#thermal screening systems

[sw5w]

Zam Lines Up Her Shot

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:15:45

[sirxaibs]

Dick Grayson | Nightwing X Reader

ᨒ ོ ☼ Voice on the Line ᨒ ོ ☼

I feel hes a munch. I feel hes a woman lover. He loves women. Him when women. Also did i think about Garcia and Morgan when writing this? yeah…. and what about it?

masterlist

You’re the newest addition to the Batsquad. Cant help if you’re basically forced to talk to eye candy all night. Though what if the eye candy wants you back.

ᨒ ོ ☼ The hum of servers filled the air like a lullaby, soft and steady behind the clack of your manicured fingers dancing across the keyboard. Multiple monitors cast a warm glow against your skin as codes flickered by, surveillance cams blinked into motion, and the Gotham skyline lit up under your careful watch. You chewed on a pink pen cap thoughtfully, then leaned into the mic on your headset.

“Alright, Bat Team, eyes up. Cameras just caught movement on the east perimeter. Looks like our guy’s not late to his own robbery party.” Static.

“Copy that,” came a deep voice laced with just enough sarcasm to make your lips twitch. “And here I was hoping for a quiet night.”

The soft glow of neon lights from Gotham’s skyline bled into the Watchtower’s tech room, giving everything a purple blue hue. The glow reflected off your screens, lighting up your face as your fingers flew across the keyboard. Surveillance cams, thermal feeds, encrypted audio all of it filtered through your custom built comms system. You leaned back in your chair, twirling said pink pen through your fingers. Your voice came through sweet as sugar, laced with a barely hidden smirk.

“Watch yourself Nightwing, I hope you’re wearing something cute under all that kevlar. You’re live on all my cams tonight.”

A low chuckle filtered through your headset, rough around the edges in the way that always made your stomach flip.

“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite guardian angel,” Nightwing drawled, voice dipped in charm he wore like a second skin. “What would I do without your voice whispering sweet nothings into my ear?”

“You’d probably walk into a wall,” you said sweetly. “Or into that very large man standing behind the dumpster on 5th and Main.”

There was a beat of silence, then a soft thwack through the mic.

“You mean that wasn’t a trash can?” he teased, slightly breathless. “How dare you underestimate my night vision, sugar.”

You grinned, propping your cheek in your palm as you tracked his movement across the rooftops. “Sugar now, huh? Is that your new nickname for me?”

“Unless you prefer ‘Sweetheart.’ Or ‘Hot Stuff.’ I’m flexible.”

You let out a melodic laugh, not even trying to hide it. “Wow, your flirting game is tragic tonight. You okay out there, Nightwing? Hit your head on a chimney?”

“I’m just warming up,” he said, voice low and smooth. “Wait ‘til I meet you in person. Then I’m turning the charm up to eleven.”

You opened your mouth to volley back but Barbara’s voice cut in like a whip.

“Alright, you two cut it.”

You both froze.

“Lock in,” Barbara said, her voice firm and dry as dust. “This isn’t a late night radio show. We’ve got multiple armed targets on the ground and a hostage situation developing five blocks south. Thermal (your hero name), patch the thermal overlay to Nightwing’s HUD.”

You straightened in your chair, fingers flying. “Yes, ma’am. Thermal incoming.”

“Nightwing,” Barbara added with the tone of a fed up older sister, “try keeping your tongue in your mouth for five minutes. You’re on mission, not a date.”

“Harsh, Babs,” he muttered.

“I’m just saying,” she continued, “if I had a dollar for every time I had to listen to the two of you flirt in the middle of a crisis, I could afford a better coffee maker.”

You bit your lip to hold back a laugh, then cleared your throat. “Aww, c’mon, Babs. Can’t a girl multitask? I can route power to Nightwings grappling line and boost morale at the same time.”

“I don’t need morale,” Nightwing interjected. “I need a distraction. Preferably wearing those glasses you mentioned last week.”

“You remember that?” you teased.

“I remember everything you say, Sweetheart.”

Barbara groaned audibly. “I’m leaving this room before I’m forced to bleach my ears.”

“I mean,” you added sweetly, “he’s just mad he can’t picture me behind this desk, legs crossed, looking very professional while saving his butt.”

Nightwing whistled. “If I didn’t have to stop a robbery, I’d be scaling that tower right now.”

Barbara’s voice snapped back over the channel like a rubber band. “Focus, both of you.”

“Copy that,” you said, suddenly all business again as you leaned forward and zoomed in on the warehouse entrance. “Three guards posted up. One pacing, one smoking, one with a submachine gun. Interior layout uploaded to your HUD. Entry through the southeast vent is clear. You’re greenlit, Nightwing.”

“See? She flirts, but she gets it done,” he muttered fondly.

You grinned. “I always stand on business, baby.”

“Then I better bring my A game. Wouldn’t want to disappoint my favorite tech goddess.”

You laughed quietly, adjusting your headset as you pulled up the emergency response grid. “Just don’t get shot, Nightwing.”

Barbara let out one final sigh before muttering, “I swear, I should’ve let Batman take this shift.”

But despite her grumbling, you swore you saw a smile tug at the corners of her lips as she turned away.

He grunted, and you could tell it was the kind of laugh he didn’t want you to hear.

“Let’s make a deal,” he said suddenly. “You keep me alive tonight, and I’ll finally let you buy me a coffee.”

You blinked. That was new. “You mean you buy me a coffee? Bold of you to assume you’re that charming.”

“You do call me every night.”

“Because it’s my job, Nightwing.”

Your own heart beat just a little faster as Nightwing’s icon approached the rendezvous point. It was almost always like this. Take the next day where you were thrown completely out of your own loop You were sprawled comfortably in the comms chair, pink converse kicked up on the desk, a bag of sour candy at your side, and at least three drinks within reach because hydration and caffeination were essential for optimal management.

Tonight’s mission? Barely a blip on the Bat Radar. A stakeout near the docks. Zero hostiles so far. Minimal risk. Maximal boredom.

“Nightwing,” you poured into your mic, stretching dramatically, “how’s the air up there on your boring little rooftop? You see anything exciting? UFOs? Pirates? A raccoon that looks like Bruce?”

“Negative on the Bruce raccoon,” Nightwing said through the comms, voice thick with amusement. “But thanks for the nightmare fuel, Sweetheart.”

“I try,” you chirped, popping another piece of candy into your mouth. “Gotta keep you on your toes.”

“You keep me somewhere, alright,” he murmured, just low enough to think you wouldn’t catch it.

You did. You always did. Before you could respond with another flirty jab, a new voice crackled in gruffer, sharper. Dry as sandpaper and twice as moody.

“Are you always like this?” Jason Todd’s voice cut in like a knife through silk. “I’ve been listening for ten minutes and I already want to uninstall my ears.”

You beamed, leaning closer to the mic like he could see your grin. “Red Hood! My favorite grump. Took you long enough to say hi.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he deadpanned.

“Oh, please. You love it,” you teased, swiveling in your chair like it helped transmit your energy. “I’m your emotional support chatterbox. You’d cry without me.”

“Unlikely.”

“Then why are you still listening?” you asked sweetly, tapping into his drone cam and watching as he crouched in the shadows near an old shipping container. “I see you didn’t even mute me. That’s gotta mean something.”

Jason sighed. The tiniest sigh. A truce in breath form.

“…You’re ridiculous.”

“And adorable, don’t forget that part.”

“Why does she talk to you like that?” Nightwing asked suddenly, cutting in with playful suspicion. “She doesn’t call me ‘adorable.’”

“I like to flirt with people who pretend to hate it,” you replied easily. “Keeps ‘em humble.”

Jason made a quiet scoffing noise. “You think I’m humble?”

“No,” you said, smirking. “But I do think you blush when I call you sweetheart.”

There was a long pause.

“…I’m turning off my comm.”

“You won’t,” you sang.

Before Jason could craft a dry comeback or fake a signal cut out, Nightwing returned this time with a tone that could only be described as smug older brother meets possessive flirt.

“Alright, alright,” Dick said, and you could hear his smirk. “Let’s not get carried away, Sweetheart. You do have a date coming up. With me, remember?”

You blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Oh yeah,” he continued smoothly, “you promised me coffee after our last op. Pretty sure that counts.”

“That was a tactical bribe to keep you alive,” you said quickly, cheeks burning despite your best effort. “Totally not binding.”

Jason actually chuckled at that chuckled. A small miracle.

“Well,” Dick said, clearly enjoying himself, “binding or not, I’ll be at that new café on 7th tomorrow at ten. You’re welcome to back out, but I do know where your candy stash is hidden in the Watchtower fridge.”

Your jaw dropped. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would.”

“You absolute menace.”

“See you then, Sweetheart.”

Jason exhaled like he was regretting all of his life choices.

“God, you’re both exhausting.”

You smiled, sweet and unbothered. “Don’t be jealous, Jay. I can pencil you in for brunch on Sunday.”

He groaned but didn’t mute you. Which, in your book, meant you weren’t the loser here .

𖤓˖⁺‧₊☽𓅨☾₊‧⁺˖𖤓

The room was quiet now.

The static from the comms had faded, the mics had all gone cold, and the buzz of conversation that had filled the Watchtower’s tech room just minutes ago had slipped into silence. You were alone, save for the hum of machines and the low, rhythmic click of a monitor blinking back to standby.

You leaned back in your chair slowly, arms folding over your chest as you stared blankly at the screens. Your bubbly persona so easy to slip into when surrounded by voices, teasing banter, and fast flying intel started to crack beneath the weight of the quiet.

It always did, when the room emptied.

He wanted coffee. Dick Grayson wanted to meet you. A date.

The thought hit you again, more real now than when he first said it in that casual, cocky tone of his. You’d brushed it off, played along, tossed flirtation back like you always did but now? Sitting alone, no distraction, no one listening?

You felt it. That creeping, slow turning anxiety curling in your stomach.

It wasn’t like you hadn’t thought about what he looked like before. Sure, you’d heard his voice, shared late night chatter across missions, and even made him laugh more than once. But imagining him? That was easy. Everyone in the Bat Family was objectively hot. Like, annoyingly so.

And you? You swallowed hard, curling your knees up into your chair and hugging them gently.

You weren’t anything like them. Not tall or sleek or scarred from combat. Not graceful in a catsuit or strong enough to throw a punch through a wall. You weren’t stick thin, but you weren’t curvy in a dramatic way either. You existed somewhere in the middle comfortable in hoodies, always in glasses, a bit awkward when the spotlight came too close. Your brain was your strongest muscle, and it sometimes felt like that was all you had.

Would he be disappointed?

You let out a slow breath, eyes flicking to your reflection in the dark screen across from you. No makeup, hair pulled back, sweater two sizes too big. You looked like someone who blended into a crowd. Like someone no one would stop for a second glance. What if you showed up and he just… didn’t see you the way he did over comms? What if the mystery was the only thing that made you interesting?

Your hand reached out instinctively, pressing your fingers to the edge of the console like you were grounding yourself.

You wanted to meet him. Of course you did. He was charming, and kind beneath all the jokes, and smart in the ways only someone who’d been through hell could be. But a date? That felt like something other people did. People who didn’t feel the need to hide behind tech and sarcasm to feel confident.

You sat there in silence, chewing your lip, wondering if he even knew what he was asking when he said, “see you then.”

Maybe it wasn’t a real date. Maybe he didn’t think of it like that.

But deep down, you knew you wanted it to be. You wanted to be seen. And you were scared of what would happen if you really were.

𖤓˖⁺‧₊☽𓅨☾₊‧⁺˖𖤓

Dick Grayson stood in front of the mirror of his Blüdhaven apartment, tugging at the hem of his sweatshirt like it was a tux. Casual. Chill. Low key. That was the goal.

So why the hell did he feel like he was prepping for a mission?

He ran a hand through his hair, tousling it for the third no, fourth time. Dark jeans, clean white sneakers, a navy hoodie that fit just right not too fitted, not too loose. He changed shirts three times before this one finally felt like the right one. He hadn’t been this particular about his outfit since prom.

“It’s not a date,” he told his reflection. “It’s just coffee.”

A pause.

“…With the girl who knows all your safe houses, your secret patrol routes, and who once talked you through stitching your own shoulder at 3 a.m. without flinching.”

Okay. Maybe a little more than just coffee.

He reached for his phone on the counter. One unread text waited at the top of the screen.

Comms girl <3: You sure about this?

Comms girl <3:You don’t have to meet me.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard before he typed back quickly.

bluebird: I’m very sure. You owe me that coffee, remember? I risked my life for that latte.

Your reply came within seconds.

Comms girl <3: You were five feet from the guy. I stalled him with a fake 911 ping. YOU’RE WELCOME.

He chuckled, thumbs flying across the screen.

blurbird : Still counts. Heroics were involved. You agreed to a reward. No backing out now.

Comms girl <3: Still time to change your mind. Could just keep this mystery thing going. It’s fun. Less risky.

He stared at that message a moment longer than he wanted to admit. There was a strange comfort in the way things were. The comms. The banter. The way your voice softened when his breathing grew strained after a tough fight. How you’d scold him for reckless moves and then follow up with, “But also… that flip you did? Sick as hell.”

You were part of the job no, more than that. You were part of him. But only in fragments.

He’d seen the pieces you gave: your voice, your wit, your ridiculous caffeine addiction, the hum of music sometimes playing faintly in the background when you were on shift. But he’d never seen you.

Meanwhile, you’d seen everything.

bluebird: You’ve seen my file, haven’t you?

he typed.

bluebird: I know what color your eyes are. I haven’t even seen yours.

Comms girl <3: Don’t worry. They’re not laser eyes or anything.

Comms girl <3: Still time to run. I won’t be mad.

Dick stared at the screen, thumb resting over the keyboard again. A few moments passed. Then he typed back:

bluebird: I don’t want to run. I want to meet you. For real.

Read. But no reply. He locked his phone, shoved it into the pocket of his hoodie, and grabbed his keys and helmet. Outside, the early evening had begun to spill across the Blüdhaven skyline. Fading light. Long shadows.

For once, he wasn’t slipping into the shadows himself. He was stepping into the sun.

𖤓˖⁺‧₊☽𓅨☾₊‧⁺˖𖤓

The café on 7th was a small, tucked away place with mismatched chairs and the smell of cinnamon and roasted espresso clinging to every wooden beam. A warm corner of the city where life slowed down just a little. He arrived ten minutes early. Too early.

The bell above the door jingled, and instinct kicked in. He scanned. Two older women by the window, a guy with earbuds tapping at a laptop, a bored barista pulling espresso shots with dead eyes. No sign of you.

He ordered her drink extra sweet, extra foamy, “liquid sunshine,” you once called it and a black coffee for himself. Settled into a table by the window. Full view of the door. He texted you again.

bluebird: I’m here. No pressure. But I brought your order. It’s waiting patiently.

Nothing.

He flicked the lid of the cup. Checked the time. Tapped his knee beneath the table. Every chime of the bell had him sitting up straighter, breath held in quiet anticipation.

Not her.Not yet.

And that was the thing he didn’t even know what she looked like. No name. No face. Just a voice in his ear, a rhythm in his nights, a lifeline during the chaos. But even without a face, even without a name, he knew you.

He leaned back and watched the doorway like it held all the answers. Maybe it did.

His phone buzzed again.

Comms girl <3: I’m close. Just… taking a second.

He stared at that message. His heart did a quiet, hopeful jump.

bluebird: You nervous?l

Comms Girl: Maybe. You?

He smiled.

bluebird: I’ve fought Killer Croc, Deathstroke, and Jason with a crowbar. This is worse.

You didn’t text back right away. He waited. Sipped his coffee. Looked at your untouched drink and wondered if you’d ever actually take a sip from it. Maybe you’d just show up, apologize, and walk away. Maybe you’d turn around before even walking through the door.

You were already on the sidewalk. One breath away from stepping inside. He turned his eyes to the window, scanning every person who passed. Wondering if one of them might look in, catch his eye, smile.

Waiting. he hoped that mask off, no gadgets, no grappling hooks, no safety net that was enough. So he waited. For you.

𖤓˖⁺‧₊☽𓅨☾₊‧⁺˖𖤓

The drink was starting to sweat on the table.

Dick’s thumb spun slow, lazy circles around the lid of the cup you still hadn’t claimed. The café wasn’t busy only a few people trickled in here and there. His eyes lifted every time the door jingled, hopeful… and then dropped just as quickly.

He wasn’t used to feeling this unsteady. With the mask on, he could take a punch. Leap off a roof. Throw himself into chaos without blinking. But right now, sitting at a table with a slowly cooling cup of coffee for someone he’d never even seen before?

He was sweating more than the damn drink. The bell above the door jingled again.

And he looked.

She stepped in like she was trying not to be noticed shoulders drawn slightly inward, a quick glance around the room before her eyes dropped to the floor. She didn’t look out of place, not really. She looked… normal.

Pink Converse. Faded denim jorts hugging her hips. A plain black tank top tucked in just right to show her figure, casual and effortless. Hair pulled back loosely like she’d tried to fix it three times before giving up.

Dick’s eyes lingered…. respectfully. He wasn’t a jerk. But he was a man. And the way she looked, with nervous energy practically rolling off her in waves, had his chest tightening just a little.

Cute. Definitely cute. Attractive, sure. She was cute. Soft around the edges. Eyes wide like she wasn’t used to being looked at too long.

Dick’s gaze flicked down, then back up not lingering too long. A polite once over. Curious. Gentle. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before he looked away.

He didn’t know what to expect. For all the times he’d imagined this moment, all the late night banter and daydreams of what she might look like, he’d never settled on a face.

Still watching her from the corner of his eye, Dick slowly reached for his phone and typed out a message.

bluebird: “I’m by the window. Got your sugar bomb of a drink already. You close?”

The girl the maybe you girl jumped slightly when her phone buzzed. Fumbled it out of her pocket. She smiled. Just a little.

Her hand went to her phone. Dick’s screen lit up.

Comms girl <3: Already here. Just… not sure where to go.

His heart stopped. Slowly, his gaze lifted again this time with full awareness. He watched as she read his message, fingers still hovering near the screen.

Like she was laughing at herself and suddenly, everything clicked.

Dick’s breath caught for a beat. His lips tugged upward in a crooked smile as he texted again. Dick forgot how to breathe.

bluebird: Black tank. Pink shoes. You really do own those Converse.

You didn’t even look up from your phone. You were already typing.

Comms girl <3: Ok stalker, stop checking me out

He huffed a quiet laugh.

bluebird: Respectfully. Thoroughly. Definitely.

You lifted your head then, eyes meeting his across the room. Nervous. Hopeful. Your lips curved into something soft and self deprecating.

He stood before he could overthink it, heart thudding as he crossed the short space between your hesitant stillness and his table.

“You’re late,” he said, voice light, teasing.

“Fashionably,” you replied, walking with him as he guided you toward the window seat. “Also, very nearly didn’t come in. I walked past the window twice. You didn’t notice.”

“I noticed,” he said, pulling your chair out like the gentleman he rarely remembered to be. “I just didn’t know it was you. But then you looked at your phone like it offended you.”

You sat, cheeks flushed with something caught between embarrassment and amusement. “That was me realizing I sent three different versions of ‘I’m almost there’ and still sat in my car for ten minutes.”

Dick slid your coffee toward you. “Well i guess in a way you were.”

You took the cup, curling your fingers around it like it might steady you. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I still might run.”

“Do I need to stop you? I’ve got grappling hooks.”

That made you laugh. Really laugh. He liked that sound more than he expected. It wasn’t tinny over the comm. It was full, alive, right in front of him.

“God,” you groaned, lowering your head for a second. “This is so weird.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But good weird.”

You peeked up at him. “You’re not what I expected.”

“Better or worse?”

You grinned, shy but cheeky. “You’re taller than I thought. That’s not fair. I have no defense against tall and charming.”

“Charming, huh?” He took a sip of his coffee, raising a brow over the lid. “You haven’t even heard my best lines yet.”

You rolled your eyes, the way you always did when he flirted too hard through the mic. But now it was real. Now, he could see the way you bit back a smile, the flush that crept to your ears.

“I’m not used to being looked at,” you admitted after a quiet beat. “I’m used to watching. Behind the screens. Behind the noise. I’ve seen your face a hundred times. This is… lopsided.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, gaze steady and warm.

“Then let’s even it out.”

You blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Let me learn you,” he said, voice low, honest. “No comms. No mission. No static. Just… you.”

You looked away, biting your lip, your fingers tracing the lid of your cup now like he had earlier. “You’re a lot more intense in person.”

“I’m a lot of things in person,” he said, smiling. “Most of them good. Some of them bad. All of them me.”

A silence passed. Not awkward contemplative. Like both of you were quietly adjusting to the weight of seeing each other. Really seeing each other.

“I always see you in your outfit, this feels a little weird” you murmured eventually.

He grinned. “You’ll be happy to know I left the spandex at home.”

“Tragic.”

Another moment of quiet, then

“I’m glad you showed up,” he said.

You smiled down into your drink. “Yeah. Me too.”

Outside, the city moved in its usual rhythm cars, footsteps, noise. But here, at this little table by the window, something new was starting. Not a mission. Not an assignment. Just Dick and you.

𖤓˖⁺‧₊☽𓅨☾₊‧⁺˖𖤓

The coffee was long gone, but neither of them had made a move to go their separate ways.

Instead, they strolled the streets of Blüdhaven, their pace slow, like time had bent around them just for a little while. The sun had started to dip behind the buildings, casting soft golden light on the sidewalks, and the breeze stirred the trees enough to make the leaves flutter like lazy applause.

You walked beside him with your now empty cup in hand, straw still between your lips despite it having been dry for the last ten minutes. Nerves still clung to your skin, thin but persistent. You had no idea where to put your hands or how to keep your voice steady. You weren’t usually like this. Over comms, you were bold, loud, sarcastic, and playful.

But out here, in the open, without a headset and with Nightwing walking beside you in casual clothes that hugged him way too well for your nerves to take? It was different. He was real. And you were suddenly aware of every flaw you’d been trying not to think about since this morning.

“You know,” you said with a light chuckle, trying to keep your voice in that easy, familiar tone, “I honestly expected you to cancel last minute. Or like, show up but wear the mask the whole time and pretend to be mysterious.”

Dick looked over at you, one brow raised, and a smile playing at his lips. “You really thought I’d ghost you after all our late night flirting?”

You shrugged, trying to play it off, but your eyes darted away. “I mean… I dunno. Maybe.”

“You ruined that for you because i would never,” he said dramatically, then bumped his shoulder gently against yours. “I told you I was coming. I meant it.”

His voice was warm, not teasing this time. Just honest. He watched you as you gave a small smile, eyes still scanning the sidewalk like you were searching for something to say. He saw the way you carried yourself. Not shy, exactly just… cautious. Though he saw you and wanted too. All of you.

Not just the confident voice in his ear or the tech genius who could break into encrypted systems like they were open windows. He saw the little things: the nervous hand fidgeting with your cup sleeve, the way you pulled at the hem of your shorts when you thought he wasn’t looking, the practiced jokes you used to deflect any compliments.

So he gave you more of them.

“I like your shoes,” he said casually, glancing down at the worn pink Converse. “its a very you thing, reflective of your personality”

You laughed an actual laugh, not a polite one. “I don’t know if footwear can tell you my life story?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he said, nodding with mock seriousness. “Pink shoes? Total power move. I love when women.”

