#tw: allusions to a child's death.

[brutalmasks]

' it's quite funny how the world works. suddenly, killing makes you a villain if you're not some high end fancy pants ordering men to die in the name of honour. a flag is a stupid think to waste your life over, but, it's made glorious and beautiful and honourable. nobody tells you about the rage that comes with it, with the understanding that war is man-made violence and, therefore, it isn't a part of the natural cycle of life and death. '

bunny mask's first thought when the other first began speaking that the other had a very powerful way of commanding her attention; a trait that bunny mask herself found interesting, for this meant whoever possessed it oozed confidence, in her opinion. and although the spirit herself would willingly listen to anyone given the chance, it made her wonder about who this woman beside her was already. or what all she had experienced, as it were, since life events seemed to often have a tendency to shape who you are. bunny mask was clad in her usual attire at the moment; her mask in the shape of a rabbit obscuring the upper part of her face completely, with only wide slits cut out of it near the top to accommodate her glaring white eyes, and the dress she wore a nearly pristine looking white color.

and i say nearly because of the soot that was smeared across her collar. however, she thought she knew what she was getting into whenever she followed the sight of smoke in the distance, so this was of little importance to her: what was important to bunny mask was seeing if anyone needed her help here. it was usually a bad sign whenever a deep, dark smog that screamed ' fire ' had created a wall of it's own in the sky. but it turned out that she was wrong. this place was clearly pillaged and completely torn apart brick from brick, as the places that people used to call home were reduced to piles of wood scorched by embers. a thick layer of ash seemed to have formed in the midst of the landscape, and bunny mask could feel in her gut that something terrible had happened here.

perhaps as part of a war, as mya highlighted. the spirit could feel her heart drop while the other described her perspective on the sometimes militaristic and bleak nature of humanity. no, was it her experience? bunny mask thought that the way she phrased her words made this all sound very personal. a frown tugged at her lips as she bent down to touch the ash, letting it run through her fingers. mya was right — this was nothing to be proud of. she looked up at the other from the side, then, and spoke, ❝ you are right. i sincerely hope you were not here to witness what had happened here, for that would be a horror that you would likely never forget. but the men who do things like this, who ordered their own to risk their lives to ruin other's; they simply refuse to think they are the villains of anyone's story because they believe they are doing it for a noble purpose. though they are certainly not. ❞

bunny mask stood up and took a deep breath as she surveyed the land before her. there looked to be no survivors here, so the people here were either all killed, or maybe some had escaped. the latter might've been wishful thinking but bunny mask wanted to have some hope that this place was not turned completely into a mass grave, ❝ was that what this conflict was born from? the excessive pride of a nation, who are of the mind that they're righteous and good, but commit barbaric acts such as this one? ❞ she had to tell herself to take a deep breath now or she would likely lose herself to anger. and that would not be a pretty sight, for neither her, nor the other who stood just an arm's length away from her. in and out. bunny mask could feel the claws of her right hand dig into her palm as she took a moment to inhale, then exhale, but she didn't care.

everything about this was wrong. bunny mask let her eyes become half-lidded with the sense of sorrow that had come over her suddenly, like a tidal wave. it was just as she feared. mya had experienced this for herself, ❝ it is not natural. that, i must agree with. i am of the belief that we are fated to leave this world at a specific time and the lives of the humans that died in this town were stolen. they still had much to experience, to love. and from what i am hearing, you were forced to partake in the wrongful robbing of people's lives yourself, were you not? through war. an organized form of slaughter, glamorized to appear necessary by the masses, where there is no true victor. where everyone loses something and you are left feeling full of rage because of what you were coerced to do. ❞

the chill running through bunny mask's bones only intensified when she saw it on the ground. a doll, abandoned by it's owner, within the ash. bunny mask's voice became low, ❝ i am sorry. i am... so sorry. ❞

[mad-hunts]

okay, so i know this is a million years late, BUT we're just going to act like i just posted that post about how i believe barton would actually come to peace with death rather quickly in the event that he was dying okok / j [ahahhh, i'm just messing around with you all (': but anyways, allow me to get back into talking about it; like i'm sure you all are reading this for LOL]

nahhh, but i honestly was working on this for a little bit longer than i thought because i wanted time to really try to explain my thought process the best i could, you know? because that is not the kind of thing that people would probably expect from a villain character... though, with good reason, of course. and the fact that barton is actually afraid of dying does make it a little more unexpected, in my humble opinion. however, i promise that everything about this will make sense by the time i'm done explaining it.

so, no matter the scenario, i've always seen barton as a character who's very stubborn and who's resolve and/or goal to 'fix' as many people as he can is the right one most if not all the time. this is, of course, due to a variety of factors: one being that this sort of ideology was introduced to barton at a young age, and he never learned how to 'break out of it' so-to-speak (though he knew it was harmful). another one is that he's been exposed to a lot of terrible sights over the years and believes that humanity isn't inherently good, like batman, for example.

no. i'd say that barton is much more pessimistic and tends to expect the worst out of people automatically. as a result, this has kind of implemented the delusion upon him that 'well, if everyone's already bad anyways, then who's to say that these people don't in some way maybe deserve it?' so yeah. that second thing is a lot to unpack there on its own, i believe, but that is the general basis of what kind of character he is.

but here comes the double-layered part of it: barton had never wanted for his life to turn out this way, with him self-sabotaging and hurting people all throughout it. he sees 'normal' people after all, especially those who are happy and often becomes jealous of what they have, in fact. barton had fallen into the unfortunate trap of growing up in a household that praised him for hurting people... and when he was introduced to winslow, it felt like he'd gotten whiplash because he was nothing like wesley.

he couldn't break out of that terrible way of thinking, but of course, one can't blame everything on their past and must take responsibility for what they're doing. barton in this scenario of dying chose to go down a path of becoming a god damn serial killer just like his father; effectively becoming similar to him in some ways even though he didn't want to. and at his time of dying, i think that barton would have this moment of clarity that is a bit complex, but that i'll try to explain the best i can here.

this would be that he hasn't done any 'good' in his life much, if at all, but in the event that barton had time to spend before he died and was aware he would... he could do one good thing, and that would be to — although this wouldn't even begin to make up for everything he put them through, barton wouldn't be expecting that or their forgiveness — make his kids promise to break that cycle of violence in their family because they could still make something good of themselves.

they'd still have their whole life ahead of themselves, after all. barton wouldn't be claiming that it'd be easy or anything like that, but he'd want for them to be able to live a simple life like he secretly wanted to. and it'd be alright if they only thought of barton once in a while, or even never again because he knows that what he's done to them can't be undone. but the thing about death is that it makes you realize stuff like what you put out into the world is what you'll get back; and you have to do this life right, because you only get to live it once.

so, yeah, he wouldn't have any unreasonable expectations that he'd be making up with them or act like he's a saint now because he's doing this. but he could at least do this one thing for them after an adjustment period because facing your own mortality is probably scary, as i can imagine.

and it'd make anyone really think about what they want their legacy to be. and does barton want his to be his kids continuing the family business by killing people + thus condemning themselves to a life of staying awake late at night, just like him, thinking about what could've been? no, though it might take him some time to realize that, too.

now, if barton was dying suddenly and didn't have much time to do anything, then things would be very different. if any of his kids were present for it, then he'd tell them not to cry and that they'll be okay without him. probably better, actually, because barton believes he's never been the 'nurturing' type. but he'd ask them to grant a request for him and that would be to live the rest of their life/lives in a way that they could be proud of. with anyone else, i think that barton would come to peace with it by saying that he's done a lot of things he regrets (again, a moment of clarity) but one of the best things he ever did was have his kids.

so, telling them to pass on a message for him that he loves them and accepting it because he's just caused suffering + as well felt like he'd been suffering for a good portion of his life, so maybe it was just... time for him to move on? that'd be the way he'd react to that. which is... yeahhh, it's got a little bit of a kick to it, but once again; complexity is basically barton's middle name and he's not going to expect anyone to treat him any differently for doing this.

even in death, i don't think barton would want pity and would likely laugh at himself for thinking this would 'never happen to him,' as a matter of fact. but he would be genuinely calm and sentimental in a way that's very rare for him. so, yeah.

this was one long ass analysis, but if you made it to the bottom, i want to say that i appreciate you and love you to the bottom of my heart MUAHHH!! y'all are amazing and i just want to say RPing with my moots on here is always a blast for me 🩷 plus, i'm so honored that you're interested in my probably overcomplicated (LOL i kiddd, but IDK. he might be) OC that i made based off of a comic book batman villain that's appeared in like... two batman comics, haha. it really makes my heart happy.

[maevesheart]

only angel (2)

FINNICK ODAIR X FEM!READER

note: wasn’t originally planning on making a part two to this but it just seemed so unfinished??!?! and i love ruthless reader idk she’s a queen

summary: through your alliance with katniss, you and finnick rekindle some buried feelings.

wc: 5.2k

tw: violence, death, brutal!!reader, blood, allusions to forced prostitution

only angel (1)

SEVEN YEARS EARLIER, THE 68TH HUNGER GAMES

Brutus and Enobaria sat in front of you and Mace, your district mate.

They reminded you of strategies that you had been taught your whole life, ensuring that as long as you two played into the Capitol’s hands, you’d get plenty of sponsors and come out alive.

Mace and you had never been close back home, but you saw him in the shopping centers, had some mutual friends. It was someone familiar, and even though your two mentors spent more time perfecting your wielding of knives and crocodile tears, you hoped Mace could somehow make it far in the games. Like you knew you would.

Enobaria and Brutus had introduced you to the various other Career Tributes, taking their time to butter up the other mentors, ensuring a ticket for your survival.

You were small compared to the other tributes, even the girl from Twelve was bigger than you.

But you trained, and you trained hard, showing off the various knife and sword tricks that had been engraved in your brain since you were a child.

Enobaria helped with your endurance, shocked by how fast you were. She had instructed you to not show that off to the other tributes, don’t give too much away.

After the private sessions with your mentors, you were stronger, faster, and more agile than Mace could even dream. You almost felt bad, the way Enobaria and Brutus were setting him up for death.

But, at the end of the day, only one can make it out alive.

Enobaria was strategic, determined for you to win. She instructed you to not show too many strengths in the private session with the Gamemakers, just enough to get a respectable score for someone from a Career District.

You followed her instructions to a tee, refusing to be one of the 23 fallen.

For the interviews, Ceasar laughed at your innocent comments and jokes, complimenting the head piece you wore, noting how it looked like a halo.

“Beautiful, like an Angel,” he smiled, the crowed cheering in agreement.

You giggled, smoothing down the uncomfortable golden dress they had sewn you into.

The crowd roared with your unwavering confidence, the arrogance paired with your baby-face and innocent smile was enough to send them into a fit of convivial.

It was just too easy.

The night before the games you had snuck out of the floor for Two, going up to the rooftop in hopes of having a moment to yourself.

You perched on the ledge, a small nightgown barely covering your shivering body.

You closed your eyes to relish in what could possibly be your last moments of peace, before being snapped from your trance by footsteps echoing.

You whipped around, teeth barring and senses on high alert. You were already acting like the wild animal Enobaria had been training you to be.

“Not in the arena just yet,” a smooth voice sounds out, a boy a few years older than you coming into view.

You recognized him as Finnick Odair. He had won a few years back, and was now returning as a mentor.

You ignored him, turning back to the outline of the Capitol.

He approached you slowly, leaning his body against the glass railing you were propped against.

You looked up to him, tired-eyes meeting his, somehow seemingly sparkling.

“Unfortunately,” you spoke, your mouth in a straight line. Enobaria had introduced you to him during the parade, but his tributes were not ally-material.

He laughed at your response. You stared at him, unamused.

“Feisty,” he smirked, watching you look away from him and back to the skyline.

“Not really in the mood to talk about my fate,” you said, his eyes still burning two holes into the side of your face.

His smile dropped slightly, having once been in your position himself.

He reminded himself you were only 15. A year older than he was when he won.

He had only won 3 years ago, and stood on this same rooftop. Looking out on the same city skyline.

Your peripheral vision caught him lean both his forearms onto the glass, shifting closer to you.

“Is it just as scary as it seems?” You ask. You were a child. A child that had been trained to hunt and kill. But deep down, you were just a scared kid. How would you kill all those people?

Finnick hums, acknowledging the same question that wracked his mind the nights before his games.

“It is,” he recognized your fear, but refused to give you false hope that it wouldn’t be as brutal as it truly is.

The words Enobaria had spoken to you earlier bounced around your brain, it’s just killing. Self-defense. All of it. Don’t be scared to kill someone who isn’t scared to kill you.

You let out a long breath, closing your eyes.

“I don’t want to die,”

It was quiet, but Finnick heard it, head perking up and turning to stare at you.

The role as a tribute was meant to bring great honor to someone from your district, but you were terrified. You were young, passionate. You had so much to give and so little time to give it all.

“Enobaria told me to hide my strengths, and I did. I’ll be able to kill them, once it comes down to it. But how will I live with myself?”

Finnick asked himself the same question everyday. How did he kill all those people? Sure, it was survival. Him or them. But how do you continue your life, pretending like you hadn’t murdered people on live national television?

“I—“ Finnick fell short, eyes still watching the side of your face.

“How do you cope with it all?” You finally turned to him, salty tears on your cheeks.

He knew you were preparing yourself for the inevitable. He had heard Enobaria boast about you, and had seen you in training. Other tributes would be frightened to get close to you.

He didn’t answer, swallowing thickly. You would soon understand, you would be in his position.

You choked out a sob, hands wrapping around your body.

He watched with wild eyes, before pulling you into his warm chest, head burrowing in his body.

You made no move to remove yourself from his body, and his arms were snug against your back.

“Kill as many as you can, as soon as you can. Then lay low, hunt. Don’t fall for any of that ally-bullshit.”

His voice was rushed, eyes filled with emotion. He felt for you, a scared child. He remembered his fear all too well.

You sniffled in his chest, hands balling at the thin fabric of his top.

And you listened to him.

In those next few hours, during the bloodbath, you killed two, both with knives to the chest. The Capitol citizens cheered as your face reflected the highest kill-count. You knew it was nothing to be proud of.

That next evening, while the rest of the Career pack slept, you stole the boy from One’s — Yves — backpack, shoving their weapons into it as quietly as possible.

Your small size came handy, being able to stealthily move around them, you were lucky the arena was a desert, sand not making a noise.

The girl from One — Aithon — began to lightly stir, and you knew it was now or never. Finnick’s words from the night before mixed with Enobaria’s, and that was all you needed to take a sword in each hand and take down the two tributes from One.

Their deaths were quick, the canons sounding out and Mace waking up, his laying figure looking up at you. Small but powerful.

You stood over his body, one foot on each of his arms, keeping him from reaching up to you.

His face twisted in confusion, looking over to the blood pouring from Yves and Aithon, each who had just been sleeping soundly next to him.

Your knife neared his face in milliseconds, and you had to force your arms down as he began to scream.

“I’m sorry,” was all you could whisper, guilt beginning to cloud your senses.

But you pushed past it, knowing you had to come out alive. No other option.

“Y/N! Please!”

And then there was silence.

He wasn’t anything special, but he was from home.

You held in tears as the canon sounded, running from the three as quickly as you could.

Whilst you hid behind one of the large cacti around the arena, Enobaria grinned as Capitol citizens celebrated her and you, her star tribute.

Finnick watched, heart tugging, knowing that he had encouraged the killings, he had told you to trust no one. And you had listened.

And from then on, you became the Capitol’s angel, their winged symbol of purity, despite the blood and deaths of many on your hands.

When Snow placed the crown on your head, you smiled, naively, and thanked the crowd. Thanked them for their donations, and their belief in you from the beginning.

But that’s all you were to them: a spectacle. A little girl who killed five in one day, a little girl who’s life had been dedicated to these games, to win. A little girl who would never get her purity back, never get to sleep without seeing Mace’s terrified face before she killed him.

He didn’t deserve it, none of them did. But it was life or death. And there was no way you were going to die.

PRESENT DAY, THE THIRD QUARTER QUELL

Your group continued up to the Cornucopia, you and Finnick taking the tail.

Peeta and Finnick drew a map in the dark sand, you leaned against the side of the metal Cornucopia, Johanna plopping down next to you, and Katniss on your other side.

It all happened in a blur. One second, Wiress was singing her song about a mouse and the clock, and the next, Gloss was on top of her, knife straight into the heart.

Katniss’s arrow struck him, you grabbing your swords to get Cashmere who was standing behind him.

Finnick rushed after you. He knew you could take Cashmere, but what happened if Brutus appeared? Brutus had never been kind to you, and it was doubtful he would start now.

Your sword stuck Cashmere in the leg, and she screamed, falling onto the little amount of ground that the middle sector offered.

She turned over, knife in her left hand, grazing your ankle slightly. Luckily your stylist had dressed you in thicker socks; she had been an absolute idiot about most things, but at least she had your back in the arena.

Your thigh was still slightly burning with pain, but you pushed through it, sticking both your swords into Cashmere’s chest, a strangled gasp leaving her lips and her head falling back against the ground.

The canon sounded out, but you continued to pull your swords out and drive them back into her chest, more blood pouring out.

You were grunting now, mind hyper-aware of your actions, but refusing to stop.

You kept driving the sharp tools into her chest, her body slightly moving up when you retracted the metal, and then caving in as you pushed them back.

You weren’t going to die; you refused to.

Hands were on your shoulders, pulling you backwards, and you turned, swinging.

Finnick let go and backed away, hands held up. He knew you’d never hurt him, but once you’re in the killing mindset, it’s very hard to break it.

You dropped the weapons to your side, a long breath leaving your lips that you hadn’t realized you’d be holding in.

Finnick pulled you along with him, hand on your side as he brought you over to everyone else.

All of them were staring with wide eyes — besides Johanna of course.

Katniss knew you were brutal, but she didn’t realize how quickly you did turn into the angel of death. One second you were smiling, laughing at something Johanna had said.

Then your eyes were lit with a fire, teeth out, and running, faster than Katniss had ever seen someone move.

She had watched you kill Cashmere in seconds, continuing to drive the weapons into her, sounds of exasperation leaving your lips but you were unrelenting.

You felt like you were fifteen again, scared and angry, brutal to anyone who crossed your path. Your swordsmanship was uncanny, and Katniss dreaded the moment that she had to try and kill you.

And then the Cornucopia began to spin, extremely fast. You grabbed onto Finnick, a sword sucking down into the water, your other tight in the palm of your opposite hand.

You and Finnick fell to the ground, grabbing at the hard rocks to keep from flying to the water.

And then you heard Peeta scream Katniss’s name, and the two of you both yelled a loud, “shit!”

You pushed off the hard ground, crawling to the side of the island, hand reaching down to grab Johanna’s axe and try to hoist the two of them up.

You grunted, holding onto a small portion of the metal that wasn’t sharp. Your feet dug into the ground, sword shoved into the rock to keep you grounded.

You watched as Katniss went flying down, and then Johanna was on top of you, the two of you gasping for oxygen when the spinning stopped.

You and Johanna were back on your feet, rushing to help Katniss out of the water.

You all made your way back onto the sand, where it was relatively safe.

You discussed strategy, your fingers tracing different shapes into Finnick’s thigh.

“Who’s left then?” Katniss asked, eyes flickering between you and Johanna, the two of you having a conversation with your eyes.

“Brutus and Chaff, I think that’s all,” Peeta announced, all eyes shifting to you at the mention of your district-mate.

“I get Brutus,” you spoke clearly, eyes hard.

“Y/N…” Finnick spoke, hand smoothing down your arm.

“Just… I know him. I can handle it, I swear,”

He had helped train you, of course you would know his methods like the back of your hand. You had been seeking revenge for years, waiting for the day you could get him back.

What had the games done to you? Fantasizing about killing someone?

And then you were back there, back to the moment your life really ended.

You were dressed in clothes Snow had picked out, a hairstyle Snow had picked out, makeup Snow had picked out. You were his newest doll, malleable to his every demand.

It was your victory tour, and Enobaria and Brutus were accompanying you, helping you with speeches and coming to terms with your new life as a Capitol pet.

You were finishing up in the Capitol, the final destination. Snow had laid out his conditions for you: your pride and body now belonged to the Capitol, and with it, they could do what they pleased. Your company came with a high price.

He had threatened your family back in Two, describing in detail what would become of them if you didn’t comply with his wishes.

You had gone back to the train and told Enobaria and Brutus, eyes spilling hot tears when Enobaria pulled you into her arms, hands stroking your hair. At least she was kind.

Brutus, however, was not.

His boisterous laugh rang off the walls of the train, your eyes peeking out from Enobaria’s embrace to glare at him.

“Let me know when you start, sweetheart,” he smirked, a scowl overtaking your features.

You had been waiting to get him back, to show him that weren’t a little slave for his disposal. Finnick understood your rage, more than any other person could.

He wanted to kill Brutus just as badly as you did.

No one else asked any questions, and for that you were grateful.

And then the screaming started, and you jumped to your feet, eyes frantic and scanning the area.

Whoever it was, they were screaming for Katniss, and rather brutally as well.

And off she took. You were the fastest, so you caught her first, arms around her shoulders to steady her, but she kept moving, screaming back to the voice.

She stopped abruptly, and shot an arrow into a large black bird that was flying over your heads.

The screaming stopped immediately. And then it began again, this time, it was the voice of Mace. And you felt the blood drain from your entire body, legs suddenly shaking and threatening to go out.

The words he had screamed to you before you had slit his throat were wrapping around your body, swallowing you whole.

“Y/N! Please! Y/N!” You were running then, the screaming getting louder and louder, tears streaming down your face as you tried to escape it; the horror that would haunt you forever.

“It’s not real, they’re jabberjays!” Katniss assured you, running behind you, trying to catch up.

You saw Finnick and Johanna’s faces ahead through your blurry vision, and you sped up, Finnick’s arms wide for you to run into.

But it was a force field, and you collided right into it, falling to the ground in a heap of tears and painful memories.

