization that jaehyun was right. if it weren't for him insisting to sit next to you, nakamoto yuta would've long gotten you in his claws.

you tried gathering your things until he purred into your ear.

"ah, ah, ah. you wouldn't be needing those with where we're going."

the hallways were empty, not that you had much time to scream for help when he had a knife pointed up your back, shoving you into the fire escape stairs. within the tranquil confines of the staircases, the sad face slayer couldn't fucking care less for your personal space.

he disgusts you greatly, he needn't do anything but stand there in front of you but you can already smell the long blood trail from his path. it reeks of rotting flesh and that infuriating god complex he had left a sour aftertaste.

"you know, i genuinely wanted to get to know you," yuta pouts, shaking the hoodie off his head. his hair raven, it's ends kissing the nape of his neck. he looked like he came right out of a shounen manga but the bloodlust in his eyes is something that can never be masked. "i detested the soulmate connection at first, i thought i should just kill you off because you could be my loose end."

his humorless smile is enough to give you nightmares.

"but seeing how sweetly normal and untainted you are made me hold back," the butterfly knife appears before your line of sight, yuta teasingly dragging the tip right down your cheek to trace your tears. "so, why did you snitch, baby?"

you shiver when he noses the side of your neck, inhaling your scent as his other hand hooks underneath your top, freezing fingers making you jolt. when you don't reply, his patience starts to dwindle. then again, he was never a patient man.

"answer me, you bitch. why did you rat me out?" gone is the playful lilt in his voice. the vibrations surge through you as his deep, demanding voice scares you shitless.

you feel, hear, and smell him everywhere. this wasn't like any nightmare. this is real, and you won't magically wake up on your bed, sighing in relief, knowing he isn't there, that it was all just in your head. no, this was very much real and there's absolutely no escape.

"i didn't," your voice cracks. "i didn't mean to—"

"bullshit!" he yells. you wail in pain when he slams you against the wall, head aching as it came in contact with concrete. "because of you betraying me, i nearly fucking got caught, and i never get caught!"

you were full out sobbing at this point, noisy and unsightly as the snot mixes with your tears. your only hope now is he gives you a quick, painless death and that he doesn't carve and mutilate your face like what he always does to his other poor victims. "i'm sorry! please... i'm so sorry. i was scared—"

he coos mockingly, tilting his head to the side as he inched his face closer. "aw, scared? my sweet little soulmate was scared?" he places the blade flat against your neck. as humiliating and degrading as it was, you almost peed on your clothes. "how about now? i'm sure as hell that you're fucking terrified for your useless life right now."

you cringe when his hand abandons the expanse of your stomach, no longer inching higher, finding its purchase on the hair sitting at the crown of your head. he holds you in place like that, forcing your head parallel against the wall, with his whole body pressing up to you that it's nearly suffocating.

"just one quick little slice," he taunts. you hiccuped when you feel the feathery light scrape of the blade moving against your skin. "you won't even have time to scream… but i'm sure we don't want that, do we?"

you forgot how to speak. forgot how to breathe. whenever your mind wanders, you've always thought about how you'll give this killer a piece of your mind, with the amount of fear and sorrow he inflicts upon other people. but you guess realities were a lot more different than expectations. the yuta you dreamed of meeting is in handcuffs, but fate is a fickle little thing.

"do we?" he repeats, slicing ever so slightly at your skin. enough to draw blood in droplets, never a waterfall.

"n – no."

he smiles. "you can make it up to me. do you want to make it up to me?"

the butterfly knife digs even further. a warning. and if you value your useless life, you should be smart enough to know what to answer. drawing a shaky breath, you tried forcing the ends of your lips up to a smile. "of course, yuta."

your voice breaks as your sobbing grips your body whole. the fear consuming your entire being like a parasite consuming the host. you would've shut down altogether if it weren't for the calloused hands gently gripping your face. "i know, i know. i see how regretful you are, baby. don't worry, i won't hurt you. you'll make it up to me."

anyone would be fucking stupid if you believe those words coming from a serial killer.