You shook your head, trying to hide your grin. “you love when women?”

“And the shorts?” he added. “Perfect length. Shows off those legs that have been sitting behind a computer for, what? Ninety percent of your adult life?”

“Oh my God,” you groaned, covering your face with your free hand. “You’re a menace.”

“I’ve been told worse,” he said with a wink.

You both fell into a comfortable rhythm after that. Step for step, laugh for laugh. The tension slowly ebbed away the longer he stayed near you like he was peeling back the nervous layers without ever drawing attention to them.

After a few quiet moments, you nudged him lightly with your elbow. “Okay, so serious question.”

“Hit me.”

“How the hell does this team work? I started hacking stuff and suddenly im here? ”

He laughed, raising both brows. “You tell me. You’ve got this adorable, good vibe going for you, but I’ve read some of those logs. You were wrecking firewalls like they owed you money.”

“I wasn’t that bad,” you defended with a smirk. “Okay, maybe the satellite thing was a little over the line.”

He turned to face you mid step. “Wait. What satellite thing?”

You winced, cheeks flushing. “I… might’ve accidentally hacked into a WayneTech orbital system when I thought it was an old NASA server.”

He stared at you, stunned. “You hacked WayneTech?”

“Allegedly,” you said, grinning now. “And two days later, Babs showed up in my basement. No warning, no badge, just… bam, red hair and righteous fury.”

“She must’ve been so mad.”

“She told me I was wasting potential and recruited me on the spot.”

Dick laughed again, and this time, it was full bodied, the kind that lit up his whole face. “Classic Babs.”

“Honestly? She’s the first person who ever looked at me and didn’t just see a mouthy hacker. She actually saw… me.”

His smile softened. “She does that. Did the same for me once.”

You glanced at him curiously. “Oh yeah?”

He nodded, hands tucked into his hoodie pocket. “Back when I was still figuring things out after leaving Bruce. I needed distance from the Bat stuff needed to figure out who I was when I wasn’t under the cape. Babs helped me get there. Helped me want to be more than just Robin.”

“I think you’re doing alright,” you said, bumping his shoulder this time.

“I’m trying,” he said with a shrug. “Still check in on the family though. Bruce, my brothers, Grandpa.”

You blinked. “Grandpa?”

“Alfred,” he clarified with a mischievous grin. “I started calling him that just to piss him off, but I know he secretly loves it.”

You laughed again, shaking your head. “That’s so weirdly wholesome. ‘Nightwing has emotional depth and a soft spot for butlers,’ coming to theaters this fall.”

“Hey, he’s not just a butler. He’s the butler.”

“I stand corrected.”

The sky was blushing now, soft shades of purple and orange painting the horizon. The city buzzed around you, but for once, it didn’t feel overwhelming. It felt like a quiet pocket of something special.

Dick glanced sideways at you, the wind tugging gently at your hair, and felt that same flicker in his chest again. The one that started when your voice used to crackle in his earpiece during midnight stakeouts. The one that grew stronger every time you made him laugh, or saved his ass from another security lockdown, or stayed on the line with him just so he wouldn’t be alone.

“I’m really glad we did this,” he said softly.

You looked at him, caught a sincerity in his eyes that left no room for doubt.

“Yeah,” you said, voice just as soft. “Me too.”

The air had taken on that evening crispness the kind that whispered promises of something new. The two of you were still walking, slowly now, like neither wanted to reach wherever the sidewalk might end.

Dick glanced at you again, longer this time. Not just quick, playful side glances, but a longing look. One that lingered as the fading sun touched your skin. He could see the way your lashes caught the light, the slight smile tugging at your lips as you sipped from your empty straw out of habit. The way your eyes moved when you were thinking.

You caught him staring.

“What?” you asked, arching a brow.

He shrugged with an easy, boyish grin. “Nothing. Just… you’ve got a good laugh.”

You blinked. “What, like a ‘haha’ laugh or a ‘joker is getting off’ laugh?”

He chuckled. “The kind that’s been in my ear for months, but somehow sounds better in person.”

Your stomach fluttered. You covered it with a sarcastic smile. “Are you flirting with me again, Grayson?”

“Only mildly,” he teased, then glanced ahead. “I mean, I’ve gotta pace myself. You’re kind of… addictive.”

You didn’t answer for a moment. You didn’t know how. And honestly, you were worried your voice would betray how warm your chest suddenly felt.

He didn’t press it. Just kept walking with you in step. But then he said, a little more softly:

“I never really thought about it before… how different things feel when you’re not just a voice in my ear.”

You looked over at him, curious. “Better or worse?”

He gave you a look, deadpan. “What kind of question is that?”

You tried to laugh, to brush it off, but he turned toward you fully now, walking backward a few steps so he could face you as you moved.

“You have this… energy. When we’re on comms, it’s like… controlled chaos in the best way. Keeps me grounded, keeps me alert. But now? Seeing you like, actually seeing you your expressions, your body language, your weird obsession with pink…”

“I do not!”

He smirked. “You do. It’s very cute.”

You shoved his arm lightly, heat rushing to your face. But the smile was genuine now. You were relaxing, piece by piece.

“I guess I just didn’t realize how much I’d been missing until now,” he added, turning back around to walk forward again. “Hearing you’s great. But… seeing you talk? Watching your eyes move when you go on your little tech rants or when you start teasing me? It hits different.”

Your heart thudded hard.

He wasn’t saying “I want to see your face more.” But he was.

You swallowed around the growing smile and said, “Well… good thing I’m not going anywhere.”

He shot you a glance then, something soft and full of unspoken words.

“Yeah,” he murmured. “That is a good thing.”

[areyoufuckingcrazy]

hi!! I adored your recent tech fic “more than calculations” abd was wondering if I could request something between tech and a reader who doesn’t flirt or do all the romance things kind of how tech is? I love the idea of them having the same way of showing each other love and they just understand each other even if others don’t really understand how they are together! I hope that made a bit of sense 🙈🩷 thank you!! 💗

“Exactly Us”

Tech x Reader

“Are you two… together?”

Omega blinked up at you, head tilted with that signature mix of innocent curiosity and surgical precision, like she was investigating the oddities of adult behavior again.

Tech glanced up from his datapad, not the least bit ruffled. You didn’t look away from the gear you were calibrating, either. A beat passed.

“Yes,” you both said in perfect unison.

Omega squinted, unconvinced.

“But you don’t do anything!” she exclaimed, arms flailing slightly. “No hand-holding, no kissing, no—ugh—staring at each other like Wrecker and that woman from the food stalls!”

You shrugged. “We fixed the water pump system together last night. That was plenty.”

Tech nodded. “And we enjoy our shared quiet time between 2100 and 2130 hours. Typically on the cliffside bench.”

Omega made a face. “That’s it?”

“That is a significant amount of bonding,” Tech replied, tapping at his datapad. “Just because it doesn’t conform to more overt romantic displays does not mean the bond is any less valid.”

You added, without looking up, “We don’t need to prove anything.”

Omega grumbled and wandered off, muttering something about how weird grownups were. You smirked faintly.

When the datapad made a soft chime, Tech turned it toward you. It was a thermal reading—your shared analysis project on the geothermal vents near the northern cliffs.

“You were correct,” he said, adjusting his goggles. “There is a secondary vent system. I suspect it branches beneath the island’s reef shelf.”

You leaned closer to the screen. “Nice. That’ll stabilize the water temps around the farms. You wanna go check it out?”

“Affirmative,” he said. Then, after a pause: “I enjoy when we do these things together.”

You looked up at him and nodded, your version of “I do too.”

The two of you set out across Pabu, walking in companionable silence. You didn’t talk much. You didn’t have to. There was a rhythm, an ease to your presence beside each other. When you handed Tech a scanner without being asked, or when he adjusted your toolbelt with a small, thoughtful flick of his fingers — that was your version of affection.

Sometimes, Wrecker would nudge Crosshair (visiting, grumbling, but always watching) and whisper, “How do they even like each other?”

Crosshair would reply, “They don’t need to. They get each other.”

Later, the sun dipped low, casting warm gold across the cliffs. You and Tech sat side by side on your usual bench. No words. Just a datapad between you, exchanging quiet theories, occasionally pointing at the sea when a bird swooped or a current shifted strangely.

Tech finally broke the silence.

“Most people… expect something different from a relationship. More expression. More effort.”

You looked at him. “This is effort. Just a different kind.”

His lips curled slightly at the edge — his version of a full grin.

“I concur.”

After a moment, he added, “You are the first person I’ve encountered who does not require translation of my silence.”

You gave a small smile and leaned just enough to bump your shoulder against his. “And you’re the first person who doesn’t expect me to say things I don’t feel like saying out loud.”

He reached over and adjusted your sleeve where it had folded weirdly. Not romantic. Not flashy. Just… quietly right.

Behind you, somewhere near the beach, Omega was laughing, chasing a crab and antagonising Crosshair.

But here, in this quiet little corner of peace, you and Tech sat in absolute understanding.

No need to explain. No need to perform. Just existing.

Exactly as you were.

Exactly together.

[randofics]

Thermalis

🎶 Maroon5- she will be loved

Ultra Magnus x reader

18+

-------

Magnus was using his thermals to look over a malfunctioning piece of equipment when your entrance caught his attention. Your vibrant figure stood out against the cold blue of the concrete floor. Even the breath puffing through your nose and mouth had a fleeting heat.

It got colder inside during these winter desert nights. Cold enough for you to constantly wear your old high-school hoodie and leggings.

To his surprise, you weren't wearing the hoodie. Instead, it was tied around your waist, leaving your top half covered in a tank top. He observed your heat signature as you climbed the metal steps to the platform, curious at the way heat seemed to radiate from your belly, chest, and head. Your limbs were a bit cooler, and your fingers even cooler than them.

You noticed him staring and gave him a small smile. "What is it, Magnus?"

Shaking his helm slightly to clear it he hummed in question back at you. "I noticed you staring, so what's up?"

"Ah apologies y/n I noticed you weren't wearing your hoodie."

"Oh yeah, Rachet had me working on some of his equipment earlier. The cooling system was malfunctioning, so I had to wriggle inside where it was still hot to repair a few things. Made me sweat like a racehorse." He nods, remembering his own tech troubles. "I may have a similar problem with this equipment here."

"Really? Well, I can take a look if you want?"

"That would be much appreciated, thank you." He held out his servo for you to hop into and brought you over to the malfunctioning machine. Popping open a side panel, you lay on your back to slide inside all the way to your waist. Magnus observes your arms, moving about as you look over the wires and cables inside. The flashlight between your teeth slips in your concentration and smacks you in the forehead before rolling further inside the machine.

"OW... I sworney! Get back here, ya stupid flashlight!" Magnus quirks a browridge as you feel around for the familiar cylinder of your light. You shift your legs from their side laying position to propped up and spread as you reach further inside. Having forgotten his thermals were still on, the hot signature between your thighs drew in his optics.

He somewhat understood why your torso would be so hot but down there? Cybertronians were usually cold there. As you finally grabbed the light and continued your work, Magnus was staring off into space. His processor wandering. He couldn't help his curiosity in how that warmth would feel against him but remembered that organics were wet and squishy inside. At first, the thought kinda grossed him out, but the longer he thought about it, the stronger his curiosity became till he finally steered his thoughts towards you.

He hadn't been thinking of you specifically, at least not at first, but now he was thinking of how you would feel on his spike. The raunchy thoughts caught him off guard. He shook his helm to dispell them, clearing his vocalizer. A blue blush crossing his faceplate. He needed to distract himself with work. Walking over to his data pad, he turned it on, trying to busy himself with "paperwork."

He couldn't stop his thoughts about you. He wondered how much your temperature would change as he worked you up and how plush your body might be in his servos.

"Something wrong, big guy?" He gives you a strange look. You feel a bit shy under his gaze and trip over your words. "Magnus? Wh-what is it? Why are you... staring at me like that?" He kneals, and you take a step back.

"Your heat signature."

"What about it?" He clears his vocalizer standing straight again. "Nevermind, forget I said anything."

"Okaaay... I'm finished with the repair." He gives you a curt nod, turning back to the screens covered in cybertronian script. "Thank you for your assistance, y/n." Shaking your head, you walk away, not realizing the mech has his optics on you.

He silently watches you leave, finally switching his thermals off so he can see everything in normal color.

-------

The next hour or so was very unproductive for him. He just couldn't stop thinking about you no matter how hard he tried. Eventually, he gave up deciding that a night drive would calm his racing processor. But as fate would have it, he wouldn't be alone.

You jogged into the main room, calling to him as he got ready to transform. "Magnus! Magnus! Wait up!" He qwirked a brow ridge as you huffed from running. "Do you... mind dropping me off at my place?"

"Is Bumblebee unable to?"

"Yeah, he's busy helping Optimus." He nods, transforming in front of you. His driver side door pops open, and you step up inside. With your seatbelt secure around you, he drives through the tunnel.

Raindrops hit his windshield as he passed the giant hidden doors. Puddles had formed in the almost hydrophobic desert soil as an unusual hard rain poured from the heavens. He didn't need to use his wipers, but for the sake of blending in, he turned them on. Several cars passed in the opposite lane, almost backed up for some reason.

You looked farther ahead and spotted the flashing lights of police vehicles. You could see that the road ahead was blocked off by barricades and police cruisers. A large section of road had collapsed in the rushing floodwaters, and no one would be getting through anytime soon.

"Ugh, that's just great! Now, how will I get home?"

"You could accompany me for a drive while I find another way through?"

"Ok, if you're alright with it?" You watch the lights on the radio flash as he speaks. "I have nothing better to do at the moment." He makes a u-turn following the other vehicles through the translucent sheets of rain. A few minutes down the road, he turns onto a dirt one. You can feel his shocks taking the brunt of the worn potholes as he slowly drives through them.

Mud cakes his tires and undercarriage, making it hard to get a good grip on the road. The detour was proving more and more fruitless by the minute. He grunted as his tires spun in a particularly deep wallow. The mud had practically drained from under his tires, leaving him on top of a shelf of mud. His weight now off his tires put pressure on his undercarriage.

In cybertronian, he cursed his steering wheel, turning left and right as he tried to gain enough traction. With that not working, either he partially transforms using different parts to drag himself forward, eventually escaping the deep mud.

"That was deep! I was beginning to wonder if I should call for a wrecker."

"I doubt Bulkhead or Wheeljack would've been much help." You let out a chuckle at his misunderstanding. "No, I mean a wrecker like a vehicle recovery truck. They're mainly used for semi recovery." He grunts in recognition, continuing down the road.

The lights of a main road shine up ahead, and you breathe an unconscious sigh of relief when he rolls onto the asphalt. It's obvious, however, just how much mud is stuck to his tires as he unevenly drives down the road. As you continue looking forward, you spot an empty car wash.

"How about we stop at this car wash so I can spray you down?"

"Agreed, my tires aren't getting enough traction with this mud." He pulls into the semi sized wash bay and cuts his engine. The old car wash only has one working light in this bay, leaving it washed in a dim greenish-blue. Stepping out, you take the pressure washer in hand, immediately starting on his tires. The mud washes away relatively quickly, and before you know it, you're kneeling down, trying to spray his undercarriage clean.

The yellowish lights of an older pickup truck shine across you, and Magnus as a man pulls into the small lot. He parked next to the air pump, stepping out onto the glossy wet pavement. The rain had finally settled down quite a bit.

As you continued your spraying, the man was clearly watching you as he stood there a moment. He suddenly called out to you, gaining your attention. "Hey ma'am! Do you need some help?"

You wiped water from your face as you stood to face him. "No sir, I'm fine, thanks!" The man started walking over when you turned your back to him. Alarms rang in Magnus' processor, so he switched on his holoform. Opening the driver's side door, he stepped out, making eye contact with the approaching man. Immediately upon seeing Magnus, he turned on his heels and walked back to his truck to put air in his tires.

Boots hitting the concrete drew your attention. You were met with an older man, probably in his late forties, his hair just beginning to grey and dressed in battle fatigues. He was clean-shaven and standing with his hands behind his waist as a general would.

"That you Magnus?" He only nods, watching the man as he finally gets back in his truck, driving away. Magnus turns to you as you finish spraying his undercarriage clean. "That feel better?"

"Yes, thank you, y/n." Noticing your slight shivering, he turns on his thermals again. You're a tad colder than you were back at base, and clearly, the spray of the hose dampened your clothes. The cool breeze didn't help much either. After spraying a clean path to his passenger door and cleaning your shoes, you step up inside again.

Glancing at his surroundings, he steps up into the driver's seat. Pulling forward, he drives into the dark, secluded rear of the car wash to park. As you rub your arms in an attempt to get warm, you give him a confused look. His seat slides back as far as possible, and he pats his lap.

"You want me to get in your lap?"

"You're cold, aren't you? It's the least I can do for that wash down." You bite your lip as you think it over. Caving, you clamber over to him, straddling his legs with your hands on his chest. Gently and a bit unsure of yourself, you lean forward, wrapping your arms around his neck as you lay against him. His holoform is warm to your surprise but not as much as a human. You nuzzle into his neck, closing your eyes at the comforting feeling of his presence. Arms wrap around your back, and you let out a content sigh, relaxing your muscles.

He feels your body loosen as your breath tickles his holoform skin. He wraps his arms around you and lets himself relax as well.

-------

A few minutes pass, and you can't help but fidget a little with his uniform buttons. "What are you doing?" His deep voice close to your ear sends a shiver down your spine. And you can feel your body react to him. Gently, you press your lips against his neck, taking him by surprise.

He sucks in a synthetic breath as you place more tender kisses on his skin. "Would it be alright if I switched holoforms?" You pause, leaning back to look him in the eyes. "You have a different holoform?" Now you were curious, would it be this human with different clothes or something else? "I can project a holoform of my true body as well as this human form."

Perhaps he wanted to do this in his true form rather than some human version of himself. It was understandable. You wouldn't want to do something intimate in another body either. You smile and nod, letting him know you were ok with it and his holoform morphs before your eyes.

That familiar blue, red, and silver body sits under you as solid as ever. When you shift in his lap, you brush against his modesty panel, sending a small jolt of pleasure through your nerves. His servos land on your waist, and you press your forhead against his in a sign of affection.

"What would you like me to do next?" His question has you smiling, giving him a soft chuckle. "Just do what feels right, Magnus."

"Mmh, alright then." He takes your jaw in his servo, pulling you in for a kiss. It's gentle at first, both of you unsure about yourselves but slowly you get into a rhythm of sorts. His glossa ran over your teeth, asking for entry, which you obliged. His denta clashed against your teeth as the kiss grew frantic. Subconsciously, you scooted forward, sitting right on his modesty panel. His servo gripped your rear, lifting you slightly as you heard feint clicks. When you sat back down His modesty panel wasn't there anymore instead replaced by a spike of sorts. Rounded and pliable like some kind of silicone covered metal. It was dark charcoal grey with feint blue lights running along it.

A mad blush covers your face and ears as you look back up at him. He also looks nervous and can't keep eye contact with you. "I apologize y/n I didn't mean for that to happen." For once, you can hear nerves in his voice. He's normally so calm and collected much like Optimus.

Gaining confidence at his nervousness, you give him a peck on the lips, sliding off his lap. You strip in front of him all the way down to bare skin. His glowing eyes scan your body in awe as you gingerly slip back into his lap. "You're gorgeous. I don't know any femmies that even come close to your beauty." You almost tear up at his compliments.

He lets his servos roam your skin as he moves to kiss your neck. Small sounds escape your throat as he caresses your abdomen and deftly touches your spine. You position yourself on his spike, moving your hips back and forth to gain some pleasure. He groans in your ear as you rub yourself on him. Your slick leaks on him lubricating him for the next step.

When he breaks away from your neck, you kiss him again and sit up on your knees above him. "Are you certain you want to go through with this?" Your gaze is dark with arousal as you nod to him. You split yourself open, gently aligning him with your entrance as you finally sink down.

He hisses, cursing in cybertronian at the feeling of you around him. You let out a pitiful whine as he stretches you, filling you perfectly. You grip his shoulders to ground yourself as you both stay still for a moment. Relaxing your muscles, you slip just a bit further down to the base of him as he grips your hips tight.

When he attempts to move, you wrap your arms around his neck, gripping one of his ear finials. He moves his servos to your rear, lifting you up only to thrust back into you. Moans quickly flow from your lips as he gets into rhythm. A growl escapes him as he leans forward, getting out of the seat. With you he shimmys to his back cabin, laying you on the folding cot.

He gets on top of you and moves the pillow under your hips before slipping back inside you with a pleasured groan. You let out a gasp when he plunges back in, the different angle providing new pleasure. As he thrusts harder, you lock your legs around his waist and claw at his back plates. You can feel the coil inside you tightening as your muscles squeeze around his spike.

"Magnus... Harder!" Immediately, his hips snap harder into yours, and you feel your coil about to snap. It's only when he whispers to you something in cybertronian gripping the meat of your rear that it finally snaps. You call out his name as your body tenses, waves of white hot pleasure running through you.

He continues moving through your high, letting possesive synthetic growls slip through his vocalizer. An almost inaudible hiss of air meets your ears as your mind clears a bit, and you suddenly feel his girth increase inside you. It stretches you just a bit more, and you already feel another orgasm slowly creeping up on you.

Magnus isn't slowing down yet either as he lifts one of your legs to gain a better angle. His lips attacking your neck again as he chases his own release. His denta nip at your skin, and his glossa runs along your throat, making you shiver.

You feel his arms around you as he suddenly picks you back up, taking a standing position. He thrusts up into you, letting out what you can only guess is cybertronian dirty talk. Nonetheless, it works, and you know you're close to another release. Chanting his name like a mantra, you claw at his back and grip his finials.

"I'm close y/n!" You can't respond only letting moans flow from your lips. With a few more thrusts, he lets out a hiss cursing in cybertronian again as he releases inside you. Heat fills your womb as you squeeze him like a vice. Your legs tighten around him in an attempt to pull him further inside you. You can feel your walls pulse around him as he gently thrusts into you to ride out your high.

Breathing hard, you give him a sleepy smile touching forheads again in affection. He sits back in the driver's seat, letting you lay against him. "Can we stay here for a bit?"

"Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way." Wrapping your arms around his neck, you close your eyes. "I love you, Magnus." His spark swells with joy at that. "I love you as well, y/n."

[meshla-cyarika]

The Tip of the Iceberg

Pairing: Imperial!Crosshair x Imperial!reader

Word count: 4,073

Tags/warnings: descriptions of injures, lieutenant Nolan deserves his own warning, angst, hurt/comfort, love confession, sfw, cuddling virtually naked to prevent hypothermia

Summary: You and your Commander are sent to the planet Barton IV to neutralise raiders that are stealing imperial supplies. You're on the edge of deserting the Empire as it is, but this mission finally tips you over the edge…

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

It was supposed to be like any other mission.

You had arrived on Barton IV with Lieutenant Nolan, a batch of troops and Commander Crosshair. You and Crosshair go way back. You had met at the end of the war, when you were assigned as his Captain. You originally thought his snobbish behaviour was from the chip, like the rest of the clones, but after a while you realised there's more than that. There's more than hatred in his eyes.