You covered your ears, head digging into the ground to stop the noise, but it wouldn’t stop. You wailed, and Finnick was hitting the force field, which he was standing on the direct other side, but there was no avail.

He was screaming for you, to look at him, listen to his voice. But the field was soundproof, and he had to watch with a heavy heart as you sobbed, the sounds of the person you betrayed all those years ago the only thing you could focus on.

Finnick’s hands were all over you, smoothing down your hair, checking your face, helping you stand.

Peeta was doing the same with Katniss, the both of you having tear-stains down your cheeks and dirt smudged into your cheeks.

You were frozen solid, eyes big and wide, legs slightly shaking. You had never felt worse about something than what you did to Mace that dreadful night. His screams haunted your dreams, and to have the Gamemakers play into that weakness reminded you just who the real enemy is.

“Y/N, look at me,” Finnick’s hands were on the sides of your face, pulling you closer to his protective figure.

“It wasn’t real. It wasn’t him,” he shook his head lightly, your lips still quivering from fear.

You could only muster the strength to simply nod, telling him that you knew, but the Gamemakers were cruel, so cruel, and they had hit you right where it hurt.

Just as you were beginning to regain your usual automatic-kill mindset, a small box flew down, straight into your hands.

Everyone gathered around you, curious as to what could’ve been sent.

You knew Enobaria would have your back, and considering the sponsors this year were based upon what you had left over from your games, you were lucky. You had a large pot of donations under your name, not needing much assistance when you were in your first games.

You screwed off the top, being met with a small vile of Crave Cure, the very concoction that she had sent you during your games. It came with a note reading: remember who the real enemy is. I’m always rooting for you. - Baria

That assured you of Enobaria’s stance, likely scheming with Haymitch and Plutarch behind the scenes, ensuring your protection by Thirteen.

Finnick smiled next to you, Johanna calling out with happiness.

“Finally!” Johanna cheered, axe thrust into the air.

You even broke a smile, suddenly distracted from the traumatic experience you had just endured.

You looked up, seeing the confused looks on Katniss and Peeta’s faces.

They would’ve never heard of Crave Cure, it was the most expensive thing a mentor could send their tribute, and required many sponsors. It was usually only sent to the Careers, both you and Finnick had received it during your games.

“Crave Cure,” you spoke, Katniss’s eyes meeting yours.

“One drop on your tongue and it cures hunger for 12 hours,” you smiled to them, picking up the vile.

“Enobaria is a saint,” Johanna spoke, watching as you dropped a tiny bit of the brown liquid onto your tongue, a content sigh escaping your lips.

Beetee went next, then Finnick and Johanna.

Katniss and Peeta stood awkwardly to the side, not knowing to approach or not.

“Oh, enough of that! We’re allied, aren’t we? Take a drop,” you urged, placing the vile into her hands.

Peeta nodded, and that seemed to be all the convincing Katniss needed before mimicking your action and gagging when she tasted the fluid.

You laughed at her expression, a light-hearted tease. “Not the best, but it does do its job,”

You figured you had really won her trust, considering how she walked next to you during the hike to the big tree.

The two of you talked about your families back home. You complimented her dedication, to protect her little sister.

She had killed your Cato and Clove; the two you had spent hours coaching, assuring they’d be okay in the end. Words you had needed so badly during your games.

Through talking with Katniss, you realized no one deserved to win as much as she did. She was selfless, willing to sacrifice herself for both her sister and Peeta, placing herself as a protector, not a victim.

And then the peace you had all been building crashed down, Katniss suddenly retreating from the trust you all had built after Beetee offered she go with you and Johanna.

“Why can’t Johanna and Y/N go? I’ll protect you with Peeta,” she spoke, and you met Finnick’s gaze. You read the fear in his eyes, knowing this the was now or never moment.

“Katniss,” you spoke, hands resting on her shoulders.

“You know who the true enemy is,” you whispered, holding her intense eye-contact.

Her eyes softened at your words, everything seemingly clicking into place. With a nod, you grabbed her hand, and pulled her with you and Johanna.

A look over your shoulder to Finnick, and a nod. Your eyes said it all: I love you. I’ll see you soon, once we are safe and out of the Capitol’s hands.

You and Johanna halted your movements, stopping Katniss as you did.

“Stay down,” Johanna instructed Katniss, grabbing her arm.

“What-“ Katniss was about to scream, and you could not let that happen.

You grabbed her face with your hands, eyes frantic for her faith.

“You can trust us,” you whispered, barely loud enough for the cameras to pick up on.

But the raw emotion in your eyes calmed Katniss, giving Johanna the opportunity to cut the tracker out, Katniss’s arm beginning to bleed heavily.

“It’s alright,” you soothed her, your arm out to Johanna, waiting for the inevitable sear of pain.

And then it came, and you placed your body over Katniss’s not allowing her to get up and try to attack.

But then you spotted Brutus over the rock, his hard eyes staring straight into yours.

“Y/N,” Johanna warned, watching the familiar fire begin to brew.

You were up in seconds, sword in one hand, knife in the other, running up the rocky hill. The pain in your arm was masked by the rush of adrenaline you ran high off, killing spree — if you will.

Johanna grunted in anger, but she knew not to expect anything different from you.

“Do not move,” she instructed Katniss, picking up her axe to follow you.

You had reached Brutus quickly, pouncing onto his back and driving your sword straight through his abdomen.

He cried out in pain, blood soon coating your legs that wrapped around his waist.

You pulled the sword out, taking the knife to his neck. He was dead in seconds, the familiar canon sounding throughout the arena.

After registering what you had done, images of Katniss flooded your mind and you internally cursed yourself, rushing back to the spot you had left her and Johanna.

Johanna was back to your side, but Katniss was no where to be seen.

“Fuck!” You cursed, sprinting back towards the tree where Beetee, Finnick, and Peeta were.

She had likely gone back to protect Peeta and kill Finnick, and you were not about to let that happen.

Johanna tried to keep up with you; but even with a gushing arm and slit leg, you were fast. Much faster than anyone else.

“Finnick!” You screamed, feet pounding against the hard ground, propelling you towards the tree, where you watched Katniss aim her arrow straight at Finnick’s head.

Beetee was on the ground, and you crouched, feeling for his pulse. His heart was still beating and you hovered over him protectively, in case Katniss decided to turn around and fire at you too. Which seemed very likely.

You watched as Finnick said something to Katniss, obviously resonating with her, the bow slightly lowering.

“Johanna! Give me your arm!” You swung around, panic-struck and searching for the familiar face.

And you saw her a few feet below, trying to climb the vines you had mounted with ease.

You looked between Finnick and her, torn as to which to try and protect. You knew Finnick would hold his own, so you turned back around and began to move for Johanna, quick feet avoiding possible injuries.

But just as you were in grabbing-distance of her, Finnick’s voice rang out, screaming, “Get away from that tree!”

A crack of something echoed around you, and you turned wildly, trying to figure out what had just happened.

Then you understand what Finnick had meant, a loud crack of lightening rained down and sent you flying, reaching for Johanna as you flew past her, her terrified eyes meeting yours.

The last thing you remembered was being pulled up into the air by a large claw, head and limbs limp as you were hoisted up; sword still secure in your palm, a protection habit you had picked up since your games. You always needed to be armed, after all, life was the arena.

You awoke to the sound of a heart monitor, steady beeping lightly calming your high-alert nerves.

You winced sitting up, large bandages wrapped around your forearm and thigh.

You inspected your surroundings, two empty mats in front of you, and Katniss sleeping to your left.

You stood, hushed voices on the other side of the door that reached the ceiling of the craft you were on.

You looked for a weapon of sorts, not willing to go in unarmed. On the other side of the empty room was your sword, glimmering and coated in blood.

You walked over to it, legs sore and aching, the familiar metal calming against your palm.

The door immediately opened as you approached it, Haymitch and Plutarch’s widening as they spotted your weapon of choice clutched in your ruthless hands.

But it dropped to the floor with a loud clatter when your tired eyes met Finnick’s, a relieved smile coming over your features.

You rushed to him, throwing yourself into his arms. His lips met yours halfway, melting into his strong hold around your body.

The two of you fit together perfectly, like you had been made in the same mold.

Your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him tighter to your already close bodies.

You poured all your pent up feelings into the kiss, all the feelings you had suppressed since the fight that had ended your relationship.

It was the most relaxed you had been in the whole week, since your name was plucked from the bowl of living victors.

His lips moved against yours as he squeezed your hips, hands feeling everything they could, to ensure that it was in fact you, and you were alive and safe in front of him.

You pulled a part, a grin across your small face.

He smiled back, but your bliss was interrupted from the clearing of a throat behind you. You spun around, eyes meeting the expectant ones of Haymitch, Plutarch, and Beetee.

The look on your face said it all. And Haymitch nodded, validating all the thoughts that had been running through your head.

You were safe, headed for the secret hideout of Thirteen. All was okay.

You almost began to laugh thinking about how the Capitol would react, their Angel and Darling being two of the biggest conspirators in a rebellion. How ironic.

And Katniss was on the ship, you had successfully carried out your tasks.

“Where’s Johanna?” You asked, a smile still dotting your face.

Finnick’s composure broke, and your heart dropped, realizing the obvious.

“No, no, no, no,” you began to back away, spine hitting the hard metal of the table.

��I went after Brutus, I didn’t cut the tracker… fuck! Oh my god, Finnick, oh god,” you began to dry-heave, accepting her capture as your fault.

Finnick’s hands were on your biceps, steadying you and pulling you back into his chest.

“Johanna and Peeta are in the Capitol,” Plutarch spoke, your worst fears being confirmed.

“It’s all my fault,” you groaned, head in your hands. You had killed, hunted, and tortured. But the idea of a friend’s death being on your hands hurt more than any of those ever did.

Haymitch spoke reassuring words behind you, but Finnick’s hold and the idea of betraying Johanna was all you could focus on.

How would she forgive you? Was she alive? How would you ever cope if she wasn’t, and it was all your fault? Of course, you let the murderer take over, and went after Brutus.

Finnick’s arms soothed down your back, keeping your grounded as you were flooded with grief, with the heavy weight of betrayal.

Johanna and you were close friends, you were supposed to protect each other in the games. She had protected you, always by your side, and you neglected to do the same.

“We’re going to try and rescue them as soon as we can,” Haymitch said, even though you all knew that might be an impossible task.

And then Finnick slipped his hand into yours, fingers curling around yours and softly rubbing your knuckles.

You composed yourself, closing your eyes as you took in a deep breath, regaining focus on just your interlocked hands. Finnick always knew how to relax you.

All you had wanted initially was to get out of this quarter quell alive, to return home to your big mansion and family. To hug them again, to prove to the Capitol that they could take everything from you, but they couldn’t kill you.

But now, you realized that all had been in vain. Where you really belonged was here, holding hands with Finnick, discussing how you were going to break your friends from the Capitol’s mean grip.

You’d die for him, for them. You’d flap your wings once more to ensure they’d all live.

When Katniss first volunteered for Primrose, you hadn’t understood how she would sacrifice her life for another.

But now you knew, and you knew you’d do it too.

You finally had something to live for, someone you loved, who understood all that you had gone through better than anyone else.

Life was the arena, and if it came down to it, you knew the angel would sacrifice herself for the darling.

**

[inkblot22]

Give You Something To Cry About

Yay, my time management skills continue to be straight ass. Sorry to the anon who has waited so patiently for this, and thank you so much for giving me an excuse to write this depraved ball of snot. Headers by @/cafekitsune. Also don't believe everything you see on the internet, there's no scientific proof that certain things work for your skin. I think Vil would know that, considering.

This Fic Is For: Anyone who can handle it! Once again, I tried to make it as gn as possible, considering Rook's use of Franglais, but I'm delusional and will say I did exactly that. Reader is referred to with they/them pronouns, and no real allusions to specific body parts are made for them.

TW for DEAD DOVE, DO NOT EAT, forced dieting, non/dubcon, mentions of death, questionable use of magic, captivity, someone has a case of dacryphilia and a strong sadist streak, won't say who, Rook Hunt because he freaks me out, unhealthy relationship dynamics, abuse, forced BDSM if you squint, I feel so bad for the reader in this one, toxic relationships, possibly OOC characters.

“I am not going to tell you again, my love.” Vil bends down to get in your face, already wearing his ceremonial robe and heels. He points a finger in your face, like you’re a small child or a dog, “If you continue to pick at your skin, I am going to let Rook punish you this time.”

You swallow and look away, and Vil pinches your cheeks between his thumb and fingers, pulling your head so you’re looking at him again. His violet eyes bore into you, and you swallow again.

He looks offended, almost, “Well? Have you forgotten basic manners? Speak.”

Your voice sounds dry and weak, “Yes, Vil. I understand.”

He seems satisfied enough with that, moving around as he continues to prepare for whatever school-wide assembly is happening today. He elegantly tucks his hair behind his ear and sighs, scrolling through some page on his phone.

You remain standing where you are, turning your head to look out the window. It’s so pretty outside, but you only get to leave this room whenever Rook is watching you or Vil sends you on an errand. It’s always spring, never too hot, never too cold, but you’re sweating anyway.

Vil approaches you again and tilts your face back so you’re looking at him with a hand on your cheek. His eyes narrow a fraction.

“Your skin doesn’t seem to like this foundation. Make sure you discard it today; I’ll get you a new one.” He bends down again, this time to press a chaste kiss to your lips. He rubs his own together after pulling away and smudges his thumb over your bottom lip, “Hmm. What lipgloss is this?”

Your voice doesn’t sound so dry, but it still doesn’t sound like you, “Uh… The dark red one with the metallic purple? ‘Electric Berry’?

He’s silent for a second, just staring down at your lips as he cups your chin, and then he sighs and turns away, “It’s sticky. I’d tell you to wash your face and reapply your makeup, but that’d be a waste. Make sure you put on lip balm next time.”

You swallow, “Yes, Vil. I understand.”

“I have to get going now. You’d better be at least halfway done with that list by the time I return.” He breezes towards the door and gives you a last, long look. He’s completely silent before he leaves, closing the door behind him.

Your palms ache. You stiltedly wander towards the list pinned in the closet, glad to see it’s not insane today. All you need to do is tidy the bathroom and skim through Vil’s mail to see if it’s anything but hate mail or advertisements. Tack on getting rid of that foundation and that’s it, at least until he returns at lunch.

You relished this time to yourself, even if it was just cleaning or whatever else. Vil always said that motion is good for you, a structure does the mind good. You didn’t care much anymore. As you sat down to search through his mail, finding nothing but the usual hate mail and what appears to be a poem from Rook (why did he even mail that? He’s not even down the hall from this room,) you catch yourself craving something sweet.

The diet Vil has you on sucks. He has assured you that your body is lovely, and he is having you eat like this to help clear your skin, but really you just want something. Anything, you’d even take a breath mint over this lack of junk food. You’re young, what young person doesn’t enjoy gratuitously unhealthy food? A basket of french fries? Ice cream? 

You frown to yourself and toss the last of the mail into the recycle bin. You know he’s just going to check it over again anyway, but at least you’re moving around. That’s what he would say.

By the time you’re almost done scrubbing the tub, you hear the door open. You don’t want to go greet him, so you pretend you didn’t hear anything and keep cleaning, making sure to disinfect the non-slip mat that resembles a bunch of ugly gems glued together. 

You hear him clicking towards you, and his hand rests on your shoulder, “Going above and beyond today? I have lunch, come eat.”

You school your expression and stand up, pulling off your cleaning gloves and hanging them on the rim of the tub before you follow Vil. He ensconces himself in his desk chair, leaving you to awkwardly lift the stool near his vanity. He hates it when you push the furniture.

He clucks his tongue, not even looking at you, “Lift with your knees, darling. As much as I’d love to massage your back if you pull something, I simply don’t have the time.”

You can’t help it. You shoot him the nastiest glare you can muster as you lift with your knees, right as his eyes flick up to meet yours. You nearly drop the chair as his lips curl into a cold smirk.

“Do you have something to say?”

You hastily shake your head, “No, Vil-”

“Then don’t allow me to see that expression on your face again.” He bites, “Come sit down.”

You put the stool down a little harder than you mean to and take a seat beside Vil at his desk. He passes you your nice little container containing one of several things he gets you- a pile of leafy greens and chopped veggies on a bed of quinoa, fresh fruit, and a murky green smoothie topped with chia seeds.

 You don’t like chia seeds. They remind you of frog eggs- a bunch of slimy lumps, sliding down your throat. You accept the straw Vil passes to you and stir the smoothie before eating in silence.

Vil doesn’t mind if you don’t thank him for feeding you. Since he’s keeping you here, it’s pretty much the least he could do. Still, it doesn’t make up for hearing about his boring day.

“This morning’s assembly was complete and utter chaos, as usual.” He muses, sipping his own smoothie. It’s a soft purple. “It’s ridiculous. Those brutes never wear their robes correctly.”

You don’t respond. There’s two reasons: first of all, you don’t care, and secondly, there’s a knock at the door. Vil hums, as though he’s been waiting for someone, and turns to face the door.

“Who is it?”

That boisterous voice you are so used to hearing echoes past the door, “‘Tis I, Roi du Poison. I have come to join you for lunch.”

You can hear the smile in Vil’s voice, “Oh, of course. Come in.”

As Rook walks in, you feel a stab of jealousy in your chest. He takes a breezy seat on the loveseat in front of Vil’s bed and glances at you. You break eye contact and dully pick at your salad.

Vil treats Rook so nicely. He considers his feelings and opinions, although he doesn’t always listen. He speaks to him as though he’s a person. You suppose Vil’s obvious care for Rook trickles down to you in some capacity, but it hurts. Vil claims that the two of you are lovers, but really you’re more like a doll.

“Do you mind meeting me in the lab later on, Rook?”

Rook chuckles from where he is and you cast another glance at him. His eyes meet yours, again, and you look away, again.

“I can always make time for you, beautiful Vil.”

You lamely pick at the fruit, having finished the salad, before you decide to save it for last. You take a sip of your smoothie after stirring it again and openly recoil, trying not to cough. You didn’t smell it, but there must be ginger in there, because there’s a mellow burn alongside the bitterness from the kale. It makes your eyes water and settles in behind your nose.

“Mmm. Something wrong?” Vil smiles at you.

You shake your head, blinking rapidly so you don’t start crying. There’s not enough tears to fall, but taking your chances is stupid, “No, Vil. The ginger just caught me off guard.”

“Oh. My apologies, I should have warned you. I don’t want you catching a cold, and you’ve been a little irregular. The smoothie also has spinach, kale, avocado, chia seeds, and, of course, a little mango.”

You nod and force yourself to smile, taking another sip and soldiering past the rush of that aromatic pain in your sinuses. “Oh, thank you.”

“You’re very welcome, darling.” Vil turns away from you to speak to Rook again, “What else did you have planned?”

“I thought I might take a walk. It is a wonderful day, non?” There’s a slight mocking tone to Rook’s voice, “Hardly the type of day to be cooped up all day, hmm?”

Vil furrows his eyebrows as you choke down the last of the smoothie. His voice is curt, “You can say what you mean.”

“Est-ce que je peux? You are not very open to suggestion.”

Vil narrows his eyes at Rook, taking a deep sip of his smoothie before he places it on the coaster sitting upon his desk. He uncrosses his long legs and stands, walking over to sit with Rook on the loveseat. Rook watches him approach with a smile, the same pleasant one he usually wears before he shoots you a beaming grin and turns to look at Vil.

Their conversation is hushed, and you can’t really make out all of what they say. You can hear someone say your name, Vil’s tone swiftly turns vitriolic, then sweetens once more, and Rook chuckles under his breath. When their little meeting is over, Vil walks back over and finishes his smoothie before petting your head like you’re some kind of cat.

His hand strokes the crown of your head, then smooths over your cheek, he cups your jaw and thumbs over the swell of your lip, all while staring at you with a look you cannot read. And then he tilts his head, and smiles.

“Make sure you thank Rook. And you mistook a letter from my father as garbage.”

“Yes, Vil.” You reply obediently, “Sorry, Vil.”

He smiles. Your palms ache, and you have to bite back the urge to move, to peel at your cuticles or scratch the sides of your fingers.

“I’ll see you in class, Rook.” Vil says politely before he tilts your face up and pecks you on the lips.

You’re left alone with Rook. He doesn’t get up, not yet. You remain where you are, looking at your slippers. You hear Rook stand up and discard his garbage. You can feel him come up to stand behind you. 

“Has today been particulièrement difficile? My poor dear… You seem so sad today.” His arms wrap around you, looping them around your shoulders so they warm your collarbones like a scarf and he can rest his cheek against the back of your head. You hear him take a deep breath in.

With Vil, you don’t even try to speak anymore. You know he won’t really listen to you, because he knows better than you… But with Rook, as long as you wait a moment to make sure he is done speaking, he welcomes and even encourages you to speak your mind.

Your breath hitches and you swallow, “Uh, I mean… I guess I’m just having a bad day. It’s really been the same as usual.”

“Hmm.” Rook hums, completely devoid of emotion. You feel him turn his face so his nose is buried in your hair. He presses a kiss against your hair and sighs, “Ah, yes, the monotony of life is très épuisant, mmm?”

You wait for a second, then deliberately don’t answer the question in favor of asking your own, “Um, he said I should thank you?”

“Perhaps you should ask why more clearly. I have convinced our very own Vil to allow me to arrange a surprise for you.” Rook removes himself from your back and turns you around to face him, “And thus, I believe I have earned a kiss from you.”

“Wait, what?” You don’t get time to really back away or tell him to explain, as Rook squishes your cheeks with one of his gloved hands until your lips part.

His grip isn’t as harsh as Vil’s, but this is still something that only happens when you’re in more trouble than usual, so you involuntarily wince and close your eyes, cowering away from Rook as he dips his tongue into your mouth and slithers it between your teeth.

It is very easy to like Rook. He is passionate, and he’s far more kind to you than your supposed lover is. He’s intelligent and has an adonis-like form, and if not for the taste of blood on his tongue from whatever he ate for lunch or the grip he has on your face, maybe you would enjoy this kiss. But the big issue is that Rook honestly frightens you a little.