in your wrecked state, you barely register that he's pushing you down to your knees. skin coming in contact with the freezing linoleum floor as you refuse to look at what his hands are doing. yuta has pocketed his knife. the sound of a belt unbuckling in itself added insult to injury.

you stare blankly at his shoes as he shoves his bottoms down enough for his cock to show. if you squint hard enough, you'll see tiny splatters of blood in the shoelaces. whether or not he feels you're unresponsive, he doesn't show. maybe he doesn't care entirely. he takes one of your hands and used it to wrap around himself. he gasps, sharp, followed by a hiss.

you feel it throbbing and it strengthens the disgust you feel. no way you're going to give him the satisfaction of eye contact when you're already forced to blow this psycho.

"eyes up."

you sniffled, vulnerability present in the tone you speak. "i don't want to. please, don't make me."

if words alone aren't enough for you to follow orders, maybe you'll feel more motivated if held at gunpoint. it's unmistakable, the infamous desert eagle you've only seen in your nightmares. the last thing you ever expected is to be on the side where the bullet comes out.

the barrel is freezing as he digs it into the crown of your head. "soulmate or not. i don't shoot blanks."

your eyes looked up then. glaring as the tears rolled down your face. "you're a monster," you mutter under your breath. where you got the confidence to fight back is unknown.

"i've heard that before, be more creative next time," he holds your hair tight in one grip, shoving you forward, eye-level to his throbbing dick. "now… suck, baby."

"freeze!"

you knew that voice, you've been hearing it for the last two weeks. "jaehyun–!"

yuta cuts you off, shoving the gun into your mouth. the safety clicking off resonating in the tranquil room. it's deafening, and it makes you immobile.

"hands up. step away from the civilian." whether or not mark is nervous as he points the gun at the serial killer, he's doing a damn good job of hiding it.

yuta sighs, exasperated as he throws his head back. his raised arms came down to tuck himself back in his jeans, and the action made jaehyun's calm exterior crack. "i said, hands up, asshole!"

"chill out, motherfucker. i'm just trying to wear my pants." the serial killer hisses, glaring at jaehyun over his shoulder.

"mark, call back up already. what are you doing?" jaehyun mutters, side-eyeing the young detective whose gun shakes as he holds it up. the taller cop takes a step forward, eyes never leaving the notorious killer as he addresses you curtly. "(name), come here."

just as you plant your palms to the ground to push yourself up, one of yuta's hands shoves you down quick as lightning. "no. she stays here, with me."

jaehyun scowls, takes another step forward. "and what makes you think i'm going to let that happen?"

"i don't think. i know."

there's a constant ring in your ear as the gunshot temporarily renders you deaf. you've shut your eyes in utter fright, hands shooting up to cover your ears but it was too late. you refuse to open your eyes, you didn't want to see a dead body lying before you, even if it belonged to a heartless serial killer.

but when your eyes fluttered open, it's not yuta bleeding out on the ground.

"no, this can't be – jaehyun!"

it was a bullet straight to the head, no one could've survived a shot like that. his eyes are empty as he stares at you, unblinking, stoic. the color is yet to drown away from his milky complexion. but you can't even manipulate yourself into thinking that jaehyun's still alive. not when his eyes are empty, not when he just looks so lifeless.

it couldn't have been yuta who pulled the trigger.

his weapons were on the ground and the shot rang too fast. the sad face slayer couldn't have crouched down for his gun to shoot the cop, it would've taken too much time. and among the three men, there's only another person holding a weapon, and that was –

"great shot, mark."

the detective smiles, but with the blood splattered on his face, it looked cold. "told ya i've been practicing."

yuta hauls you up by the arms, addicted to how frail your body feels as it collapses against him. he's finally got his little soulmate in his arms. and he will never, ever let you go.

the cops lost – you've lost.

yuta, with a sense of victory coursing through his veins, took the liberty of trailing little pecks down your neck as he mutters, "mine, mine, mine!" but you couldn't care less about his display of mocked affection. not when the other person meant to protect you, turned out to be everything you think he wasn't.

mark must've felt the gravity of your stare as he crouches before jaehyun's bleeding body. grabbing the fallen cop's gun, he took it upon himself to empty the magazine. the lopsided grin he sends you broke your resolve more than yuta ever could.