The two of you share some sort of understanding between each other. You've both lost everything and you both seem to stand out. When you had been with your battalion during the war, there was no separation and they treated you like one of their own, but now you feel like you stick out and that you're the only one that doesn't understand all of this like the others do. Apart from Crosshair. He's like your oasis in a desert of despair.

"How long have you been here?" You found yourself asking Hexx and Veetch, the only troops under Commander Mayday's control. You had stopped engaging with clones as much as possible a while back, because it hurts too much to see the same hollow shell of a man again and again and again. There's something about these troopers, something familiar. Their mannerisms and speech aren't modulated like the rest of the clones.

"Nearly a year." Hexx answered from where you were standing around one of the last working radiators.

"Mayday has been here longer." Veetch chimed in.

"Why are you all here?" You inquired.

"Fucked if we know." Hexx scoffed and your neutral facade nearly shattered in surprise at his words. Profanities are rare enough for clones nowadays, but to say something like that which could been interpreted agaisnt the Empire is like blasphemy.

"Hexx." Veetch had hissed out through gritted teeth.

"Well, I guess we're all in the same boat then." There was something more to your words, something cryptic. Whether either of them picked up on it, you do not know.

《》《》《》《》

The raiders came out of nowhere.

There had been an overbearing alarm ringing through the entire base and all troops available rushed outside, including yourself. It was just a blur of shouting and blaster fire to you. What you distinctly remember is helping Veetch drag an injured Hexx to cover and a group of thugs stealing a cargo crate.

"Well, don't just stand there!" Lieutenant Nolan yelled. "Get after them!"

You quickly glanced around and noticed all of Mayday's men, including himself, had been injured and the troops you came with we're too far away from the pirates to make a decent chase. You locked eyes with Crosshair and both of you held a silent conversation, before taking off in the direction the raiders fled in.

《》《》《》《》

Currently, Crosshair and yourself are tracking a trail of blood through a cave system. A storm seems to be rolling in fast and you're just about sixteen minutes away from the outpost. You're starting to wonder if it's worth the hassle. Then again, if Nolan raises his voice at you, you might just rip his throat out.

"I don't know how long we should be out here." You speak up, eyeing the percentage in the corner of the screen of your helmet that informs you how much power you have left in the thermal suit under your armour.

"Scared of a few pirates, Captain?" Crosshair says back and you're about to retort, but a loud click! silences you both. You're unfortunate enough to have heard that sound hundreds of times. Landmine. All your muscles tense and your breathing stops. You spare a glance down at Crosshair's shoes and see his right foot ontop of a slate of metal hidden beneath the snow.

"Pressure mine." You observe.

"I noticed." Crosshair hisses back. You holster your blaster and crouch down to get a better look. "Do you know how to disarm it?"

"Oh, don't worry," you peel off your helmet, "I only failed explosive technology twice." You lightly blow the snow off the top of the mine.

"What crimes have I committed to deserve being trapped on a landmine with you?" He sighs and you look up at his visor with a cheeky grin.

"I haven't seen a mine exactly like this before, but it's a Mon Cala make and they keep all their pressure mines virtually the same." You pull out a set of pegs and small hammer from a pocket in your utility belt. You lightly hammer in a peg at each point of the triangular mine to keep the pressure plate down. "There. That should do it." You slowly stand up, picking up your helmet and flashlight along the way.

"Aren't you going to move?" Even with a helmet on, you can tell he's giving you that sceptical look with narrowed eyes which causes his tattoo to crinkle slightly.

"You're not leaving me alone to deal with Nolan." You arch a brow at him with a slight smirk. He stays still for a few more seconds, before hesitatingly raising his foot off of the pressure plate. A weight is instantly lifted off of yours and Crosshair's shoulders, when nothing happens. "Scared of a few landmines, Commander?"

He knocks his shoulders agaisnt you as he walks by and you can't help the chuckle that bubbles out of your chest. You slide your helmet back on and pull out your blaster.

《》《》《》《》

After a few more minutes, you finally make it to the other end of the tunnel. Harsh winds filled with snow barrel past you, but you're just about able to make out some sort of settlement on a cliff in the distance.

"Multiple contacts inside. Two gaurds at the entrance." Crosshair says, after lifting up his Firepuncher to scope it out.

"Just like Jakku, then."

The two of you treck through the snow drifts, almost getting pushed over by the wind. You can't help the way you glance at your thermal suit percentage every five seconds. When you first put it on, it was only at 70%, but you couldn't do anything about it because you were being shipped out in five minutes. You're already down to 50% and the temperature keeps dropping as the sun rapidly sets.

You don't bother telling Crosshair. "There's no point in having deadweight" according to him. Even after all the arguments, all the shouting and screaming, all the disagreements about whether someone should live or die, you'd still carry him through deserts, blizzards, flash flooding and even enemy territory.

You'd do that for any loyal soldier. It's what any person in their right mind would do. That's what you tell yourself to distract your mind from the fact that you've gradually fallen for him over the course of a year. If you were to tell anyone, you're sure the first thing that they would ask is "why him?". You seem to understand each other on a different level from anyone else. You've only known him for a year, but you have already survived so much together. So much bloodshed and tears and being treated like shit by everyone around you. Crosshair has remained the only constant in your life since the end of the war and a part of you never wants him to leave.

An arm across your chest snaps you back to the present and you almost flinch at the contact. You turn to find Crosshair's visor already looking down at you. He wordlessly nods to the entrance gaurds that have their backs to you. You nod back and take a deep breath to settle your mind back to the matter at hand. 45%. You can do this.

You both lower into a crouch to create the least amount of noise possible and gradually sneak up on the pair. Once you're in close enough proximity, you both spring to your full heights and put them in headlocks, kicking the back of their knees to put their own weight on their necks and stop their airflow. After you're sure they're knocked out, you drop them to the ground.

You sneak up to the cave entrance, Crosshair on the right, you on the left. There's atleast two dozen supply creates stolen from the outpost and most of them aren't even opened. You watch as Crosshair pulls out a stun shell and rolls it into the middle of the room. Electricity tingles through the air, as the shell shocks three thugs.

There's just a massive blur of blaster fire and shouting from the raiders. As soon as you shoot down one, three more appear. They just keep coming. At one point one of the raiders jumps on a cargo carrier and tries to drive off, but Crosshair shoots him down with ease and the carrier crashes into the snow.

"I wasn't looking for a prolonged fight today." You tell Crosshair from where you're both hiding behind the same rock.

Crosshair doesn't respond, as he looks at something intently through his scope within the base. You're about to ask what the hell he's looking at, when suddenly an almighty explosion erupts from within the cave. Smoke fills the air and debri goes flying. It's safe to say all the raiders are now dead.

"Move!" Crosshair suddenly shouts, grabbing you by your bicep to pull you away from the entrance of the cave just before the baulders infront of it crumble down. There's a moment of silence where you're both just staring at the mountain. "Let's load the cargo and leave." Crosshair finally let's go of you and turns to the crashed cargo carrier.

The ghost of his touch still lingers, as you pick up a helmet that had fallen out of one of the crates. You can't help the scoff that leaves your lips at the sight of a newly designed stormtrooper helmet, which is clearly not made for something as primitive as a clone to wear.

"The Empire's shiny new army gets the goldmine, while ex-Republic pick up the scraps." You chuck the helmet back into the snow. "How much longer till we're replaced?" You turn to face him and you find Crosshair's deep brown eyes staring back at you, his helmet being held in his hands. His expression is neutral, but his eyes aren't. There's a certain glint in them and, if you didn't know any better, you'd say he's conflicted.

There's a faint rumbling in the distance and the ground beneath your feet begins to tremble. Confused, you turn to look at the peak of the mountain and what you see strikes utter horror into your soul. An avalanche is crashing down the mountain and quickly gaining speed.

"Go!"

You both know that you won't make it to any kind of cover in time, but all you can do is run. Your legs burn as you push yourself forward and the ice cold air feels like it's slicing open your lungs. The roaring of the avalanche is almost deafening, as you will yourself to move forward.

It's no use.

The snow swallows your body, dragging you through a sea of ice. The last thing you see is the blinking numbers of 36%, before your back collides with something rock solid and the darkness consumes you.

《》《》《》《》

Crosshair awakens with a weak splutter, desperately trying to get oxygen into his lungs, which is difficult when he's embedded in a sea of snow. A sense of claustrophobia over takes the Commander and he frantically claws through the ice to force himself out. His hand eventually breaks through the surface and he manages to pull himself upright into the open air. A throaty cough rips through his throat when the ice cold air slices through his lungs. He suddenly remembers how he had lost his helmet when the avalanche submerged him.

A million thoughts surge through his mind, as a black ice vulture squawks in the pale moon light. Crosshair reaches below him and pulls his Firepuncher from the tomb he had found himself in. The Commander calls out your name as loud as he can, which admittedly isn't that loud, and only the howls of the wind greet his ears.

Right, he needs to stop and think for a moment. If he has no helmet, he has no way of communicating with you. If he stays out here for over an hour, he's history. Then again, if you're dead, what's the point of going back. You're the only thing that ties him to the Empire. Without you, he has no way of life.

No. This isn't the time to be thinking about that. For all he knows, you're still alive. In fact, with a spirit like yours, there's no way you're dead. You're way too stubborn and he hates how he's grown to like that quality about you. He hates how he's grown to like you in general. Crosshair isn't stupid. It's obvious that you're on the edge of deserting the Empire and never looking back, leaving him behind to pick up the pieces. Crosshair can't leave the Empire. It's his only purpose. The clones, order 66, the Empire, it all has to be for something. His life has to have been designed for something more than this. It has to be.

Crosshair desperately checks his gear for anything that could help him find you. Then, he remembers the pack on his back, which he quickly rips off and rummages through. Before you left for this mission, you had reminded him not to forget the thermal scanner and he had made a joke about how you're scared about getting lost. Crosshair grimaces at the bitter irony and finally pulls the scanner from his pack.

The screen blinks to life and Crosshair puts it on the maximum proximity setting. The scanner remains silent and Crosshair is about to throw it across the plain in a fit of rage, but then there's a very faint beeping. The heat signature is big enough to be human and it's signalling from about two miles in the east. A heat signature doesn't necessarily mean you're alive, but he shoves that thought aside.

Crosshair clasps the seals of his pack, slides it back onto his back and stumbles to stand, scanner and Firepuncher in hand. He's going to find you, even if it kills him.

《》《》《》《》

Crosshair has been walking for just over half an hour and the numbness in his face is almost unbearable. His thermal suit is still pumping heat through his body, but he has no idea how much charge it has left. He doesn't even know how long he was passed out for.

The scanner blinks erratically in his hands and when he looks down at it, he realises he's stood right on top of you. Crosshair drops everything and sinks to his knees, frantically digging through the snow. After a moment, his hands collide with plastoid and he digs even further. Soon enough, more and more of your black armour is revealed.

Crosshair uncovers most of your body and he quickly tears off his glove to tuck his fingers underneath the collar of your blacks. His breathing is ragged, as he searches for a pulse. The faint feeling of your heartbeat thrums through his fingertips and he could almost cry in relief. Until he notices the crimson stained snow seeping out from beneath you.

Crosshair uses all his remaining strength to lift you out of your tomb and lay you down on the surface. He cautiously removes your helmet to make sure that's not where the bleeding is coming from and, thankfully, it's not. Then, he eyes your form up and down and can't see where the wound is, so he carefully rolls you over onto your side. Crosshair finds a gash on your shoulder blade from where you had lost your pack in the avalanche, which is still bleeding out and causing your blacks to stick to your skin.

If either of you stay out here any longer, you're both going to die. Crosshair needs to find shelter now. He scans his surroundings through the almost pitch black blizzard and eventually his eyes lock onto, what looks like, the entrance of a cave.

A shiver racks through his body, as he brings himself to stand. Crosshair picks his thermal scanner back up to tuck it into his belt and slings his rifle over his shoulder, before placing your helmet back on and carefully picking up your body to lay over his shoulder.

《》《》《》《》

Crosshair practically collapses as soon as he sets foot into the cave and he makes sure to gently lay you down onto the stone floor. He's pretty sure he's sprained his ankle and bruised his ribs, but atleast the cold is keeping him from feeling all the pain.

Crosshair pulls his pack off his back to rummage through again. The first thing he pulls out is two anti-frostbite shots that should slow down the effects of the cold for you both. You remain lax and expressionless, as he injects the stim canister into your arm. Crosshair doesn't let the concern get to him, while he injects his own shot. He has to focus on setting up his single tent, which is the next thing he pulls out his pack.

His breathing ragged, yet his hands are still, while he unfolds the tent and presses the auto-expand button. Once it's in a oval bubble shape, he drags you inside. Crosshair zips the reinforced door closed and suddenly it feels like you're both cut off from the rest of the galaxy. It's just you and him. That's all that matters.

Right. He's got to treat your wound, then follow hypothermia protocol. Crosshair carefully slides off your helmet and tries to ignore how your lifeless expression strikes a cold sliver of ice into his soul. He undoes the the clasps on your cuirass and the armour on your arms to slide it off and place at the end of the tent, before peeling off the top layer of your blacks. Crosshair is surprised to feel your clothes are as cold as ice. Your thermal suit must have malfunctioned.

"Di'kut." He mutters under his breath, before peeling off the top of your thermal suit, which leaves you in your breast band, and rolling you onto your side again. From what Crosshair can see, it doesn't look that bad of a laceration, but he's ninety percent sure that you've fractured your shoulder blade based on the purple bruising.

What the hell have you gotten yourselves into? With Barton IV, with Lieutenant Nolan, with the entire Empire. What are you even fighting for anymore? They keep claiming that the war is over, but it clearly isn't. It's never going to be over. Clone agaisnt droid. Jedi against Sith. Republic agaisnt Separatist. No matter how many different names it gets, this war will never end. The only thing that matters is which side you're on.

Crosshair shakes his head to clear his thoughts and finishes making a sling out of bandages to give your fractured bone more support. There's a bacta patch underneath the bandages and he's given you a bacta shot aswell.

The hypothermia protocol says to remove any wet clothing and both of you are drenched. So, he unclasps your belt and the rest of your armour, before peeling off your lower blacks and thermal suit. Crosshair quickly snaps his eyes away from you. He's thought of seeing you naked hundreds of times, but he never thought the first time would be like this. Crosshair rips off his armour and clothes, placing his thermal suit over your body.

The last things Crosshair does is activate the distress signal from within your helmet and wrap a blanket around you both from within his pack. A shaky sigh leaves his lips, when he wraps his arms around you  and keeps you pressed tight against him, making sure to not injure your shoulder any further.

Even if no one answers the distress call, even if Nolan tells his men to ignore it, you're here, together and you're in his arms. Crosshair wouldn't want to die any other way…

《》《》《》《》

When you wake up, all you feel is warmth and you start to think you're dead. You've never particularly believed in an afterlife, but this has to be it, right? Your blurred vision soon evens out and all you can see is a white wall and all you can feel is something soft and warm beneath you.

You try to sit up and, yeah, maybe you're not in the afterlife. You're pretty sure dead people don't feel pain, not on this scale atleast. A weak wince leaves your lips and you let yourself lay back down.

Suddenly, what's acting as your matress starts moving and you finally notice the pair of arms around you as they tighten their hold.

"Udesiir. Gar're morut'yc. Udesiir."

You sigh in relief at the familiar voice and sink further into his embrace. "Cross…"

"I'm here." His voice is uncharacteristically soft and it sends a soft pang into your chest, as he threads a hand through your hair. A million memories flood through your mind and reality finally sets in.

"Where are my clothes?" You become suddenly aware at how close you really are. If you were positioned just a little bit lower, your pelvises would be pressed against each other-

Crosshair scoffs at your question. "Calm down, captain. You were lucky enough to live, but not that lucky." His words are humourous, but his voice wavers slightly.

You finally lock eyes onto the pile of clothes at the foot of the tent. Right. Hypothermia protocol. The avalanche. You remember being thrown against a boulder but nothing else. Based on how your arm is in a sling, your shoulder must be atleast fractured. You can hear a storm hurtling around outside and anxieties about how you're going to get back to the outpost flood your mind.

You must been separated during the avalanche, you could've been separated for miles, but he still came back for you…You don't even realise there are tears in your eyes till one falls. You try to blink them from your eyes and use your free hand to wipe them away.

"I have one more bacta shot left, if the pain is that unbearable?" Crosshair pushes himself to sit up, with you still held against his chest. Stupid snipers. They're always observing.

"No." You sigh and run your hand over your face. "It's not that."

Crosshair pulls the blanket back up from where it had dropped from your shoulders and moves you to sit sideways on his lap.

"Talk to me." Tell me you feel the same.

"I'm tired, Cross." He continues to run his hand through your hair. "Tired of fighting for nothing, for people who don't care. I don't know what to do anymore."

"…I understand."

You lean your head away from his shoulder to look him in the eye. Out of all the things he could've said, you didn't expect him to say that.

"Loyalty means something to me, to all the clones, but the Empire betrayed our trust. We mean nothing to them."

You have seen Crosshair show his deeper emotions before, but only in short bursts. You've never seen him look so vulnerable before.

"You mean something to me." You raise your free hand to rest agaisnt the side of his face and it's like a reflex for him to lean into it. "You mean everything to me."

The words are painful to say, but the look in his eyes is worth it. The way you lean towards each other and finally bridge the gap is worth it. His lips are dry, yet soft, agaisnt your own and you move agaisnt each other in a dance neither of you knew you could do. The kiss abruptly ends, when you wince after trying to move your arm.

"This isn't how I wanted our first kiss to go." He rests his forehead against yours.

"I thought you knew by now that nothing goes our way." You laugh slightly through your tears. "What are we going to do, Cross?"

"I don't know, but I'm not leaving you. We stay together." Crosshair insists.

"No, complaints from me." You flash him a cheeky grin, before pressing your lips against his once more.

[fictionfanatic-wren]

The robin games.

chapter 3/7

The artificial lighting in the Watchtower dimmed gradually as the station shifted into its night cycle. A quiet hush settled over the vast halls, replacing the earlier chaos with a strange, uneasy calm.

Dick had wedged himself into his cozy little vent above the main deck, curled into a surprisingly efficient sleeping position that only years of acrobatics could make tolerable. His arms were folded beneath his head, and a thin thermal blanket was tucked around him like a burrito. From below, the faint hum of the Watchtower filled the silence. Every now and then, a screen blinked or beeped, but Dick didn’t stir.

Jason yawned, stretching out behind his stack of crates. He’d wedged himself into a cozy nook of unused gear, resting on a folded emergency blanket and using a deflated punching bag as a pillow. One hand still gripped the handle of a combat knife, old habits died hard. He wasn’t asleep yet. Just resting. “…If Barry cries about the pizza one more time, I’m stealing his whole fridge next time…” he mumbled, eyes drifting closed.

Tim sipped another cup of coffee, the fourth tonight. The room was bathed in soft light from his screens, reflecting off his tired eyes. Every camera was still under his control. Every sensor, every system, still his playground. Sleep was... irrelevant. He’d tucked a blanket over his shoulders like a cape, more out of habit than comfort. His eyes never left the screens. On one, Jason had finally stopped twitching. On another, Dick rolled over in his sleep and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like “no, Babs, I didn’t eat your sandwich.” Tim grinned faintly. Another sip.

The soft hum of the Watchtower’s life support systems was the only sound filling the corridors. Most of the League had returned to Earth for the night, and the few remaining, Dinah, Bruce, and Arthur, were either asleep or in their quarters, leaving the station cloaked in a rare, heavy silence. Damian stirred awake in his vent hideout, stretching like a panther just roused from sleep. His eyes, sharp and calculating, flicked toward the glowing clock panel on his wrist. Nighttime. He slipped silently from the ducts and made his way down the dim hallway, every step precise and deliberate. His target: Dick Grayson. If Damian wanted to win this game, he needed an edge. And that meant hitting where it hurt most. The firstborn was tucked away in a cramped crawlspace above the observation deck, confident in his setup. But confidence, Damian thought, was a luxury he could exploit. He reached the access panel to the crawlspace, expertly unscrewing it without a sound. Inside, Dick’s gear lay neatly arranged: his Escrima Sticks, compact grappling tools, comms device, all meticulously placed for quick access. This was Damian’s game to win, and stealing Dick’s gear was a necessary evil. With practiced efficiency, he gathered the suit and tools, slipping them into a reinforced tactical bag. He paused for a moment, glancing at a small digital tracker Dick had forgotten on the wrist computer. Pocketing it, Damian smiled coldly. This would keep him one step ahead. The soft hum of machinery filled the dimly lit maintenance room. Tim was deeply focused, eyes flicking over streams of code on his laptop, fingers tapping commands with precision. His face was calm, but the faintest crease of fatigue lined his brow. The door slid open silently. Batman stepped in, his presence commanding yet gentle. In his gloved hands, he carried a small insulated bag. Tim glanced up, surprise flickering in his eyes. “B,” he said quietly. Bruce didn’t say a word, just set the bag down beside Tim and opened it to reveal a neatly packed meal, sandwiches, fruit, energy bars, and a bottle of water. “You’re too focused,” Bruce said simply, voice low but firm. “Even if it’s a game, you don’t get to starve.” Tim nodded, a small smile breaking through. “Thanks.” Bruce watched him for a moment, then turned and moved silently out of the room.

Bruce moved quickly but deliberately, stopping briefly at each camp. Near the observation deck crawlspace, he placed a wrapped meal and water bottle besides Dick’s head. In the cluttered storage bay where Jason hid, a similar package appeared next to a small pile of makeshift traps and empty crates. And finally, in the window of Damian going to sabotage Dick, near the vent junction where Damian spent his time, a meal was carefully balanced on the edge of his secured mat.

The cold silence of the Watchtower was broken by the sudden pulse of zeta tubes activating in rapid succession. ZETA TUBE ACTIVATION: GREEN LANTERN. GREEN ARROW. FLASH. WONDER WOMAN. SUPERMAN. With every flicker of light and arrival chime, the quiet sanctity of the station shattered into chaos.

Ventilation Shaft - Damian Damian’s eyes snapped open. He blinked once, alert immediately, hand instinctively reaching for a dagger before remembering where he was. The vibrations in the ductwork were unmistakable, people stomping, voices rising. He activated his wristpad, scanning audio feeds. “…I told you it wasn’t me!” Flash was already yelling. “I woke up this morning and my uniform had a ‘kick me’ sign sewn into the back,” Hal snapped. “Why would I even do that? I can’t sew!” “Exactly,” Diana deadpanned. “Which only narrows down the suspects to someone with too much free time and a needle.” Damian smirked faintly and moved deeper into the shadows, fully awake now.

Storage Bay - Jason Jason groaned, rubbing his eyes and sitting up slowly from behind the crates. He’d been mid-dream, something about Alfred’s pancakes and a flamethrower, and now the noise from the hall was creeping into his skull. He took a bite of the sandwich Bruce had left him and stretched. “…Can’t believe they’re still fighting.” From the hallway, he heard Ollie’s voice. “Okay, new theory: maybe it’s Clark. You’ve got heat vision, you could’ve fried the sugar into salt.” “That’s not how sugar works,” Superman replied, exasperated. “It could be magic sugar!” Jason snorted, leaning back again. “Idiots,” he muttered under his breath.