It’s absolutely not his fault, not entirely. Upon first meeting him, it was hard to tell if he was being genuine. He’s difficult to read, as he is often wearing the same set of expressions and his tone is always a bit melodramatic.

His hand releases your face to clamp around the base of your head, his tongue twisting in your mouth, pressing against the crevices in your teeth.

Not only is Rook hard to read, he is also uncannily observant and will not hesitate to ask somewhat invasive questions about his observations. The fact that he dresses in a way that conceals his mass is also disconcerting, as you were unaware that he had such a build until you saw him roll up his sleeve one time. You were aware Vil could do a lot of damage, but that was the day you realized that Rook was capable of doing about as much as Vil, if not more.

He purrs into your mouth, the vibrations feeling oh-so-wrong, and his other hand clamps down on your shoulder. He sucks your tongue into his mouth. It’s not a good feeling, as he is literally stealing what little air is in your mouth. When you feel something feather light flutter against your lashes and cheek, you feel a bit confused for just a moment, not even a second, before you realize that Rook just blinked. His eyes are open. 

He pulls away and sighs, almost dreamily. You suppress your distressed sputtering, holding your breath as Rook stares at you.

“Ah, enough time has passed. I will need to leave you, mon lapin. Thank you for indulging me; your kiss was divine and tasted sweeter than the finest fruits!” He presses something into your palm and adjusts his hat before he casts you a wave and shuts the door.

You stand there, your lips drying out from the saliva left on them and your cheeks feeling a little odd from the way he was holding your face. You’re processing, because, ever as always, Rook is simulated spontaneity. So many things just happened, and you don’t… 

You blink a few times and look down at your aching palm stupidly. The crimson cellophane crinkles as you unclench your fist. He gave you a piece of candy.

Just looking at it makes you start crying. One second you’re staring wide-eyed at the little lump of sugar, and the next your vision is blurring and you’re crying off your makeup, plump tears cascading down your face. Your nose begins to run and you sniffle. You can’t find it in yourself to sob, because you’re mostly certain that these are happy tears. 

Unfortunately, you can’t eat the candy now. If you threw the wrapper away, Vil would notice it in the garbage and you’d get in trouble for “breaking your diet plan.” So you hide it in the very back corner of the drawer of Vil’s armoire. You’ll be tidying it on your own anyway, and Vil never reaches all the way into the back of it.

Once your tears have stopped, you stand up and go back to cleaning the bathroom. It’s spotless and smells like lavender and lemons about an hour before Vil gets back, so you decide to skim one of the books on the shelves. 

It’s not long before you’re bored with that as well. You carefully put the book back and wander over to the lattice window, staring out of it. The window, paired with your usual low mood, made you sort of feel like a bird in a very ornate cage. 

From where you are, about three stories up, you notice a familiar figure notching an arrow before he unnotches it and takes a knee. You blandly spectate as he fiddles with the bow.

Partway through him notching the arrow again, you see his hat tilt. He’s far away enough that you can’t see his eyes, but you can feel his stare. His gloved hand bends his brim and you jerk away from the window, only to bump into someone.

You don’t get to shriek, as a hand clamps over your mouth. It’s just Vil, but you don’t relax yet as he drags you towards the bed and deposits you there.

“How many times must I tell you to stay away from the window?”

He’s never once told you to stay away from the window. Not as far as you can recall, at least. Your lips tremble and you decide it’d be more wise to keep silent.

Vil glares down at you and you feel the rest of your body start to tremble. His lips curl into a displeased sneer, “You didn’t wash your face after crying?”

“N-no, Vil-”

“We do not stutter.” Vil hisses, bending to get in your face. He stares at you for a moment before standing straight again, “Speak up.”

You swallow and clench your hands into fists, “No… Vil. I… got rid of the foundation like you, um… asked me to. I wouldn’t have been able to redo-”

“Alright. Go wash your face.” Vil interrupts you again.

You jump up and rush into the bathroom, going through your skincare routine. You can feel Vil staring at you, your skin crawling under his gaze. As you rub moisturizer into your skin, Vil finally says something.

“Did Rook do something to you, darling?” His tone is soft, tentative.

You glance at him, blinking a few times. What does he mean by ‘something’? He did do something, but it wasn’t bad, or particularly different.

“Um… Not exactly.” You say, massaging your forehead.

“I see. What did he do?” 

You look down at the sink. You’re not saying anything about the candy. “Rook kissed me?”

“That should not be a question.” Vil says. You see him shake his head through your peripheral, “Would you like to change your clothes before I redo your makeup?”

You’d like to ask what he’s talking about, but instead, you look down at your clothing. You don’t have a proper Pomefiore uniform because you’re not a part of this dorm. You’re an interloper- or a caged bird.

You don’t know what to do here. You don’t want to say something wrong and unintentionally offend Vil. Your palms ache. You give him a confused look from where you are.

He doesn’t look impressed, but before he can say anything about you gaping at him, you speak up, “What… am I supposed to do?”

You’ve only seen Vil surprised a few times. He raises his eyebrows and looks at you as though you’ve grown two heads, then sighs, “Well, I suppose I’d like to see you in something else. I’ll choose your outfit.”

That’s nothing new, he always does that. You wait in the bathroom for him to return. He strolls back in with a mockery of the Pomefiore uniform. There’s a deep purple cloak and capelet, which Vil drapes on the bed before handing you the actual clothes. It’s a very ruffled dress shirt, the long, puffy sleeves cinched into more ruffles at the wrist paired with a pair of black bloomer-style shorts. The buttons are all white and gold, marbled together. 

Vil leaves the bathroom and you change, neatly tucking your previous clothing away in the hamper. When you leave, as usual, Vil picks at your clothing, making sure it looks as good on you as he pleases, and then he steers you to sit down.

For however vicious he can be, Vil can be oddly gentle. For every time he grabs you roughly, his touch is feather-light ten more times. He hums a soft tune as he puts light makeup on you, just your eyes and lips, and then he drapes the cloak around your shoulders and places his hands on his hips.

“You look lovely. Go put on the pair of gold boots with the black decals.”

You do as told. He very likely wants to just take pictures of you or something so he can ask that Mira app about it.

Except when you stop in front of him, he doesn’t tell you to go sit in the loveseat or on the table near his window, no, he scoops you up and presses his forehead against your jaw.

“Oh, when did you put on this cologne? What a ravishing smell on you.” He presses a kiss on the column of your throat and breezes out of his dorm room's door.

Almost immediately, you go limp in his arms, like a doll. He never gave you explicit verbal permission to leave this room, so the curse he placed on you when he decided you should be his smashes into you like a giant wave at the beach.

Vil carries you all the way outside and looks at your face, then happily struts along the path behind the dorm. Since you can’t turn your head, you can only go off of the view of Vil’s neck and chin, the sky, and whatever you can hear.

“Ah, I am glad to see you did not change your mind, Roi du Poison. J'aurais été très déçue et triste pour notre chéri.” You hear Rook say. 

You can almost feel Vil get a mite warmer, “Yes, well. Hand me the basket. Since you want to make out with them and make them cry, you get to carry them as an apology.”

Rook happily scoops you out of Vil’s arms, giving you a cloying look as he strolls along. He and Vil chat as they walk, something not really worth listening in on, just boring musings about class and “this teacher did x” or “that student did y”. An insect lands on your cheek and you are incapable of batting it away or expressing your discomfort. Its legs tickle the peach fuzz on your face and you remain still, like a corpse.

Rook slides you into a seated position, posing you like a toy before shooing the bug off of your face. Now you can see that you’re in a clearing in the woods, seated on a picnic blanket. There’s a few lanterns staked into the ground, and Rook and Vil are busy with whatever is on the floor. You can’t look down, so your best guess is that it’s a picnic.

Vil leans over and snaps in your face, smiling kindly at you, “Now. If I release you, you are not going to run. You are not going to so much as consider running. We are going to have a nice picnic with no shenanigans from you.”

You can’t nod, so you just stare at him, trying to telepathically communicate.

He looks pleased enough, “Wonderful. I give you permission to leave our room.”

Your muscles relax and you look back, finding that you’re leaned against a log. The picnic spread is very nice, as well. It looks like finger sandwiches. You’re not expecting to get to eat one, as you haven’t had bread since Vil switched up your diet. Vil passes something to you.

“Oh.” You mumble, staring at the plate Vil hands you. 

It’s a sandwich. A very wonderful looking sandwich, cut into triangles and with the crusts still on. You blink at it a few times and look back up at Vil.

“Don’t expect this to be a pattern. This is a treat for good behavior.”

You look back down, “Yes, Vil.”

“There’s no need to remind them. They’re being obedient.” Rook’s voice is more firm than you expected to hear him ever speak. Usually his tone is buoyant, and you’ve never seen him outright pick a fight with Vil like this.

“Please. You give anyone an inch, they’ll take a mile.” Vil cuts back, then turns to you and pets your head like a dog or a cat again, “Eat your food, beautiful.”

You take a bite. Bread is just as good as you remember it. The air feels thick, like you’re in a bubble as Vil and Rook communicate through eye contact alone. Before you know it, your sandwich is gone and your hands are covered in crumbs. Rook, still staring at Vil with that happy little smile, wipes your hands and places a glass in your hands. Whatever is in it smells sweet. You take a tentative sip.

Were it Vil, you would have never drank whatever this is. It kind of tastes like a mellow mixed berry juice. It’s very pleasant, actually. Better than the potion Vil used to lace your food and drinks with. You smile into the cup and Vil snatches it from you.

He takes a sip and frowns, handing it back, “Mmm. I have an even better surprise.”

Rook pulls your legs into his lap and gently kneads your calves as you watch Vil rifle through the picnic basket. What is happening? You sip your juice and Vil produces a triangular container. He places a fork on top and hands it to you.

You finish the last of your juice and accept the box, looking conspiratorially at Rook. Something you can’t put your finger on dances in his eyes and he digs his thumb into your shin a little strongly. You flinch and cautiously open the box. It’s a piece of fluffy white cake, with even fluffier meringue and an uncannily perfect cherry wedged into it.

You look at Vil, expecting some kind of trick. Not that he’s ever done that before, usually he’d just take it from you or make some snide comment, things like that, but he and Rook are acting really strange today, 

“I know how much you long for junk food, so I spent some time after club activities today whipping up some angel food cake. It’s got agave instead of sugar so it won’t completely break your diet and your skin won’t suffer as much.”

Yeah, this is weird. The cake is good, though, it’s fluffy and sweet. You pace your bites so that Vil won’t make a comment and you can savor this. You can feel both of their eyes on you and it makes your skin crawl.

You lower the cake box and look at Vil, who looks a bit offended for just a second. The fleeting expression is replaced by a pleased little grin, the mauve lipstick making the curve of his lips all the more sinister in the dimming light.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes, Vil.” You glance at the cake and then back at him, “I’m… I’m sorry, I’m a little confused.”

“Why?” Rook asks.

Your shoulders jerk as you turn your head to look at him. You weren’t expecting him to say anything. His chest swells in what appears to be a suppressed chuckle as he squeezes your knee. It seems his hands have climbed.

“Uh…” You swallow, “This is just… not what I’m used to.”

“The cake?” Vil looks hurt. Why does he look hurt?

You shake your head rapidly, “No! Oh- No, Vil. I… It’s just been so long since I’ve been out here…”

“Do you want to go inside, chéri?” Rook murmurs.

You do, but you also don’t really want to risk sounding ungrateful. Being outside has stressed you out more than you’d like to admit. You’re not really sure what to do because Vil has you trained like a dog, and none of what he’s hammered into you involves picnics. You’re scared.

Rooks eyes narrow as you just stare at him. Your chest hurts from how hard your heart is throbbing, and on the other side of you, Vil sighs.

“Well, I’ll start cleaning up, then. When we get back, I expect you to take a seat on the bed.”

That sounds like what happens every time you get in trouble. A terror shudders through you and your eyes water a bit as you gnaw on your lip. Your palms ache as you fight to keep from picking at your cuticles. Vil packs up everything and Rook offers you a princely hand to help you up.

You can feel the calluses on his hands through his gloves as he essentially lifts you to your feet. You keep between Rook and Vil as you walk back to the dorm.

It’s quiet, since everyone else is winding down for bed. For a moment, you think you spot Epel, but you’re not sure. It doesn’t matter anyway. None of your old friends talk to you anymore. Not since Vil started having eyes for you.

Just as you were told, after taking off your boots you take a seat on the bed and retrieve the silver ruler from the side-table’s drawer. You place it beside you as you look down at your feet. You look down at the streaky bruises on the lighter skin on your palms and try not to start crying. It’s always worse when you cry.

He adds smacks by twos. Depending on what you did, you start with four or six, and then any time you flinch or pull away or make a loud noise, he adds two more. Last time, you spilled one of his nail polishes, and after watching you clean it up, you ended up getting ten lashes.

At least Rook didn’t do it then. He tries to make it quick but that just makes it hurt more. A tear slips down your cheek.

You don’t even know what you did. You tap the tear track dry with one fingertip and Vil and Rook fully enter the room.

“Why is the ruler out?” Vil asks, and then his voice goes sharp, “Are you crying?”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Vil.” You sob.

“I don’t know why.” He grabs the ruler and shoves it away before you can raise your hands, “Go wash your face.”

You stand up and shakily do as told, returning to sit on the bed. Vil goes into the bathroom after you and Rook takes a seat next to you, his hand on your shoulder.

He smiles at you, rubbing your shoulder, “You are très précieux, chéri.”

You look at him in a state of hollow bewilderment as he brushes his cheek against yours and presses a soft kiss to the shell of your ear.

You hear the bathroom door close and a tired sigh from Vil, “Do you have no patience?”

Your head jerks to look at VIl, “Rook is…?”

“Yes, he’s joining us tonight.” Vil plucks the loop of his sleeve from his middle finger and loosens his belt. You get the feeling that the next words he says aren’t for you, “Well, go ahead.”

You feel Rook’s chuckle more than you hear it. With his lips against your neck, his hands begin to slide. The hand on your shoulder rests on the nape of your neck and his other hand slides down to your thigh, then up to your waist. You try not to cringe against his touch, but it’s difficult.

His hand slides down again as he trails his teeth against the back of your ear. His thumb hooks in your pants and starts yanking them down. You outright flinch.

“Wait-”

“Relax, darling.” Vil mumbles, hanging his clothing in the armoire.

You try. You absolutely try. Rook throws your bloomers aside and rests his hand on your lower belly for a moment. He sighs into your ear and reaches up to unclasp your buttons.

You feel stiff. You want to push him away but you can’t move. It’s as though your body is frozen. It’s not due to a curse, so the only possible solution is that you’re quite literally scared stiff. 

He pulls away your shirt and glances at Vil, “Are you prepared?”

“Please.” You can hear the smile on Vil’s lips as Rook turns back and kisses you again, his hand smoothing along your collarbone and shoulders.

Your underwear is the next to go. Of course it is. You fight to keep from breathing oddly, because you’re aware that if you pass out, Vil will get annoyed.

“Mmm.” The devil’s hand glides up your back and you fight back a shudder as Rook leans you backwards into his arms. “How are you feeling, darling?”

You’re honest, “I’m scared.”

“I thought you would say that.” Vil freely manhandles you, shifting you so you’re leaned chest to chest. He slides something off of the side table and passes it behind you, then cups your cheek, “You would save a lot of time and stress if you’d just learn to trust me.”

“I…” You hate him. You hate him so much. He keeps you here like a pet, and you don’t know how he’s supposed to expect you to treat him like a lover when he treats you the way he does. 

Before you can articulate an answer that pleases Vil, a wicked burn besets your sphincter and you clench your jaw. 

Vil’s voice is sharp, “Rook, please.”

You hear Rook make a noise underneath the harsh sound of blood rushing in your ears and your own heavy panting. Something cool oozes around the ring of your ass and you press your face against Vil’s chest. His robe is lazily tied, which is not particularly like him, and you can see his cock poking out where the fabric separates. You let out a strangled noise and Vil shushes you, rubbing your back soothingly.

“Relax. I know, you weren’t prepared. Relax.” Vil soothes.

“I don’t mind if you remain tense, chéri. Mon plaisir n'en est que plus grand. And your little cries and whimpers sont terriblement mignons.” Rook mumbles behind you.

Rook is better than Vil in most areas, but once he gets his dick inside of you, it’s as though he forgets to be caring and kind. The tables flip, with Vil acting the part of a caring lover and Rook becoming a sadistic bully. You let out a ragged sob as Rook rolls his hips and Vil hisses something that you don’t quite catch.

It almost sounded like he was telling Rook to slow down. That very well could have been the case, as Rook eases back a bit and only shallowly thrusts.

Vil continues petting you, coaxing you so your cheek is pressed against his thigh. He is always a perfect warm. He is always perfect, so it sort of makes sense, but his skin is a pleasant temperature. He feels alive, a perfectly human temperature that tells you he’s breathing and his heart is beating. As he fingers through your hair, Rook gives a harsher than usual thrust and you cry out.

“Rook, if you’re impatient then you’re going to hurt them, and neither of us have the time to take care of them all day.” Vil chides, and then his tone softens as he rubs the space between your shoulders, “Are you ready for me as well, darling?” “What…?” You ask, blearily. Somewhere in the back of your awareness, you know what he wants, but you can feel Rook’s thrusts growing impatient and seeing as you weren’t given any prep, you’re in a bit too much shock to think straight.

“Mmm… You’re awfully cute but I need you to be a bit more lucid.” Vil snaps in your ear and resumes his petting, “This isn’t the first time, sweetheart. I’m not going to hold your hand.”

The soft tip of his member spreads his pre like lipgloss against your lips. As you shakily open your mouth, you figure you’re lucky that Vil doesn’t have a chaotic, unhealthy diet like Leona or Ace, that he doesn’t drink coffee for fun or often like Deuce does. The taste of his skin is lightly floral and dominantly human, likely thanks to the body lotion he applies daily. 

He hisses and presses against your forehead, “Ah-ah. You’re taking enough from Rook. Just the tip for me is fine.”

From behind, you hear Rook grumble under his breath, ��Je n'en peux plus de cette merde…”

“Watch your- unf- watch your language, Rook.” Vil snarls, massaging the nape of your neck as you carefully lave your tongue over his glans.

Rook’s patience breaks, his hands clamping down on your waist, just above your hips. You have the sense to pull Vil’s cock out of your mouth as Rook begins battering into you.

As much as you feel okay about Rook, he is not a doting lover by nature. He’s mean and brutal, chasing his climax, and only after he cums does he bother to think about you or your needs. Your palms ache as you grab Vil’s member and gently tug on it. Vil flinches and snaps at you to get your attention.

You look to the side and for a second, as the pain ebbs, you assume you’re having an out of body experience, and then you realize that you’re staring into his vanity mirror. Rook’s hair exaggeratedly sways with his motion. He removed his hat but just haphazardly displaced the rest of his clothing. He’s not smiling, he’s making some sort of smug expression.

It’s funny. As Vil is satisfied with you weakly jerking him off, his touch gentle, Rook is wild on your other end. Every time you just barely begin to relax, he thrusts harder, which makes you tense and a spike of pain batters through you. 

You endure as best you can. You endure every day, enduring through eating the same unfulfilling food, enduring through walking on eggshells around Vil, enduring getting your palms beaten to hell for the most human of errors, so what’s getting sodomized in the face of everything else you can handle?

You bite back a shriek as a harsh pinch on your bottom, followed by a smack administered by Rook. He leans down and blows in your ear, snickering as he leans back, “I thought you had given up the ghost for a second there.”

Vil sucks in a breath and you quietly mumble against his thigh.

“Hmm? I didn’t hear you, mon chou.” Rook’s voice is almost mocking, like before.

“P-please… Rook, I can’t-”

“You can. You’ll live.” He grunts, the steady clap of your ass against his body punctuating his statement.

“It hurts.” You sniffle. You’re not particularly prone to crying, but, then again, Rook and Vil usually prepare you before deciding to fuck your ass.

You sob and Rook’s grasp tightens on your waist, a ragged moan punching out of his chest. He pulls your body flush to his and jerks his hips into you, drilling a bit harder for all of four or five thrusts. And then he’s no longer on you, and you feel your body getting shifted so your head is still in Vil’s lap but you’re lying prone.

You tilt Vil’s dick down to massage the head with your tongue and something warm drips on your back. You hear a noise of disgust from Vil, capped by a quiet moan.

“Absolutely not. All three of us are getting in the tub if you don’t clean that up right now.”

Rook chuckles and coos, “Hmm, but it looks so lovely. My alabaster essence creates a wonderful contrast with their soft and supple skin.”

A flush of humiliation crawls up the back of your neck and you hide your face against Vil’s belly, using your own arm to hide the other half. Vil shudders as he pushes your head down a bit, but his voice sounds incredulous.

“That’s vile. It doesn’t have any proven health benefits, you know that.”

You felt Rook’s hands spreading his semen into the skin on your back and your palms ache as Vil cums in your mouth. He doesn’t do that often, so it hits you like a shock.

You gag but force it down and Vil shoots up, fretting over you.

“Did you just swallow that?” He bends down to look into your eyes.

“Yes, Vil.”

“You didn’t need to do that.” Vil snips, sounding much harsher than he might intend, “I’m going to run us a bath, alright, darling? I’ll make sure you can brush that icky stuff out of your mouth.”

It didn’t taste bad. Vil usually cums on your face as an incentive for you to wash your face very well after a day of wearing makeup, or he has you jerk him off until he cums, but the few other times you did taste it, it was the same as this time. It was mostly salty, not too bitter, likely from his good diet. Regardless, he breezes away and Rook gives your bottom a light tap. You stand up and glance at Rook, who is looking a bit disheveled but pretty pleased with himself.

“How are you feeling, cheri?”

“That hurt.” Your voice is quiet, and your throat is still lined with tears.