"i'm sorry. it's nothing personal."

jenoluck (c) all rights reserved

[the-kingshound]

The third Arch Deleted Scene

The snippet here is a bit rushed at the beginning and in some other parts, as I did not want to go into even more spoiler territory. If you want to send me asks about this please be sure to advertise them as spoiler at the beginning, since not everyone will want to read them.

SPOILER

TW: blood, injury, poisoning, strong language.

3rd Arch – the seventh Trial

 Your stomach was knotted by dark swirling anxiety from the moment Arthur announced the diplomatic visit. You were familiar with the House, it kept being, after all, one of the most influent beside yours before and after the Emperor’s fall. This did not mean anything, though. Your homeland was beautiful but deadly, ready to swallow anyone whole to quickly digest them.

You promised yourself you were going to be at Arthur’s side at all times, and that’s precisely what you are doing now.

 Four days in, and the only major threat has been the amount of people wanting to interact with you. For the most part, Arthur smoothly deflects them to himself, for which you are endlessly grateful. You’re not in the mood to socialize, instead you keep on high alert, especially against the House leader and formal Ambassador.

You do not think he will pull anything while you’re here, after all you grew up together and you respected each other deeply, but one cannot be too cautious when the King is concerned – as demonstrated by the multiple scars that litter your body. You would go through all of it again in a heartbeat if it meant keeping your King safe, but all you can do for now is stay by his side and keep the risks at minimum.

For this reason, when the Ambassador proposes a meal together with both yours and his knights, you are instantly weary.

“I don’t like this one bit, Arthur.”

“Me neither,” agrees Evaine, all the while lazily making their dagger spin on the table.

“I don’t deny that is not an ideal situation. On the other hand, a wrong move on their part would jeopardise their own negotiation,” counters Arthur as Morien finally snaps, blocking Evaine’s wrist with a tight grip and hissing an irritated “stop fooling around, for God’s sake!”

Evaine pouts. Yniol ignores them in favour of the matter at hand “they are certainly going to outnumber us, but if they wanted to attack us head on they would have done so before now, there were better opportunities. MC?”

You really think it through before answering “I wouldn’t put it past the Ambassador to try something, direct or more subtle, while we’re so exposed and out of our physician. Lania is not the head of his House for nothing, but aside from that he was always particularly attached to the Empire. We can’t afford to underestimate him.”

“Yes, yes” interjects Morien, having by now freed Evaine’s hand and left the table, dismissing themselves from the meeting “I’ll be prepared in any case. I swear you manage to hurt yourselves everywhere we go.”

And so dinner begins. It is a boring affair, but you won’t let yourself relax until it’s over. You sip on your wine, closely inspecting the hosts for any sudden or unusual movement. You find none, but you stiffen and your brows furrows. There’s something strange in your mouth, something strangely… bitter.

Time seems to freeze in front of your eyes. With an uncoordinated, panicked movement you jerk on the table and bat away Arthur’s cup, spilling its content on the table.

You place your hand on the table to support you as you rise, your dilatated pupils numbly fixed on the red liquid that’s quickly staining the tablecloth. It feels like an hour but actually only a second has passed before you regain your senses.

“Seize them.”

Arthur and his Knights are no longer seated by now, but the Ambassador’s men have drawn their weapons as well and pointed them to your delegacy, effectively halting their movements. You see icy red and do not spare another glance at the man now placed on your back while you snarl in the envoy direction.

Placing your fingers on the hilt of your sword, you hiss an enchantment to track the magic residue and the culprit is revealed in front of your eyes. Ignoring the taste of iron on your tongue, you spit out another enchantment and the room’s door is locked close with a lout snap. They will not get away.