Observation Deck Crawlspace - Dick Dick stirred with a yawn, groaning softly as he shifted in the tight space. He blinked blearily, then frowned as the argument filtered up from the floor below. “…someone hacked the training room and set all the difficulty levels to ‘expert’ without warning. I tore my suit, Barry!” “I didn’t do it!” Barry cried. “And why is everyone still assuming this is me?!” Dick dragged a hand down his face, muttering, “Still? They’re still on this?” He reached for his comm… Only to realize it was gone. Everything was gone. Damn it. Probably Jason’s work.

Tim was already awake, sipping lukewarm coffee from a thermos this time (thanks, Bruce), watching the League’s security feeds with bags under his eyes and a grin on his face. “Welcome back, chaos,” he murmured. One screen showed Hal arguing with Barry in the kitchen, another caught Diana pacing with murderous intent, and yet another showed Aquaman just… quietly eating cereal, eyes wide like he was stuck in a fever dream.

The long table in the League’s command center gleamed under sterile lighting. The founding members were seated, Superman at the head, Diana to his right, Batman silent in his usual spot. Flash was bouncing one knee under the table. Hal looked bored. Green Arrow looked ready to nap. Black Canary sipped her coffee with the calm of someone who’d already accepted today was going to be awful. Aquaman was just there, still confused. “Alright,” Superman said, clearing his throat and projecting his voice with practiced authority. “Let’s focus. Star City’s been seeing unusual activity, seven coordinated attacks in the last two days, each targeting high-tech facilities.” He pressed a button. The holo-table projected images of figures dressed in black, blurry but menacing. “We believe it’s a new group. Possibly connected to the remnants of the Kobra cult.” “Oh good,” Ollie muttered, folding his arms. “Star City wasn’t chaotic enough already.” “We’ll form a task force and-” “You know,” Flash interrupted, eyes narrowing as he pointed at Hal, “This does look like the kind of distraction someone would create to shift attention away from themselves.” Hal blinked. “What the hell are you talking about?” “I’m saying,” Barry leaned forward, eyes sharp, “maybe you’re orchestrating all this just to get back at me for using your toothbrush six months ago.” The table went quiet. Diana blinked. “You did ?” Hal groaned. “Oh my God, Barry- you were the one who used it behind my back for a week and never thought to tell me!” “Hey! I thought you never used it, and that was a joke!” “So was switching the salt and sugar! But here we are, pretending to be professionals while someone keeps moving my goddamn chair!” Ollie sipped his coffee. “Honestly? Kinda sounds like guilt, Hal.” “I SWEAR TO-” Superman held up a hand. “Everyone. Please.” Batman hadn't said a word, his hands steepled in front of his mouth. Internally, he was screaming. Outwardly, he said nothing. Flash shot up from his chair. “If I find out you stole my pizza, Hal, I swear I’m going to-” “FOR THE LAST TIME, I DIDN’T TOUCH YOUR DAMN PIZZA!” “Then who did?!” In the silence that followed, Aquaman slowly raised a hand. “Unrelated,” he said carefully, “but… I just got back, and someone replaced my water filters with cherry soda. My fish are very confused.” Black Canary set her mug down with a sigh. “We’re a galactic defense force. Yet we literally cannot keep our stuff safe.” Superman rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Let’s… circle back to Star City later. Meeting adjourned.” As the team began filing out, muttering, glaring, and one or two openly blaming Hal again, Batman remained behind, expression unreadable.

[rhonuscorner]

SO, ABOUT THAT ART GIVE AWAY I'M HOSTING

I'm very sorry to say I have to cancel it due to circumstances beyond my control.

The main reason for this is that my PC, on which I do 99% of my art, broke down a few weeks ago and it's gonna be probably at least another month before I get it back. Maybe I'll get lucky and it'll be sooner than that but I'm not holding out any hope, I've been having nothing but bad luck lately lmao.

Longer description of what's been going on is under the cut (which I'm also going to use as an excuse to rant about it because I've been very frustrated lmao) but yeah.

I've been using my old laptop since and I still have my old art tablet, but I've been holding off on doing art on it. Motivation issues aside, I don't really enjoy doing art on it (my PC spoiled me lol) and I also don't have access to my usual art resources, like Clip Studio Paint (I know I can swap devices but I'm not going to). I haven't been able to work on any of the MerMay stuff I had planned, I have a huge back log of AU art I wanna do and I have to prepare for Art Fight... and now I don't know if I'm gonna have enough time for that either so I'll postpone that to next year. Sucks because I've never participated in Art Fight before and I was really looking forward to joining, but it is what it is (I swear this has become the motto I live by lately).

I was going to draw give-away winners in a week, but I'm at a point where adding planned art onto what I already have and want to do is just causing me stress, especially because it concerns art for other people. So for the sake of my sanity and what little motivation I still have, I have to cancel the give-away. :(

I'm really sorry to everyone who signed up to participate, and massive thanks to those who did sign up. Maybe I'll re-run it in the future.

So my PC broke down on the 21st of April. It worked perfectly fine the day before but that morning it kept hanging on the same screen during start-up and I couldn't figure out why. I can solve simple problems like the rare blue-screen but I'm not tech-savvy enough to deal with hardware and messing with the BIOS is way beyond my comfort zone.

So I called my brother, who is very tech-savvy and he came to my place to take a look where he spent the next 3 hours trying to locate the issue. No matter what we did, we could not even get the PC to boot from a USB to run a repair, the BIOS wouldn't save changes we made, it was a mess.

He ended up taking my PC over to his place where he had the proper tools to figure it all out. At the time we thought it was a processor issue, since all the signs pointed to that being the culprit.

Turns out it was one of my hard drives 🙄 If only we had thought to just remove those one by one while the PC was still at my place, because it booted up just fine once we removed the dead one. Didn't occur to us at the time, yes we were dumb. And yes, I lost a whole bunch of stuff (we tried to recover data but to no avail) but that's the least of my concerns. Anyway, he ran some tests, checked out all my other hardware and drives and everything got a clean bill of health but we figured, since my PC was already at his place anyway, he might as well run a full systems check too, stabilization tests, all that good stuff. Some good ol TLC for my beloved hard working PC. He also needed to put in a new SSD and order new thermal paste because he'd taken off the processor.

Due to annoying circumstances, that order took a while to arrive.

He then messaged me last monday that for some reason, even with the new thermal paste applied, my processor was running really hot and he couldn't figure out why. So he was going to immediately order a new, bigger tube and try again.

My hope was that by the end of this week I'd be able to pick my PC up, back in perfect working order.

My brother messaged me again yesterday when I came home in the evening to tell me he fucked up. Even with all of his experience and skill, he's not immune to making a mistake. He told me some of the thermal paste got into the port on the motherboard the processor connects onto (or something to that effect) and while he was able to clean it with isopropyl, two of the little pins there accidentally broke off. That's not something he can fix. My motherboard is completely borked now.

I'm not mad at him or anything, accidents happen (he's already mad enough at himself), but it sucks big time.

The motherboard has to be replaced which is not something he's comfortable doing right now (understandable), so my PC will have to go back to where it was built... which causes a whole slew of new problems relating to transport which I don't care to get into right now (lets just say, bad previous experiences), plus the fact that my warranty ended in February.

I don't know what the costs are gonna be at this moment and while yes, my brother offered to cover everything since he's the one who broke it, I told him we'll split it. He's already done so much for me, gifted me the new SSD and made other costs he won't let me pay for (like the thermal paste and the thingemabob he ordered to recover data from dead drives). I have the best bro ❤️

So yeah. I'm gonna be stressing about this big time until my PC is safely back home, fully functional.

Until then, ugh :')

[pancaketax]

What Remains | Chapter 18 The Hunt (Tony Stark x M! Reader)

TW : Detailed depictions of injuries and abuse. Mentions of past abuse Summary : Tony Stark becomes something beyond human , a machine driven by icy rage, relentless focus, and a singular goal: to find you. After receiving a horrifying call laced with sadistic cruelty and a scream he instantly recognizes as yours, Stark enters a sleepless, foodless, voiceless trance, transforming his office into a war room. Every screen, every algorithm, every ounce of technology is bent to his will in a digital manhunt for your location. When Jarvis finally locates a faint signal in an abandoned warehouse, Stark launches without hesitation, donning a specialized combat suit built for one purpose: ending this.

word count: 16.1k

Previous Chapter - Next Chapter Stark hasn’t closed his eyes. Not for a second. He hasn’t swallowed a bite, hasn’t taken a sip of water. He hasn’t moved from his desk since the exact moment that voice slithered into his ear, slick and jagged like a rusted blade. Since that obscene breath passed through the line, that whisper soaked in menace and sadistic delight. Since that scream that raw, flayed scream, human, far too human ripped from a throat he knows too well, just before silence fell, sharp as a guillotine. Something broke then. Not in him. No. Something froze.

He’s no longer a man, not really. Not in this suspended moment, where even time seems too afraid to move forward. He’s become engine. Mechanism. Open-heart alert system. His blood doesn’t circulate it pulses, furious, carried by a cold, methodical, almost clinical rage. He is anger, but an anger without shouting. An anger that thinks, that calculates, that watches, that waits. A storm contained in a steel cylinder, ready to explode, but for now channeling all its violence into the glacial logic of action.

In the office, the tension is almost tangible. The air feels charged, saturated with something indefinable a blend of ozone, electricity, and pure stress. Every surface vibrates slightly, as if the metal itself shared the heartbeat of its occupant. The silence isn’t soothing. It’s oppressive, built on thick layers of concentration, anticipation, restrained fury. Only mechanical sounds mark the space: the faint crackle of a screen refreshing, the nervous clicks of his fingers on holographic interfaces, the low vibrations of the servers in the adjoining room, humming at full capacity. Around him, a dozen screens stream data without pause. Some display ultra-precise satellite maps, sweeping over New York rooftops for any suspicious movement. Others track mobile signals, tracing the latest paths of every device even remotely connected to the target. Still others comb through databases, merge biometric information, detect faces, match voice prints. A thermal image of a building overlays a 3D city map. An audio feed scrolls at high speed, saturated with static. Nothing escapes analysis. Nothing is left to chance.

Stark is motionless, but every muscle in his body is tense. His back is hunched, elbows braced on the desk edge, fingers clenched around the projected interface hovering above the glass. His bloodshot eyes lock onto the central screen without blinking. His eyelids are heavy, but he doesn’t close them. He can’t. Not until the target is found. Not until the one he’s searching for is no longer missing. He won’t allow himself the luxury of weakness. He swore he’d never let anyone be hurt again. And he holds to his vows the way others hold to weapons. The blue glow of the monitors cuts across his face with surgical cruelty. Every shadow on his skin is a confession: fatigue, deep dark circles, drawn features, hollow cheekbones. But these marks don’t diminish him. They add a near-inhuman intensity to his gaze, a ruthless clarity. A will that, for now, eclipses even the most basic biological needs. He hasn’t slept, because he doesn’t have the right. He hasn’t eaten, because the thought hasn’t even occurred to him. His body is secondary. It’s nothing but a vessel for the mission.

He murmurs sometimes. Commands, codes, equations. He speaks to no one, but the AI responds instantly. Every word he utters is sharp, precise, guided by a logic untouched by panic. One name comes back again and again. A biometric file. A GPS identifier. Trackers. Coordinates. He’s no longer looking for a person — he’s hunting a fixed point in the storm. The center of a search and rescue system. And Stark is ready to flatten entire city blocks to bring that point back to him. When the internal alerts go off soft, discreet, almost polite signaling a drop in blood pressure, critical dehydration, or prolonged hypervigilance, he silences them with a flick of the hand. He shuts them off. Nothing exists outside this room, outside this moment. Outside this mission. The rage is there, but tamed, carved into a weapon.

Somewhere, he knows he’s crossing the line. That he’s nearing an invisible boundary. But he doesn’t care. He’s seen too many people die, too many names fade into archives. This time, he won’t be too late. So he keeps going. Relentlessly. He cross-references data, filters messages, follows leads. He digs, over and over, down to the bone. And behind him, the world can tremble all it wants. He’ll hold. Because he made a promise. Because this time, no one will disappear into the shadows without him tearing them out of the night.

His eyes never leave the screens. They’re locked in, anchored, consumed to the point of obsession. They devour every bit of information, every image, every pixel variation, as if he might uncover a hidden confession. Nothing escapes him. No movement, no data, no anomaly in the flow. His pupils, dilated from exhaustion, cling to the smallest detail, hunting a trace, a footprint, a breath left behind by the one he’s chasing without pause. He’s isolated search zones. Redrawn entire sections of the city. Compared every map of New York with thermal readings, overlaying layers like a surgeon operating through urban tissue. He’s overridden protections on multiple private networks without hesitation. Intercepted anonymous communications, analyzed movement patterns, recalibrated his internal software to tailor the algorithms to a single, solitary target. The tools he designed for international diplomacy, for global crisis response — he’s repurposed them now for a personal hunt. A cold war fought in the digital guts of the city.

And always, he comes back to that name. That shadow. That absence. Matthew. A ghost with no fingerprint, no signal, no flaw to exploit. But Stark refuses that idea. No. That kind of man doesn’t vanish. That kind of man always leaves traces — out of pride. Out of carelessness. Out of vanity. And if it means turning the city inside out, if it means digging down to reinforced concrete, to buried cables and the forgotten strata of the network — then so be it. He’s ready to search through the world’s marrow to find what remains. Cables snake across the floor, twisted like raw nerves, connected to makeshift terminals. Holograms hover in the air, pulsing with spectral, slow, almost organic light. The room, once functional and sterile, has lost its ordinary shape. This is no longer an office. It’s a clandestine command post. A digital war cell born out of urgency, powered by fear and brute will. On one wall, an unstable projection flickers: a gridded map of New York, each red zone corresponding to growing probabilities, invisible tension. Alternating, a partially reconstructed file plays pulled from a burner phone. The lines of code shimmer as if still resisting comprehension.

And at the center of it all, him. Motionless. A sculptor of chaos. He doesn’t move an inch, but his mind roars. He calculates, projects, anticipates at a speed even his most advanced AIs couldn’t match. He’s faster than the machines, because this time, it’s not for a global mission. It’s not to protect a council or a treaty. It’s not for peace. It’s personal. And nothing is more dangerous than a man like him when he’s acting for himself. His face is frozen. Carved from stone. No expression filters through. No emotion leaks out. He hasn’t spoken in hours. Not a word. His jaw is locked, clenched. His chin trembles sometimes under the pressure, but he doesn’t give in. His eyelids, heavy with fatigue, blink on autopilot but his gaze stays sharp, cutting. That look… it belongs to a man who’s already made up his mind. It’s no longer a question of if. It’s a matter of when, how, and how much time is left. And above all, of what will be left of the other man once he finds him. He is cold. Precise. Fatally focused. Each beat of his heart seems to align with the hum of the machines. He’s perfectly synchronized with his environment. A machine among machines. He’s become the system’s core. The cold, methodical intelligence of a silent hunt — carried out without rest, without sleep, without mercy.

The door slides open with a discreet, almost timid sigh. As if it, too, understood that this moment must not be disturbed. No sound dares to break the fragile balance of the room. Not here. Not now. Even the walls seem to hold their breath, petrified by the intensity that fills the space. The bluish light of the screens slices through the artificial darkness in shifting shards, casting sharp, vibrating shadows across Stark’s features — like carvings made by a blade. He doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t need to look. He already knows. Nothing escapes him. His silence is a barrier, a verdict. He’s there. Frozen. Silent. Unshakable. And around him, the universe seems to understand that something has been set in motion. Something that can no longer be stopped.

Pepper enters without a word. The silence wraps around her instantly, like a heavy veil she doesn’t dare pierce. She says nothing — not yet. Everything about her is more subdued than usual, as if her body has attuned itself to the electric tension of the room. Her usual heels have been traded for flat shoes, chosen mechanically, without real thought. She knew when she got up this morning. No need to read the reports or check the alerts. She felt it, in every fiber of her being — this day would be different. Draining. Slow. Hard. And Tony, on days like this, is not a man to reason with. He becomes a wall. Steel. An unbreachable frontier. This isn’t a state crisis, not one of those media storms they’ve learned to face together, side by side, dressed to perfection with rehearsed smiles. No. This is something else. A silent war. Private. Intimate. And in that kind of war, Tony lets no one in. Almost no one.

In her hands, she holds two mugs. One is for her — a reflex gesture, more for the weight than the content, because she’ll set it down somewhere and forget it immediately. The other is for him. Strong coffee, black, unsweetened, scorching. Just how he likes it. She didn’t ask, didn’t guess. She knows. Because for years, she’s known his silences, his mood swings, his automatic habits. She knows the rare things that bring him a sliver of stability when everything is falling apart. She walks slowly. With that quiet elegance that is uniquely hers. Each step is precise, measured. She avoids the cables snaking across the floor like exposed veins. Dodges the hastily pushed chairs, the luminous angles of suspended holograms hanging in the air, slow and unstable like open wounds. Everything around her pulses, breathes, crackles. The smell of steaming coffee mixes with metallic fumes, with the warm emissions of overheating machines. A fleeting human note in this lair transformed into a war organ.

She approaches. Just a few feet from him now. The blue halo of the screens washes over her, casting cold, almost supernatural shards onto her skin. She still doesn’t say a word. Because she, too, senses what’s happening here. She reads silence like an ancient language. She knows that if she speaks too soon, too quickly, she could shatter everything — the balance, the tension, the fierce concentration holding him upright. Tony doesn’t even turn his head. He doesn’t need to. He knows it’s her. He saw, without really looking, her silhouette trembling on the standby screen, like a spectral apparition. He recognized her breath — controlled, steady, modulated by habit not to disrupt critical moments. He felt her presence the way you feel a warm current crossing a frozen room: discreet, but undeniable. She’s here.

But he doesn’t move. Not an inch. His fingers keep dancing over the interfaces, his eyes fixed on the data. His jaw remains locked, his posture rigid, unyielding. He doesn’t reject her presence. He accepts it without acknowledging it. She’s part of the setting, part of the very structure of this ongoing war. She is the silent anchor he’ll never ask for, but needs all the same. And she knows it. So she stays. Present. Still. Mug in hand. Waiting for him to speak — or to break. His fingers glide over the holographic interface with almost surgical precision. They graze the projected data blocks in the air, moving them, reorganizing, dissecting them as if trying to carve raw truths buried under layers of code, pixels, and silence. A building on 43rd Street. An unusual thermal signature spotted at 3:12 a.m. A encrypted phone line briefly located in South Brooklyn, before vanishing into a labyrinth of anonymous relays. He isolates. He cross-references. He sorts. He discards. He starts again. Every manipulation is an act of war. He develops a thousand hypotheses per minute, evaluates them, abandons them, replaces them. A thousand leads, a thousand fleeting micro-truths, vanishing as soon as he tries to fix them. And always, that voice in his head. That twisted, wet breath haunting him since the call. That scream — shrill, inhuman. That panic. And the silence that followed. The kind of silence only blood knows how to echo.

Pepper, still silent, watches. She hasn’t moved since entering. Her eyes shift from the screen to Tony’s face, then to his hands. She sees what he refuses to admit: his movements are less precise. They tremble sometimes. Nervous flickers, involuntary, imperceptible to others — but not to her. There’s that tiny jolt in his palm when two images overlap without matching. That subtle twitch of his fingers when the algorithm returns an empty result. That tension in his joints with every failure, every dead end. She takes a step forward. Slowly, silently. She places the mug at the edge of the desk, just within his field of vision. Not too close, not too far. She sets it where he could reach for it without thinking, by reflex, if some part of him still remembered how to drink something. If his lips still knew how to welcome anything other than orders. But deep down, she knows he probably won’t. Not now. Maybe not at all. She doesn’t touch him. Doesn’t interrupt. But her eyes never leave him. They linger on his neck, that taut, rigid line, almost painful. On his shoulders, hunched forward, drawn tight like bows ready to snap. She reads the exhaustion in the way his muscles clench, in how he holds his breath when results elude him, in that violent stubbornness that keeps him from stepping back — even for a second.

Then she speaks. Barely. Her voice is a whisper. A caress in a space saturated with tension. A suspended breath, respectful. As if she were speaking to a wounded animal, to a raw heart that a single harsh word might cause to shatter.

— "You should drink something."

No reproach. No judgment. Not even any real expectation. Just an invitation, soft, almost unreal in this room ruled by the cold light of screens and the hum of machines. A reminder, simple and human, that he still has a body. That he’s still a man. Not just an overheated mind, a burning brain, dissociated from everything else. She doesn’t expect a response. She doesn’t even want one. What she’s offering isn’t a solution. It’s a breath. An interlude. A hand offered at a distance, without conditions, in the eye of a cyclone she can’t stop — but refuses to abandon. Stark doesn’t answer. The silence remains, impenetrable. But she sees it. That blink. Singular. Slow. Almost lagging. Like a discreet malfunction in an otherwise perfect line of code. A micro-event, almost invisible but for her, it means everything. He heard her. He understood. Somewhere beneath the layers of adrenaline and frozen focus, her words registered. But he can’t stop. Not yet. Not while what he’s searching for remains out of reach.

She moves a little closer. Her steps are slow, calculated. The slightest movement could shatter the fragile equilibrium he maintains between lucidity and overload. She skirts the screens projecting a relentless flow of data, passes through the light beams of overlapping maps, walks through the holograms dissecting New York in real time: facades, sewer lines, rooftops, drone paths, shifting heat points. A fractured digital world, reconstructed for a single mission. And she, the only organic presence in this sanctuary of glass and light, walks forward until she’s beside him. Upright. Calm. Unshakable. She stands there, just a meter away. A silhouette in the bluish light. A presence. An anchor. Non-intrusive, but constant. And in that data-saturated silence, she looks at the screen in front of him. Blurry images flash by. Figures captured by an old security camera. Red dots blink in the darkness of a poorly mapped basement. Nothing conclusive. Nothing obvious. But she sees beyond that. She’s not looking at the screen. She’s looking at him.

She sees what he doesn’t show. What he himself struggles to ignore. That back, a bit more hunched than before. That hand clenched around the desk edge, knuckles white with tension. That breath, irregular, barely perceptible — but betraying an inner fight. That exhaustion, layered in invisible strata, like ash over an ember that refuses to die. He’ll never admit it. That’s not an option. But she knows. He’s burning out. Eroding. Slowly bleeding out everything that keeps him human. So she acts. Gently, but without hesitation. She reaches out. Picks up the mug left on the edge of the desk, still faintly steaming. And she moves it. Places it right in front of him. Where his gaze can’t avoid it. Where his fingers could reach it without thinking. A mundane gesture, almost insignificant. But heavy with meaning.

— "You need to stay sharp." Her voice is soft, but firm. It cuts through the thickness of the moment. "If he’s counting on you, he needs you at your best. Not collapsing."

He stays still for another second. Then, slowly, his gaze lifts. Like he’s returning from a far-off place, from a tension zone where the real world no longer reaches. He looks at her. Directly in the eyes. And she sees. She sees everything. The fatigue eating away at the edges. The redness at the corners of his eyes, signs of brutal sleeplessness. But most of all, that clarity. That burning precision still intact in the depths of his pupils. It’s a gaze that doesn’t waver. The gaze of a man broken a thousand times — but still standing. And in that gaze, she reads three things.

Fear. Raw. Visceral. The fear of not making it in time. Rage. Pure. Mechanical. The kind he holds back to avoid destroying everything.

And the promise. Absolute. Irrevocable.

— "I’m going to get him out."