“Does it still hurt?” He smiles and tilts his head.

The sound of the tub running is thunderous even where you are. Vil would never tolerate you complaining, but Rook is amicable, “A little.”

“The bath will do you good, then. Come.”

You let Rook guide you into the bathroom, his hand on your elbow. As he undresses and joins Vil on the edge of the tub, you look down at your bruised hands and glance at the slowly closing bathroom door, then at Rook and Vil where they stand near the tub.

You can’t say you prefer either of them, really, but you don't get an opinion. Do dolls at tea parties get to ask for a different kind of tea?

[huramuna]

even in undeath - chapter 1.

lich king aemond x reader a 'world of warcraft' AU. prev | next

The Lich King is the master and lord of the Scourge. Consisting of thousands of walking corpses, disembodied spirits, beasts of the north, and damned mortal men, the Scourge is a terrifying and insidious enemy.

word count: 2.3k

@huramuna-fics - follow & turn on notifications for just my fic postings! no taglists right now, sorry.

content: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, DUBCON, smut, heavy heavy angst, graphic depictions of violence, allusions to cannibalism, imprisonment, kidnapping, murder, suicidal thoughts and ideation, mutilation of corpses, obsessive aemond, dark aemond, a happy ending is not in our future. PLEASE MIND THE TAGS! This story will be pretty dark.

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It was dark and cold. There was a faint dripping of water somewhere off to the side, but you couldn’t quite see where. The echoes of whimpers ricocheted off of the craggy walls, stinging your eardrums. 

This was the descent into madness, wasn’t it?

You weren’t sure how long you’d been chained up for— how long had it been since your village burned to the ground? Since you watched the ghouls rip apart the cow farmer from down the road. Since you watched hellhounds crunching on little Mary Jay’s bones. Since you had watched your mother and stepfather plead and beg for their lives, for forgiveness, for mercy, for absolution of their supposed sins before the death knight’s sword lopped their heads off. 

How long has it been? 

Shifting slightly, the chain tied to your throat clinked against the wall. There was no light, no passage of time to be had in the dank, pitch black cave they stowed you and a few select others in. You only had on a ragged potato sack as a dress, the sensation of dirt and grime caked on your hair and under your nails making you feel less than human. 

But— you were still human. For now. The Scourge had ravaged the Eastern Kingdoms without mercy, swiping through the North and South like a fast traveling plague, curdling and damning everything it touched. Hordes of undead zombies, ghouls and hellhounds were the first to raze the cities, driving out the people like mice from the walls. Then the banshees came, along with the necromancers to raise the dead, adding them to a forever amounting army.

Not even Quel’thalas had been able to resist it, an ancient elven city hewn in magic.

What chance did you have? 

More than most, evidently. Your mind wrought itself over and over as to why— why were you alive? Why were you still human and not merely a risen thrall? 

The clinking of armor scared you as it ascended the hallway. You pressed close to the wall and closed your eyes. 

Please don’t stop here, please don’t stop here. 

Clink, clink, clink… closer… closer… 

Then it passed, descending further away. You let out a breath, your blood still pumping in your ears. 

Clink, clink, clink. They were coming back. Clink… silence. You felt bile rise in your throat as you shook, the chains rattling noisily. You knew they were standing there, you knew they were here for you. 

A harsh tug upon your chain, your head hitting the floor— some words were mumbled, the voice sounding far away and broken. Your eardrums rang with the ferocity of your fall, drowning out any semblance of what your jailer was saying to you. Then, you were tugged upward, the cool metal of the collar biting into your skin as you were dragged like a petulant child away from your cell… 

You didn’t want to open your eyes. You couldn’t face the horror you knew was around you— corpses, living ones and dead, the clatter of bones, the heavy breathing of gargantuan abominations, bodies and faces of countless people stitched together into a new body, hewn with thread and necrotic magic until it gave way to something else entirely. Something unnatural, something made of nightmares. The dermis of those who were used to make the monsters would still twitch, reach out on its own, and if it had a mouth, it would be twisted into a scream. You swore that you heard them whispering as you were dragged by. 

The monstrosities were one of many abhorrent creatures at the Scourge’s disposal. Hellhounds, ghouls, gargoyles, wraiths, crypt lords, geists, banshees, and other things of horrific nature were only some of the power wielded by the Scourge. It felt like it was all pulled out of a child’s fairytale, changed and twisted and defiled into what it was now. 

It all felt like a very bad dream. 

Your eyes opened on their own and you took in the image of death knights, former paladins who served a higher power, the Light— now are nothing but undead heretics, glowing eyes and gaunt stares that bored through you. 

Some of the monsters chittered as you were dragged past them, leering and looking hungry. 

‘Scrawny that one. Perhaps she will suffice for hellhounds to pick their teeth.’

‘Speak for yourself, her skin will do beautifully on a new abomination.’ 

‘She won’t be knighted. Merely a maid’s bastard, I’ve heard.’

You forced your eyes to close once more, the sudden light stinging them. You forced yourself into another time, a better memory than what you were experiencing. 

They were right, you were a maid’s bastard. Your mother had served in the royal keep for years, with you under her feet. You didn’t know who your true father was, nor did you care.

You became attached to the second son of the King— Aemond Targaryen. He was a sprightly boy with near white hair and luminous violet eyes. The two of you were attached at the hip. 

Childhood friendship blossomed into more as you grew into teenagers and young adults— you shared your first kiss together, you held hands and shared sweet nothings. As he trained by day to become a paladin of the Light, he held you close by night, vowing to never let you go. You were both terribly in love and so terribly, terribly naive. He was your first in everything– your first friend, your first kiss, your first lover. You promised yourself that he would stay your first and only.

‘You can never marry a maid’s bastard, Aemond! You’re a prince of the realm-‘

‘I don’t care! I want her, father. I’ve always wanted her!’

Your mother quit her job at the castle— moreso, threatened into quitting by some of the King’s advisors. She was given a considerable amount of coin and told to take you far, far away and to not contact the prince again. 

Heartbroken, you left him your sapphire ring, the only thing of value you ever had, which had been passed down through your mother’s family for generations. 

It was left on his desk with a note of few words but much feeling. 

‘I love you. I’m sorry.’ 

That was over ten years ago. You hadn’t seen him since, but you missed him horribly. Especially now. You wondered if he was still alive, fighting against the Scourge like his knightly vows dictated. 

Maybe he was married and moved across the sea to Kalimdor where it was safer. 

Or maybe he was dead. Dead like almost everyone else you knew. 

You heard a rumor, fleeting and without much more information, that his father had died– no, that his father had been murdered. The fall of the king, Viserys, is what started the Scourge war. Did Aemond know, wherever he was? 

You imagined him holding his arms around you, kissing your neck and fanning his breath over your skin. He liked to encompass you completely with his body when you laid together— you never could emulate the feeling with heavy blankets and pillows, as much as you tried. Putting yourself back into that memory, you wrapped your arms around yourself, willing warmth into your body. 

But you didn’t feel any warmth. All you felt was cold, cold down to your bones. They felt brittle, like ice, splintering into shards as you were thrown on the floor again in a different room. Pain bloomed in your arm as it cracked at an awkward angle. Broken. 

Your ears rang again as your mouth opened into a scream, tears of pure anguish squeezing from your eyes. But you didn’t hear a thing besides the rush of blood dampening your senses— and the sickening crunch of your broken bones. 

‘What have you done to it, Lady Deathwhisper? It looks broken.’ 

‘It’s human bones are so brittle, it was merely a slip of the hand. I cannot help that their living constitution is so weak.’ 

‘His grace will not be pleased if it is broken beyond repair.’ 

‘Worry not, Lady Alys. Most things can be mended— and if not, it can always be raised.’ 

‘Physical defects aren’t the only issue. What of its mind?’

You feel an acute sensation over your skull, reaching into the depths of your cranium. Its cold, but not stinging— like a soft caress upon your brain as your mind is rifled through like a tome. You can feel your memories being perused, all of the most intimate moments of your life flashing in your head like playwright’s prose. The physicality of your mind being invaded wasn’t painful, but the act of your memories being ripped from you was damning. Tears fell down your face on their own, your mouth opened into a silent scream.

‘She is the one— I saw it. You are lucky that you did not break her mind completely, Lady Deathwhisper.’ 

‘As are you. You do not have a deft hand when it comes to memory perusal, Lady Alys. I am surprised that it still has a brain in its skull.’ 

‘Shut up and bring her to him. He will be pleased she is still alive. Barely.’ 

You felt yourself being moved again, still reeling from the invasion of your mind. You tried to put yourself back into the safe haven of memories, but they were… locked. Locked behind an iron door with no keyhole. They were lost to you. 

What were you trying to remember? 

Flashes of white hair and violet eyes flitted behind your eyelids, soft caresses and kisses, heavy breathing and love filled promises, the sensation of skin to skin… 

Your eyes opened, vision bleary. A helmed woman followed behind you, wings outstretched. You could see the glint of green eyes under her helm. Val’kyr. The woman behind you was a Val’kyr, a spirit guide who defected to the side of the Scourge. They could move between the realm of living and dead as simply as taking a breath. 

“The little human is awake,” she mused. “Your mind isn’t broken after all? I do see a glint of intelligence behind those eyes. Keep them on me, you shan’t wish to look upon Lady Deathwhisper.” 

You didn’t want to speak, words caught in your throat like food stuck in your craw. A val’kyr was basically an angel of death and talking to one must mean you are dead. 

You wish you were. 

The chains scraped against the floor, which was no longer stone like before, but rather, hardened ice. You were ascending upward, it seemed. The architecture of the building was nothing like you’d ever seen— dark metal was plated upon the walls, inscribed with glowing runes. The runes looked… familiar to you, somehow. But the memory that contained them was locked away, or mayhaps stolen by the Val’kyr, Alys. 

The temperature was cold, you were being lofted upon ice, of course, but you didn’t wholly feel it. You were partially numb, heat radiating from your broken arm. You knew you should be feeling pain— but you were just… numb. 

Your escorts stopped in front of two large doors, inscribed with the same glowing runes. Against Alys’ advice, you glanced at ‘Lady Deathwhisper’. She was skeletal, floating upon the ground with no legs to speak of. Her robes were purple fabric, molded around an incorporeal body. She spoke in a language you didn’t understand, the scratchy voice of hers coming out of a bone skull, but the mouth wasn’t moving, maw open as the words came out. 

You should have listened to Alys. 

The door opened with a rumble, opened by ancient magic, likely imbued by the runes, as they flickered and flitted above your head as it opened. The room beyond was open and bereft of almost anything, except for a throne. A throne forged of ice and swords. 

Someone was sitting upon it in a lazed position, one plated gloved finger tapping on the arm of the throne.

“We’ve brought her, your grace,” Lady Deathwhisper growled, shoving you forward. You skidded across the floor, which felt slick like grazing atop an ice-capped lake. “Alys confirmed it is her.”

The clinking of armor caught your attention, the sound of metal grazing against ice. It was irritating and made you grind your teeth. As whoever was on the throne got closer, the force was oppressive. Whimpers and tiny cries were ripped from you as they walked towards you, the aura exuding from them causing you to fall flat to the ground, feeling as if someone was sitting atop of your chest and not letting up.

The steel plated boot was in front of you now and your hair was grabbed rather harshly, pulling you up. 

Don’t look, don’t look. You cannot look.

“Look. At. Me.” the voice growled. It was quiet but commanding at the same time, rattling in your bones and making a home amongst the marrow. It felt familiar… so… 

You lifted your bloodshot eyes, not out of your own volition, but from the authority of the voice.

“Hello, little dove.” he mused.

It was him. It was… it… Aemond. You knew him so well, even with ten years gone. His chiseled jawline and chin and the dimple of the tip of his nose… 

But his eye was missing, a jagged scar bisecting it. In its place was a sapphire. The sapphire from your ring, grown into something to make home in the socket.

You felt everything and nothing all at once, your stomach flipped and flopped like a fish hoisted from the sea, sputtering for air. You couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t–

Your best friend, your lover, the one you vowed to never forget, to never forsake.

Aemond Targaryen. 

Aemond Targaryen was the Lich King. A defiler, a mass murderer, an unholy being in his own right.

“Now you won’t be able to leave again, will you?” Aemond murmured, his violet eye roving you. It was glowing slightly– his skin was a pale gray pallor, cheeks sunken slightly. He was undead.

Your eyes rolled back in your head, vision going black.

[outoftheseine]

- MATT MURDOCK FIC RECS -

(here is to my favorite lawyer by day and vigilante by night)

brief note: most fics contain canon trigger warnings (blood, violence, death, assault etc.) so please be aware of them.

main masterlist

SERIES - MULTI-CHAPTERS

please don't be mad • matt murdock x fem!reader all i need is you

↳ by @chvoswxtch (angst, smut)

matt murdock x age gap!reader

↳ by @multiharlot

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ONE-SHOTS/BLURBS/HC'S

strawberry rhubarb • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @ellephlox (blood, torture, forced nudity)

these broken things • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @courtforshort15 (angst, mentions of murder and blood)

steal my warmth • matt murdock x gn!reader

↳ by @devils-dares (very fluffy)

discordant • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @ellephlox (angst, sex trafficking)

always here • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @blackshadowswriter (hurt/comfort, angst, nightmares)

like real people do • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @amhrosina (angst, hurt/comfort, nightmare trope, tw: panic attack, mentions of trauma and child abuse)

jealousy • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @devils-dares (jealous!matt, allusions to smut)

care packages • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @chvoswxtch (very fluffy, mentions of violence)

how sweet it is (to be loved by you) • matt murdock x afab!reader

↳ by @courtforshort15 (oh very sweet, smut, virgin!reader)

green is the color • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @courtforshort15 (angst, but happy ending, reader is insecure of her relationship with matt)

angel • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @peterman-spideyparker (so much angst :(, death)

sincerely, anxiety • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @brokebonewritings (so fluffy, i related too much)

never an ear strain away • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @amchapel (fluff, honestly i smiled a little too much while reading this)

it's in the details • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @onewholikesthings (fluff)

you are in the kitchen humming • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @shadesofsteve (veryy fluffy, a little hurt/comfort)

always so good with the kids, and kids absolutely love him • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @yarrystyleeza (this was so sweet :'))

the comfort of your relationship • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @slightlypossessed (so much fluff, i love soft fics like this)

small acts of kindness • matt murdock x gn!reader

↳ by @mattmurdockspainkink (fluff, mentions of sensory overload and anxiety)

thinking about • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @murdocksluvrr (such a cute drabble, fluff)

halo not included • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @undiscovered-horizon

more • college!matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @itwasthereaminuteago (smut, virgin!reader)

without you • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @foli-vora (so much angst, can't wait for part 2!)

bruises • matt murdock x gf!reader

↳ by @goldustwomun (angst, injuries, blood, fluff, hurt/comfort)

first of many • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @coalix (smut)

what's your middle name? • matt murdock x fem!reader

↳ by @thegingerwriter (fluff and smut)

make amends • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @honeycombstrawberry (assault, angst but fluff, hurt/comfort)

again and again • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @imaginesfordifferentfandoms (angst, blood, comfort, fluff at the end)

"i no longer know where i end and you begin" • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @mattmurdockspainkink (this was so so cute and comforting, just fluff)

tracking the devil • matt murdock x enhanced! reader

↳ by @mattmurdocksscars (angst, injuries, ex lovers)

wanting • matt murdock x gn!reader

↳ by @coalix (i LOVED this, angst but happy ending)

afterglow • matt murdock x reader

↳ by @amhrosina (so. much. angst but happy ending)

stray • matt murdock x gn!reader

↳ by @itwasthereaminuteago (fluff)

[lucky-bishova-42]

Kate Headcannons

(in the Malen’kiy Yastreb universe)

TW: allusions to child abuse

Kate and Eleanor were never close. They never really bonded, even before Derek Bishop passed away; things turned ugly two months after he passed. Eleanor blamed Kate for his death and basically forced Kate to become her housekeeper to make up for it: doing all the cleaning, the laundry, making meals, etc.

Kate still feels obligated to clean the apartment when Natasha and Wanda are working long days, despite being told multiple times that she doesn’t need to

Kate has ADHD

Even though Natasha and Wanda are together, Kate was a little nervous about admitting to them she had a crush on America because Eleanor almost kicked her out when Kate told her she was a lesbian

Kate’s favorite days are spent snuggled between Natasha and Wanda just relaxing

There is still a lot about Kate’s past (specifically with Eleanor) that she hasn’t told Natasha about, and she isn’t quite ready to yet

Kate starts looking for engagement rings, for Natasha to give to Wanda, three months after they started dating; she really does hope they thank her in their wedding vows

She still flinches sometimes when she is overwhelmed and overstimulated and Natasha or Wanda moves too fast, her subconscious still not getting the fact that she is truly safe with them

Kate had been calling Natasha ‘mama’ in her head since around Mother’s Day before she started calling her that all the time (she doesn’t remember calling her that when she was sick)

Kate likes to quietly read with Wanda in her favorite spot under the big oak tree on days were she feels too overwhelmed

On really bad days, Kate likes to rest her head on Natasha’s chest so she can hear her heartbeat

Kate is, and will always be, a cuddler

Dr. Cho believes Kate is slightly touch deprived given the way her and Eleanor were never close

No matter how bad Kate is panicking, Natasha’s calm voice, soft touch, and steady heartbeat always help start to calm her down

Natasha trains Kate in self defense in between archery seasons

Natasha, despite being very encouraging, is dreading the day Kate fully takes on the Hawkeye mantle

Natasha basically ‘adopted’ Kate after she met Eleanor for the first time and could see something was wrong

Kate is currently teaching herself Russian, but isn’t telling Wanda or Natasha as a surprise

Sometimes Wanda has to remind herself that Kate and Natasha are not biologically related when Kate makes Natasha’s signature face or says something in an eerily similar way to how Natasha does

There are probably more I am forgetting but these are them for now :) (these were mostly kate, nat, and wanda centered but what else is new lol)

[antinous-of-ithaca-but-cuter]

~ FLASHING BACK ~

~ OPEN RP STARTER ~

TW FOR DEFINITE ALLUSIONS OF CHILD ABUSE, MURDER, GORE, THE WORKS LOL

Returning to the beach was always hard for him. No matter what he did or how he wound up there, he was always nervous, on edge, afraid. Today was no different.

He had come to the beach with a gift for an old friend lost too soon. It was a simple children's toy, a wooden sword this time, but despite how light the toy was, it carried a heavy burden with it.

Slowly, Antinous dragged his feet through the pebbled beach of Ithaca to the waterline. Each step felt harder than the last, that's when the first shock wave of a flash back hit Antinous harder than a Trojan warrior getting hit by a Greek soldier's chariot.

The sound of children's feet running on this same beach started echoing in his ears as his pulse started picking up.

He couldn't deal with this now, not today, not on his death day.

His eyes widened as he then found himself on the ground, his father's cruel grin seared into his memory as he held a ram head dagger above Antinous' face. "You want to run away?" His Father's voice echoed in his head. "I'll make sure you never come home again!!!" He then felt that same knife strike his throat.

A scream tore from his throat as he found himself standing again, the toy sword long since forgotten by his feet.

He backed up, tears subconsciously streaming down his face as he gripped his hair tightly. He couldn't tear those memories from his mind and it's been damn near six or seven years since it happened.

The next thing he knows is he's laying on his back again, his throat bleeding from the cut. His father was no longer on top of him and his friend was pulling him to his feet hurriedly. "Antinous come on!!! Hurry up!!! We have to go!!!" At that, both Antinous and his friend started running down the beach again, but it was too late. Antinous watched as his father grabbed his friend's arm tightly, lifted the dagger up and-

"LET HIM GO!!!!" Antinous screamed, sobs tearing from his throat as he fell to his knees of the beach. The rocky shore tore up his knees, leaving small cuts everywhere, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest and head at the moment.

All he could focus on was his best friend's face. His face was indifferent, devoid of any emotion whatsoever. His eyes were rolled back in his head, only a sliver of those beautiful silver and blue irises being visibly anymore. His friend had thick red blood running down his face sluggishly as his father's dagger as sticking out of the top of his head like a unicorn's horn.

"This is your fault Antinous!!! Look what you made me do to him!!!" His father yelled at him, holding his friends face inches away from his to prove a point.

Antinous could only let out another scream, holding his arms above his head as he sobbed. Trying to block out the memories seemed impossible at this point.

His father's hands were on his, forcing him to hold the same knife that had once been in his best friends head to cut his limbs off one by one. Each time Antinous heard a sickening crack from his friend's body he would sob louder, and every time Eupiethes heard Antinous sob he would smack him.

Eventually, his father made him dump the body in the ocean, walking away after Antinous was done doing so. He could only sit there and sob, grieving the loss of his friends with gut wrenching sobs, unaware of the fact he had just left his mother vulnerable for his father.

Antinous tried to curl further in on himself, sobbing so loudly to the point where his head and throat hurt as he laid down on the shores of Ithaca.

What do you do???

Tagging people who I think would have an interesting interaction with him; @king-of-the-fish @lethia-not-athena @not-so-far-from-battle @4mph1r1t3 @lightning-wielder ( @antinous-of-ithaca appearntly.... /t ) @jorgeofithaca @just-a-mer @l-l-l-l-legendary @1ceyanonhasarrived @apollo-ask-blog @cloak-of-ares @penelope-is-waiting @the-epic-amphinomus @the-warrior-of-the-mind I THINK I GOT EVERYONE NOW

Other people who weren't tagged may still reply fyi!!!

[call-sign-shark]

Heaven in Your Eyes || Arthur Shelby x Reader!OC

Summary: Disobeying Tommy's orders, you're back in Small Heath. Your rebellious attitude starts to really bother him but you don't care. All that matters is that you're reunited with Arthur and John, the two men of your lives. From then, nothing can go wrong. Nothing, right? -- Featuring John Shelby x Reader.

Words: 5.5k

TW: Extreme angst - read at your own risk, graphic depiction of violence, canonical violence, graphic depiction of murder, major character death, allusions to self-harm.