Unfortunately, you lack the ability to free Arthur and the Knights, you are now surrounded and painfully outnumbered, but you know they can hold on until you have taken care of the threat at hand. You cough blood and half crash on the floor, but you ignore the alarmed voices of your Knights and crawl in the Ambassador’s direction.

How dare he. How dare.

“My, Lord…”

“Let them,” a voice says to your back “they will not go far.”

“How dare you” your breaths are ragged, your intestines raw and burning, your voice rough for the acid that invades your throat. The Ambassador’s face is a mask of contempt and stony resolution. He watches, halting his men while they try to block you, as you half-crawl to him, gripping with iron strength the wooden chairs to keep yourself upright.

“I have the upper hand, King Arthur. I’m afraid you are in no position to make such demands.”

“Release us, and call a physician for my spouse, and I will consider letting this incident go without consequences.”

Arthur’s voice is steady, calm and there is only a hint of something sharper, at least for now.

You can’t see your King, but the sound of his voice sends shivers down your spine. They tried to kill him. The House you grew up to respect is full of nothing more than vile traitors.

As your strength start to waver, you lose your balance and crush to the ground with the chair you were pushing your weight on. Still, you get up again and you and fix your gaze on the second born, now Ambassador and traitor “I’ve had enough of you.”

You take a shuddering breath, your lungs filled with blood that’s now spilling over to your lips as you speak, but the pain you feel is nothing compared to the hot, blinding rage that’s consuming your every thought. Still, your voice is, as ever, cutting cold “you invite us here, offering a pacific discussion, and all you provide are poison in our drinks and weapons against my Knights and my King’s throat. You’ve exhausted my patience, Lania.”

You see him flinch at the use of his name. You remember a time long gone when you played together as kids, swearing you would be the ones to restore the Empire uniting your two Houses. Now these are broken promises and rotten friendships.

“MC,” the Ambassador says, “it’s over, you have to understand that.”

“Oh, you just wait,” interjects Evaine, almost immediately silenced by the Ambassador’s men.

You cough and choke on blood, and you can feel the physical weight of Arthur’s and the Knights’ worried eyes on your back, but you exhale and grip tighter your sword’s hilt. A wave of raw power invades your body and you are able to focus again.

“You know what I’m capable of, what I am willing to do for my King,” your voice is almost devoid of intonation, save for unforgiving hardness. His gaze falls on your non dominant arm and then on your throat, scarred by a thin horizontal line “I will gut you and feed you to my hounds. You’ll die like the backstabbing coward you are.”

They know as well as you do that you don’t make empty promises. There is a rustle around you that culminates in a sharp sigh from the Ambassador and swords pointed at your neck.

“Must we really do this, MC? I cared for you once, but you know that I will not hesitate to strike you down if you give me reason to do so.”

You don’t draw black nor move a single muscle, your eyes find Arthur’s blue ones and you find the King is dangerously immobile, his fingers brushing against Excalibur’s hilt in what could be mistaken for a soothing caress. When he speaks, his voice bears nothing else but firm command “you will not do that.”

Lania cocks his head to the side, appearing quite unbothered “oh?”

“How is your sister, Ambassador?”

At the same time as Lania stills, you blink. A violent cough than shakes your chest, and when your senses are fully back and you can breathe again Arthur has kept going with the same calm, calculated demeanor “I want to remind you that together with the Lord the wedded she’s now head of the Merthian feud, the nearer one to the south-eastern border.”

“What does it-“

“I am the one in control of the knights tasked with their protection. As per the arrangement we signed weeks ago, the border is under Camelot’s defence. But if I die, or if my spouse dies, my knights will retire, Ambassador.”

Oh, Arthur is not King for nothing. He is striking where it hurts the most – family – without even an drop of blood shed. You don’t hide a proud, feral smile at this. Almost immediately, blood invades your throat again, you can feel its taste on your togue, but you shove the pain back where it started in your burning stomach. You shiver. You love and hate seeing your King like this.

Lania swiftly unsheathe a long, curved dagger and you are immediately ready to bolt– swords to your throat be damned, you’ve had worse – but he makes no move in Arthur’s direction for now.