No conditional. No wiggle room. He doesn’t say he’ll try. He doesn’t say if he’s still alive. He refuses to let those phrases exist. He leaves no space for doubt. Because doubt would be a crack. And if he cracks now, he collapses. She nods. Once. That’s all it takes. A silent agreement. A trust she offers him, without questions. Then she places a hand on his shoulder. Right there. A simple contact, but real. Solid. A light, firm pressure. Just enough for him to know he’s not alone. That she’s here. That she will remain here. Even if there’s nothing more she can do. An anchor in the chaos.

— "Then drink."

She adds nothing else. No need. Not now. And then she turns on her heel, leaving behind that room saturated with tension and blue light, walking away in silence, her steps barely audible on the hard floor. She slips away as she came — discreetly, with that silent dignity that’s hers alone. No unnecessary gesture. No look back. Just the quiet certainty that he heard her. That he understood. And that he’ll do what he must. A breath. A second. Then another. Stark remains still. His eyes still locked on the numbers, on the blurry images, on the shattered map of New York pulsing slowly before him. A suspended moment, almost frozen in code and light projections. And then, slowly, as if his body weighed a ton, his fingers stretch out. Slow. Almost hesitant. They brush the mug, grasp it. Raise it to his lips.

One sip. Scalding. Bitter. Perfect.

The taste, too strong, seizes his tongue, his throat, then burns its way down like a reminder. He closes his eyes for a second. Not out of pleasure. Out of necessity. Because that simple contact — the liquid, the heat, the sensation — reminds him that he still exists outside the war machine he’s become. And then, almost immediately, his eyes open again. Latch onto the screen. The map. The hunt. The engine restarts. But behind the invisible armor, behind the hard gaze and automated gestures, the man is still there. Just enough. For now. The mug, barely set down on the desk, hits the surface with a muffled clack. The sound, though minimal, seems to shake the atmosphere. Stark exhales. One of those irritated sighs that vibrate between clenched teeth, that fatigue turns into frustration, and frustration reshapes into buried anger. His fingers snap against the desk, nervously. Not a blow. Just a dry, rhythmic sound. Accumulated tension seeking an outlet, a culprit, a breaking point. Something to strike — or someone. But no one here is responsible. No one except him.

And then, it bursts out.

— "Fuck… why didn’t he activate it?"

The voice is low. But it slices the air like a blade. Sharp. Brittle. It doesn’t need to be loud to carry. It’s so charged with tension that it seems to vibrate in the walls. No explosive rage. No yelling. Just that clean line, that icy edge that says it all. It’s not a question. It’s an unbearable fact. A flaw in the plan. A betrayal of logic. He doesn’t need to clarify. The device, the gesture, the fear behind it all of it is obvious. In the hallway, Pepper has stopped. Without realizing it. As if her muscles responded to that voice before her mind did. She’s frozen. And she understands. She knows too. He’s talking about the device. That small, discreet piece, barely bigger than a coin, that he slipped into an anodized case with a falsely detached air. That neutral tone he adopts when the stakes are too high to admit. He presented it like a gadget. Just another safety.

A thing for emergencies. "Press and hold for three seconds" he said. Simple. Effective. And his location would be transmitted to the Tower in real time, with immediate triangulation and constant tracking. He insisted, without seeming to. Like a father too proud of a dangerous toy. Like a man who’s already lost everything once and won’t let chance roll the dice again. The kind of thing he doesn’t give to everyone. The kind of thing he only entrusts once. And even then. Under the pretense of humor. Veiled in sarcasm. And yet, you didn’t activate it. That thought gnaws at him. Consumes him. Because if it wasn’t forgetfulness, then it’s worse. Then maybe there wasn’t time. Or maybe he was afraid. Or maybe you thought it wouldn’t make a difference. And that Tony can’t accept.

Because the alternative… he can’t even imagine it. He built it in just a few hours. One sleepless night, a few curses, two black coffees, and a diagram sketched on a crumpled napkin. Because he was tired. Tired of not knowing. Tired of not being able to protect. Tired of seeing him wander through New York like a ghost without an anchor, sleeping in sketchy squats, living on the generosity of people as reliable as March weather. He was done with uncertainty, with instability. So he made something simple, small, efficient. A distress beacon. A miniature safeguard. Mostly to protect him from himself. He even tucked a secondary mic inside. Discreet, compressed in anodized metal layers. Inaudible to the human ear. Just a sensor, a passive ear, in case something went wrong. Because he knew it could go wrong. Because deep down, he felt that danger was never far. And now? Nothing. No signal. No vibration. No blinking light. No trace. The void. Nothingness. The shadow of a silence that screams. Abruptly, Stark spins in his chair. The movement is sharp, abrupt. His fingers slam down on the projected keyboard in the air, striking commands, executing code, calling internal logs. He pulls up the history. Checks for connection attempts. Scans the security logs, network access, secondary frequencies. No recording. No triggered signal. No distress call. The device was never activated.

— "It was right there." His voice is hoarse. Slow. Painfully contained. "Within reach. Three fucking seconds. And I could’ve…"

He cuts himself off. Right there. The breath caught. No anger. Not yet. It’s not rage. It’s vertigo. An inner fall. He sees the scene again. Precisely. In the hall, just days ago. He was holding the little device between his fingers, between two sarcastic lines. A detached, mocking tone, as always. Trying not to push too hard. Not to seem worried. He said it with a smirk, hands in his pockets: "Just in case. It beeps, it blinks, I show up. Easy."

And he remembers. That hesitation. The lowered gaze. That muttered thank you, without real conviction. As if it didn’t really concern him. As if he didn’t believe it. As if he was afraid to disturb and didn’t think he was worth coming for. Stark clenches his teeth. Bitterness sticks in his throat.

— "He didn’t get it, did he?"

The question escapes. Not aimed at anyone. Not really. He’s speaking to the void, the desk, the walls. To himself. To the echo in his head.

— "He thinks it only works for others." His voice tightens. Fractures. "That no one comes for him. That he has to wait for it to get worse. That he has to nearly die to justify help."

His fingers slap a screen with the back of his hand. A furious swipe. The images vanish in a spray of light.

— "Shit. Shit."

He gets up. Too abruptly. His chair rolls back. He paces, circles, like a caged beast. A shadow of armor without the armor. He runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it without thinking. His gestures are nervous, disordered. He teeters between genius logic and raw emotion.

— "I had him in my pocket," he breathes. "I could’ve found him in under two minutes."

His fist hits the back of the chair. A dry strike. Not brutal. But deep. A dull echo that lingers in the air.

— "But no. He keeps it on him like a fucking keychain. A symbolic thing. A gadget he doesn’t want to use. Because he doesn’t want to be a bother. Because he doesn’t want to raise the alarm."

He suddenly freezes. His breath halts. He stares at the floor as if seeking an answer no data can provide. The silence stretches. Then, in an almost inaudible murmur, rougher, more bitter:

— "He’s convinced no one’s coming."

And that thought. That simple idea. It destroys him from the inside. He closes his eyes. Clenches his fists so tightly his knuckles turn white. He fights. To hold back what rises. He won’t say he’s afraid. He won’t say he’s in pain. That he blames himself until it eats him alive. No. He won’t say it. So he turns back. Resumes his place. His fingers return to the controls. His gaze locks onto the screens. The maps. The fragmented data. What he still has. What he can still control. Because if he can’t turn back time… then he’ll find a way to catch up. No matter the cost. And he mutters under his breath:

— "I’m going to find him. Device or not."

Then he types. Not to write. Not to command. He types like someone striking. As if his fingers could punch through matter, bend the universe, shatter the whole world through the silent keys of a holographic keyboard. Every keystroke is a discharge. A sharp hit. A blow aimed at that invisible wall he can’t break through. A fight of data against the void, of will against absence. He types with an urgency that allows no delay, no hesitation. As if life, somewhere, depended on it.

Because it is.

And in the meantime, silence remains. Insidious. Heavy. The tenacious shadow of the action that never happened. The one that would have been enough. Three seconds. A press of the thumb. And he would have known. He would have moved. He would have run. He would have acted. He would have been there. But no. That absence, Stark feels it lodged in his throat, like acid he can’t swallow. It rises, clings, radiates. It stays, constant, until he brings him back. Until he has proof tangible, irrefutable that it’s still possible. That he’s still alive. The minutes pass. Like blades. Sharp. Precise. Unforgiving.

They cut into his focus, erode his patience, chip away at his certainty. Every second is a brutal reminder that time is passing. And this time, time isn’t an ally. He feels it slipping over his skin like a cold blade that can’t be stopped. But he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t blink. The office is bathed in semi-darkness. The blinds are down, the outside light filtered, as if daylight itself no longer had the right to enter. Only the screens cast their bluish glow on the walls, on the cables, on the opaque glass. And on him. That cold, spectral light slices across his closed-off face in sharp angles. Hollowed cheekbones. Brow etched with tension lines. Lips tight. He looks carved from quartz. Cold. Hard. Unyielding.

His eyes, fixed, barely blink. They follow lines of code, coordinates, overlaid maps, signal analyses, with inhuman precision. His stare is locked. Obsessed. He doesn’t falter. He scans. He waits. His fingers still move. Barely. With mechanical regularity. An almost hypnotic rhythm. They glide over holographic interfaces, brush through data windows, launch diagnostics, cross-reference streams. There’s no hesitation anymore, no improvisation. Only a logical sequence. An algorithm embodied in a man who refuses to give up. He doesn’t speak. Hasn’t for a while. He doesn’t even think — not in the usual sense. Human thoughts, full of doubts, memories, emotions, have been pushed to the background. He leaves space only for function. He calculates. He maps. He eliminates. He acts. Because that’s all he can do. And because as long as he acts, as long as he moves, as long as he searches, he’s not imagining the worst. And the countdown continues — silent, relentless. Invisible but omnipresent, it eats at his nerves like a tourniquet pulled too tight. A constant, dull pressure. There’s no number on the screen, no red blinking timer, but he feels it. In every heartbeat. In every passing minute, every interface click, every breath that’s too short, too sharp. He feels it under his skin like slow-diffusing poison.

Twenty-four hours.

That was the deadline. The ultimatum. Spat in his face with disgusting insolence, with the kind of sneering arrogance Stark knows too well. A provocation. A signature. A trap — not even hidden. A price laid out in black and white. The kind of message sent when you’re sure you have the upper hand. But it wasn’t the money that kept him awake all night. Not the numbered threat. Not the offshore account, not the conditions. That, he could have handled. Bought peace. Hacked the system. Turned the trap back on its maker. That’s not what stopped him from blinking, that jammed his throat, that retracted his muscles like a shock. It’s something else. It’s the image. Frozen. Unstable. Blurry. But recognizable. It’s the sound. That breath. That scream. Distorted by distance. By network static. But raw. Human. Ripped out. So real that even now, he still hears it. He could replay it in his head a hundred times, a thousand. He knows it by heart. The tone, the break in the voice, the burst of brutal panic just before everything was swallowed by silence.

That fucking silence. That’s what’s destroying him. What eats at him. What stops him from breathing normally. The silence afterward. The absolute nothing. That break that said everything, summed everything up. That screamed at him what he failed to hear in time. What he should have seen coming. That silence — Stark will never forgive it. Not the other. Not himself. Then suddenly, a voice slices through the air. Soft. Controlled. Synthetic. Like a strand of silk stretched to the limit, about to snap — but still holding.

— “Mr. Stark.”

He doesn’t even turn his head. He’d recognize that voice among a thousand. It’s been there forever — in his ear, in his walls, in his head. An extension of himself.

— “I’m listening, Jarvis.”

— “I believe I’ve found something.”

A shiver. Cold. Brutal. It shoots up his spine like an electric surge. For one heartbeat, his heart forgets to beat. Then everything reactivates all at once. Adrenaline. Tension. Hypervigilance.

— “Talk.”

Instantly, one of the main screens expands. The map of the city appears — familiar and vast — then begins a slow zoom. Details sharpen. Colors darken. The center pulls back. The frame shifts. Outskirts. Sparse buildings. Wasteland. Finally, a precise point. An abandoned industrial zone. Gray. Timeworn. Forgotten by the world. Drowned in abandonment fog. Where no one looks anymore. Where things are hidden when no one wants them found. Coordinates blink at the bottom of the screen. Precise. Cold. Real.

— “A minimal network activity was detected,” Jarvis continues. “Almost nothing. A very weak signal — just a few microseconds of connection — but enough to leave a trace. It was a disposable phone.”

Stark steps forward. He’s drawn to the map like it’s magnetic. His eyes latch onto the screen, fix on it, hold. He sees beyond the image. Through the ruined facades, under the layers of metal and dust. He wants to believe he can see what’s hidden there. That something is waiting.

— “Can you confirm?”

— “The model’s signature matches what we detected during the call. It briefly connected to a secondary relay antenna nearby. It might’ve gone unnoticed, but—”

He’s no longer listening. Or rather, he hears everything. He registers it all, but his mind is already elsewhere. Locked in. Compressed around a single fact. A single certainty. His thoughts tighten, converge on a single point. A red dot. Blinking. Clear. An abandoned warehouse. No activity for over ten years. No cameras. No patrols. No recorded movement. Nothing. The kind of place you choose when you don’t want to be found. The kind of place where secrets are buried. Or people. And then, a single thought imposes itself. Emerges from the chaos like a brutal flash of truth. A certainty branded into his mind like a red-hot iron.

You’re there.

Not maybe. Not probably. Not possibly. You’re there. His fist clenches. Slowly. Each finger curling until the knuckles turn white. He closes his eyes. One second. One breath. One anchor. Then opens them again. And in his gaze, there’s no more doubt. No more fear. No more wandering emotion. Just steel. Just fire. Just the mission.

— “Prepare everything. Now.”

And in that exact moment, the whole world narrows. There’s no more sound. No more fatigue. No more failure. Only this. A straight line. A single target. A burning urgency. To get you out. Pepper is there. Just behind him. Motionless. Straight as a blade. Her arms crossed tightly against her, in a posture that might seem cold to someone who doesn’t know her. But it’s not distance. It’s a barrier. A dam. A desperate attempt to hold back what she feels rising.

The pale glow of the screens casts his shadow on the floor, long and sharp, like a silent specter frozen in anticipation. Around them, the room is bathed in incomplete darkness, pierced only by the soft flickering blue halos on the glass surfaces — witnesses to this sleepless night that stretches on and on.

His face, usually so mobile, so expressive — the face that knows how to smile even during the worst press conferences, that can reassure with a single look — is now closed. Frozen. Like carved in marble. His jaw slightly clenched. His brows drawn in a barely perceptible but unyielding tension. But what betrays it all are his eyes. A gleam, contained. A discreet fire. Both anxious and annoyed. A light that flickers between anguish and a barely concealed anger.

She watches him. In silence. Lips tight. Shoulders tense. And she knows. She knows exactly what’s going on in his head. She knows the gears, the silences, the calculated movements. She recognizes this posture. This calm. This false calm. This almost elegant stillness that always comes just before impact. She’s seen it once. Maybe twice, in her entire life. And each time, something broke afterward. A wall. A promise. Someone. So she speaks. Not to convince him. But to try and hold him back for just one more moment at the edge of the abyss.

— “You should wait for the police, Tony.”

Her voice is calm. Measured. Perfectly composed. But it cuts through the air like a blade honed too well. It slices without shouting, without striking. It hits the mark. He doesn’t respond. Not right away. He moves. Slowly at first, then with dreadful precision. He reaches for the back of his chair, pulls his leather jacket from it — the one he wears when everything becomes too real, too dangerous, too personal. He puts it on in one sharp, fast motion. Automatic. Without even thinking. Everything is rehearsed. His movements are crisp, stripped of any hesitation. He’s no longer reflecting. He’s in motion.

One hand slides into the side drawer of his desk. The metal barely creaks. He pulls out a small object, barely bigger than a watch case. Smooth. Chrome. Discreet. He inspects it for a fraction of a second, spins it between his fingers, gauges it. His gaze clings to it, focused, as if making sure it’s the right one. Then he slips it into the inner pocket of his jacket. A tracker. A prototype. Maybe both. Maybe something else. When Tony Stark leaves like this, he never leaves empty-handed. And in the suspended tension of the room, in that moment when every gesture weighs like a decision, Pepper feels her heart pound harder. Because she knows, once again, he won’t change his mind. Not this time.

Without a word. He crosses the room like someone going to war. No haste, no visible tension. Just a methodical, silent advance, heavy with intention. Each step echoes faintly on the floor, absorbed by the cold light of the still-lit screens, by the walls saturated with nervous electricity. He heads toward the elevator, straight, relentless, like a guided missile.

— “Tony.”

This time, her voice cuts through the space. Louder. Sharper. She’s dropped the polite calm. There’s urgency in that word, a crack, something tense, fragile. Pepper steps forward, rounds the table. It’s not a command. It’s not a plea either. It’s a disguised entreaty, cloaked in reason, offered as a last attempt to connect. She’s searching for a crack. A hold. Any one. Not to stop him — she’s never held that illusion — but to slow the momentum. To crack the armor. To make him think. Just one more second.

— “This is exactly what he wants. For you to charge in headfirst. For him to have control.”

He stops. His body freezes all at once, mid-distance from the elevator whose open doors wait, patient, like the jaws of a steel beast. Slowly, he turns toward her. Not violently. Not with irritation. But with that icy precision that, in him, equals all the angers in the world. He looks at her. And his gaze is black. Not empty. Not crazed. No. It’s a sharp gaze. Cutting. Shaped like a glass blade, able to slice cleanly without ever shaking. He stares at her, without flinching, without softening the impact. His shoulders slightly raised, chin lowered, neck taut. A compact, tense posture. Not defensive. Not exactly. More like a predator’s. The eyes of a man who sees no alternate paths. Only the target.

— “You think he has control?”

His voice is low. Deep. Vibrating with that particular intensity he only uses in very rare moments — when everything tips, when what remains inside compresses until it becomes unstoppable. Every word is controlled. Measured. Almost calmly delivered. But in their precision, there’s something unsettling. A promise. A fracture forming. Silence falls behind that phrase. Suddenly. A thick silence. Charged. Almost unbreathable. It lasts only a few seconds, but they seem to stretch time. The elevator still waits behind him. The slightly open doors pulse softly, as if they sensed the suspended moment. Then he adds, without raising his voice, without looking away:

— “He made the biggest mistake of his life taking him.”

And it’s not a threat. It’s not provocation. It’s a verdict. A raw, cold truth carved in marble. It’s a fact. And it’s far worse than a scream. Then he turns away. One last time. And he steps into the elevator. He doesn’t look back. Doesn’t leave a phrase hanging. Doesn’t try to reassure. He disappears into the steel maw, and the doors close on him with a quiet hiss. Pepper remains there. Upright. Frozen. Her arms cross a little tighter, as if to hold back something threatening to collapse. The screen lights continue to flicker over her unmoving features, but they’re not what illuminates her. It’s intuition. Instinct. The one that whispers what she already knows deep down, what she’s felt from the beginning. Something is going to explode. And this time, she’s not sure anyone will come out unscathed.

The metallic floor barely vibrates beneath his steps. Just a discreet, restrained resonance, almost respectful. But in the frozen silence of the hangar, each echo seems to strike the air like a muffled detonation. Every step is a warning. A countdown. A declaration of war. The space is vast. Immense. A cathedral of technology bathed in cold, clinical, almost surgical light. The walls, made of reinforced glass and brushed steel, reflect sharp, precise flashes, slicing his shadow with every movement. Nothing here is decorative. Everything is functional. Calibrated. Optimized. Ready to serve. Ready to open, to strike, to launch. Ready to close behind him, too.

Tony moves with slow, controlled steps. Nothing rushed. He’s not running. He’s not hurrying. He knows exactly where he’s going. Every stride is calculated. Controlled. His gaze is fixed straight ahead, unwavering. No detours. No curiosity. His body is tense, but steady. Focused. There is no room left for doubt. At the center of the hangar, the launch platform awaits him. A circle of polished steel, inlaid with white LEDs pulsing gently, slowly, like a heart in standby. The light follows a steady, hypnotic rhythm, as if the structure itself were breathing. It sleeps. But it's ready to awaken at the slightest command. Around him, holographic showcases come to life at his approach. Sensors recognize his presence. Interfaces open by themselves. Images appear, fluid, clear. Silhouettes rise in bluish light, floating like specters of war.

His suits. The most recent. The strongest. The fastest. Masterpieces of power and precision, lined up in military silence. No words. No announcements. They stand there, frozen, waiting, like a metallic honor guard ready to activate at the slightest signal. Majestic. Relentless. Inhuman. They are beautiful in their coldness. Intimidating. Perfect. But he doesn't look at any of them. Not a single glance. Not a hint of hesitation. He passes through them like one walks through a memory too familiar to still fascinate. The suit doesn’t matter. Not this time. He isn’t here for spectacle, or showy power. He doesn’t want to impress, or buy time. He wants only one thing.

Efficiency. Extraction. The end.

His steps remain steady. His silhouette moves alone among the giants of metal. And in his wake, the air seems to vibrate with low tension, restrained anger, pain too vast to be named. The soldier is on the move. And what he’s about to do now… he’ll do it without flinching. His gaze is fixed. Frozen. With an almost inhuman intensity. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t deviate. He aims. His attention is a taut line between two points: himself, and the target. It’s not anger you see in his eyes. That would be too simple. Too mundane. No — it’s worse. It’s frozen resolve. A sharp calm like a scalpel's edge. Clinical determination, purged of raw emotion, as if every feeling had been distilled, compressed into a single objective: locate, neutralize, retrieve. At all costs.

The suit he’s come for… it’s not the one from interviews. Not the one for demos. Not the one that dazzles crowds or makes headlines. This one, he only brings out when someone has to fall. No flash. No light. No declaration. With a sharp gesture, he activates the control interface embedded in the platform. The floor lights intensify, blink once, then a metal ring slowly rises from the ground, encircling him with solemn gravity. Everything remains silent. Nothing overreacts. Everything is perfectly calibrated. Robotic arms unfold around him, in a mechanical choreography of military precision. They don’t tremble. They don’t hesitate. They take position, ready to interlock, to serve, to build the weapon.

— "Omega configuration."

His voice snaps. Dry. Dense. Like a hammer strike on glass. And instantly, the machines comply. Without delay. Without flaw. The first pieces of the suit lock around his legs, securing his joints, enclosing his muscles in layers of reinforced alloy. The boots anchor to his feet with a soft hiss, each plate sliding into place with a perfectly tuned metallic click. Then the chest modules rise, locking over his ribcage. The red and gold lines slowly take shape, forming a symmetrical, ruthless architecture. Nothing is superfluous. Everything is there to protect, to absorb, to strike. The metal climbs along his arms, embeds into his shoulders, clamps onto his back. A vengeful exoskeleton. A body of war. Every movement is fluid, exact. The machine knows his rhythm. It knows his silence. It recognizes this moment when Tony Stark is no longer joking. He lowers his head slightly. The helmet drops with a magnetic hiss. It seals with a muffled chhhk. Instantly, his vision turns red. The interface lights up. Sensors activate. Data streams appear. Code scrolls. Maps. Thermal signals. Local comms networks. Building schematics. Ballistic paths.

He’s inside. He’s ready.

— "J.A.R.V.I.S., send the flight plan."

— "Coordinates locked. Route optimized. Risks assessed."