Notes:

✞ Theme song on repeat if you want to break your heart: HERE

✞ Quotes from the TV Shows are in bold and italics

✞ Heaven is OP's original character but written with the use of « you » (Moodboard here).

PREVIOUS || Masterlist || NEXT CHAPTER

The deafening howl of the train’s honk boomed in Small Heath’s station, quickly followed by a whistling sound. The steel giant had barely opened its heavy doors when the foul-smelling wind of the city rushed into the wagon and made you wrinkle your nose in disgust. It was not that you hated Small Heath strictly speaking, but the stark contrast between the industrial city and the green landscape of the forest in which you lived now was difficult to process. The sound of your stiletto soon clicked on the metallic steps as you got off the train, attracting people’s eyes to your tiny frame. Yet, you weren’t really sure if this sudden attention came from their sound, or rather the sight of your short black dress adorned with the most expensive white fur coat you had ever owned, and the gold choker necklace you wore, whose shape was one of a barbed wire wrapped around your neck. When your heels found the dirty concrete of the platform, a gargantuan hundred pounds Cane Corso with a spiked collar followed you closely, like a silent but off-putting bodyguard. He was your shadow, mimicking each of your movements and grazing your steps,  except if told otherwise. Loyal guardian, Kaiser was even more protective since Arthur left. Without minding the fascinated or curious stares that were looking at you, you walked out of the station with the dog’s leash in one of your small hands and a cigarette in the other.

“Mrs. Shelby? Here is your bag.” A man told you, all the while putting the said luggage at your feet. 

“Thanks, sir.” You replied with a brief polite smile, before stubbing your cigarette on the nearest wall and throwing it away. At first, you had been surprised by the care the staff provided you during the whole trip until you saw the glow of fear in their eyes as soon as they noticed your family name on the ticket.  She’s Arthur Shelby’s wife, you better be ready to help her with her stuff if you don’t want her husband to knock at your door and break your skull. That was what the ticket inspector told one of his colleagues when he met him in another wagon a few minutes after this frightful discovery. Waiting in front of the train station with a slight feeling of uneasiness, you swept your surrounding with your celeste blue eyes, whose coldness equaled the freezing English wind.  Looking around you in the hope of catching sight of a cab, your fingers absentmindedly brushed the almost imperceptible white burn scar on your wrist. The circle-shaped wound the cigarette had left on your skin had miraculously healed in a matter of days.

“Welcome home, little Angel.”  A familiar voice echoed right behind you. You turned around in one swift movement, and your freezing gaze turned into a child-like expression: John’s smile welcomed you, its charms so blinding that it made you momentarily forget about the dreadful feeling you carried in your soul. 

“John!” You exclaimed, unable to hold your joy any longer. Kaiser’s bark followed right after when he recognized who the man was. Without further ado, you rushed into him to pull him in a hug. Amused, John could not help but chuckle at such a vivid reaction before wrapping your body with his muscular arms and tightening his grip around you with the firm desire not to let you go, “What are you doing here?” You asked, looking at him. Your enlightened expression adorned your doll face and made your hypnotizing eyes shine with elation.

“That ain’t the right question, love. What are you doing here?” He teased you, raising one of his eyebrows, then stared right at your eyes. His tongue pushed the toothpick that was in his mouth from the right corner to the left before he went on, “When Arthur got your letter he told me about your arrival in Birmingham. Hell, he was so happy and terrified at the same time I thought that bastard was having an aneurysm. I’m the one who came at the train station ‘cause Arthur still has to make a few last-minute adjustments to welcome you here.”  As he talked, the young Shelby brother had freed one of his hands from your delicate body to pat the big Cane Corso’s head. The latter closed his eyes, mouth wide open and tongue hanging in bliss.

“A few adjustments?” You frowned.

“Like, threatening all the men of Small Heath not to even look at you, and dealing with Tommy’s reaction. He’s fuckin’ mad at you, eh.” 

Of course, he was — you could not expect less from Thomas Shelby. God, you barely arrived in town he already found a way to bother you, even if he was not here. At this stage, he had real talent. “You know what? Fuck Tommy. If he thought I’d be dumb enough to stay out of the plan while my husband and you risk your lives, well it’s his problem, not mine. And if Changretta’s men come to my door, I’ll put them in the dirt myself.” That being said, you waved off the topic, “But let’s not talk about Tommy, please” You concluded, then laid a soft kiss on his chin.  As your juicy lips crashed against his skin, John half-closed his eyelids and let out a soft exhale from his nostrils.

“Yeah, I bet you will,” He stated, referring to you possibly burying Changretta’s henchmen six feet deep. John enjoyed the physical contact for a few extra seconds, then he gently parted from you and closed his fingers around your wrist in a soft grip. You raised your gaze to him, surprised.

“Wait a minute. I just wanna check something before you get in my car.” His smile vanished, handing over to a very serious expression that kind of unsettled you.

“What‘s the problem?” Your smile followed his somewhere else. You didn’t know where, but what was sure was that it had left your face. 

Without the slightest warning, John raised your arm above your head and made you twirl one first time, “Would you look at you, little angel! What a stunning outfit!” He exclaimed, before spinning you again to admire your otherworldly beauty, “Oh my God, I’m in love. Last time we met you were barefoot in the grass like some kind of ethereal nymphet and here you come in the shape of a goddess, dressed like a queen?”  You suddenly chuckled at his unexpected reaction.

“Hey fuck you! You’ve scared me!” You nudged him in the ribs with your free arm, but it only made him laugh louder. 

“My little heart can’t resist that.” He winked at you, his grin stretching in an adorably annoying smile only he could do before making you twirl again. Sometimes, you wondered if Tommy and he were really brothers. He is so different from Arthur and John. You thought.

“John! Shut up, dumbass. Your little heart can’t resist girls in general — or more like your cock can’t resist girls.” You rolled your eyes, faking an annoyed pout which only resulted in John protectively wrapping your shoulders with one arm. 

“That’s my mean angel! Fuck I’ve missed you and your quick wit so bad. C’mon!” He said, grabbing your bag with his free hand before you started walking away. Kaiser ran and hopped inside the car a few seconds before you did.

The whole trip went well, casual conversations and joking with John had managed to alleviate the anger in your heart, which was far too focused on the driver’s joyful voice and stunning eyes. He talked to you about the kids, about his new house, and about some childhood stories. Surprisingly enough, each of his sentences had snatched a smirk from you despite the anxious situation in which the Shelbys were embedded. Nevertheless, your mind drifted away at some point and you stopped listening to him though. Not that he bothered you, but it was rather due to the fact that you lost yourself in the contemplation of the smallest details of his face. The adorable freckles, his little round ears, his pinchable cheeks… Everything about John Shelby made you feel at home. 

“Is that fine with you?” His voice suddenly popped your thoughts bubble.

“Hm?”

“I was saying that you’re going to live a few days at me house just the time for Arthur to secure Watery Lane properly. You’ll spend Christmas with me, Esme, and the kids.” He repeated, noticing he had been talking to himself for a little while.

“Ah,” You started, batting your Bambi lashes quickly to chase away your daydreams. That was all you could say, for you dive into your thoughts right again. A comforting silence fell between you. After a little while, John slightly bit the inner of his cheek and glanced at you. The truth was he had been hesitating on his next move for five solid minutes. No matter how goofy John Shelby could act, he was a sharp observant. Considering his ease at analyzing people, he naturally noticed the way your fingers nervously played with the fabric of your dress, indicating your inner turmoil. The young gangster slowly moved his hand towards you, still conflicted about what he was about to do — Was it appropriate? Were you going to slap him? He hoped not, for he didn’t want to crash the car on the side of the road and explain the reason behind the accident to Esme. But worst than facing his wife’s wrath was to offend you.

No, no he wouldn’t want you to hate him. Yet, John was not the kind of man to let the demons of his mind win. Acting first, and thinking after was a motto he often applied in real life. He briefly looked at you again, his sky-blue eyes meeting your aquamarine iris before they shifted their focus back on the road. The young Shelby brother finally gathered his courage and rested his warm and strong hand on your thighs. 

“Hey. Are you okay? You didn’t tell me what you think about living at me house.” 

“Oh yeah,” You slightly shook your head, “That’s fine with me John boy.” You finally said, punctuating your sentence by gently covering his hand with yours and, to his greatest surprise, your small and cold fingers clenched around him. The physical contact almost immediately sent a wave of comforting warmth into your soul. John’s lips stretched in a caring smile and he replied to your sweet gesture by turning his hand to intertwine your fingers together.

That was definitely fine with you, for you knew that as long as John was around, there was no place for the storm.

Only for the sun.

A sun as bright as his smile.

“Get the fuck off my way.” Arthur’s gruff voice thundered in the hallway, followed by a noisy thud and Michael’s flourishing insults.

“Piss off, Arthur!” 

The tall gangster had been so eager to rejoin his sweet angel after two awful weeks of loneliness that he had shoved Michael right into the nearest wall for the sole reason that he had been walking too slowly for Arthur’s tastes.  All the while walking through the corridor, he had thrown his beret out of frustration and had brought his hands in his hair to nervously slick them back. He busted into the living room and his shiny steel blue eyes, sparkling with a gleam of hope, searched for you. 

“Hey, Arthur.” When your soft voice swirled in the room and reached his ear with the tone of a mesmeric siren’s chant, goosebumps of excitation appeared on Arthur’s skin. Moving your body with a wildcat’s grace from the sofa, you stood up and looked at your husband with an adorably shy smile, like a young bride seeing her groom for the very first time. All the confidence you’ve felt kinda disappeared now that you were standing in front of him — would he be happy to see you? Or did you deceive him by disobeying and coming back to town despite Changretta’s men lurking in the shadow? You hadn’t the time to think about the matter though for Arthur rushed to you without waiting any longer and, with an uncontrolled strength enhanced by the power of his overflowing emotions, hugged your little frame. The gangster then lifted you from the ground, causing a cry of surprise to break free from your plumped and glossy lips.

“Bloody Hell, angel! I’ve told ye to stay safe at home!” 

He said, putting you back on the ground right before cupping your face with his large, warm, and calloused hands, before you could even react, “I’ve told ye it was too fookin’ dangerous here! What if Changretta and his men would have attacked you on the train eh?!” He exclaimed, a bit more aggressively than intended. At first, you opened your mouth to reply but no sound came out. The sight of his pained eyes and his worried expression suddenly made you feel a bit guilty: if there was one thing you hated it was being the cause of his worries. “Hmm?!” He insisted when faced with your silence. His piercing blue iris dived into yours, looking in their celestial frost for the answer your mouth could not produce. 

“I— I don’t care. If you’re in trouble then I am too. If you fight, I fight. If you die, then I fucking die. We’re one, and I’m sick of acting like the good frail wife waiting for her husband to come back from the war,” You started, shaking yourself out of your silence; and the more you spoke, the more your confidence came back, backfiring, “I don’t care about the danger, Arthur.” A desperate smile stretched the corner of your lips, making your eyes squint a little bit. A smile both tainted with sadness and mad love, “The first time we met I’ve made the promise that you’ll never face Hell alone ever again and I don’t plan to back up now that we’re at its gates.” 

“Yer fookin’ crazy, I swear you are.” He replied. His eyes shone with dawning tears as he observed your holy pulchritude, “Out of yer goddamn mind, Heaven Shelby… Fookin’ bonkers.” His face relaxed, anger swept away by the winter breeze that had rushed into the living room through the open window. Arthur finally let out a nervous yet endeared little chuckle and shook his head in disbelief, "You're so much trouble eh."

“I’ve learned from you.” You straight off replied, gently pressing your forehead against his in this intimate gesture that was so proper to him. Yet, he didn’t reply right away, still shaken by your fierceness — these last two weeks had almost made him forget how untamable you were. He wanted to scold you for behaving in such a reckless way — He really did. But the truth was big bad Arthur Shelby couldn’t resist you. And God knew how hard it was to function without your heavenly and reassuring presence. If he had to be honest, he would admit that he wasn’t sure he could do it without you anymore. He was consumed by his love for you, body and soul.

A little sigh escaped from his lips as his boiling worries slowly faded away, drowning himself in the little details of your face. With trembling fingers, Arthur grazed your snow-white hair. Fuck, he had missed you bad. Very bad. To the extent of drinking himself to sleep almost every night and lashing out at the boxing ring, mercilessly beating his opponents, for these were the only ways he had found not to slip into pure insanity. 

“Angel —“ He started, wanting to say so many things at once, but words choked in his throat. Closing his mouth, Arthur swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he did. The joy of having you there was so intense that his mind could not find something relevant to say: he wanted to talk about Tommy, about the letter he had sent you, about the Changrettas but nothing mattered anymore. What did though was you and him. That was why he finally gave up everything to hug your frame again, his spine bent so that he could bury his face in your small breasts. “I promise I’ll protect ye with me whole life, Angel. No one’s gonna hurt ye. Not on me watch.” He finally mumbled, the sound of his words muffled against the soft pale skin your cleavage exposed, thus turning his plead into more of a symphony of low grunts than anything else. 

“I’m here, darling.” You reassured him. Arthur squeezed your body a bit too painfully in reply, but you didn’t mind. The uncomfortable pressure of his brutal grip chased your worries away and made your whole soul flicker — It made you feel so tiny, so fragile, as no other men did before, and you genuinely liked it. So, he could break you in half with his hug if he wanted, you would be okay if it was the price to pay to keep feeling his possessive and aggressive love all around you.

With the desire to soothe his heated spirit and confusing thoughts that were bumping into each other in his confused head, you let your small fingers lose themselves in his messy hair. Your gesture brought immediate relief, whose warm sensation spread in his bones at the contact with your frozen skin. Arthur’s whole being gradually relaxed, and he could finally let out the pressure of these last two weeks. All of sudden, you felt salty and wet drops running down your chest, “I’ve fookin’ missed ye.” He lamented, his crystal tears dying in your cleavage. Parting from you was the worst idea ever, he thought, and he didn’t want to experience it ever again. 

“I’ve missed you too.” You said in a whisper. Ceasing to caress his hair, you put your hand on the back of his head and pressed his face a bit more against your bosom, keeping him still until his grip finally loosen around you and his tears run dry. Now that the storm of emotions was slowly calming down, Arthur sniffed one last time and raised his head, his lips reaching for yours. The press of his kiss, eager and hungry, dissipated the last couple of clouds of his troubled mind the moment your flesh reunited. Weakened by his scorching passion, your legs shook at the sweet and liquored taste of whisky on your tongue, while his strong hands explored you just as if the tall gangster wanted to make sure you were really here. To make sure he was not dreaming. His hands grabbed you, rubbed the sides of your thighs, ran up the curves of your ass, and then clenched on your shoulder blades for a short while before going down again to seize your waist in a bruising movement. You squeezed your eyes tighter, shaken to the core by the way his fingers left streams of fire in their trail, melting the ice that had settled under your skin the night he had left the house without you. Arthur deepened the kiss, almost leaving you breathless.

After an undefinable while during which you both lost the notion of time, his tongue gave yours one last stroke before he finally broke the kiss and reopened his eyes. Yes… You were still there — to his greatest relief. You let out a faint feverish sigh, the sensation of his kiss still tingling on your swollen lips, then you tilted your head to the side. Betrothed by your adorable pout, Arthur’s smile widened until the crow feet at the corner of his eyes appears. 

“Look at you. You’re fookin’ stunning, little one.” He laid his big hand on your cheek and you gently rubbed it against his palm in reply.

“What about you tell me what you're up to instead of treating me like a little girl, Mr Shelby?” You teased, your reunion definitely erasing the worries out of your brain, even if the threat section D had sent you still lingered at the back of your mind. 

“Listen,” He started, his thumb brushing your lips with utter desire but he tried not to get too distracted by them, “John should have already told ye but you’re going to stay here ‘til Christmas hm? The house isn’t safe yet and you’ll be safer with Esme and the kids. Also, John will stick around to protect you. Just until Christmas right?”

“What about you?” You retorted, furrowing your brows. 

“As for me Tommy and I will figure out what to do. But don’t ye worry… " He brought his face closer, his mouth reaching your ear, "Each night I’ll be back in your arms and I’ll show ye how bad I’ve missed you.” He whispered, his low voice alike the growl of a starving wolf, “I'm a little afraid ye’ forgot what’s like to feel your husband, hmm.” A little amused snort came from your nostrils at the delightful perspectives. For sure, Arthur’s way to make up for the last two weeks of loneliness you’ve both been through was particularly exciting. 

“You think so? Little evil me is not so sure if she prefers Kaiser’s presence next to her in bed rather than yours. ” 

“We’ll see, love.” He was about to kiss you a second time to shut your bratty mouth when Esme appeared at the doorframe, arms crossed in her chest and one brow raised.

“There are kids there.” She reminded, her voice cold and slightly bothered. Of course, she wasn’t enchanted by your stay here, but it has been two years since you joined the Shelby family, which had given her all the time needed to tame her hostility toward you. Your relationship was still rocky, but at least she had stopped insulting you on every occasion. 

“Oops, sorry Esme.” You replied with the biggest and most charming smile you could do before taking a step back from your husband to help him —and you— resist the temptation of giving in to your burning desires. Arthur could not help but chuckle at the comment. He slipped his hands into the pocket of his long black coat, coming to the conclusion that it was safer if they stayed there.

“Alright, no need to bark Esme.” He grunted, but the sincerity of his grumpiness was definitely undermined by the faint smirk etched on his lips.

“I’ve made tea.” Esme went on, her magnificent brown eyes going from Arthur to you several times. Their dark color struck you for one second for their hard beauty reminded you of autumn leaves spinning in the immensity of her iris. You did not hate her. You never did. As harsh as her behavior had been, you had come to understand that her reactions were dictated by fear rather than spite. As a very catholic person, Esme was more than terrified by evil spirits — and she ultimately thought you were one, not seeing the enamored twenty-five-year-old girl you were, but the evil witch you could be. You could not blame her though, for she wasn’t entirely wrong. Somehow, you were convinced that Esme was the only one of the family who truly understood your dormant dangerous nature. What she did not grasp though was the sincerity of your feelings, “Hurry up.” She said, turning around and returning to the kitchen.

“Come on,” You gently wrapped your arms around your husband, “Kaiser is waiting in the kitchen. He’s going to be so happy!”

“Ah right, let’s see the man who took me place in bed.”

Arthur had barely stepped into the room when you heard the dog’s frantic barks, soon followed by his muscular body running toward his master to greet him with great enthusiasm. The sight of Kaiser almost reaching Arthur’s height, with his two front paws on his shoulders, filled you with joy.

It was at this very moment that you were almost convinced that nothing could go wrong.

The calm of the forest was a type of peacefulness nothing else could outmatch. All that was lacking from this grandiose landscape was the mighty shadow of the old and wise mountains of Haute-Falaise, whose silent lullaby could only be heard by those who paid close attention to it. From where you came, Christmas was always synonymous with snow along with the cold sensation of frosty wind biting at your face. Each time you would come back home after a joyful moment of playing games outside with your little sister, the warmth of the hearth’s fire would welcome you. But this Christmas, like many others since you left France, there was no snow. No mountains. And no little sister anymore. You were alone in the forest, wandering among the dead trees and the howling breeze.

Katie had woken up with a light fever, and she had cried in her father’s arms for twenty strong minutes before he managed to hush down her sorrow. Following a quick discussion with John, you informed him that you knew a natural remedy against fever and then, you went in the forest to collect the few plants you needed to concoct a healing tea. Esme would have naturally disagreed with the idea if John had told her, which hadn’t been the case. Instead, you simply replied that you needed some fresh air when she asked you why you were venturing outside the house on Christmas morning.

Oh, fuck it's you. Got nothing better to do on Christmas morning? // Tommy wants everybody at Charlie's Yard now, come on.

You’ve been wandering for over one hour when you finally found all the plants you needed for Katie’s tea. Satisfied, you headed back home with a light heart, already thinking about the pleasant breakfast that was waiting for you. A small grin flattered your lips at the thought of the children tearing their gifts’ paper apart and screaming with awe at the discovery of their new toys. 

What's gonna happen man, it's fucking Christmas.

Moreover, you could not wait for the adults to open their gifts too. Even if Ada told everyone to focus on the kids, you could not help but buy a little something for the house’s hosts: a beautiful silver necklace with a protective crystal pendant for Esme, and an expensive ring for John inside which was engraved the sentence “Le soleil brûle dans ton sourire” which meant "The sun burns in your smile". 

John. John, come to the meeting. All right? Think about the kids. Come to the meeting and if you want to leave, then fine.

For sure you could not wait to see their surprised expression slowly shifting to joy the moment you would give them their gifts! A little smile flattered your lips at such adorable thought. In truth, you had stopped celebrating Christmas for so long that the perspective to do it today delighted you. It was going to be a wonderful, wonderful day.

Get in the fuckin' house!

The petrifying detonations of gunshots tore the forest’s silence apart, which caused a cloud of afraid birds to erupt from the trees’ thick foliage. One shot, the surprise made you wonder if you had really heard that or if it was just the traumatizing memories of men chasing you down in the forest that was playing with your mind. Two shots, you turned towards where the noise was coming from, realizing it was real. Three shots — they stirred a brutal pain in your chest. A pain so vivid your fingers loosened their grips on the plants, letting them go, and grabbed the place where your heart was. It was drumming so hard in your chest that you felt it was about to burst your ribcage open. Crushed by the unexplainable ache and a crawling feeling of anxiety, you leaned against a tree not to collapse on the muddy soil. Your throat felt tight, to the extent you could barely breathe anymore. With eyes wide open, you desperately tried to calm yourself and comprehend what was happening to you. And suddenly the macabre evidence of the whole situation hit you like a train — a suffocating panic seized you again as you realized that the gunshots were not coming from hunters in the forest but from John's house.

No.

Your body moved slowly from the tree, taking a few wobbly steps.