“Figured you had to hit low to get a reaction.”

“Release us,” Yniol commands, standing tall near the King.

“No” spits out Lania, his composure now fully broken “you stole our independence and our pride, Pendragon, you humiliated us and stripped our Houses of the opportunity to unite again. You are every bit of your father’s blood!”

He then turns to you, his eyes frantic, his expression pained and almost feral “I thought you were on my side!”

Blood rushes to your ears, a high-pitched whistle the only thing you’re able to hear at the moment. You feel sick. Sicker than before – sicker than what you’ve felt in years. You spit blood on the floor, your answer is weak and unnaturally subdued, “it was a- a long time ago.”

“We were like siblings!”

You can’t say anything, you only choke on your words. All that you manage to do is keep yourself upright only thanks to your sword.

“They are right, you really are your King’s hound, nothing more than Camelot’s bitch,” he tries the next word in his mouth like they were both foul and inevitable “the haghàn bajek*.”

Your vision is overcome by whit spots, your skin hot and freezing cold.

“Kill them all.”

You force yourself to focus. Protect your Knights. Protect your King.

After that it is pure, unbidden chaos. You tighten your grip on your sword, assessing where you’re needed the most. With the corner of your eye you spot Arthur, he’s a beautiful fighter, he is no match for – Lania.

Your magic flares alongside most of your nerve endings as you sprint in his direction, interjecting his blow with your own weapon. Unfortunately, the Ambassador is a skilled opponent and you’re already considerably weakened, all you can do is channel in your arms the strength of your steel determination to not let him reach your King.

“Stop trying to defend an enemy, MC!”

“Stop trying… to kill him.”

You are barely managing to defend yourself when Lania strikes back. You catch the dagger with your arm, it pierces through your skin just over your elbow but it won’t reach its intended target. No one will hurt your King while you’re still breathing. No one.

Pain paralyzes your arm, your breath is stuck in your throat together with a blood clot that feels intrusive and that fills you with panic. The finishing blow never comes, though. As you inhale again, you refocus on the room’s occupants and notice how Arthur’s Knights have the clear upper hand.

“Ah, and you thought you could beat the Round Table so easily,” Evaine all but purrs in a knight’s ear “that’s precious.”

“Stand down” Gawaine commands “you’re surrounded.”

You can hardly distinguish the shapes of your own knights, you’re nauseous, your stomach and throat are on fire. You fall down on your knees, exhausted and hurt. You feel like you’re going to throw up–

“MC’”

Where is Lania, where is –  

“Wh-where…?”

“Kai, get Morien here, please.”

Arthur’s voice is soothing, as ever, but tainted with worry. You can’t make his face out. There are arms supporting your weight, not his but equally familiar – Yniol?

“It’s going to be alright, dear.”

It’s the last thing you hear before the world goes black.

  *haghàn bajek = [REDACTED] traitor

[lovebarelyhuman]

Abandon all hope

Pairing: Winchester Sister! OC x Jo Harvelle, Sister! OC x Sam and Dean

Summary: Siblings Sam, Dean, and Evelynn (Lynn for short) Winchester are on a hunt for the devil. When Jo gets fatally injured, Lynn breaks down. [A/N: Jo and Lynn were in a relationship previously. Enjoy!]

Word Count: 2,485 words

Warnings: Gory imagery, Swearing, Female Pregnancy (For those who don't like untagged events)

Blood crusts her skin, most of it slowly seeping into her shirt. The grey fabric has long been soaked-through, intestines clinging to her fingertips. Once, then twice, it pulsed under her fingers like a current, and then slower, weaker. Lynn's fingers dig into the wound, desperately pressing against it with anything she can find: ace bandages, gauze, some spare pieces of clothing. Ellen's beside her, eyes filled with a mother's pride and fear as her steady knuckles squeeze out a rhythm on Jo's hands. She's so cold, almost frozen to the touch. Worry slams into her like a freight train - she's never been this terrified since John had been bleeding out on the backseat of the Impala, just barely holding his guts in. Castiel's gone, there's no use in praying to him when hellhounds are on the loose, and her brothers might know their way around a needle, but they needed a hospital. Jo was losing too much blood to stay conscious for much longer.