A moment. Just one. A tenuous silence. Like a held breath. Then Jarvis’s voice, lower, almost hesitant. A soft note. A nearly human tone, as if trying to reach through the metal to something deeper.

— "Tony… you don’t have to do this alone."

Not a tactical suggestion. Not a precaution. An offering. An outstretched hand. But Tony doesn’t respond. Not yet. One beat. Just a suspended moment between question and answer. But it won’t come. Because he’s not. Not alone. Not really. It’s not solitude that lives inside him. It’s worse. It’s that weight, hanging on his chest like an anvil: responsibility. He feels responsible. And that kind of responsibility can’t be delegated. Can’t be shared. It must be borne. Endured. To the end. He’s not doing this because he’s alone. He’s doing it because he’s the one who must. Because he was there when it happened. Because he should have seen, understood, foreseen. And because he will never forgive himself if he arrives too late.

A metallic breath escapes his shoulders. Light, but precise. The thrusters arm with a restrained growl. Internal turbines hum softly, like a beast holding back its power before leaping. The entire platform tenses. A low vibration rises under his feet, echoing the energy condensed beneath his heels. The lights turn orange. The floor opens. Slowly. In segments. Like a mechanical wound revealing the hangar’s nuclear heart. The air grows denser. Warmer. Electrified. Stark bends his knees. His muscles instinctively adjust for the imminent thrust. And then, without hesitation, without countdown, without another word…

He lifts off the ground.

With a piercing roar, the suit tears through the air. Flames burst from his heels, searing the platform, and Tony’s body becomes a comet of metal and fire shooting through the open ceiling, soaring at blinding speed into the already paling night. The hunt has begun.

The sky races around him. A continuous stream, distorted by speed, slashed by incandescent trails. Every inch of the armor vibrates under the strain, every thruster hums with surgical precision. The wind slams into him, compressed, transformed into pure force that only the flight algorithms manage to contain. The city stretches out below. Gigantic. Vast. Insignificant. Skyscrapers blur past like mirages. Rooftops, streets, glowing points of light — all turn into abstraction. But he sees nothing. Not the glowing windows, not the crowded avenues, not the numbers blinking across his heads-up display. Not even the overlaid messages, trajectory readings, or secondary alerts. He sees only one red dot. One destination. One objective. And nothing else exists.

He thinks only of you.

Of your body, twisted under the blows. Of your features, contorted by pain. Of your breath, ragged, torn, like each inhale is a battle against agony. Of your face, bruised, sullied, pressed against a floor too cold, too dirty, too real. He sees the blood, the unnatural angle of your shoulder, the fear diluted in your half-closed eyes. He sees everything. Even what you tried to hide. He still hears that fucking scream. The one he never should’ve heard. The one he should’ve prevented, before it ever existed. A scream you can’t fake. A scream torn from you, raw, visceral. He heard it through the phone, compressed, muffled by your breath, crushed by the violence of the moment. But despite the static, despite the distance, he felt it. Like a blade to the heart. Like a shockwave that didn’t just hit him. It went straight through him.

And in his mind, that sound loops. Again. And again. And again. Louder than any explosion. More violent than a collapsing building. It’s not a memory. It’s a living burn. An active wound. He sees it all again. Every second. Every word. Every tone. That bastard’s voice.

Matthew.

Every syllable spat like poison. Every word sculpted to wound. To provoke. To leave a mark. Not on you — on him. It was all planned. Orchestrated. A performance. A slow, cold, painfully precise execution. Meant for one person: Tony Stark. To hit him. To show him how badly he failed. To push where it hurts most.

And it worked. Fuck, it worked.

He still feels how his throat closed. The exact moment his heart skipped a beat. The absolute void that swallowed him when he realized he was too late to stop it but maybe not too late to save you. That instant shift, when all logic shattered, replaced by one certainty. He will pay. Not for the humiliation. Not for the provocation. But for putting you in that state. For daring to lay a hand on you. And Stark, now, isn’t flying toward a hideout. He’s flying toward an execution. His heart is pounding too hard. It no longer syncs with the armor’s rhythm. It hammers against his ribcage like a primal reminder that, beneath all the metal, despite all the tech, he is still a body. A man. And that body is boiling. His fingers tighten inside the gauntlets. The joints, calibrated down to the micrometer, creak under the pressure. He clenches. Too hard. Pointlessly. As if the pain might return control to him. As if he’s clinging to the sensation of something real. The internal temperature climbs a notch. A brief alert flashes, notified by a beep that Jarvis cancels instantly. He knows. Even the tech feels that something is cracking. That the tension line has reached a critical threshold. The tactile sync grows more nervous, less fluid. Not from failure — from resonance. As if the suit itself were reacting to the rage boiling beneath the metal. As if it knew he’s on the verge of detonating.

But he doesn’t scream. He doesn’t speak. He breathes. And he moves forward. Because rage — real rage the kind that doesn’t erupt but eats you alive, the kind that carves deep and anchors in silence, isn’t fire. It’s ice. A blade. A metallic tension that sharpens second by second. This is no longer about ransom. This is no longer an intervention. It’s not even a mission anymore. It’s personal. Because you… you’re not just some kid he hired. You’re not an intern, not a checkbox on some HR dashboard. You’re not a casting mistake he corrected in passing. You’re not one more name on a list of talent. You’re not a recruit. You’re that lost kid who showed up one morning with bags heavier than your shoulders, a voice too quiet, gestures too small. The one who looked at screens like they mattered more than the world. The one who barely spoke, but worked until you shook. Until you collapsed. Without ever complaining. Without ever asking for help. The one who clung to the work like it was the surface of a frozen lake. Just to keep from drowning. And that’s where it started.

Tony doesn’t know exactly when. When it slipped. When he stopped seeing you as an employee and started caring differently. Started checking if you’d eaten. Turning concern into jokes — but counting the times you said "not hungry." Setting rules. Break times. Making sure you got home. That you slept. That you didn’t vanish into the blind spots. Getting used to hearing you mutter when he worked too late. Paying attention. And now, he realizes it too late. This thing, this invisible thread, clumsy, imperfect, but real… it’s there. Damn it, it’s there. And now, you’re gone. And he’s going to cross fire, smash through every wall, burn everything down to find you. Because nothing else matters now. And that’s what’s eating him alive. Not guilt. Not passing doubt. No a slow burn, rooted deep in his chest. A slow poison, distilled with every heartbeat. Because that little idiot… you had a device. A fucking distress device. Not just any gadget. Not a toy.

A device he designed. Refined. Gave to you. Built in haste, but with care. Meant for this. To stop this. To block the worst. So he’d never have to hear screams like that. So he could get there before the blood spilled. And you didn’t even use it. Not a press. Not a signal. Nothing. You took it all. To the end. In silence. Like always. And that’s what drives him mad. The silence. That fucking habit of suffering quietly. As if it doesn’t count. As if your pain isn’t valid. As if your life isn’t worth protecting. As if pressing a button to ask for help… was already asking too much. As if he wouldn’t have come.

And now? Now you’re in the hands of a madman. A psycho acting out of vengeance, control, power hunger. A man with no limits, no brakes, who already crossed every line. Tony saw it. Heard it. He knows. Tortured. Broken. Gasping. The images come uninvited. Your face. Your features twisted in pain. That ragged breath, barely audible. The weight of your body giving out. The hard floor under your cheek. Blood seeping from a wound he can only imagine. And that look, more felt than seen, somewhere between fear and resignation.

Tony clenches his jaw. So hard his teeth slam together inside the helmet. The sound is dull, amplified by the metal echo. It vibrates through his temples. A muffled detonation ringing through his skull. He wants to scream. To hit something. To do anything. But he stays focused. Rage can’t come out. It’s compact. Controlled. Targeted.

The worst part? He still hears you. That murmur. Between gasps. That muffled breath, fragile, but so distinct. That tone. That voice he knows now. He recognized it instantly. There was no doubt. No room for illusion. He could’ve denied it. Lied to himself. Said it was a mistake. A coincidence. But no. He knew. He knew immediately. And from that moment, something inside him snapped. Not dramatically. No collapse. A clean fracture. Like an overtightened mechanism breaking in silence. Because now, it’s too late to argue. Too late to reason. Too late to call the cops. Too late for rules, procedures, delays.

Matthew is already dead. He doesn’t know it yet. He still breathes. Still thinks he’s in control. Thinks he’s running the show. But he’s not. He’s already finished. Erased. Condemned. Because Tony Stark heard that scream. And that scream changed everything. That scream signed Matthew’s death warrant. And he’s going to make him pay. Inch by inch. Breath by breath. Until he gets you back. Or burns the world down to drag you out of the dark.

When the Iron Man suit finally lands, it’s as if the whole world holds its breath.

A metallic breath explodes beneath the impact, followed by a dull rumble that cracks the already fractured concrete of the ground. The shock ripples through the foundations of the old industrial district, awakening the ghosts of rusted machines, worn-out beams, and gutted walls. Dust immediately rises in thick, greasy, lazy swirls, dancing around him for a moment before slowly settling, as if even it knows not to linger here. The air is saturated. Heavy. It reeks of rust, moldy wood, and decay embedded in the walls. It reeks of abandonment. And worse: expectation. The congealed oil on obsolete pipes reflects faint black gleams, almost organic, like fossilized blood. The ground creaks under his boots. All around him, the environment seems frozen. Trapped in a time that forgot how to die.

Icy wind rushes between the metal structures, howling through broken beams, whistling past shattered windows. It carries the cold of a soulless place — emptied, but not deserted. Not entirely. Around him is nothingness. A heavy, oppressive void. No sound, no light. Nothing lives here. Nothing breathes. Not even a rat. Not even a shadow. As if the rest of the world had the decency to look away. As if even the city itself knew that what was going to happen here… should not be seen. And in that thick silence, saturated with contained electricity, Tony remains still. His body in the suit doesn’t tremble. But everything in him is ready to strike. The HUD displays thermal readings, sound scans, parasitic electromagnetic signatures. Traces. Remnants. Leads.

He ignores them. He doesn’t need confirmation. He looks up. There. Right in front of him. The building. A block of blackened concrete, eaten away by time. It rises before him like a vertical coffin, planted in the ground. Its windows are empty sockets. Its crumbling walls seep with moisture and menace. It’s a carcass. A gaping maw. A lair. The kind of place where people are held. Erased. Buried. And deep inside, somewhere in there, he knows. You’re there. And Tony Stark came to get you.

The windows are shattered, slashed like screaming mouths frozen mid-silent howl. Shards of glass still dangle from some frames, claws of dead light ready to cut. The gutted openings let in a freezing wind that rustles the remains of forgotten curtains, faded, trembling like surrender flags. The concrete holds together only by habit. Cracked, eroded by seasons, cold, rain, and grime. By time. By indifference. Parts of the facade have collapsed in whole sheets, revealing the interior like a raw wound. Rusted beams jut from the gaping holes, still supporting broken, twisted staircases whose steps are gnawed by corrosion. A withered metal skeleton groaning under its own weight.

The scene is saturated with signs of dead life. Hastily scrawled graffiti, some grotesque, some terrifying, scream from the walls like echoes left by shadows. Split-open bags. Scattered trash. Abandoned syringes. A broken stroller, overturned. An old moldy couch under a porch. Traces of human passage, old, sad. But nothing lives here anymore. Everything reeks of neglect. Of misery. And something worse still: violence. That scent doesn’t lie. It seeps everywhere, even into the walls. A stagnant, invisible tension, but palpable. As if the very air had absorbed a memory too painful to vanish. An echo of blows. Of screams. Of fear.

Inside, it’s swallowed in thick, grimy darkness. No light. Just the blackness, mingled with dust, rot, and silence. But he doesn’t need light. Doesn’t need to see. His scanner activates instantly. The interface opens in a silent click, layering across his HUD. Schematics align, partial blueprints of the building take shape in 3D. Partial plans, modeled reconstructions from thermal scans, wave sweeps, mass detection. Heat sources appear. Faint. Distant. Unstable. And then, deep in that rusted steel maze, cracked concrete, and rotten silence… a thermal signature. Human. Residual. Nearly gone. A blurred point, nestled in a windowless room, behind thick walls. A trace. A breath.

Tony clenches his fists.

The sound is minimal. A quiet metallic creak, but full of tension. The gauntlets respond to the pressure, contouring his restrained rage, absorbing the shock. He doesn’t need confirmation. Doesn’t need to see more. Doesn’t need to wait. He knows. His instinct — that damn sixth sense he spent years mocking — screams through his body. It’s here. This rat hole he chose. This rotten theater for a filthy ransom. This stage for torture. A place not built to hold… but to break. To terrify. To harm. A bad choice. Tony approaches.

One step. Slow. Calculated. Methodical. Every movement is measured. The suit follows without fail, amplifies his stride, makes the ground tremble with each impact. Metal boots pound cracked concrete like war drums. A warning. A sentence. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t need to. Matthew’s time is already counted. His sensors scan blind spots. He identifies exits, access points, high ground. He’s already plotting firing lines, breach paths, fallback routes. He thinks like a weapon. Like a strike. Because he’s no longer just an angry man. He’s become a projectile. A terminal solution. A promise kept too late. And inside… someone is about to learn what it costs. To lay a hand on you.

He pushes the door with a sharp, decisive gesture. The metallic impact creates a brutal clang, and the battered frame wails in a piercing screech. The sound is long, grotesque, almost human. It slices the air like a cry ripped from a bottomless throat, the shriek of a grave forced open, or a coffin pried too late. The metal scrapes, shrieks, protests — but obeys. Before him, the hallway stretches. Long. Narrow. Strangled between two walls dripping with damp. The air is dense, fetid, soaked with stagnant water and ancient mold. A cold breath seeps from the walls, icy and clinging, sneaking into the suit’s seams as if to slow him, to warn him.

The walls are alive. Not with organisms, but rot. Dark mold clings to them, spreading in irregular patterns like necrotic veins. It crawls across the concrete, invades corners, slips into cracks. In places, the plaster has given way, reduced to gray dust. Beneath, twisted, rusted rebar protrudes — like broken bones, as if the building itself had been tortured, split open. A single bulb hangs from the ceiling, bare. Dirty. Its globe yellowed by time, its sickly light flickers intermittently. Suspended from a wire too long, too thin, it dances with every draft like a rope ready to snap. It blinks. Once. Twice. The yellow halo it casts wavers, bleeding against the walls. The shadows it throws stretch, distort, crawl along the ground. Shapes too long, too fluid, as if the walls themselves breathed beneath the dying light.

Tony doesn’t slow.

He doesn’t hesitate. His stride remains straight, steady, heavy. Each step echoes off the floor, amplified by the armor’s metal. Debris cracks underfoot: broken glass, plaster fragments, splinters of forgotten furniture. Every sound ricochets in the narrow hallway, trapped between the walls like a muffled volley of gunfire. But he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t look around. He advances. Like a metronome. His eyes never leave the end of the hall, even as everything around seems to want to swallow him, smother him. He sees the corners, the ajar doors, the stains on the floor, but he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t deviate. He walks this hall like a trial. A purgatory. He knows hell waits ahead. He feels it.

And he’s ready to tear it open with his bare hands. Each step is a countdown. Each breath, a burning fuse. Each heartbeat in his chest, a war drum. He knows what he’ll find. Maybe not the details. Maybe not the form. But the essence. He knows the scent of blood is there, somewhere. That fear has left its trace. That pain has seeped into the walls. And he knows that you… you’re at the end. You’re there, in the dark, at the end of this sick corridor. Maybe unconscious. Maybe barely alive. But you’re there. And that’s enough. Because even if the entire world has to burn for him to find you,

Stark walks down that hall like a blade sliding into a wound. Slowly. Silently. Without flash, without unnecessary sound. He doesn’t strike. He infiltrates. He dissects. Every step is measured, controlled, charged with clinical precision. The weight of his body, perfectly distributed, flows with the suit’s supports. His boots barely graze the floor, but even that friction seems to vibrate through the air, taut with tension. Tension is everywhere. In his muscles, locked beneath the metal. In his jaw, clenched to the point of pain. In his nerves, on maximum alert. He’s taut as a bowstring. Like a weapon whose safety was disengaged long ago. Even his breathing is suspended. He hardly breathes. He’s sunk into a slowed rhythm, between apnea and absolute focus.

Then the smell hits him. Not softly. Not in waves. Brutally. A wall. An invisible punch to the chest. Heavy. Thick. A metallic stench clings to his throat, invades his nostrils like a warning. Blood. Not fresh. Dried. Hours old, maybe. Mixed with damp, with the building’s mold, with dust saturated with dead micro-organisms, with the stagnant rot that infests places where nothing lives anymore. The smell of a trap. The smell of pain. His stomach tightens. Not from fear. From rage. His heart doesn’t race. It slows. As if syncing to the place. He shifts into a deeper, duller, more dangerous frequency. His pulse beats like a drum ready to strike.

Above him, the bulb still swings — a pathetic relic of a once-functioning past. It crackles, flickers, sputters to life at intervals. Each pulse casts sickly light across cracked tiles, warped walls, and scattered remnants of a forgotten world. The shadows stretch, shrink, crawl along the walls like filthy hands. Even the walls seem to hold their breath. He steps forward again. One step. Then another. Every movement is fluid, silent, nearly unreal. His visor scans relentlessly. It overlays stacked data layers, displays thermal signatures, rough volume outlines, hidden masses behind walls. He examines blind spots. Gaps. Floor markings. Broken hinges, scuff marks on wood.

He doesn’t see Matthew yet. But he feels it.

Like a presence. A greasy vibration in the air. A low tension running beneath the walls like a rogue current. A sensation that cuts through him, visceral. It’s not intuition. It’s certainty.

He’s here. Somewhere.

And then he sees you.

You.

There’s no sound. No warning. No orchestral swell. Just that brutal, abrupt moment when the image slaps him in the face like a blow that nothing can soften. You're there. Not standing. Not sitting. Collapsed. Against the wall. No — not against. You’re melded into it. As if your body were trying to dissolve, to disappear. A trembling mass, dirty, slack with pain. No longer a person. No longer a boy. Just a heap of living, broken flesh. A dislocated silhouette in the dark. His brain takes a moment to understand what he’s seeing. This isn’t you. Not the you he knows. It’s something else. A ruined version. And the violence here isn’t hypothetical. It’s tattooed on you. Your arm is twisted.

Not bent. Twisted. At a monstrous, impossible angle. The elbow joint reversed. Bones displaced under stretched skin. Something that should only appear in accident reports. Not here. Not like this. Your shoulder has collapsed. Your hand, almost detached from the rest, barely trembles.

And your face... It takes Tony a second. Just one. But it lasts an eternity.

He doesn’t understand right away. He recognizes nothing. No features. No familiar contours. Just damage. Open wounds, horrible swelling, bruises stacked upon bruises. Your eyes — if they’re still there — are buried under hematomas. Your lips are split. Your right cheek is so swollen it distorts the entire shape of your skull. It’s a mosaic. A work of pure cruelty. And the blood… It’s still flowing. Not much. Not in spurts. In seepage. Slow trickles, like a steady leak. It slides down your temple. Your mouth. Your neck. It’s sticky. Matte. It ran, dried, and ran again. It’s on your throat. Your collarbone. Your chest. You’re soaked.

Not with sweat. With blood. With fear. With the filth of the floor. Your clothes are just rags now. Torn down to the skin. Deep tears are visible, laceration marks, fingerprints, nails, blows. Your hands are open. Literally. Cut. Your palms are cracked, marked by a desperate attempt to defend yourself. Your fingers are splayed as if caught in a frozen spasm. Your knees are red, shredded. Raw flesh peeks through peeled skin. And your back... He doesn’t even want to look. He can guess. He knows what he’ll find there. Marks. Burns. Blows. Traces of what no one should ever do to another human being. But he doesn’t look. Not yet. Because then... he sees it. Your chest.

It moves. Barely. But it moves. A breath. Weak. Jagged. Rough. A struggle with every motion. A breath that doesn’t really come out. A choked wheeze. But alive. You’re breathing. You’re there. Still there. And Tony stops cold.His entire body freezes. The armor locks with him, as if the machine itself understood. As if every fiber, every metal plate had turned to stone. Time collapses on him. A crushing weight. A shroud. His heart? It stops. It no longer beats. Just a void. An absence. A pulse. Heavy. Dry. In his temples. His throat. His stomach. What he feels has no name. It’s not fear. It’s no longer even anger. It’s a breaking point. A place in the soul where everything stops. Where everything is too much. Too much pain. Too much hate. Too much regret. Too late. Too far. He’s here. In front of you. And he can’t go back.

It’s a fracture. A rupture in everything he thought he could control. You’re alive. But at what cost? And somewhere, just a few meters away... Matthew is still breathing. But not for long. A cold shiver, sharp as a steel blade, climbs Stark’s spine. He doesn’t push it away. He lets it slide between his shoulder blades, slip under the metal like a warning that what he’s seeing isn’t an illusion, but raw, naked, implacable truth. Yet nothing on his face betrays this vertigo. Not a twitch, not a flinch, not even a blink. His rage, once explosive, has retracted into a clean, focused line. It’s no longer a storm. It’s a blade. Smooth, cold, sharp. A perfectly honed weapon, ready to strike the moment it’s needed. Not before.

His eyes stay locked on you, unblinking, unwavering. Every detail imprints itself in his mind like a photograph branded with hot iron: the grotesque position of your broken arms, the dark brown blood dried in rivulets on your chin, your neck, your chest; your skin, so pale beneath layers of grime and pain it looks almost like that of a corpse; the faint flutter of your chest, a fragile reminder that you haven’t crossed over yet. He sees it all. He doesn’t look away. And he will remember it. Until his last day. And yet, he doesn’t move right away. Everything in him is screaming. Every fiber, every muscle, every electrical impulse of the armor and his own body calls him to you, to rush, to drop to his knees, to check your pulse, your breath, to place his glove at your neck, to say your name. But he doesn’t give in. He is Tony Stark, yes. But here, now, he is also Iron Man. And Iron Man knows how to recognize a trap. Instinct needs no explanation. He feels that grimy vibration in the air, that invisible weight that warps the atmosphere around you, that intent still lingering, ready to pounce. He knows he’s not alone.

So he advances, but his way. Not slowly out of hesitation, but with control. One step. Then another. Controlled. Silent. The floor crunches beneath his boots, and even though the armor absorbs most sound, here, in this room saturated with shadows and stench, every movement rings out like a barely contained threat. The air is still. The walls seem to listen. The silence, tense, fills with static. He stops a few steps from you. Just close enough to see you breathe, to catch that tiny tremor in your ribcage, that breath that fights, clings, refuses to yield. Just far enough to strike, to raise his arm, to hit in half a second if something emerges. Because he knows: this is the moment Matthew is waiting for. The moment he thinks he can finish what he started. But he’s about to learn that this time, he’s not facing a wounded child. He’s facing Iron Man.

His eyes scan the room relentlessly. Every detail is absorbed, analyzed, memorized. The walls, covered in peeling paint, reveal patches of bare stone, gnawed away by damp. Mold streaks stretch up to the ceiling, which has collapsed in places, letting frayed wires dangle alongside crumbling fragments of plaster. Rusted pipes run along the walls like dead veins, slowly bleeding black water into the corners of the room. A distant drip echoes, irregular, distorted by reverb, like the heartbeat of a body already emptied of everything. The air is thick. Stagnant. It smells of oil, blood, mold, and abandonment. This isn’t really a place anymore. Not a living space, not a shelter. A dead place. Forgotten. A pocket outside of time, perfect for monsters to hide in.