“No!” Your voice yelled but no one was there to hear your desperate cry except the pristine nature, which had sent the wind to howl in pain with you. A surge of adrenaline ran through your body and, as if you had received the fiercest whiplash ever, you started running to the house as fast as you could. You ran faster and faster, with the cold breeze biting your face and brambles clawing at your exposed skin as you rushed past thick bushes. That was all you could do anyway for every other function of your being had shut down to focus only on your restless race. You could not think straight anymore. You could not hear anything else than the brutal beating of your heart resonating in your skull. Gosh, you couldn't even see properly, your vision narrowed into a small point in the horizon that was John's house. So you just ran, you ran no matter the insufferable burn in your lungs and the soreness of your legs.

"Hey! Come back, little doe". You could almost hear them behind you. The cruel men who hunted little thirteen years old you in the dark woods of Haute-Falaise. "We’re not gonna hurt you! Fuck — where’s that little slut?!"

Moving away the last branches aside, you jumped above a thick root and broke the last meters that separated you from the house. That was when you heard it, the agonizing scream of Esme. Her voice, filled with pain and fear, almost pierced your eardrums like the wailing lament of a Banshee. You reached the front of the house and suddenly, your legs made an abrupt stop, refusing to move anymore. In front of your wide-opened eyes, from which tears were already leaking, laid the inanimate body of both Michael and John in a crimson puddle of their own blood.

"John! Oh my God, John! No!" Esme yelled, her face contorting with indescribable sorrow and insufferable ache. She was kneeling on the pavement and hugging the motionless frame of her husband, whose skin already faded two shades paler. The young Romani beauty shook him but John's eyes remained shut. At first, you wanted to scream along with her, giving in to panic, but no sound came from your mouth. Instead, you let your quivering body drop to its knees and immediately put the moist palms of your hands on your best friend's wounded chest — The numerous bullet holes had made flowers of blood blossom on the white fabric of his shirt.

You took a deep breath, threw your head back, and closed your eyes in a desperate attempt to channel all the magic that was running in your blood to save him. After all, you had witnessed your mother performing similar miracles in your childhood. All you needed to save him was a faint beating of his heart, even the weakest would do the trick. Thus, you focused on your task the best you could and drained yourself of most of your energy in the hope of seeing John reopening his magnificent blue eyes and offering you one of his beaming smiles. You were pretty sure that he would come back to life, just like the bird you had found in the garden two years ago. Yes, you were going to bring him back to life, and this awful nightmare would be over and you would all have a good fairy tale ending.

— But life wasn't like the tales you loved: his heart had stopped beating for too long for you to do anything. It had been only a matter of minutes but still, you came too late.

You came too late.

When you understood it, a river of tears streamed down your angelic face. One of your hands gently moved up to his throat, and you pressed two fingers on his carotid artery to check his pulse in a desperate and last attempt to feel something, but there was nothing. Only the dull silence of Death. You slowly backed off and looked at the surprisingly peaceful expression on his face, forever frozen by the Reaper's cold kiss.

John was gone.

And so was the sun.

✞ A little note now that you've finished this chapter: Heaven did not ignore poor Michael by the way. When walking past him she noticed that his wound was not as serious as John's, so she decided to check him after checking John.

✞ Any comment, review, reblog, or constructive criticism is welcome. Your reactions really motivate me and keep me alive, so please don't be shy. English is not my first language.

✞ gif by the amazing @fkmylif3

✞ Tag list: @adaydreamaway08 @theshelbyclan @jomarch-wannabe @esposadomd @zablife @woofgocows @anathemasworld @anastasia000 @kate654 @kxnnxy @babayaga67 @meowtastick @shelbyssins @sarai-ibn-la-ahad @bluevenus19 @raincoffeeandfandoms @kishie8 @zablife @brummiereader @alexandra-001 @dearshelby

[hopefulatrocity]

From The Ashes-Chapter 13

Notes: So, long time no post. I'm truly sorry for the lateness of this chapter. I've had some bad bouts of depression pop up and also had a switch of hyperfixations. This chap is actually one I had already written up, I just didn't post until now. I'm hoping this will motivate me to start writing again. Lots of misunderstandings between Daryl and Pheonyx going on right now. It won't last for long though, Pheonyx is very direct but they need to work through this before they can confront each other.

TW/CW: smoking, talks of past drug/alcohol abuse, past child abuse, allusions to past sexual assault, scars from abuse, animal death(possum and woodchuck), gore, blood, body insecurity, depictions of a walker,

If you want to be added to the taglist please let me know. I also post on AO3 and FF so you can subscribe there too.

Dividers by: @firefly-graphics & @omiyours

Banner by: @liminal-creations

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In his 39 years of life, Daryl was more than familiar with the concept of losing time. He had his first sip of alcohol when he was 11 and 13 when he first got blackout drunk. Alcohol was something that had always been a constant in his life, although not as much in the recent years. After a while, his forms of escapism were molded by Merle’s. When he first started following his older brother around, he was immediately introduced to a world of doing and dealing drugs. For years, he’d watched his father shoot up and snort shit on a regular basis. So the idea of getting high was something he avoided for as long as possible. But his brother had a way of getting into his head and making him do things he wouldn’t typically do. It wasn’t long before he was dabbling in various illicit substances. Mostly weed, but he tried almost everything else. His limits being fentanyl and smack. He’d seen too many good people fall into those traps and he couldn’t bring himself to fully destroy his body, no matter how much he hated himself. Daryl was aware of his family’s inclination for addiction, his mother being an alcoholic, his dad being both an alcoholic and a drug addict. Because of that, he refused to allow himself to follow fully in his family’s footsteps. Despite his urges to do more, get high more, he held his ground. Which ultimately led to a knock out fight between him and Merle. The older Dixon had goaded Daryl, calling him a pussy and asked Daryl if he thought he was better than him. But Daryl knew the anger his brother was spewing wasn’t pointed directly at him. It was a manifestation of Merle’s internal demons, ones that hated that he couldn’t cope without some sort of substance coursing through his bloodstream. So, he let his brother lay into him a few times before he ended the fight. One well-placed right hook and his inebriated sibling was laid out on the stained carpet of the trailer they were renting.

 After that fight, he cut back on the hard drugs, sticking mainly with weed and alcohol as his vices. Lots of alcohol. Looking back, he could admit that he’d avoided one addiction by picking up another one, but in his mind, being a drunk was a better option. A slower death, riddled with lost time and moments of fleeting happiness and contentment. The walk back to his tent after seeing the scars that covered Pheonyx’s back, was probably the first amount of lost time that didn’t result from some sort of vice. All he knew was the feeling of shock, the itch to run, and suddenly his ass was planted on the grass in front of his tent. 

Shaking hands patted his pockets, searching for the packet of cigarettes that Pheonyx had given him earlier in the day. He pulled them out, fingers almost numb, and pulled a lighter from his other pocket. Placing one of the smokes between his lips, he flicked the lighter four times before his tingling fingers finally managed to get a flame to stick. Lighting the cigarette, he inhaled deeply and allowed the smoke to permeate his lungs. It had been almost a week since his last hit of nicotine and the rush of it pulsing through his veins helped to calm his frazzled nerves. Hands still shaking with the remnants of haunted memories personified, Daryl ran trembling fingers through his short hair. 

The only words going through his mind were four lettered words and one resounding question: How? How did Pheonyx get those scars? Was this all a mistake? Did Daryl misinterpret the long lines and rounded imperfections? Was it the product of some freak accident and not what he had assumed? If it wasn’t an accident, who would have done it? The scars were old, the coloring of the ones not covered in ink were a big indicator. They were  most likely from childhood. If it wasn't an accident, like his gut was telling him, then who could have done it?  Was it Pheonyx's stepdad, Hershel? No. Daryl didn’t think so. While Pheonyx had seemed uncomfortable earlier when his stepdad was around, it seemed to be more about the old man and his stupid beliefs on the walkers sentience. There wasn’t any fear in those fern green eyes. Not like the kind his own eyes held for his Pa. It could have been Pheonyx’s mom but he only seemed sad when he mentioned her death earlier. There wasn’t any relief to be found in his words. Briefly, Daryl wondered why he cared so much. They were scars, similar to his own, but they were on someone he had known for less than 24 hours. Why did it matter?

Taking another deep drag from the quickly burning cigarette, Daryl knew the answer was complicated. He’d only known the other man for a short time, but there was something there. A spark of something. Something he was unfamiliar with. Something that scared the shit out of him. So even if he had only known Pheonyx for a day or even just 5 minutes, he felt like he would still care. He wanted to know who had hurt the younger man. Maybe just so he would have somewhere to direct his anger. Because he was angry. Pissed. Furious. And every synonym in between. Those scars had him seeing images of his own past but also images of a tiny Pheonyx, being broken in the way he had been all those years ago. Was that why he had panicked earlier when Daryl asked about his gender? 

“Fuck!”, Daryl cursed, dropping the cigarette nub to the ground. Instinctively he pulled the side of his index finger to his mouth, soothing the small burn with his cool saliva. He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t even noticed it burning down right to the filter, where his dirty fingers were clenching the little stick tightly. The slight wound wasn’t really painful, more of a shock to his already frazzled brain. Shaking his head in frustration at his foggy mind, he used the heel of his boot to put out the tiny stub, red embers fading into the grass, and unzipped the tent behind him. He crawled into the small space, barely remembering to turn around and zip the polyester flap closed. Before he flopped down onto his sleeping bag, he made sure to place his bow within reaching distance. 

In the span of less than half an hour, Daryl went from being wide awake to dog tired. The scratchy pillow under his head suddenly felt like a pile of cashmere. His eyes felt heavy and he covered them by flinging his arm over his face. 

He was so lost in a haze of sleep, he didn’t even notice the shuffling outside his tent, followed by the slow unzipping of the entryway. 

Pheonyx fucked up. Really fucked up. 

When he’d first walked out into the woods, he fell into a familiar rhythm. There was no trouble. Just the whispering of the trees and the resounding answers of wind chimes in every direction. With his bow raised, he walked with purpose, keeping his ears open for the sounds of nocturnal critters. It wasn’t long before one of his arrows was piercing through the night air and impaling a possum through the eye. Leaves crunching under his feet, Pheonyx walked towards his kill and knelt down next to the small animal’s body. This was one of the worst parts of his nights. He had to find fresh meat to bait his traps. The windchimes worked wonders to draw in the shadows to the stakes of his traps, but it usually wasn’t enough to entice the creatures to push themselves deep onto the spikes. That’s why he needed the meat as a final nail in their proverbial coffin. The shadows prefer fresh, breathing meat but if no other options were around, they would indulge on already butchered flesh. 1-2 days dead at most. A few weeks after the world fell, Pheonyx had found the body of a woodchuck, killed by a long forgotten bear trap closing on its foot. He’d taken the bear trap but left the body(after recalling Kismet to stop him from rolling in the dead animal), with full intentions to come back the next day and give it a proper burial. Instead, the next day, he stumbled on the walking corpse of his high school English teacher chowing down on the slightly decomposed body. This knowledge had helped him complete the plans for protecting his home. He had originally thought about rigging up small cages to the trees to house small animals as bait for the shadows. But the idea of putting an innocent creature in a box and emotionally torturing it just didn’t sit well in his stomach. Killing them still made him feel horrible, but at least it didn't prolong their suffering. 

When prepping kills to eat, a hunter would normally slit an animal’s throat to allow the blood to drain from the body. Pheonyx didn’t do that now. The blood was what drew in the shadows.  He picked up the animal, gently petted its soft creamy fur, and sent an internal thank you to its soul. Opting to leave the arrow in, to prevent anymore blood loss from the small body, he slung his bow over his shoulder. One would be enough for at least 5 traps, so he wanted his other hand–the one not holding the dead animal–to be free if he needed to grab his cutlass. Most nights, he would spend 8 hours clearing and checking each trap in the woods, but he didn’t have the time or energy to do that. His ultimate plan was to hit the ones, about half of them, that were closest to the farm, on the right side of the creek. Sophia seemed to be sticking to the left side of the water, which meant he would be able to check some of the others during the search the next day. He wouldn’t be able to check all of them, doing so would put them off course and be detrimental to finding the girl. But some were better than none. 

So far, he’d been lucky. The amount of shadows that wound up in the traps was manageable for one person running on little sleep and high levels of stress. Pheonyx wasn’t dumb. He knew that eventually he would crash emotionally or get hurt.  He needed help and Rick’s group was a beacon of hope for him in regards to his family’s safety. Not only were they experienced with the dead, but they also were motivated to stay and protect the haven of the farm. 

It was that train of thought that ultimately led to Pheonyx’s fuck up. His body moved on muscle memory to check the first four traps. While his body was working on protecting his family, his mind was back at the farm, back in the stables. As he was pulling off the rotted flesh from the trees, tossing it into the burn pit and replacing it with a chunk of the dead possum, his mind kept flashing back to the paleness of Daryl’s skin and the look on his face before he ran away. Pheonyx’s internal demons reared up, their raspy voices grating across his ear drums. 

He’s disgusted by you. 

You’re so weak and broken.

Why didn’t you fight back?

Why would he want you?

Shaking his head, Pheonyx tried to pull himself from the darkness. If he allowed himself, he could easily fall back into old habits. Self-destructive ones. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he dabbled in drugs and drank way too much in the past. Sometimes it was easier to find solace in the bottom of a bottle than to actually face his problems. If it wasn’t substances, his mind had its own ways of destroying itself. Constant self-berating and internal insults could make him physically ill sometimes. The end of the world wasn’t the time to be getting drunk or allowing his internal demons to claw the walls inside his body until the blood seeps from open wounds. 

Pheonyx finished refreshing the fifth trap, stabbing the leg of the possum onto the railroad spike that was already impaled into the old oak. He had tossed the head of the possum, the last piece of the animal’s body, to the side near his bow and quiver. Looking at his hands, he saw clotted blood soaked his fingers and stained his fingernails, the red color turning more brown as it dried in the evening air. Copper fragrance permeated his nostrils and he suppressed the gag from crawling up his throat. Pheonyx went to wipe his hands on the back of his jeans, as they needed to be washed anyways, but stopped when his hands met a soft fabric hanging from his back pocket. 

Pulling out the red rag, he noted the walker blood from earlier had dried and stained the cherry colored fabric. He could already see the possum blood soaking into the area where his fingers were. It blended more seamlessly than the black sludge from the shadow. Something about the idea of letting the threadbare cloth get even more dirty didn’t sit right with him, so he wiped one hand on the back of his jeans and then the other, moving the rag to the other hand in between. Although he didn’t want to admit it, he knew the rise of sentimentality surrounding the simple object was due to who it had belonged to originally. But the ultimate question was why? Why did he care about Daryl Dixon or what he thought? Growing up, he'd cared what everyone thought about him, ashamed of not fitting into their boxes and trying so hard to himself small enough to fit in them. After he came out, he’d learned to think less about it, and to follow his heart as opposed to chasing after the elusive judgements that people bestowed on him. That night had derailed him severely from his progress in those regards, but moving away had helped him become more independent when it came to freeing himself from the binds of society’s rigid standards. So, why Daryl Dixon? What about the older man made him want his acceptance so much? It wasn’t even really acceptance, Pheonyx wanted him. There had been flirting in the past. Brief glances of possible futures with girls and some guys, plenty of people he could have opened his heart to, to fall in love with, but he never had the urge to. Until him. 

That was where he messed up. While he was lost in his head, hand still rubbing the softened red rag, it snuck up on him. 

He smelled the shadow before he saw it. The scent of decay from the walking corpses was even more distinct than that of a dead animal or even a normal dead human. It was that sickly, rancid smell that filled his lungs. From experience, no amount of coughing or gagging could clear it away. Dark miasma coated his inner nostrils and flowed down the back of his throat, like the nasty cough medicine his mom would make him take when he was sick as a kid. Fear and adrenaline began to pulse through his veins and Pheonyx whirled around just as the sound of hissing and groaning reached his ears. 

The shadow was much too close to him, he could practically feel the fetid air escaping its lungs as it raised its hands to grab at his shoulders. Pheonyx barely had a second to sidestep the gnarled fingers, gray flesh hanging from under its fingernails. If he hadn’t moved, the monster would have pushed him directly into the spikes of his own trap. 

Heart slamming against his chest, Pheonyx grappled at his waist for the handle of his cutlass, but the shadow turned around. Instinctively, he took another step back and felt the air come out from under him as his foot slipped on a loose stone. He fell back onto the damp forest floor, a sharp pain ripping through his ribs, causing his lungs to constrict and his eyes to water from the pain. 

Before his senses could come back to him, the spongy weight of the decaying corpse fell directly on top of Pheonyx. Gasping loudly, not only for air but out of shock, he pushed against the shadow’s skinny collarbone with his right hand. His fingers practically melted into the mushy flesh, and black blood trickled between his digits and down onto his shirt. Midnight stained teeth snapped in front of his face and he had to breathe only from his mouth to avoid the rancid scent of blood and pus coming from the orifice. He pushed hard against the creature’s shoulder but despite its putrefying muscles, it was still incredibly strong. The hunger and need for flesh intensifying its strength. With his left hand, Pheonyx tried to search along his waist for the handle of his hunting knife, but he couldn’t reach it on the other side of his body. The walker’s hands dug into his own chest, trying desperately to gain any purchase. He threw his arm out, searching along the forest floor for any sort of weapon. Just as the tips of his fingers brushed against something soft, the hold that Pheonyx had on the shadow’s collar bone slipped. His fingers slid into soggy flesh and more black blood poured from the area his nails just slipped into, dripping onto his neck and chin. The texture of the decaying flesh was like chunky mud against his hand. This slip gave the creature all the leverage it needed to lean down and clamp its teeth into the sharp bone where Pheonyx’s shoulder met his neck.

 Letting out a cry of pain, Pheonyx grasped onto the furry object that his fingers brushed against and used a burst of strength to push the heavy body up, breaking the seal its mouth had on his body. Teeth snapped in his face, barely missing the tip of his nose, and Pheonyx instinctively shoved the unknown object into its muzzle. Now in his sight, he could see that the object in question was the possum head that he had tossed aside earlier. The monster’s teeth tore into the skull, crushing the bone with inhuman strength, causing fresh, red blood to pour onto Pheonyx’s face. Smacking and sucking noises as it chewed were sickening. The smell of copper filled his nose and the metallic zing of the fluid flooded his mouth. 

The distraction of the meat in the shadow’s mouth was enough for Pheonyx to gain the energy to push it back with one hand and reach around his body with the other hand to grab his hunting knife. The familiar textured hilt felt like heaven on his tired fingers. Pulling out the sharp blade, he pushed the chewing creature back and raised the knife up, bringing the weapon down into its skull. The soft bone caved under the pressure of his stab and more black sludge trickled down onto his already coated hand. 

Frantic movements ceasing, the shadow went slack against Pheonyx’s body and the partially macerated possum head fell directly onto his face. Suppressing the retch that his brain finally sent the signal for, Pheonyx shoved the body off of him, inhaling the fresh air deeply. There was still a remnant of decay in the air, and the lingering scent of copper from the blood that coated his body, but it was better than the acrid smell of the creature’s mouth inches from his face. 

Pheonyx laid there for a moment, his side and shoulder throbbing in tune to his still accelerated heart rate. That was the closest encounter he had ever had with a shadow that didn’t involve one of his traps. The closest he had been to death in almost 5 years. And he still could die. The pain in his shoulder was a reminder of that. He turned his head to look at the area, his hands beginning to shake as he thought of what happened when his brother and mother were bitten. The pain of watching them slowly die was excruciating. He wouldn’t put that on his family. If he was bitten, he would take the hunting knife from the monster’s head and push it into own skull before he allowed his sisters to see him slip from the world. 

In the darkness of the night, he couldn’t see much on his denim jacket besides blood. Black and red blood was splattered all across the chest like a morbid Jackson Pollock painting. He grabbed the fabric near his neck and pulled down to see a perfect black outline of the shadow’s teeth imprinted into the thick material. Each tooth mark a testament to how close he came to becoming one of the walking dead. While it didn’t look like it had torn through the jacket, he had to be sure. He pushed his hand under the collar of his t-shirt and used his fingers to prod the painful area. There was pain but he didn’t feel any scratches or broken skin. 

Pheonyx let out a deep breath of relief. He got up slowly, careful not to jostle his side, and began to gather his stuff. The few minutes before let him know that he wasn’t in the right state to be out. A flash of red on the ground next to the walker’s body stopped him mid step. He bent down to retrieve Daryl’s bandana he dropped when the creature attacked him. The cloth had been dirty before, a mixture of oil stains and blood. Now it was coated with more of the latter. At some point during the struggle, it must have gotten caught on a root or rock because there was a large tear through the center, nearly splitting the square in half. Red threads hung limply from the perforation and Pheonyx couldn’t help but feel a bit saddened. The shadow hadn’t gotten him but it did break something important. A normal person would have simply tossed the bandana, but Pheonyx had never been normal. His feelings about Daryl might have been full of confusion, and some anger from his earlier actions, but he couldn’t find it in him to part with the cloth that had seen better days. Maybe he saw a bit of himself in the insignificant object. Torn and stained by past events but there was still some life left in the old bones of thread. He gently folded the bandana and tucked it into his jacket pocket. He had an idea of what to do with it but that would have to be done later. 

Weapons in hand, and in sheaths, he began the trek back home. It was slower going due to the pain in his side and just general tiredness. The adrenaline had faded and now he needed to sleep. But a shower was needed first. 

By the time he made it to the farm, Pheonyx guessed it was around two in the morning, based on the position of the moon. He stopped briefly into the stable to drop his weapons off near his pallet. The horses were all asleep. Baker did wake when Pheonyx dropped his bow and quiver onto the ground. The old horse gave a snort that roughly translated to “Shut the fuck up, I’m trying to sleep.” before flicking his tail and turning the other way. 

Grabbing some clean clothes from his bag, Pheonyx headed out of the stables towards the farm house. The yellow aura from the moon hit the old glass windows, reflecting the luminescence like a lighthouse, sending a beacon to let him know the way home. 