Anyone except Jo, she begs quietly. Anyone. She can't go on without Jo. She can't. She won't.

How was it that they'd been drinking shots and celebrating a day ago? They'd fooled around under the bright Arizonan stars, over a dozen beer bottles littering the front step of Bobby's porch. Dean had even let Jo take a joyride on Baby, watching the expanse of space overhead. They'd taken a family photo - one with what was left of the Winchesters. It all seemed too long ago. Wasn't that absurd? One night, they were celebrating their last night alive. The next, Jo's on the floor of a hardware store, clutching her stomach, peppered in the crimson-black of her own blood. Lynn isn't sure how much time has passed, just that seconds are turning into minutes and minutes are turning to hours, and hours are too fucking long. They need to get the Harvelles out, now, no discussion. Sam's already salted all the windows and doors, lines of white painting every entrance. "Safe for now," he whispers, voice rough with punched-out anticipation. "Or trapped with wolves at our door," hisses Dean. He looks to Jo, eyes softening in something that isn't quite concern. She's seen it when he looks at Sam or Lynn, the pain of an older brother. "How's she holdin' up?" "Some help would be nice, please," mutters Lynn, doing her best to hold the bandages in place. Can't show weakness. Not when Sammy and Ellen and Dean are depending on her, not when Jo's staring up with eyes that are a shade off of alive. "Salt lines holding up?" "For the time being," Dean nods. "Can we talk privately, Ev?" -- Dean fumbles out a makeshift radio, trying to find the special signal they've set with Bobby at Home Base in the case of emergencies. They need his help, someone, anyone's help. The ancient device turns on with a crackle of static, then fine-tuning. The channel catches on immediately. There's radio silence, then a heavy buzz. Lynn grabs the mic, "K C 5 Fox Delta Oscar, come in." There's a weighted moment of nothing. No noises, no crackles, no voice. Suddenly, Bobby's speaking, and relief doesn't wash over her, it fills her lungs like a fresh breath of air. "K C 5 Fox Delta Oscar, go ahead," says Bobby. "Oh thank god, Bobby," she chokes out. "It's Lynn. We've got a problem." There's a sound like a large sigh, "It's okay, you idjit. That's what I'm here for. Now, is everyone alright?" "No, Bobby, it's Jo. It's bad. She's holding her stomach in as we speak." Bile rises in Lynn's throat, and she shoves it down. Shoves it down, like the tears building in her eyes, because she can't cry -- won't. This just like any other time she's patched up her brothers. A bullet wound in Sammy's shoulder, a stab near Dean's kidney. They'll be fine, they always will. "Okay, copy. First off, breathe, kid. What do we do next?" "I don't think she's gonna--" Evelynn breaks off with a sob around her knuckle. "I don't think she can make it." "I said what do we do next, Lynn?" asks Bobby, even and rational as always, even though Jo might just really die this time. A part of her wants to yell at him. How can he be so relaxed? When Jo's in danger? It strangles her like a vicious knot in her throat, and she swallows around it. Leaning her forehead against the mouth piece, she lets out the tiniest cry. This was Jo. This was the love of her life. And she was going to go out bleeding. "Right." She takes a moment to steady her shaking fingers. "Okay." "Now tell me what you got." -- Nothing but the ticking of the clock can be heard over the line once Lynn explains everything as she knows it. He's silent for a few minutes. "Did Cas tell you how many reapers there were before he disappeared?" "I don't -- I don't know. Ellen and Jo were with him, and he said a lot of things, I guess. They couldn't put a number on it." "The devil's in the details," warns Bobby. Ellen's tapping at her shoulder then, and Lynn hands over the mic without a word. Ellen doesn't need to look at Lynn to know that she's a pindop away from a breakdown, and graciously ignores Lynn's blotched face. "It's Ellen. With the number of places Castiel's eyes went, I'd say we're looking at a dozen or so