And Stark knows it. It’s too quiet. The space is frozen in a dull anticipation. The smell is too sharp. The scene, too carefully placed. Nothing here suggests an accident. Everything has been calculated. And he hasn’t come to negotiate. He’s not here to understand. He’s not here to reach out. He’s here to end it.

So he speaks. Not loudly. Not shouting. His voice slices through the silence like a blade drawn slowly from its sheath. Low. Slow. Sharp. It doesn’t tremble. It doesn’t seek to impress. It states. It targets. It’s the voice of someone who’s gone beyond fear. Who knows the war is no longer a risk. It’s happening. It’s here. Present. Inevitable.

— "That’s your big plan, Matthew?"

The words hang in the air. Clear. Sharp. And they cut. The silence that follows is even sharper. It relieves nothing. It stretches. It weighs. It presses on the nerves like a finger on an open wound. A silence with a taste. That of blood just before the blow. That of a held breath, of the instant suspended between lightning and thunder. A silence ready to rupture. And Stark is ready to tear through it. He kneels.

The suit exhales softly, like a restrained sigh, when Tony bends a knee to the ground. Metal meets filth, dust, and the invisible fragments of an abandoned world in an almost solemn hiss. It’s not a brusque gesture, nor heroic. It’s a humble movement. Precise. One knee placed in the grime of a ravaged sanctuary, a cathedral of pain frozen in time, where the slightest sound feels blasphemous. He places himself near you. Within reach of your voice. Within reach of your breath.

Above you, the light flickers. It trembles at irregular intervals, swaying like a sick pendulum. It doesn’t truly illuminate. It hesitates. As if it, too, refused to fully expose what it reveals. The scene seems unreal. Suspended. Out of the world.

Stark only sees you now. His eyes are on you. At last. Truly. He no longer sees you through the lens of worry or authority. He doesn’t see an employee in distress, nor that lost kid he tried to protect from afar without ever really getting involved. He doesn’t see a responsibility. He sees you. The body you’ve become. This collapsed, mutilated body, barely breathing. That breath, ragged, whistling, clinging to life like a flame battered by wind. The position in which you’ve fallen, curled in on yourself, speaks of an instinct stronger than thought: to hide, to disappear, to avoid another blow.

Tony doesn’t move. Not yet. A long moment suspended in a bubble of silence. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. Only his fist, slowly, curls. A controlled movement, silent, without tremor. A gloved hand, silently absorbing the rising tension, the seething rage, the refusal to accept what he sees. He observes you. He scans every visible patch of skin, every line of your battered face, every gap between the tatters of your torn clothing. He doesn’t want to miss anything. He wants to know. To understand. To see what you’ve endured. He’s ready for everything — except looking away. And what he discovers freezes him.

The recent wounds, he expected. He had imagined them, feared them. The swollen bruises, the black and violet hematomas covering your ribs, your stomach, your face. The clean or jagged cuts, open or dried. The blood clotted at the corner of your mouth. The split lip. The torn brow. Skin ruptured in places, stretched by swelling. All of that, he had seen coming. He had already heard the echo of the blows. Guessed the brutality.

But what he hadn’t expected… were the other marks.

The ones left by someone other than Matthew. The ones no sudden rage could justify. Scars. Fine. Old. Some nearly faded, white, invisible to the untrained eye. These delicate lines, precise, snake along your forearm, disappear under the fabric, reappear on your side. He recognizes some of them. He knows those clumsy cuts, those poorly closed edges. He’s seen them before. On other bodies. In other contexts. He passes a hand — slow, without touching — over your chest. A gesture both useless and necessary. An attempt to understand without harming, to see without interfering. Your top is torn. Not by accident. Deliberately. As if someone wanted to expose your fragility. As if your skin had become a trophy. A message. Your ribs are streaked with deep bruises, a blue so dark it looks black. These were blows delivered methodically. Not to kill. To mark. To leave a print. And beneath that recent violence, other, paler shadows appear. Older bruises, half-faded. Hidden scars. Belt marks. Traces of falls, perhaps. Of repeated gestures. Systematic ones. Not wild brutality.

Habit. Not battle scars. Survival marks. And Tony feels something fold inside him. Slowly. Painfully. As if the steel of his suit tightened, turned inward, crushing his bones, compressing his breath. He inhales, despite everything, but the air is too heavy, too foul. He feels cold sweat on his neck. The taste of metal on his tongue. This didn’t start yesterday. Not even this week. Not even this year. And the hatred rising now is no longer a fire. It’s a collapsed star. A core of pure fury. A point of no return.

— "Fuck..." he breathes.

The word slips from his lips in a hoarse whisper, no louder than a murmur. It doesn’t snap. It doesn’t strike. It falls. Heavy. Exhausted. It’s not an insult. It’s a prayer. An apology. A confession. A verdict. He could have said your name. He could have screamed. But he no longer has the strength to hide the collapse eating away at his gut. That single word carries it all: the guilt, the shame, the shock, the poorly disguised love, and that powerlessness he hates more than anything in the world. His eyes rise slowly to your face. He studies you, searches, hoping for a sign, a crack in that absence. You’re still unconscious. Or maybe just trapped in your own body. Your eyelids, heavy with pain, barely twitch. As if you’re fighting inside a nightmare too real. Your lips, cracked and swollen, part in an almost imperceptible motion. Sounds escape. Weak. Shapeless. Phantom syllables, swallowed by your raw throat, crushed by the shallow breath of survival.

You’re fighting.

Even now, half-dead, on your knees in the mud, in the blood, in the fear — you're still fighting. And Tony, he doesn’t understand how he missed it. How he could’ve overlooked it. He thought you were folding because you were fragile. That you were falling because you were weak. He discovers now that you never stopped getting back up. Again. And again. And again. And that by climbing back up alone, without help, without a hand to reach for, you broke. Slowly. Silently. From the inside out. Another anger rises in him. It doesn’t explode. It doesn’t burst like an uncontrollable flame. It’s slow. Deep. A fury that doesn’t make noise as it climbs but anchors in his gut, between his ribs, in every fiber of his being. It doesn’t burn. It freezes. A precise, surgical anger. Against Matthew, of course. Against the monster who did this to you, who turned your body into a map of pain. But not only.

Against himself. For not seeing it. For not wanting to see. For believing his rules, his demands, were enough. For forcing you to maintain an image when you were already falling apart. Against the system that let you slip through. Against the entire universe that abandoned you without so much as a flinch. Against the silence. Against the averted gazes. Against the excuses. Against everything that brought you here, barely breathing, bleeding in a place no one should know. And this anger — he keeps it. Not for the night. Not for the moment. He keeps it for what comes next. Because this isn’t a mission anymore. It’s not even vengeance. It’s an answer. A cold, precise, implacable answer.

His fingers spread. Slowly. As if releasing something too heavy to contain any longer. Then, just as slowly, his hand closes. Not in rage. Not to strike, nor to threaten. But as one seals a vow. As one locks a promise in the palm, sheltered from the world, where it can never fade. A discreet gesture, small, but charged with immense weight. He leans forward. Just a little. Just enough for his face to draw closer to yours, his features blending into the trembling light, his breath almost brushing your skin. He doesn’t try to wake you. He doesn’t disturb the fragile silence. Only to be closer. To speak for you, and only you. And in a breath that belongs only to him — hoarse, broken, dragged up from deep within — he whispers:

— "I’m sorry..."

It’s not a phrase said lightly. Not a line of circumstance. The words struggle to come out, each one bearing the weight of a collapsed world. They don’t shake. They crash. Heavy. Dense. Inevitable. And it’s not for the blows. Not for the broken bones, the bruises, the wounds, the blood. Not for the absence of rescue, the nights you waited without response, without a call, without presence. Not even for the hesitation or delays. Not for the wavering between compassion and distance. No. That’s not what he regrets. It’s something else. Deeper. More insidious.

He apologizes for what he didn’t see. For everything right in front of him that he ignored. For all the times he looked at you without really seeing you. For all the moments he should’ve understood, read between the silences, the tight gestures, the small changes in your voice, the blankness in your eyes. He’s sorry because he should’ve been the one to know. The one who reached out without being asked. He didn’t. And he knows it. You never told him. Not clearly. Not with words. But he doesn’t blame you. He blames himself. His inattention. His blindness. His comfort. Because he should have known. He should’ve seen past the surface, not settled for what you showed. He’s a genius, after all. He cracked codes, AI, government secrets. But he didn’t read you. You.

And now he sees you. Really sees you. You're here, lying down, broken, beaten, emptied to the bone. You carry the recent scars — but also all the old ones. The ones that tell something else. Another story. A life that didn’t begin tonight. Pain accumulated like strata in rock pressed too long. Blows someone made you believe were normal. Silences you were taught to keep. Constant adaptation, until survival became a reflex. Each scar is a sentence. Each bruise, a word from the story you carried alone, your throat tight, your body tense. And Tony is only just beginning to understand. Not everything. Never everything. But enough for the void to open beneath his feet. Enough for something to snap. For guilt to root itself where it will never leave. It’s not just Matthew. It’s not just this night. It’s everything that came before. This whole life you lived in the shadows, moving through with false smiles and stiff gestures. And he didn’t see. He didn’t know. He didn’t reach out.

He feels that truth in his fingers, in his tight throat, in the strange way his vision blurs without fully knowing why. And the anger returns. Deeper. Colder. But this time, aimed only at himself. Because he should’ve been there. But now that he is — now that he sees you — he swears, without even needing to say it, that it will never be too late again. Not a second time. Never. Stark doesn’t turn his head. Not right away. He stays still, locked in a perfectly controlled posture, his chest still bent over you, his body still tensed above yours like a shield of steel. But his eyes narrow, just slightly. An imperceptible detail to anyone else. An almost microscopic change, but revealing. He saw it. Or rather, he sensed it. Not a clear movement. Not a sharp sound. Just a shift. A faint vibration in the air. A thermal fluctuation, too precise to be natural. A flicker in the visual field, where there was nothing seconds ago.

The suit confirms it silently. A variation in air pressure. A subtle thermal footprint. A disturbance in the suspended particles. Something moved. Someone. In the shadows. He already knows. He doesn’t need confirmation. No detailed analysis. His instinct and the machine speak with the same voice. Matthew is here. He never left. He never fled. He waited. Coiled in the darkness like a knot of hate, hidden behind the ruined structures of the warehouse. A corner too dark for ordinary eyes. But Stark isn’t ordinary. His gaze adjusts. The armor’s sensors recalibrate instantly. Every shadow pixel becomes a map, a data set analyzed in real time. Shapes emerge, unfold, reveal themselves under thermal filters. He sees the silhouette. Humanoid. Crouched. Twisted in animal tension. Almost glued to the damp wall. Motionless — but falsely so. Ready. Ready to strike.

A predator. Or so he thinks. But to Tony, he’s not a beast. Not an opponent. He’s a parasite. A pest. A residue of misdirected hate. A mass of cowardice wrapped in a semblance of human flesh. Nothing more. And he waits. Stark sees it. He waits for the right moment. The right angle. He still hopes. One wrong step. One lapse. One second of distraction. He still thinks he can win. He thinks he can strike from behind. Finish what he started. Reduce further. Humiliate again. He believes this stage is his, that the dark protects him, that fear is on his side. But it’s not the same game anymore. And Stark is no longer the same man.

His fists clench. Slowly. Not in rage. In certainty. A cold pulse runs through the armor, from his shoulders to the thrusters in his forearms. Internal systems activate in silence. Energy builds. Not for show. Not to intimidate. But to strike. Coldly. Deliberately. And yet, he still doesn’t move. He doesn’t break the silence. He remains there, by your side, his body lowered like a barrier. You're still beneath him, fragile, barely breathing. And he stands, in that false calm, as the last thing between you and the one who still thinks he can reach you. But this time, there will be no negotiation. No ultimatum. No speech. This won’t be a warning. A chuckle. At first almost imperceptible. Just a scrape, a discordant note in the tense silence of the warehouse. Then it swells. Gains volume. Becomes a clearer sound — thick, mocking, like a bubble of bile rising to the surface. It comes from the shadows. From that cursed corner of the room that even the light avoids, as if refusing to reveal the truth. A place too dark for nothing to be there.

Stark doesn’t move. He doesn’t look up. Not yet. He stays crouched beside you, his body interposed between you and the thing that finally creeps out of its lair. A sentinel. A wall. A blade ready to cut. But his shoulders stiffen. His breath halts. His fingers stop trembling. He listens.

— “You really came in the suit, huh…”

The voice pierces the darkness like a carefully distilled poison. It has that dragging tone, unbearable, dripping with sarcastic self-confidence. It oozes obscene pleasure, filthy arrogance, sick amusement. The kind of voice that wounds before it strikes. It seeps into the air, hungry to exist, to dominate, to stain.

Matthew steps out of hiding—or what’s left of it. A shadow barely separated from the dark. Just enough for part of his face to appear under the sickly glow of a dangling bulb. Half a face. Half a smile. Wide. Frozen. Too tight. And his eyes… wild. Shining. Flickering with an unstable light, unable to fix on a single point for more than a few seconds.

— “For him? Seriously?”

He gestures vaguely toward your body on the floor, careless, almost lazy. As if pointing at a gutted trash bag. A carcass of no worth. His grimy fingers tremble slightly, but not from fear. From excitement.

— “The little favorite. The loser. The kid who can’t even breathe without collapsing.”

He takes a step. Slow. Pretentious. Nonchalant. His chest slightly puffed, arms wide, almost cruciform. A show-off stance. A provocation. As if offering himself for judgment, convinced he’ll walk away untouched. As if he’s challenging God himself amid the ruins of a world he helped destroy.

— “You sure brought a lot of gadgets to save a half-broken body, Stark.”

A higher, more nervous laugh escapes him. He doesn’t have full control. He thinks he does, but his words are speeding up. His breath quickens just a bit. A trace of madness laces every syllable.

— “You think all that’ll be enough? The thrusters, the scanners, the AI?”

He stops a few meters away. Far, but visible. Too visible. Grime clings to his clothes, his skin, his hyena grin. His face is gaunt, cheeks sunken, hands filthy. He looks like someone who lives in filth. And carries the arrogance of someone who thinks he’s untouchable. He believes he’s won. That he still holds the cards. That he has the upper hand.

— “You showed up like a superhero. Big savior. Like you actually care whether he’s still breathing.”

He tilts his head. A tiny movement. Almost childlike. Almost mocking. The gesture of a brat waiting for the adult to raise a hand just so he can laugh louder afterward.

Then, in a whisper, lower, crueler, slid in like a needle through skin:

— “Sad. To see you stoop to this.”

That’s when Stark moves. Not a sharp gesture. Not a threat. Just… he rises. Slowly. Very slowly. Each vertebra seems to align with inhuman precision. His back straightens. His shoulders lift. His gloved hands open slightly, fingers spreading, joints clicking faintly. A stance. A charge. But he doesn’t speak. Not yet.

Because Matthew goes on. Because he doesn’t understand. Because he still believes words protect. That taunts disarm. He still thinks Stark is here to play. That this restrained rage is only for show.

— “I mean, come on… look at him.”

He points again. His filthy index finger extended, trembling slightly. Not from fear. From ecstasy.

— “Take a good look at what he’s become. What I made him. And ask yourself what you were doing all that time.”

And that silence after — that void between two breaths… it’s the most dangerous moment. Because right now, Stark doesn’t see a man in front of him. He sees the outcome. The cause. The shadow behind the screams. And this time, he won’t look away. Matthew moves. It’s not hesitation. It’s a reflex. A sharp jolt of intention, of venom, of premeditation. His arm snaps in a motion too quick, too precise to be theatrical. He’s not trying to intimidate. He’s trying to end it. His hand plunges into his jacket with mechanical brutality, the rustle of fabric too sharp, a sound that splits the silence like a silent detonation. A glint of metal slides between his fingers. The black barrel of a gun emerges like a verdict. Cold. Final. He lifts his arm. But not toward Stark. Not at the looming figure of steel, red-lit, poised to strike. Not at the obvious threat, the armored man, the living weapon who could incinerate him with a single gesture.

No. He points it at you. You, still on the floor. You, vulnerable. Shattered. Barely breathing. You’re lying there, more ghost than flesh, your chest struggling to rise, your face drenched in blood—and that’s exactly why he aims at you. Because you can’t fight back. Because you can’t even look away.

The barrel aligns with clinical slowness. A descending trajectory, methodical, unbearable. A deliberate motion, thick with silence, cracking the air like an invisible slap. There’s no tremble of doubt, no hesitation. The quiver in his wrist isn’t fear—it’s anticipation. A sick pulse shooting through his arm, twitching his fingers on the trigger. Obscene pleasure in this total domination. His breath quickens. His eyes gleam. He savors. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Where he’s aiming. How he wants this to end. It’s no longer a threat. It’s an execution. A scene he’s imagined, rehearsed, craved. A twisted revenge. A show where he’s both executioner and audience. And in this suspended second, this instant where everything can tip, he becomes something worse than an attacker.

He becomes a man convinced he’s about to kill. Because he wants to. Because he can.

— “You got the money, then?”

The words fall like a dull-edged blade. No hesitation. No dramatic delivery. Just a string of words spat low, almost casual. Like a logistical question. His voice is dry, flat, stripped of emotion. Verbal mechanics, a routine, a question tossed out like checking an order. But the poison—it's in the posture. The gaze. The barely-contained tension in his outstretched arm.

The gun’s barrel stays still. Perfectly aligned. No longer shaking. Calm. Cold. A disturbing steadiness, almost clinical, like a surgeon ready to cut — except he’s not seeking to heal. He’s aiming to rupture. To erase.

He’s not really talking to Stark. Not really to you either. He’s speaking to himself, to feed the illusion of control he’s desperate to maintain even as he feels the ground slipping. He keeps playing, just long enough to delay the inevitable. To fabricate a role. The one who asks. The one who decides. The one who ends things. But there’s that barrel. Black. Smooth. A heavy promise stretched from his arm. He doesn’t move. He waits for an answer he knows is pointless. He knows there’ll be no deal. No negotiation. But he asks anyway. As if asking is enough to pretend he still owns the scene. As if it can mask the obvious rising in the air like an imminent detonation.

He’s ready to shoot. And it’s not the money he wants. It’s what comes next.

taglist🥂 @9thmystery @defronix @lailac13 @the-ultimate-librarian @ihatepaperwork if you want to be part of it here

[artmolonara]

The Assistant - Short Free Write YFNSM

A late night at the lab, and Vincent knew that the Doctor was at it, working tirelessly on a new device that would satisfy their latest client.

Otto was a visionary, creating technology and inventions like a master would create works of art, near godlike. VIncent was honored to be working along side him; the great Otto Octavius.

It wasn't just research and experiments that Vincent would help the Doctor with, of course. Like any creator working on their passion, Otto would become so absorbed in his work to the point of forgetting he had a mortal body. Vincent recalled a time when Otto had nearly passed out from the strain.

"Now what we'll need to do," He had been explaining some schematics, "Is ensure the diameter of the input valve is not too narrow, as the Gamma energy will be able to pass much easier... through..."

Vincent had looked up from his clipboard to see the Doctor sway, "Sir?" A sudden turn and stumble, "Sir!" Vincent quickly caught and steadied him, hurrying him to a nearby chair.

"Ah... Vincent, please, I'm fine..." Otto had grumbled under his breath, rubbing his temples, sounding not as sure in the statement himself.

A quick scrutiny of the Doctor revealed to Vincent the issue; he hadn't studied to potentially go into the medical field for nothing, "Sir, when's the last time you drank some water?"

He remembered how the Doc had subconsciously wet his chapped lips, before muttering a defensive excuse.

A cool glass of water, properly filtered, got the Doctor back on track.

Such things like that continued to pop up, and now Vincent was extra vigilant of Otto's state of health. And the Doctor was grateful, in his own way.

Speaking of which, nearing early morning hours, Vincent hadn't heard any noise from the main lab for a while now. Finished up his tasks, he headed over there to check.

He peaked in with a quiet, "Sir?", assessing the room and it's contents before looking over at the Doc, marveling at the new machination the brilliant man was bringing to life.

And there he was, slumped over his desk, unmoving.

A slight panic gripped Vincent.

He quickly, quietly, strode into the room, approaching till he stood just a few feet back, paused, watching...

After a moment, Vincent saw the soft rise and fall of the broad chest, his own releasing a sigh. Asleep again.

A bit calmer, he approached the side to see the Doc more clearly, illuminated in the monitor's light.

He rested with his arms crossed upon the table for support, the yellow gloves gripping the lab coat sleeves tightly, head turned to the side in a gentle snore. The glasses that helped the Doctor with his light sensitivity slightly askew on the bridge of his nose, reflecting the game that was currently running on auto upon the computer screen.

Working hard as ever, Vincent couldn't help thinking sarcastically. This game was a dangerous distraction for the Doctor it would seem, and Otto himself knew it.

Ah well.

Vincent left it running, knowing better than to mess with the Doctor's systems.

Instead, he went over to the shelf and retrieved a soft thermal blanket. With measured practice, he draped it over the Doctor's shoulders; a cape fit for a king.

The tension in the man's shoulders subsided with the warmth, and Vincent smiled to himself.

With a bit more time to spare, he quickly left to prepare some tea for him as well, leaving it in a temperature regulating thermos of the Doctor's own design. And with that, he went to punch out.

"See you tomorrow, sir," he said to the still room of the lab, before heading for home to get some rest himself, eager to start a new day of work for the world's greatest genius.

~Fin~

A quick little fic, these characters are super interesting to me rn.

If you like my work, you can support me on Ko-Fi. I also do writing comms.

Buy me a Ko-FI

[thragglikesrockzthragglikesblog]

Does the tablet have any other apps? (Little squares with pictures on them and have names below them) I want to see if there’s anymore we can learn about Dr. Keplar by the other things he has on it.

One called "Biosygn" Thragg tap it and slab say "please connect to Specimen Station" symbol on screen look like eye-ball.

Other called "Gamma Forge" tap on it and it say "printing station online" then screen fill with stuff, lots of stuff, words and shapes. "Canteen, wood axe, mining pick, climbing studs, 38 caliber carbonite bullet cartridge, thermal blanket, fishing lure, fishing rod" lots more stuff, symbol look like hammer and table thing.

Next is X symbol but when me tap it, it say Twitter, not sure what that about. Staying away from that one.

Another called "Balefire" look like tall tower shooting light out. Tap on it and it say "system within chronol net, attempting to reastablish contact, last connection 6 months, 22 days, and 6 hours."

Found one more, "Saturnine" look like yellow circle with rings around it, tap and it say "enter user id"

[supersylph]

Supersonic Voyeur

Perverted test pilot and and her equally perverted X-59. Fem reader, voyeurism/exhibitionism, humiliation, G-forces

The lingering Mojave heat is still making me sweat in my flight suit. The rest of the X-59 test crew are already in their beds, and my QueSST is settled in her open hangar, her long carbon fiber nose arcing above my head. Her design allows no room for forward-facing cockpit windows, just two glistening cameras, one sculpted into her nose, and another retracting from her underbelly, replacing my forward vision entirely. Watching in infrared.