Carefully, Pheonyx walked across the porch and slowly opened the door, wincing a small bit when it let out a loud squeak. He really needed to fix that. The journey through the living room and up the stairs was filled with more squeaks and winces. Each sound a memory of Shawn or Maggie getting caught sneaking out in the middle of the night. Pheonyx never had that problem. He didn’t have any reason to be sneaking out like his siblings did. Friends and dating were not part of his teenage years. He could barely handle his own internal problems, adding anyone else to the mix just seemed like a recipe for disaster. 

The sounds of Hershel and Maggie snoring greeted him at the top of the steps. And yes. Maggie snored. No matter how much she denied it, she was louder than a New York construction site. Pheonyx made his way into the bathroom, making sure to avoid the third floorboard after the stairs because it was the loudest, and carefully shut the door. He flipped the lock and reached to turn on the bright camping lantern that was resting on the white countertop. While the Greene farm did have a generator, they only ran it for a few hours each morning and evening. Just enough to keep the fridge cold, to make meals, and to take hot showers. Taking his showers in the early hours before the generator was on, meant that Pheonyx wasn’t benefiting from the last reason. Luckily, with the Georgia heat being prevalent even through the night, the showers were bordering on lukewarm rather than cold. The pristine bathroom glowed for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the light. 

Unbuttoning his jeans mechanically, Pheonyx’s thoughts trailed back to his fuck up earlier. This wasn’t the old world. He couldn’t afford to lose himself like that. He needed to have his whole focus on this farm. On his family. Protecting them and making sure they didn’t have to deal with the darker side of this world. The one that had always existed but had fully unmasked itself when the dead began to walk. His boots were heavy on his feet and the relief of feeling the cool air on his sweat soaked socks ripped a small groan from his mouth. Tossing the socks into the hamper by the toilet, he hooked his thumb under the waistline of his jeans and boxers and pushed them down, his blood crusted fingers brushing against the thick hair on his legs. Kicking the bundle of clothing by the door (he couldn’t have his sisters or Patricia cleaning out walker blood from his clothes), he pulled his arms out of his jacket and took a moment to run his thumb over the black bite mark imprinted into the thick material. Again, he was reminded of how close to dying he had come. If he hadn’t been wearing the jacket, he would be a shell walking in the woods. Probably would be caught up in one of his own traps before the morning sun made its way over the horizon. Before he pitched the jacket to the side, he pulled out the dirty and torn bandana and set it onto the sink for safe keeping.   He reached over his head to tug the collar of his shirt–the band logo on the front was completely disfigured by the carnage on it– over his head. The stretch of his skin over his ribs hurt, but it wasn’t as sharp as it had been earlier. The threadbare fabric stuck to his skin, the blood still wet in spots. Tossing the shirt onto the pile with his jeans and boxers, he reluctantly looked in the mirror to take stock of the damage to his body.  

The first thing that stood out was the large black bruise on his shoulder, bisecting the snake that trailed up his shoulder and over his neck. He gently prodded the skin, leaning into the mirror, to make sure there weren't any perforations. Even the slightest cut by a shadow’s teeth was a death sentence. Despite the deep pain, the skin was unbroken. If he hadn’t lost his faith so long ago, he might have believed it was a miracle as opposed to pure luck. The bruise covered a good portion of his shoulder, but with the right shirt choice, he could easily cover it. He knew if Maggie saw it, she would freak out. And he wanted to avoid upsetting his sister as much as possible. 

His hands roved down to his ribs and probed the darkened skin over the quote inked into the skin there. The bruise wasn’t as prominent as the one on his shoulder and thankfully didn’t seem to penetrate too deep, a superficial bruise. Nor did it seem like one of his ribs was broken. Another stroke of good fortune it seemed. At this point he was just jacking off luck. Eventually it would all come to an explosive deadly end but for now he could just be happy that it was just an awkward metaphorical handjob. 

Pheonyx turned the water on and listened to the soothing sound of it beating down onto the shower floor. He ducked his head and body under the flow, letting the individual drops massage his back. The scarred skin was a myriad of sensations. Some scars were completely numb, others tingled, and a select few made any sensation painful. His doctor said it was due to varying degrees of nerve damage. Aside from pain medication and experimental treatments, there wasn’t much to be done. So, he simply learned to deal with the feeling. 20 years later and his dad was still getting his lashes in it seemed. Pheonyx grabbed the bar of soap on the shelf by his knees and began to scrub his skin. 

Blood and dirt swirled around his feet, the lukewarm water and cheap soap baptizing him from the day's sins. He washed his hair using Maggie’s shampoo and conditioner. The products made his hair softer than the cheap products he brought with him from his apartment so he allowed himself the small indulgence of stealing some of his sibling’s stuff. Maggie often stole his flannels and hoodies, so it was only fair. 

As the water ran clear and his skin metaphorically sighed from the feeling of being cleaned, he took a moment to just indulge in the simplicity and luxury of the water trickling down his arms, legs, and chest. It was a small reprieve from the outside world. Just a small one. After a few seconds, he pushed the wet hair off his face and shut the water off. Cool air immediately made goosebumps appear on his arms. 

Because the water had been room temperature, the mirror wasn’t fogged and he was greeted by his own reflection in the glass. Grabbing a towel from the rack, he began to dry off. Scrubbing at his hair with the towel, his eyes fell down to the red bandana sitting on the edge of the sink. Shadows casting onto the stained fabric from the lantern in the corner. Tossing the now damp towel into the hamper, Pheonyx used one hand to run through his hair, smoothing the spiky mess, and the other to grab the cloth. He plugged the sink and filled it with a small bit of water from the faucet, enough to begin cleaning the bandana. 

It took a while but he was able to get most of the blood stains out of the red fabric. Or at least enough of it to be able to blend in with the already red dye. Unplugging the drain and wringing out the water, he laid it onto the edge of the sink to dry while he got dressed. He slipped into the clean boxers and jeans that he brought. Sitting on the toilet, he slipped on a pair of clean socks and pulled his worn boots back onto his still aching feet. 

“Fuck,” Pheonyx said as he picked up the shirt he brought. He thought he grabbed a t-shirt, which would hide the bruise on his shoulder, but he had accidentally taken one of his gray undershirts, the straps of which would cover only a quarter of the baseball sized bruise. 

It’s 3AM. No one is awake right now. I’ll be fine, Pheonyx thought while slipping the clean tank over his head. 

Within 3 minutes he was eating those words. As he walked downstairs, dirty clothes in hand and the red rag tucked into the belt loop on his side, he slammed into someone walking out of the kitchen. Instinctively, Pheonyx dropped the items in his hands and reached for the hunting knife at his side. The knife that he had left in the stable. 

“I’m so sorry, Pheonyx.”, a whispered familiar voice eased the tension in his muscles and he backed up to get a better look in the dark at the person. Straight brown hair and brown eyes glittered in the moonlight that poked through the windows behind him. Lori. He let out a breath of relief and smiled softly at her. 

The corners of her lips lifted, attempting to smile back, before her eyes darted to his shoulder, drawn to the dark contusion that was peeking from behind the strip of his tank top. Concern filled her gaze as she looked at him, “What happened? Do I need to get Hershel?”

Pheonyx hurried to reassure her, almost rambling with the need to not worry her. “I’m okay. I swear. I messed up and had a run in with a walker.  But I was wearing a jacket, so it’s just bruised. It didn’t break the skin.”, he kept his voice low, not wanting to wake anyone in the house. “I go out at night to make sure the woods are cleared of the dead.”

Lori’s lips turned down in a concerned frown. 

“Please don’t tell anyone,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to worry my sisters. And Hershel is already mad at me for putting up the traps in the woods. This would just set him off even more.” 

Sighing, she placed her hands on her hips but nodded. “I won’t tell them, but you can’t keep doing this.  Going out alone? In the middle of the night? You’re going to get hurt. Or killed.” 

He knew that. Those were constant worries that floated around in his mind. But to hear them out loud made his chest hurt. “I know. I just- I have to protect them.”

Lori didn’t even need to ask who Pheonyx was referring to. Rick and she had talked about the man in front of her. Her husband told her all about the traps in the woods(she had seen them for herself the day before but Rick explained how Pheonyx used them to protect the farm), and also how the other Greenes seemed to be in a separate world. One where the dead were simply people who had the sniffles. Pheonyx had taken up the helm of family protector. At the Quarry, all the men had taken on the task of protecting the camp. Making schedules for watches and runs. And even with 10 men working hard to protect the rest of the group, they had been attacked and decimated by the dead. The Greene son was taking on an almost impossible job. A job that one man couldn’t possibly handle alone. Not for much longer anyway. Even in the darkness of the room, the moon being her only source of light, she could see the bags under his eyes. His shoulders were slumped and he just seemed exhausted. 

“You have. And you protected my son too. Now it’s our turn to help you.”, she reached out and took his calloused hand, not noticing the subtle flinch at the contact of her skin. “Rick and the other men are going to be doing some chores around the farm, but we’ll talk to them about making a schedule for checking the woods too.”

Pheonyx didn’t know how to respond. One part of him was entirely focused on her hand touching his and how it made his skin crawl from unfamiliarity. The other part was resigned, yet still relieved, to accept help from the strangers on the property. Instead of a verbal response, he opted to nod and slowly pull his hand from hers, as not to offend her. 

Lori smiled at him and glanced at the bundle of dirty clothes that he still held in his other hand. “Carol and I are going to work on laundry tomorrow, your family’s and ours. I can take those for you and make sure to wash them before your sisters or Hershel sees.”

The older woman held her hand out to take the clothes from him and Pheonyx handed them over readily. That was another thing off his list to worry about and he could physically feel the weight on his shoulders lifting a small bit. He whispered his thanks to her and they bid each other good night afterwards. 

The warm fingers of night air threaded through Pheonyx’s still damp locks, both cooling and heating his skin. He could feel the slight breeze rustling the rag hanging off his waistband as he made the walk back to the stables. 

Once again, the only animal to acknowledge his presence was Baker, who snorted and released a sound of flatulence that Pheonyx was absolutely convinced was directed at him. Petulantly, he stuck his tongue out at the horse before walking into his personal stall. He stripped off the tank top, tossing it back into his bag of clean clothes because he’d only worn it for a short time, and pulled out an actual t-shirt from the bag. He didn’t want Maggie to come in early and catch him before he could change. After slipping on the old shirt, Pheonyx fell back onto his cot and stared up at the ceiling. His fingers found their way down to the red bandana at his side and he twisted it around in his hand, the fabric was still damp and felt clammy against his fingertips. 

The image of Daryl’s face flashed through his mind again and Pheonyx had to swallow a swell of embarrassment and sadness. He had truly been hopeful that the archer would be different. He hadn’t seemed to care about the fact that Pheonyx was trans. But when faced with the scars that lingered on his back, the man had fled, a look on his face that Pheonyx could only guess was disgust. 

Steeling himself, Pheonyx decided it didn’t matter. He’d work with Daryl to find the girl. They didn’t have to be friends. Hell, they didn’t even have to talk to each other. Once they found Sophia, they could go their separate ways. It’s not like Pheonyx could change the fact that his back looked like minced meat. Even if he could, he wouldn’t, the scars were a testament to his survival. Especially not for a man he had just met. Even if the man did make his stomach feel like tv static. 

 The morning breeze and chirping birds were nature’s alarm clock, and one that Daryl had learned to abide by in order to become an expert tracker and hunter. Most animals were early risers, so if he wanted to keep a steady pace on their trail, he needed to work on their schedule. Daryl was used to waking with the morning sun. Sometimes he even woke before the moon had finished its descent into the horizon. 

The morning after his jarring interaction with Pheonyx was no different. He had slept deeply after crashing into his tent but nightmares had infected his mind. Ones that involved his father and the things he had done to him as a boy. Those kinds of dreams weren’t unusual for him. In truth, he had grown accustomed to them. To the point that he didn’t even wake up screaming anymore. They were inevitable really. But that night had been different. Instead of Daryl being on the floor of the trailer, his back torn up like an eviction notice, it was Pheonyx. Those green eyes locked onto his, begging him for help as Will Dixon brought his belt down onto the fiery bird on the younger man’s shoulders. But Daryl couldn’t do anything. He screamed at his father to stop but Pa just smiled and brought the belt down harder. He tried to shove the man away but each time he ran into a wall. So Daryl was forced to watch. Over and over the belt smacked into Pheonyx’s skin, until the green of his eyes faded to a milky white. Despite the torturous images, Daryl had a hard time waking up. 

His body was so entrenched in sleep that his brain came into wakefulness before the rest of him did. The dewy morning air was sharp, even in the tight space of his tent, and made his lungs ache from the slight chill. His ears perked at the sounds of birds trilling in the distance and he made out the low murmurs of Glenn and T-Dog divvying up chores for the day. 

A musty scent reached his nose. His eyes still closed, Daryl’s eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. Over the past couple of months, he had become accustomed to the smell of his own body odor and this smell wasn’t that. He peeled his sleep-crusted eyes open, his vision swimming before becoming clear again. 

In front of him, he was met with the sight of……. 

Balls? 

More specifically, Daryl woke to the blinding sight of a dog’s rear end. Asshole, neutered sac, the whole nine yards. The only thing that broke through his fog of shock was the tail attached to said rear end. It began to thump against the ground and ended up whacking into the archer’s forehead. 

Daryl shot up and fell back on his hands, “What the fuck?!”

Having realized his human companion was awake, Kismet rolled from his side position onto his belly. He lifted his head up lazily, eyes droopy and a small string of drool hanging from his mouth. His upper lips were stuck on his teeth, showcasing his pearly white fangs. Out of context, and without the dopey look in his eyes, one might assume the dog was mid-snarl. Still half-asleep and teeth still exposed, Kismet cocked his head to the side in confusion at the look of distress in Daryl's eyes. Obviously deciding it wasn't his problem, the dog stood up, arching and stretching his legs out in front of him, making the muscles in his body bulge out even more than usual. He let out a big yawn and then shook himself, the metal pieces on his collar making a clinking noise with each movement. 

A faint whistle sounded from the direction of the house. Despite the tent flap blocking their vision, both man and dog turned their heads in that direction.

"Kismet! Breakfast!", a female voice called. 

Kismet's eyes widened and he didn't need to be told twice before he dove out of the small opening from the tent’s zipper that he had nosed open the night before. The dog moved so fast he didn't even realize his back leg had kicked out, subsequently knocking the archer's crossbow into his thigh. Daryl cursed again at the sharp pain and rubbed the area. 

Daryl had always loved dogs, but he was starting to think he needed to make an exception for this particular one. 

Taglist: @yoongibaybee @edgyboi10000 @dixonsboy19 @clairealeehelsing @mrrumplebottom

[lookatmysillies]

YAEL PRE-ROUND 6 LORE: Part 1

Underwater

Prefacing this with summary & warnings! This is the first of what will probably be a 2 or 3 part series of Yael lore to lead up to his and Inna’s (@alien-til-i-stage) for Season 40. The narrative is nonlinear, so hopefully that clears up any confusion. TWs include: mentions of v*mit, s**cide attempt, drowning, near-death experiences, allusions to past surgery, needles/syringes, terminal illness, mild physical violence, mental illness, mentions of urine, death, dear god I hope that’s it anyway use your discretion writing below the cut

Drowning was peaceful.

There’s the initial few seconds of calm before the lungs start to burn, the chest begins to spasm and heave. The brain’s survival instincts kick in and begin to override any instructions to remain under, should the drowning be intentional, which in Yael’s case, was true. The pain becomes unbearable. Desperation flies in the face of logic; the mouth opens in a harsh, sucking gasp in a futile plea for air. Water rushes in instead and fills the mouth, nose, windpipe, pushes into the esophagus, invades the lungs. 

But then everything is quiet.

Quiet.

Never in Yael’s life had there ever been such quiet. Half-drowned and half-conscious, his body ceased its involuntary jerks and kicks, too weak to make any clawing attempts back to the living. The Anakt Garden river wasn’t deep–even the deepest point could be stood in, and it was still as glass. Drowning, even intentionally, was difficult. Yael had considered trying to knock himself unconscious in the water with a rock to prevent the struggle, but if he was found trying to do so, his attempts would be thwarted and he himself would be punished. So instead he flattened himself in the deepest point and gripped the wet, mossy floor as tightly as he could, facedown, and waited. Waited.

The green, brown, and blue began to blur and swim in his vision, flashes of colorful dots and lights failing to catch his waning attention. The ever-present roar of thought, feeling, fear, pain, confusion, anguish, pain, pain, pain–it all left with his last breath. Quiet. It was quiet. It was so safe.

Dying was the safest Yael had ever felt. Peaceful. Warm. Loved by something for the first time, something beyond, in the place he always dreamed of. Free.

This was his last thought before his body gave one last jerk and his eyes rolled in his head, feeling draining from his limbs and up to his neck, taking the colors away.

Free.

When the colors came back, they were green like the river.

His vision crawled back into his unseeing eyes, and the light, the color, was so violently bright and sudden that nausea seized him in an instant. He could feel so much, so much that he couldn’t feel much at all. The feeling of vomiting blended in with the screaming in his chest, the bones of his ribs crushed in at odd angles. He saw only one face, the green, the green–white, an eyepatch, green–...there were other figures, but their faces were covered in helmets. If the other children were watching, he didn’t see. He didn’t hear.

His muscles lacked control, and everything was so cold and wet, there was no way for him to pick out the sensation of water, spit, and bile slipping down his chin past the swell of his lower lip, or the brief heat of his bladder failing. He was spiraling.

He didn’t have any control over what happened to him.

Guardian Velji always called his lack of control defective.

Since he was a baby, he would wail over things unseen to anyone else. As a small child, he had night terrors, always wetting his pajama bottoms in the night, sometimes screaming until he lost his voice or passed out in his own sweat and urine. In the daytime, he was kept apart from his guardian’s other young pet human, a small girl with black hair and a sickly pallor who was often accompanied by an older pet human who acted as an orderly. Her name was Nina. The orderly’s was Zair.

Yael understood that Nina was defective, too, but in a different way than he was. Nina was always hooked up to strange machines. Clear tubes were always up her nostrils. Yael was a skinny child, but when he compared himself to her, he recognized that his bones didn’t protrude like hers did from her gray skin so awfully. 

Zair was tall and decidedly more graceful than the younger children. He always wore a white uniform from head to toe, and his hair, brown like Yael’s, was kept neatly cropped. He wasn’t tender with Yael like he was with little Nina, but he was attentive in ways Velji and his partners weren’t.

“Yael,” he would scold when he came to tidy his space in the mornings and check for anything Yael shouldn’t have. “You’ve made a mess of the bedding again. If Master knew how often I have to wash these things, he’d have you sleeping on the hard floor.” He would crouch to eye level with Yael and narrow his eyes at him, pinching his nose just hard enough to hurt a little. “Do you want that to happen?”

Yael just shook his head and murmured, “No. I’m sorry.”

That was usually about the time Zair gave it up. He huffed, tweaked his nose, and stood to hurriedly gather up the wet sheets and clothes.

“I won’t tell,” he would say. Then he left.

With Nina, his words weren’t so harsh. He always let her hold his hand when they walked together. When Nina started being moved around in a wheelchair, it was Zair who pushed it, and although she was mute, he talked to her almost constantly. Yael was sometimes caught staring at them, following them, watching them interact. Nina and Zair stared back. Zair approached him, turned him around by the shoulders, and nudged him off to go play by himself.

Ironically, he and Nina didn’t interact much at all until Nina and Zair stopped appearing around the facility at all. Yael tracked them back to Nina’s room of machines. The very machines he was sometimes hooked up to to take things out, to try and cure this strange rot inside of him, kept Nina safe and alive. He remembered finding this strange. Unfair, maybe.

Zair often shooed him out of the room. After a few times, he grew very cross with him and shoved him into the wall, telling him to get out and stay out and that she doesn’t need the stress, each harsh word punctuated by a sharp jab to the chest with his index finger. When Yael changed into his nightclothes that night, he spotted small red bruises on his chest. This too seemed unfair.

Despite the warnings, he sometimes snuck in when Zair was needed by Velji’s mistresses and sat on the foot of the bed. Nina was mostly asleep during these visits. A few times she was awake and stared right back at him with unsettlingly dark, empty eyes. He tried to see what was in there; what made her this way, as something inside of him had surely made him this way.

More out of curiosity than sympathy for her plight, he once touched her limp, unnaturally cold hand and carefully slotted his fingers in the spaces between hers like he’d seen Zair do with her. It didn’t feel as comforting as he imagined, just clammy and foreign. Something in him made him hold on regardless. Even when she woke and stared up at him, unblinking, he didn’t let go.

Yael was quiet, and she was silent, always. Maybe this was why they could communicate by looking and not speaking. During their brief and unsettling visits, her eyes began to tell him a lot of things he should’ve been too young to understand.

But he understood better than any words he’d ever been told.

So one time he watched from the doorway, just barely cracked open, as Zair administered her dose of medicine. At the first opportunity, he slipped into the room and opened the small drawer where he saw Zair put the key to the medicine cabinet, then unlocked the door and took out the vial with the orange cap. He stepped back to the machines and gripped the port where the medicine was administered. His eyes drifted to Nina’s increasingly sallow, haunted face.

She stared at him as he hooked up the medicine.

An overdose.

He held her hand for the second time until her eyes were wiped of thought or feeling. The feeling of her hand was even more unpleasant than last time. He’d thought it was cold before. He hadn’t had anything real to compare it to.

When Zair came back and found him, he struck him across the face, and Yael fell to the hard floor while Zair wailed and cried for help, shaking Nina’s corpse.

Yael sat up on the floor, hand cupping his stinging cheek, and watched. Inexplicably, for the first time in a long time, he began to cry.

“I didn’t kill her,” Yael insisted even as he was accused of such by Zair. “She was already dead. She wanted me to do it.”

Zair didn’t agree. Neither did Velji.

Yael was supposed to be euthanized that night. He was strapped down to the table and everything, arms bare for a needle to slide into without resistance. It could have been an hour or only a few minutes that he was waiting for the procedure.