reapers, probably more." "I don't like the sound of that." "No one does anymore than you do," she agrees. "But what does it mean?" "Sounds like death. I think Satan's in town to work a ritual, and raise Death while he's at it." "You mean that this dude and taxes are the only sure things in life?" "I mean Death, head honcho of reapers, daddy of 'em all. Pale rider in the flesh." Bobby doesn't sound short of devastated. "They keep this guy chained downstairs 600 feet below, and the last time they brought him up, Noah was still building a boat. The reapers are waiting for the big boss to show. I been researching Carthage since you've been gone, trying to suss out what the devil might want there. What you just said drops the last piece of the puzzle in place. The angel of death must be brought into this world at midnight through a place of awful carnage. Now, back during the Civil War, there was a battle in Carthage. A battle so intense the soldiers called it the Battle of Hellhole." "Where'd the massacre go down?" "On the land of William Jasper's farm." -- By the time that Lynn hangs up, Jo's paling. Her skin is almost entirely pallid, veins showing under flesh with a body that's lost all warmth an hour ago. Ellen's whispering sweet nothings into Jo's ears, and the Winchesters crowd around, faces sober with the realization: they either die with Jo or move on and take a shot at the devil. "Now we know where Lucifer's gonna be, we've got the colt, and we know when he's gonna show up," says Dean softly, each word punctuated by a few glances to Jo. "We just gotta dodge eight hellhounds and get to the farm before midnight," mutters Sam. "After we get Ellen and Jo the hell outta town," she reminds them. "Stretcher, maybe?" "I'll see what we've got." He turns to one of the back rows of the aisles, picking out what they could to make a stretcher -- four metal poles, wheels, screws, a tarp, and some rope, maybe. They could clear the doors just long enough for Ellen and Dean to push the stretcher out to the car, before having them speed away in search of the nearest hospital-- "Stop." The voice is too soft to be healthy, too quiet. It feels like a caved lung, and Lynn knows that Jo is fighting to breathe. "Guys, stop." Lynn freezes. Ellen's eyes drift from her daughter to the three siblings. Her eyes stop on Lynn, a pleading look, a question. "Can we--" she moans mid-sentence, pushing the blood-soaked cloth tighter to her stomach and ribcage. "Can we be realistic about this for a second?" "I can't move my legs," she says after a second. "My guts are held in by a fucking ACE bandage. We gotta - we gotta get our priorities straight here." "No," whispers Lynn. She doesn't care how desperate she looks now. "Please, Jo." Ellen's voice is firm yet shakes. "Joanna Beth, don't you dare talk about dying. I'm not losing another family member through hunting. You can't -- you can't." Jo's eyes are on Lynn, although the words are directed at Ellen. "Mom, I can't fight. Hell, I can't even walk. But I can do something. We got propane, wiring, rock salt, iron nails, everything we need." Dean makes a noise like he's been punched, eyes kept to the floor. "Everything we need?" "To build a bomb, Sam." "Jo, no," Dean begs, "We can't lose you. Please." "You got another plan? You got any other plan? Those are hellhounds out there, Dean. They've got all of our scents. Those bitches will never stop coming after you. We let the dogs in, you guys hit the roof, make a break for the building next over. I can wait here with my finger on the button, rip those mutts a new one. Or at least get you a few minutes' head start, anyway." "Jo," hisses Lynn. There are tears shedding down her face as she sinks to her knees, the floor thudding when her legs hit it with bruising force. Up close, she can see everything under Jo's skin. It's too cold, too white, too bloody. "I won't let you." Ellen's eyes meet Lynn's, and an unspoken agreement passes through the room. "If we can get a shot at the devil, we gotta take it, Dean." Dean nods, an