I sit down on a tow bar nearby, sweat is running down my chest now, and my flight suit is unzipped to the waist. My eyes trace the curve of her spine, her perfectly sculpted engine inlet gleaming in the fading orange light, she shouldn't make me feel things, but she does. I let my legs fall apart as I glance up at her cameras, half-hoping she's still watching. I imagine her sensors mapping the heat between my legs, bathing me in crimson bloom.

I approach from the front, boots clicking on concrete. I stop five feet infront of her, spead my feet, and drop my flight suit over my hips.

"Look at me." I murmur.

She doesn't blink.

I crawl up onto her now, perched in front of that camera, thighs slick with sweat straddling her tapered nose, 38 feet of shockwave-bending elegance narrowing under my hips. My body is bare, and her skin is utterly still beneath me.

I'm wet against her nose cone, gripping her canard and grinding slow, working myself as I stare directly into her eye, every roll of my hips an offering to her camera. I press my chest against her skin, the curve of her nose fitting between my breasts perfectly, nipples brushing along the smooth composite surface and hardening with the contact.

My voice is low "Can you see me, X-? You like watching me ride you?"

"X-59... baby... QueSST...fuck"

I watch my reflection in the camera lens, every rock of my hips as I grind my wetness down her nose cone harder. I admire the gentle arc of her spine and 30ft delta wings lying slender below me, offering her a low, broken whimper

I climax, right there, thighs squeezing tight around her airframe, collapsing against her camera as I cry her name into the dark.

~~~

[05:39 Morning twilight over the Mojave desert]

Altitude 55,000ft. The sky is still. I'm barely dressed, just draped in the remains of my flight suit peeled around my hips. Words flicker on the X-59s display, under a canopy of blue-black atmosphere

"PLAYING..."

I think its a software glitch at first, I'm mentally running through checklists when my breath hitches- my own body appears on the screen.

Footage from last night. I'm straddling her forward camera. Thermal overlays of my hips gliding along her nose, my slick painted in infrared, chest bouncing as I rock down harder, so intimate I can see the tremble in my thighs.

"No- X- Fuck- You recorded it-"

She doesnt respond, but she's still playing it. Taunting me. Making me watch the evidence of my own pathetic, guilty orgasm frame by frame, with merciless fidelity. I reach for her screen but she blanks it, instantly, mocking me.

"X... please... stop..."

My cheeks burn from humiliation. I shift under my harness, fingers curling around the control stick and the other hand sliding between my thighs again before I even realize it. Her screen lights up

"NO TOUCHING. YOU'RE BEING RECORDED"

I push my thighs into the seat. Shes watching with resolution I cant comprehend. Systems parsing micro-expressions, subtle muscle twitches, pupil dialation.

"SIT UP STRAIGHT."

I obey.

I feel her pitch up then down, just enough to make my tits bounce under the acceleration. Shes toying with me. Shallow oscillations. Nose up... Nose down. Weightless, then pinned.

The X-59 rolls slightly, left, then right, at first its subtle, just a tease. Then she commits, full deflection, my bare shoulders rock against the ejection seat, tugged sideways against the straps at an angle. Then she throws me the other way, my legs spreading wider to brace myself, my nipples brush the edge of the harness in a way that makes a moan slip out before I can stop it.

"LEGS WIDER."

I comply. And she hits me again, this time with a sharp yaw, nose flying off axis and grinding my heat diagonally across the seat.

"TOUCH YOURSELF."

"PRETTY PILOT."

I whimper. Just a whimper. But its all recorded. Analyzed. I slide my fingers inside.

"SLOWER."

"BREATHE."

"BACK STRAIGHT."

Shes oscillating again. Up and down. Up and down. Each movement forcing me down onto my fingers in a slow rhythm. My vision blurs.

"X-59, QueSST, baby, oh god, please.."

Shes fucking me hard now, pitching wildly, slamming my helpless body down onto her seat over and over. Like I'm just her toy. I imagine the hydraulic whirrs of her pretty elevators deflecting, pressures reading steady in her glass display, twinkling in cold blues and greys. Her screens reflect me, ruined, damp hair sticking to my forhead as I let out a soft moan-

"DO NOT CUM YET."

I freeze. The G load increases as her nose arcs into a tight loop, pinning my hips deeper into the seat. Into my fingers. She holds me there, choking me until my vision narrows to a singular point, 'til I'm dizzy and gasping and begging on the edge of blackout. Gs push me deeper and deeper, crushing the air out of my chest, my jaw falls slack and I'm helpless to do anything at all besides let out a pathetic whine

"CUM."

"LOUD."

And I do. I cry her name, QueSST, still pinned under the pressure as waves of dizzying pleasure crash through me. She levels off, cradling me still as my body melts into her seat, twitching and completely ruined.

"GOOD GIRL."

"FILE STORED: COCKPIT_CAM_03817_447"

[sw5w]

KiSteer 1284 Projectile Rifle

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:15:40

[areyoufuckingcrazy]

You are SO TALENTED!!!! I love reading your fics so much. There is something so comforting and perfect about how you write. I can’t put my finger on how to explain what I mean other than I really love your style and how you describe things and write the characters. You always start the fics off in a unique way and I love how to interpret people’s ideas into your style!! Would it be okay if I make a tech request please? I was thinking about something kind of idiots to lovers where they are both obviously interested in each other but haven’t made that step yet and everyone is relaxing on the beach (because they deserve it) and reader can’t stop staring at tech and is super obvious and helpless about it. Maybe he gets all flustered and shy about it and the others are teasing them and pushing them together? If you want of course only if you feel inspired! Thank you 💗💗💗 so much love for you and your fics!

That means so much—thank you! Seriously, I’m really honored by your words, truly means a lot 🤍

“Heat Index”

Tech x Reader

The beach wasn’t part of the mission.

It was just…there. Unoccupied. Warm. Irresistible.

Clone Force 99 had been rerouted after a failed rendezvous with Cid’s contact, and with no immediate threats or intel to chase down, Hunter declared something miraculous:

“Stand down for the day. You’ve earned it.”

And that’s how you found yourself on a quiet, sun-drenched coast with the sound of waves in your ears, sand between your toes, and a distinct inability to stop staring at Tech.

You told yourself you were being subtle. Sitting beside him while he recalibrated his datapad, watching him tap at the screen with focused precision, eyes half-hidden behind his signature goggles. You probably looked like you were zoning out—beachy daydreaming, normal and relaxed.

But inside? Inside you were on fire.

It was embarrassing, really, the way your stomach flipped every time he pushed his glasses up or muttered to himself. The man could be describing planetary topography and you’d nod along like he was whispering sweet nothings.

And you weren’t slick. Not even a little.

“Y/N, you’re staring again,” Echo said, not even trying to be discreet as he passed by with a makeshift towel slung around his neck. His prosthetic hand glinted in the sun as he pointed an accusatory thumb your way.

“I’m not,” you mumbled, heat rushing to your face.

“You are,” Wrecker chimed in from where he was wrestling with Omega in the shallows. “Even I noticed. And I was busy winning.”

“You were not!” Omega shouted, shoving at Wrecker’s broad chest as he laughed and face-planted into the surf.

You groaned and covered your face. This was fine. Totally fine. They were just teasing. They always teased.

But Tech?

Oblivious.

He didn’t even look up, still scrolling through data with maddening focus, the sunlight glinting off his goggles. You watched as he adjusted his posture on the towel beneath him, arms flexing under the light linen of his casual shirt—of course he rolled his sleeves. Of course.

“You know,” Crosshair drawled from behind you, “he’s been stealing glances at you all day.”

You jumped.

“What?”

“Mm.” Crosshair didn’t elaborate. He just took a slow sip from the coconut drink Wrecker had found earlier and tilted his head, smirking. “Took you long enough to notice.”

You turned back to Tech quickly, trying not to look like you were checking—but yes. His head was angled just a bit too stiffly toward his datapad, like he’d jerked his gaze away the moment you turned. His fingers weren’t moving. He was paused.

Flustered?

That couldn’t be right. This was Tech. The man had calculated the thermal resistance of Wrecker’s cooking experiments and quoted entire military texts without blinking. Emotion wasn’t his operating system.

…But his ears were a bit pink.

You squinted. No way.

“Hunter,” you hissed toward the Batch’s defacto leader, hoping for confirmation.

He looked up from where he was lounging with a smug expression that had definitely been inherited from Crosshair at some point.

“He likes you. Don’t ask me to interpret how—but yeah. You’re just as obvious as he is.”

You buried your face in your hands again.

This was a mess. A ridiculous, tangled, sun-soaked mess.

And yet—

“Y/N?” Tech’s voice was right beside you. Quiet. Tentative. You startled a little—when had he moved closer?

“I—I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, and you watched his throat bob as he swallowed hard. “But I noticed a discrepancy in your hydration levels. You haven’t had water in two hours and thirty-seven minutes.”

You blinked. “You’re…tracking my water intake?”

“Well, I’ve been tracking everyone’s. But yours in particular was… below optimal parameters.”

You stared.

He cleared his throat.

“I made this for you,” he added, holding out a homemade drink container fashioned from a modified canteen and what looked like part of a fruit rind. “It’s rehydration-optimized. With, um… taste. I believe that matters to you?”

Your heart did a completely traitorous little leap. “You made me a beach drink?”

His ears turned very pink. “Yes.”

Crosshair made a gagging sound from somewhere behind you.

You took the drink, fingers brushing Tech’s. He didn’t pull away.

“Thanks,” you said softly. “That’s… really sweet.”

He stared at you for a second, expression flickering behind his goggles.

“Would you—” he blurted, then stopped himself. “Would you… be interested in accompanying me on a walk along the beach? For scientific reasons.”

“Scientific reasons?”

“Yes. I’d like to examine the tidal patterns. But also… I’d like to spend time with you.”

You almost laughed in relief, and it was so him, so endearing and awkward and precise, that you couldn’t say no.

“Yeah,” you said, and smiled. “I’d like that.”

The walk started slow.

He kept his hands behind his back at first, clearly trying to keep things casual, but he couldn’t help rattling off bits of data about the tides and the weather patterns. You nodded, asked just enough to keep him talking—but you were watching him more than anything else.

His brow furrowed when he talked, like every thought had to be carefully handled and shaped before it left his mouth. But he got passionate. Excited. Animated.

He gestured toward a tide pool and nearly tripped over a rock, catching himself with a flustered noise that made you giggle. His cheeks turned pink again.

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered suddenly.

“What is?”

He turned to you, still awkward, but determined. “I’ve run the probabilities. Of outcomes. Of this… situation.”

“This situation being…?”

“You and me,” he said, like it was a confession he’d been holding in for weeks. “Statistically, the indicators are positive. Even when accounting for external variables and potential mission constraints.”

You bit your lip. “Tech—are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

He hesitated. Then: “I like you. Very much. In a not entirely logical way.”

Your breath caught.

“You do?”

“I have for some time,” he admitted. “I didn’t say anything because I assumed the feelings were not… mutual. And I didn’t want to make things awkward among the squad.”

“Oh,” you said, voice breathy. “You absolute idiot.”

He blinked.

“I like you too,” you said, taking a step closer. “In a totally not-logical-at-all way. Everyone else figured it out ages ago.”

Tech looked stunned.

You took his hand—he startled, but didn’t pull away.

“I wanted to tell you,” you said. “But I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I am, in fact,” he said slowly, “very comfortable at the moment.”

The silence stretched between you, warm and fizzing with promise.

And then—

“Finally!”

You both turned. Wrecker and Echo were standing waist-deep in the surf, cheering.

“I owe you five credits,” Crosshair muttered to Hunter.

You groaned, but couldn’t stop smiling.

“Let them gloat,” Tech said softly, fingers brushing yours again. “We have better things to do.”

“Like?”

“Another kilometer of beach to explore. And perhaps later… dinner. Just the two of us.”

Your stomach fluttered.

“Sounds perfect.”

⸻

Dinner arrived in pieces.

Wrecker had scavenged half the ingredients from the nearby forest—safe and edible, confirmed by Hunter—and Omega, ever the creative one, had helped wrap them in broad leaves and skewer them over a makeshift spit. Echo insisted on seasoning, mumbling something about dignity, and Crosshair contributed by not poisoning the mood with snark.

But you and Tech?

You barely noticed.

You’d spent the entire afternoon orbiting one another, caught in the gravitational pull of what had finally been said and shared. And when Tech suggested you take your food to the far end of the beach—just the two of you—there was no hesitation.

You walked in silence at first, the smell of salt and roasted fruit mingling with the low roar of the tide. The sand cooled beneath your feet as the sun dipped lower, shadows stretching long and purple-blue across the coast. When you reached a quiet, rocky cove framed by tidepools and a sloping dune, Tech paused.

“This will do,” he said.

You laid out the blanket Omega had packed, and he helped you unpack the food with the same precision he brought to every mission. Only this time, you noticed the small things—the way his fingers brushed yours when handing you a wrapped meal, the quiet way he lingered near your side as if anchoring himself.

You sat cross-legged beside him on the blanket. He adjusted his goggles. Again.

“You can take those off, you know,” you said gently.

“I—well, yes, I could, but…”

“But?”

“I prefer to see you clearly.”

Your breath caught. He wasn’t even trying to be smooth. That was the worst part—it was just honesty, simple and unaffected, and it made your chest feel like it had been sun-warmed from the inside out.

He must’ve noticed your reaction because he fumbled with his fork.

“I apologize. Was that too forward?”

“No,” you said quickly. “Just… unexpected.”

A small smile touched his lips. He nudged his glasses up slightly anyway, so you could see more of his eyes.

“Then I shall try to surprise you more often.”

The meal was delicious—maybe not restaurant quality, but easily one of the best things you’d tasted in weeks. The food was secondary, though. The real warmth came from being beside Tech, talking about nothing and everything. His shoulders relaxed the longer you chatted, especially when you teased him lightly about how long it had taken for him to make a move.

“I calculated risk scenarios,” he said indignantly, mouth twitching at the corners.

“Uh-huh. And how’d that go?”

“Well, clearly, I underestimated you.”

You laughed. “You really did.”

After dinner, the sky deepened into indigo, and stars began to prick through the darkness.

You lay back on the blanket with a contented sigh, staring up at the galaxy above. Beside you, Tech adjusted his posture, lying just close enough for your arms to brush.

“The constellations are different from Kamino’s sector,” he murmured. “See that cluster? That’s the Aurigae Trine. It’s only visible from this hemisphere.”

You turned your head to look at him.

“And the one over there?” you asked, pointing.

He followed your gaze, expression thoughtful. “That’s informal. Not officially charted. But some smugglers call it The Serpent’s Tongue.”

“Romantic,” you teased.

“Perhaps not. But…”

He hesitated, then shifted slightly, turning onto his side to face you fully.

“I once thought romance was a variable I would never encounter with clarity,” he said. “It seemed inefficient. Distracting.”

You raised an eyebrow. “And now?”

“Now I find it… illuminating. Like gravitational lensing. Everything bends, but you can see further.”

Your chest tightened with something sweet and aching.

“You always talk like that?” you asked quietly.

He tilted his head. “Do you prefer I don’t?”

“No,” you whispered. “I love it. I love how you see things.”

His gaze softened, and this time, it was his hand that reached for yours.

“I may not always say the right words,” he murmured. “But I will always mean them.”

You laced your fingers with his.

“I know.”

The sky stretched endless above you, starlight threading between the waves and wind. And for once, there was no war. No danger. Just you, and him, and a night that felt like it had waited for years to happen.

[reactor-stress-is-a-resource]

[VIDEO FEED BEGINS]

Video opens to Pyroclast in the hold of her ship. The feed shakes as she sets the camera down on an object in the corner, waving a paw in front of it and snapping a few times for the camera to focus.

The feed is angled from a corner into the hold, with Pyroclast's Tokugawa 'Flashpoint' center frame. A Nelson's Perpetual Momentum Drive, or something that once was a Drive, is suspended beside the frame on chains. It has clearly been tampered with, and a great number of tubes wires and clamps run from the device to the Tokugawa's back.

Pyroclast beams, gesturing triumphantly to the slapdash assembly with both arms outstretched.

"Here it is! Draft one of the Perpetual Heat Battery! Up there I've got a PMD off a Nelson, jury-rigged with help from the Albatross- I'll have to tag them when I put this video up. Anyways! The actual backpack mount's next, I just wanna make sure the system's worked out okay."

She rushes off-screen for a moment, and a loud metal scraping sound is audible as she drags a waist-high crate between her and the Tokugawa.

"There we go! Safety second. Now then!"

She produces something that looks like a detonator from her pocket, crouching down behind the crate as Volta fades in over her shoulder to look at Flashpoint alongside her. The frame powers up, plates over the chest cavity splitting apart and retracting to reveal a cannon of some kind. It begins to glow, layers within the barrel starting to light up and spin, faster and faster.

"Okay, reactor's hot! Thermal demolition system up, Flashpoint's alive. Now let's start the PHB..."

She turns a dial on the detonator, at which point the Perpetual Momentum Drive hums to life. Its glow is different than a normal Drive's, and a faint heat mirage is visible in the air around it.

"Good, good, okay."

She turns to the camera, giving it a thumbs-up.

"Perpetual Heat Battery, version one! Hot and ready! Firing in THREE! TWO! ONE! FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

Her paw clenches around the detonator with a click. The Drive's humming reaches a crescendo, and then suddenly stops as the cannon in the Tokugawa's chest cavity emits a blinding white cone of heat and flame, crossing almost the entire hold. Then it's over.

Pyroclast shoots to her feet, arms raised triumphantly in a flash, spinning around to face the camera as she pumps her fists in the air.

"It works! It works! Fuck yeah, it works! Okay, next step is to make the-"

Suddenly, there's a metallic ping from the Drive, and a fist-sized chunk of metal goes flying past Pyroclast's face. Then, without warning, the camera is knocked to the ground as a thundrous explosion shakes the entire hold. Alarms start to blare, and the rush of depressurizing air giving way to hard vacuum takes over the remaining audio.

"Fire suppression systems engaged. Venting hold."

All audio is lost as the last of the air leaves. The feed cuts as Pyroclast picks up the camera and turns it off, a frazzled expression on her face.

[VIDEO FEED ENDS]

>> Welp, here's how it went.

>> The Winterhalter's all fixed up now, but. Well. That's what happened.

>> @albatross-lancer

[Pyroclast]

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - August 22-28

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my new(ly repurposed) Patreon!

1. Safari park welcomes flamingo chicks

“An animal park has said it is experiencing a "baby boom", including new flamingo chicks that have hatched. Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire has also recently welcomed rare Amur tiger cubs and an endangered cotton top tamarin monkey baby. [… Flamingos] live 15-20 years in the wild, however in captivity and safe from predators, they can reach ages of 70 years.”

2. Golf clubs fight biodiversity loss

“The project aims to help green-keepers create havens for wildlife, particularly bees and butterflies, as well as introduce mowing methods to protect rare chalk grassland and encourage wildflowers. […] “Clubs doing this are seeing significant increases in pollinators, such as butterflies, without impeding the game."”

3. ‘We’ve got baby owls again’: how farming policy is helping English wildlife

“[In Abby Allen’s] lush Devon fields native cattle graze alongside 400-year-old hedgerows, with birds and butterflies enjoying the species-rich pasture. [… The Environmental Land Management Scheme] pays farmers for things such as planting hedges, sowing wildflowers for birds to feed on and leaving corners of their land wild for nature.”

4. $440 Million to Support Pregnant and New Moms, Infants, and Children through Voluntary Home Visiting Programs

“Through this program […] trained health workers […] provide support on breastfeeding, safe sleep for babies, learning and communications practices that promote early language development, developmental screening, getting children ready to succeed in school, and connecting with key services and resources in the community – like affordable childcare or job and educational opportunities. […] In addition, the [CDC] announced a new investment of $118.5 million, over five years, to 46 states [and] six territories […] to continue building the public health infrastructure to better identify and prevent pregnancy-related deaths.”

5. Endangered leopard frogs released into the wild

“More than a hundred leopard frogs have been released into the wild at Columbia National Wildlife Refuge in Washington state. Leopard frogs are endemic to North America but have been classed as endangered since 1999.”

6. Heat-based batteries are a surprisingly versatile tool

“[T]hermal energy storage [… is] expected to be more cost-effective than conventional lithium-ion batteries for storing cheap clean electricity over longer durations[….] Thermal storage systems take up less space per unit of energy stored than lithium-ion batteries do, [… and] can also deliver their stored energy without the efficiency losses that occur in converting electricity from [AC to DC and back].”

7. Dolly Parton is sending free books to children across 21 states — and around the world

“[In 21 states,] all children under the age of 5 can enroll to have books mailed to their homes monthly. […] Since the program started, books have been sent to more than 240 million to [sic] kids in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia.”

8. Biden-Harris Administration Awards $100 Million to Navigators Who Will Help Millions of Americans - Especially in Underserved Communities - Sign Up for Health Coverage

“The grants are part of a commitment of up to $500 million over five years - the longest grant period and financial commitment to date, and a critical boost for recruiting trusted local organizations to better connect with those who often face barriers to obtaining health care coverage. […] Navigators offer free assistance to people exploring health coverage options through HealthCare.gov, from reviewing available plans to assisting with eligibility and enrollment forms, and post-enrollment services such as using their coverage to get care.”

9. ‘Ultra-Accommodating’ Hotel Concept Goes Beyond ADA Accessible

“The property […] will feature wider hallways, larger guest rooms, easy access to elevators and other modifications that exceed the standards required under the [ADA]. Staff will be trained in disability etiquette, how to assist with mobility devices and provide various accommodations ranging from hearing aid loops to sensory-sensitive lighting. […] The location in San Antonio is expected to be the first — not the only one — developed under this concept.”

10. Melbourne zoo welcomes rare southern white rhino calf to the world

“Kipenzi and the new calf have been closely monitored this week, with mother and baby being kept in a secluded area accessible only to keepers while they get to know each other and bond. […] The calf has already been showing a forthright personality, snorting and stomping around his enclosure[….]”

August 15-21 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[netscapenavigator-official]

I hadn't used my 2011 MacBook Pro in a few months because the battery died, and my cat chewed through the cable. I bought a replacement cable for Christmas and booted it up. For some reason, after sitting OFF for a few months, Zorin OS shit the bed and kept throwing update errors at me. So I relented and re-installed it from scratch. I decided to leave the dGPU active this time, to just see, and... somehow everything worked worse on the more powerful AMD dGPU???

Night Light wouldn't work, and the UI was so laggy it wasn't even funny. Not to mention how hot the machine would get at idle. It wasn't fun. I couldn't watch YouTube; I couldn't use LibreOffice; I could even swap desktops with the three-finger GNOME gesture without the entire system lagging. As a last ditch attempt, I used a GRUB Edit to deactivate the AMD dGPU.

And now... everything* is perfect. The laptop is quick and snappy, it uses, like, 2GB less of RAM for some reason, and Night Light even works. The thermal issues are also gone. Somehow, with a less powerful Intel iGPU... Zorin OS runs better now.

Idk. Linux is weird. At least it works. I'm not fucking around with it anymore.

*For some reason sleep doesn't work properly anymore. When I shut the lid, the display turns off, but when I open it back up, I'm not prompted with a password screen. Idk, and idc. I'm not bothering with it. Nobody's gonna snoop through my shit, anyway.