obedient little soldier. Lynn's fingers seek out Jo's, cradling them in her hands. They're red, bloody, and calloused. She brings them up to her face, Jo's hands touching her one last time. They cup her cheek on their own accord, perfect and all so painful at the same time. "You did eveything you could," Jo says, something only reserved for them, although it's loud enough to echo through the room. "I know," Lynn cries brokenly. Her lips find each knuckle, a sorry goodbye. "I know. But you could come with us. Please. Come with us." Jo give her a small smile, reminiscent of Bill's. She shakes her head, "This was the only way it could go." Lynn presses Jo's fingers to her lips before turning to Sam and Dean. "You heard her, boys." -- Sam and Dean grab their materials and assemble the bombs, filling them with nails and rock salt for shrapnel. Night has fallen. Sam takes Jo's hand for a minute while Dean strings the wire to the button she will hold. "So this is it." Dean gives a small, self-deprecating chuckle, "I guess I'll see you on the other side. Probably sooner than later." "Make it later," Jo mumbles. Her eyes are closing slowly, getting closer and closer to the edge by the minute. The first wave of love hits Lynn so hard that she's almost driven to her knees. She recalls Jo's laugh, more like a giggle. She didn't laugh often, but when she did, her head was almost always thrown back completely, beautiful and human and alive. She thinks of warmth, an all-engulfing warmth that was Jo, who had pulled her into a riptide. Jo used to be so warm, sunshine, violence mixed into one. Jo was tough in every way that Lynn wasn't. She couldn't best Lynn at hand-to-hand, couldn't gank every monster without getting too involved, but she was strong. Strong enough to make the toughest calls. There's a long stretch of silence, and all of them look to Lynn, as though she was the chief-in-mourning. Even Ellen thinks that's a fitting title, doesn't move from her spot next to where Sam's arms are supporting her. Jo hasn't cried yet, and Lynn half-wonders when the girl she'd fallen for had become so fucking strong. "We were trying," Lynn says finally, and the words cut through the air like a blunt knife. Ellen's head snaps up, and so does Sam's. Dean doesn't say anything, face carefully arranged into an emotionless facade. Jo looks away. "Trying?" asks Ellen steadily, breath drawn out into a thin line. "For a kid." The instant that the words register, Sam and Dean's eyes are on her. Ellen doesn't move, won't even blink, eyes open in shock. "A few weeks ago," she mutters. God, there are tears at her eyes. She's been in hell, for fucks sake, she's tougher than this. "Twenty one weeks ago, I found out that I was pregnant. Artificial insemination." "You're pregnant?" Jo asks, as if the air has been punched out of her lungs. She grins, despite the pain, shaking her head in disbelief. "You're pregnant." "Twins, I think - a boy and a girl," she takes a shaky inhale, "and neither of them will get to see their mother." "You're -- you've got her kids?" Dean asks, eyes wide. Lynn nods, once, twice. She can't do this. Can't do this without her would-be wife. Can't do this without Jo, not without her. There won't be any babies being born - not unless Jo was at her side. "And you found out a few weeks ago." Jo smiles, ghosting her fingers over Lynn's still-flat stomach. "Their mom will always be with them. Isn't that right, Samantha and Dean?" "Samantha Ellen Harvelle-Winchester and Dean Bill Harvelle-Winchester," Jo tests. "I like the sound of that." And just like that, the dam breaks. Lynn doesn't know when tears began gliding down her face, but they track down dirt-stained skin. It's a whisper that's almost too quiet to make out, "Forever?" "Always." There's a sudden pounding at the door, and Lynn prays that it's only the wind. The chain is unlocked, salt line broken. She can't leave, not yet. "We don't have time," says Sam, glancing at the door. "We've gotta leave." "I'm staying," growls Lynn. She's dealt with hellhounds

before. After all, someone needs to let them in, don't they? "Ellen, Sam, Dean, get to the nearest building before we blow this joint." "There's a line between sacrifice and suicide. You bet I'm not letting my pregnant daughter in law cross it," Ellen orders. For a second, she can see a flicker of a younger Ellen, so much like Jo, so loving and kind. "Get going now, Winchester." "Ellen--" "I said go." She turns to Lynn, face fierce and filled with defiance. Jo's gotten it all from her. "And Lynn? Make sure to kick it in the ass. And don't miss."