It was surreal. That was the only way to describe it. He didn’t scream or try to fight his restraints. He didn’t yell at the ceiling for some hypothetical god to save him. The punishment didn’t make sense to him, but this was the extent of his upset: vague disturbance and that sneaking sense of injustice that prodded at the back of his mind.

When Zair arrived, Yael expected him to grab the key, open the cabinet, fill a syringe with liquid from one of the vials and stick it in his arm without further thought. Instead, Zair paused in the doorway, nothing more than a silhouette in the dark room Yael had been left to wait in. Then he stepped inside, crouched at the head of the table, and undid Yael’s restraints.

Yael looked at him, perplexed by this turn of events. Zair frowned.

“Well? Sit up.” Before Yael could do so, Zair set him upright with hands on his shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Yael asked.

Zair pinched the baby fat of his cheek, right where he’d hit him, making Yael grimace. “You’re leaving. I’ll give you a bag to put whatever you can fit in there inside. Get up.”

Again, before Yael could do it, Zair lifted him up by the armpits and set him on the ground, grabbing his hand like he never had before and hurriedly walking him to his room. Yael struggled to keep up, tripping alongside him.

“Leaving?” Yael stammered. “That’s not what Master wanted. Did–Did he change his mind?”

“He didn’t change his mind.” Zair shut the door behind them when they reached Yael’s quarters and shoved the plastic bag from the procedure room into his hands, beginning to collect some things Yael sometimes halfheartedly played with and shoving them inside. “I changed his mind. You’re leaving before he changes it back.”

Yael blinked, hand moving to fidget with the hem of a sleeve that wasn’t there. He was still in the tank top he was supposed to die in. “Do you forgive me?”

Zair took off his white orderly jacket and threw it over Yael’s shoulders. “No,” was all he said. 

Then, “Anything else you want?”

Yael peered down at the bag Zair had filled for him, again doing Yael’s task for him. He was too dazed by the last few hours’ roller coaster of events, he didn’t think he would remember even if he did want something else with him. “No.”

Without further deliberation, Zair snatched his hand up again and dragged him through the winding halls to the exit.

“Start walking,” he told Yael, his tone clipped. “The pod will find you when it gets here, but don’t wait here. Start walking.”

Yael looked back at the facility one last time. He took one shaky step forwards, unsure where he was even supposed to go. Two.

“Hey.”

Please don’t make me leave, he thought but didn’t say. Please don’t do this to me.

Instead he turned to look, silent like any lost child, silent like Nina.

Zair cuffed the sleeves of the orderly jacket so they didn’t hang down past Yael’s hands. He held onto his wrists, not his hands, when he said goodbye.

“I’m sorry,” is what he said. For the second time that day, Yael saw pure, unadulterated sorrow in this usually stoic older child’s face. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.

“I wasn’t good enough to kill either one of you.”

So it is this that sticks with Yael when he’s picked up by the pod for Anakt Garden:

Death was a mercy. What he had given Nina was a mercy Zair could not bring himself to provide. Yael was not lucky to have escaped death that day.

Keeping him trapped in this existence was a selfish act, not for him, but for Zair.

Do you forgive me?

Yael stared out of the transport into the darkness, clutching the hem of his jacket.

No.

Tagging @paradisedisconcert because Can is… sort of mentioned. Not by name but he’s the “green” Yael sees when he’s pulled from the river and resuscitated, he’s just too out of it to know it’s him at the time. And the first tag isn’t working so @alien-til-i-stage once again - for the mention of Inna in my preface and for the fact that this part directly leads into the next part(s) which are heavily Inna and Macbeth centric!!

[ask-underrepairs]

Hello everyone! Welcome to Under Repairs! I'm Michael, the creator of this story!

This is an AU about living. Living for yourself, living for others, living out of spite. Living. It's based on my experiences with depression and suicidal ideation

As such, the following trigger warnings apply: mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation (both active and passive), mentions of self harm, abuse (physical and mental), torture, manipulation, depictions of dissociation, injury to a child, child death (due to a child being a ghost when the story starts), possession, possible allusions to sexual assault and abuse, neck trauma, wrist trauma, and eye trauma. Posts that contain these will be properly tagged (using the format "tw trigger") but if this is too much for you then it might be best to skip this one! This list is subject to be updated, I'll make a post to remind people to check whenever I add things

There's character refs under the cut, more will be added as characters are introduced! I'll add alt text soon!

I hope you all enjoy your stay!

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Fifteen

Masterlist

AO3 link

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist <3 (18+ only, MDNI)

Story is 18+ for mature content/themes, minors do not interact please

TW/CWs for this story--implied/referenced past rape, canonical violence, non-canonical violence, blood, gore, referenced past suicide, swearing, surgery, excessive drinking, nightmares, panic attacks, mention of scars, vomiting, amputation, medical procedures, non-con medical procedures, referenced past medical torture, referenced past drugging, attempted sexual assault, panic attacks, mental health struggles, referenced sibling death, referenced parent death

Each chapter will have its own TW/CWs listed

This story, Lydia Vector, her family & bestie (c) me, TheVeganDarkElf

TWD & its characters (c) AMC & Robert Kirkman, the writer of the comic series

TW/CWs for this chapter--swearing, discussion of past suicide, discussion of parent death (suicide, house fire), mention of scars (Daryl's), medical procedure (stitches), blood, allusion to child abuse (Daryl's), men being creepy, reference to sibling death, we got some big emotions in this one

Word count: 3.3k

Daryl and I began to get much closer after that second run. Eating dinner together became sort of a ritual of ours, other than the nights Daryl had duty in the watchtower. At first, it was him in the chair and me on the far end of the couch as I didn’t want to spook him. He never explicitly said it, but I got the vibe that he wasn’t big on physical touch. He always maintained at least a few feet distance between us, never getting too close. Eventually, I tested the waters and sat on the end of the couch closer to him, and that’d been our dinner arrangement ever since. Over the next few weeks, Rick had us go out on more runs. It was strange to me that I always heard about them from Daryl and never from Rick. I didn’t want to do anything that could get me in trouble, like leaving the sanctity of the walls when I wasn’t supposed to, but I was simply following instructions that I was told came from our fearless cowboy leader.

I joined Daryl once when he was working on his bike, and he showed me some stuff about it. Though he was so beautiful that day, I’ll admit, it was hard for me to keep focus. He was wearing one of his classic button-ups with the sleeves cut off, that angel-wing vest he loved so much, and a pair of ripped jeans that hugged his body just right. It was warm, so he was sweating buckets. I was practically drooling as I watched his arm muscles flex and relax as he worked. The way he glistened with sweat, the little hints of joy I heard in his voice as he talked to me about his motorcycle, his gorgeous accent…he was mesmerizing.

He still came and checked on me every night after I fell out of bed, another ritual of ours I suppose. It had evolved to a point where I would stay lying on the floor and give a thumbs up over the side of the bed when I heard the door open, then he’d leave. We’d sometimes spend mornings together, but usually one of us was always up and out before the other was awake, or if Daryl had overnight watch, he’d be just going to sleep when I got up. Typically, the one who got up first made coffee and left the rest out for the other. Sometimes, if he was coming back from an overnight watch, I’d wake up and go downstairs to find the pot just finishing up brewing.

It was obvious one of Daryl’s love languages was acts of service. He didn’t so much have a way with words, but damn he was good at showing how much he cared. Not just towards me, but the way he cared about the whole of Alexandria. He was always volunteering to go on watch, runs, hunts, you name it. He cared so much about the people here and would do whatever he needed to do to make sure we were all safe and protected. And that only made me fall for him even harder.

Though he typically wasn’t one for expressing his emotions with words, there was one morning when he left me a note. I came downstairs, and he was already out as he had gate duty all day. He had poured me coffee in a white mug with daisies on it that I once casually mentioned was my favorite mug of the ones in the cabinet, and there was a short but sweet note with it.

Have the best day

See you at dinner

I kept the note folded up in the back of my notebook where I kept some photos and a note from my brother.

Today, Daryl was teaching me how to hunt. Well, it was the start of that process. First, there was target practice. And I was getting to pick up and shoot that infamous crossbow.

Daryl had carved an X for a target on a tree, and my goal was to hit as dead center as I could. I knelt on one knee behind a fallen tree, which I was instructed to use to steady the crossbow and practice that way first. I could throw a knife over my shoulder and hit a walker square in the forehead. How hard could a crossbow be?

“Does this thing have recoil?” I asked as he handed it to me, “wow, it’s lighter than I thought it’d be.” I flipped the bow around and examined it, running my fingers over its smooth surface but was careful to make sure I didn’t touch anything that looked like a lever or a button. Didn’t wanna go causing any accidents right out the gate.

“Hardly any,” Daryl said, kneeling next to me. We were almost shoulder-to-shoulder. This was the closest we’d ever been, and I could feel the butterflies in my stomach breaking free and trying to crawl their way up my throat.

“You ever kill anyone with this thing?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes, people are more dangerous than them walkers,” he explained, and I nodded. I was all too familiar with the dangers of other human beings during the end of the world.

“I know what you mean,” I replied. I rested the bow on the fallen tree and kept my gaze on the X carved into the tree in front of me. “I’ve never killed anyone. I don’t know if I could. It goes against the oath I took.”

"Hate to burst your bubble, but that don't matter no more."

“I guess not,” I shrugged, “but enough of that, let’s get to practicing.”

“‘lax your shoulders,” he said, gently placing his hands on both of my shoulders and lightly pressing to help me relax them. This was the first time he’d touched me on purpose. My stomach dropped like I was on a rollercoaster. “Geez, you’re tense woman.”

I wouldn’t be so tense if you didn’t make me so nervous, I thought. I propped the crossbow up onto my shoulder like I’d seen Daryl do a thousand times.

“It’s no good if ya don’t load it,” he said. He picked a bolt off of the front of it and reached around me to load it. His arm rested against my back as he strapped the bolt in. It was like he was testing the boundaries of physical closeness, though I didn’t know whether it was mine or his that he was testing. But I didn’t mind one bit. I steadied the bow on my shoulder and the fallen tree, aiming it at my target.

“Ya really gotta relax,” Daryl said, “can’t have this gettin’ in the way neither.” He took the end of my ponytail and draped my hair over my opposite shoulder, “damn, ya hair’s real soft.” I felt myself melting into a puddle, and my hands started to shake a bit as my heart rate picked up.

“Thank you. I grew it all by myself,” I laughed.

“How long'd it take ya to grow it out?”

“Oh God, I think the last time I got a drastic haircut was when I was like 13,”  I explained, “sometimes I think about chopping it all off because it gets in my way so much. And it feels like it weighs 20 pounds when it’s wet.”

“Ya should keep it long. Looks good.” I smiled and looked down at the ground, trying to hide that I was obviously turning red.

“Thanks,” I said. I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself again.

“Hey, you’re shakin’,” Daryl said, placing a hand on my shoulder in an effort to help me relax, “just take a breath. You’re good.” His voice was soft, soothing, and calming. Still laced with his gravely accent, but there was genuine caring and compassion behind his words.

“Nervous jitters I guess,” I said, taking another deep breath in through my nose. I lied straight through my teeth.

“Alright, look through the scope and aim it at the target,” he said. He kept his hand on my shoulder.

“Looks easy enough,” I said, perhaps a little too confidently as I did as he instructed.

“Once ya got it lined up, ya just pull the lever on the bottom,” Daryl explained, “helps if ya breathe out when ya do it.” I took a deep breath and fired, exhaling like he told me to. The bolt went flying right past the tree, not even grazing it. It landed far off in the grass somewhere I couldn’t see.

“I stand corrected on it looking easy,” I said, feeling horrifically embarrassed, “I missed the tree completely. How did I even do that?”

“It happens. Gotta get used to holdin’ it still. C’mon, I’ll show ya how to load it.” He gestured for me to hand his bow to him.

“At this point, I’ll just be happy to hit the tree at all,” I said, giggling a little to try to make myself feel better.

That’s how we spent the next couple of hours. Me attempting to hit the tree, somehow missing it completely or just grazing it, which was starting to feel like a win, and trying to find the bolts in the grass. He never seemed to get impatient or frustrated with me, even when I was starting to get frustrated with myself. He reassured me, helped me set up and reload, and tried to help me feel more confident.

After what felt like an eternity, I finally did it. I hit the very outskirts of the giant X target, but I hit it nonetheless. I about jumped into the air with how excited I was.

“Oh my God, I did it!” I cheered, nearly dropping the crossbow to the ground in surprise. A gigantic grin spread across my face as I looked at Daryl. “I did it!”

“Knew ya could do it,” he congratulated. He had reached out and was stroking the back of my arm with his fingers. His touch was so light, it felt like being tickled with a feather. I could feel goosebumps forming, but thankfully, my sleeve hid them. “Think that’s the first time I seen ya do that too.”

I looked at him with a puzzled expression. “Seen me do what?”

“Smile like that.” It occurred to me that he was referring to the fact that I was smiling with my teeth out. And he was right—this was the first time I’d smiled like that in months.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

That evening, I found myself working late in the infirmary. A couple of the kids had gotten into a fight, and while their injuries weren’t too bad, they still required attention. A couple of scraped knees and small cuts later, I was supposed to be going home for the evening, but as I was getting ready to leave, the infirmary door swung open one last time, and in came Daryl. He’d been covering gate duty for a couple of hours, and I figured he must’ve seen the infirmary light on and came to check on me.

“Hey, there’s my little Georgia peach,” I said, giving him a big smile. He looked at me with a solemn face, which concerned me a little. “Daryl…are you ok?” He didn’t say anything at first. He simply kept eye contact with me as he stepped closer.

“I, uh, need your help with somethin’,” he said. He took his bow off of his back and turned around. There was a sizable gash across his mid-back, his clothes stained with dried blood.

“Jesus, get your ass up here,” I ordered, gesturing to the exam table. I started grabbing things like gloves and antiseptic. “What the hell happened?”

“Couple of ‘em pricks was talkin’ ‘bout ya,” he said as he sat down on the table and scooted back to the edge. I froze and swallowed hard. I hadn’t really gotten to know any of the men who typically had gate duty, and the only times I saw them were when I was coming and going through the gate, and I was always with Daryl.

“You got this defending me? Jesus, I’m so sorry. I feel awful.” I continued grabbing everything I would need, like cotton pads, medical tape, tools for stitches, and antibiotics.

“Nah, jackasses had it comin’.”

“What did you do to them?”

“Roughed ‘em up a bit. Let ‘em know not to say nothin’ like that ‘gain,” Daryl explained.

“Do I wanna know what they were saying about me?”

“Probably not. Bein’ a buncha creeps.” The never-ending list of things they could’ve been saying swirled through my mind, and I felt sick. I suppressed the nausea that quickly made its home in my stomach.

“Great. Just when I was starting to feel safe here,” I sighed. I thought I’d finally found a place away from the prying eyes of creepy men, but unfortunately, I was wrong.

Daryl looked back over his shoulder at me with kind eyes. “Don’t worry. I won’t let ‘em give ya any trouble.” I gave him a smile and a nod.

“Alright, I need you to take your shirt off. Then I’m gonna clean it and stitch it up. I’ll talk you through each step so you know what to expect since you can’t see it,” I explained. I slipped my gloves on after washing my hands thoroughly and scooted a stool over with my foot so I would sit higher up. Daryl fidgeted a little on the table, and he seemed nervous. I could tell he was in pain from his injury, but something else seemed to be bothering him.

“If you’re not comfortable taking your shirt off, that’s ok. I just need you to lift it enough so I can work,” I said, “don’t wanna go stitching your shirt to your back.” To my surprise, he lifted his shirt up and off over his head, letting it slide down his arms into his lap.

When he did, I understood why I’d never seen Daryl shirtless before.

There were scars all across his back. Not the kind of scars you’d get from being in a motorcycle or car accident, or burn scars, or from taking a really bad tumble as a kid. No, these scars were intentionally inflicted by another person. My heart shattered, but I kept my composure.

How could someone do something so awful to someone so good?

I made sure to utilize my calming bedside manner voice. “There is nothing to be embarrassed about. I have seen anything you can possibly imagine. Plus, I have scars of my own. I know better than to ask about anyone else's."

I grabbed a cloth soaked with some warm water so I could clean up some of the dried blood, and I gently started rubbing it on his back. “I’m gonna try to get as much of this dried blood off as I can.” He tensed a little bit under my touch, so I tried my best to be even lighter, but I could only press so lightly while still getting the blood off. I decided to clean just enough around the wound to make the process quicker, and he could take care of the rest when he showered.

“Alright, I have to clean it now so it won’t get infected. I won’t lie, this is going to sting a little. But I’m just taking a cotton pad with some antiseptic and patting around it,” I explained. I started patting his wound with the cotton pad, and he flinched just a tiny bit. I placed my other hand on his arm and stroked it gently with my thumb. “Hey, you’re ok. You’re doing great.” As I stroked his arm, I felt him start to relax.

My heart was breaking for him. The sensation of the antiseptic in his open wound must’ve felt similar to whatever created the scars on his back. I tried to think of something to talk about to distract him.

“I like your tattoo, Daryl,” I said, “does it mean anything?”

“Jus’ thought it looked cool,” he replied.

“I actually have a few tattoos of my own,” I told him, “I know, there’s something you didn’t know about me. I have a sternum piece with flowers on it, bumblebees on the back of each of my thighs, and a bouquet of daisies on the front of my right hip. I liked the idea of having tattoos that only certain people get to see. People that I get to choose." I hoped that, maybe one day, I’d get to show Daryl my tattoos. I set the cotton pad on the table next to him. “I’m done cleaning it now. Could you straighten up for me? I’m gonna stitch it up now. It’ll probably hurt a little, but it won’t burn like the antiseptic did.”

"They mean anythin'?" he asked as he sat up straight.

"I really like sternum pieces, so that's why I got that one. Daisies are my favorite flower, and the bumblebees are for my mom.” I got to work stitching him up as I talked. “Gardening was her favorite hobby, and we had a huge one in our backyard growing up. She taught my brothers and I about the different kinds of pollinators and how important they were. Bumblebees were her favorite. I got them a couple of years after she passed.”

“Lost my mom too,” Daryl said. It was the first time he’d mentioned his mom in any capacity. “What happened to her? If you’re ok talkin’ ‘bout it.”

“She umm…she killed herself a couple of months after Preston died. Hung herself in his closet. My dad was the one that found her.” I blinked back some tears. Stitching up someone’s wound was not the time to be crying. “Her mental health really declined after his passing. I mean, all of ours did, but hers was the worst. She couldn't stand losing one of her children, so she left the other three behind. At least that's what it felt like. The anger stage of my grief lasted a very, very long time.”

There was a heaviness that hung in the air as I finished stitching his wound. It felt suffocating, like it was a heavy weight pressing on my chest. I lowered the volume of my voice a little to keep myself from crying. “Alright, I’ve just gotta wrap it up and you’re done.”

“Mine was a house fire,” he started to explain, and as he talked, I continued wrapping his wound, using as gentle of a touch as I could and offering small comforting pats and strokes in between. I felt his muscles continue to relax into my hands as I worked. “I was a kid. Ran home after we saw fire trucks comin’ down the street. Finally caught up to the other kids and saw it was my house. Mom was inside. Some combo of her wine ’n smokes. Didn’t feel real for a long time.” Before I finished patching him up, I ran my hands over the back of his arms and offered small squeezes, like tiny hugs from my fingers. This was by far the most vulnerable he’d been around me, and I wanted to make sure he felt safe, seen, and comforted.

“I’m so sorry Daryl. You didn’t deserve for that to happen.”

"Didn’t deserve yours neither.” I ran my fingers over and flattened out the last piece of medical tape.

“There we go, you’re all patched up now,” I said, grabbing a small bottle of antibiotics and handing it to him. “you’ll have to change the dressing every day. I can help you with that. And you’ll have to take those for like a week. Make sure you stay on top of that.”

“Do I gotta? Didn’t think it was that bad,” he said, flipping the little orange bottle around in his hand.

I sat myself up on the exam table next to him, “Daryl, what kind of doctor would I be if I let you get an infection?”

Taglist: @raddydaddydude

[ghostedeabha]

riley family hcs:

tw: mentions of post-partum depression and psychosis, mentions of self harm, mentions of death/dying/suicide (no actual death though, everyone is alive!!), allusions to ghost's trauma

- matthew is a big batman enjoyer just like his dad, simon got him matching batman stuff all the time growing up

- matthew is also a big softie, big guy like his dad but is just an absolute softie (biggest animal lover fr)

- lyla's first word was tea because simon asks for tea so much when he's home she picked it up from him

- luka's first word was pineapple and it to this day baffles you and simon

- bug and matthew will never admit it's because they trained him to do it

- 90% of what simon drinks when he is home is tea

- he probably asks for tea at least once an hour

- "baby can you make me some tea?"

- "love, are you making tea? can you make me some too?"

- "do you want to have some tea?"

- "oh, while you're up can you grab me a cuppa?"

- atp just keep the kettle on 24/7 when he's home

- bug kept their middle name, it's joeseph <3

- true to their name, bug used to bring all assortments of bugs home with them as a kid

- literally just pulled a mf earth worm out of his pocket one night at dinner when he was 8

- simon and matthew freaked out

- "ew! why did bring that to the table?!"

- "bug you're gonna make me sick, please get that thing away from our dinner..."

- "matthew! simon! be nice!"

- lyla is a big daddy's girl, luka is a mommy's boy

- idk if i mentioned it before but bug uses they/he pronouns (will use she/her to spite people, only ever to spite people)

- matthew has beat up transphobes at school for bug (and would gladly do it again)

- soap tried so hard to convince simon to name a kid after him

- closest he got was matthew's middle name being john (he'll take the win)

- lyla's middle name is valerie (for the sole reason that mummy likes the song valerie a little too much, it kinda pisses simon off because it's so close to valeria but he lives with it and learns to love it every time he sees his lover dancing around the kitchen to the song)

- luka legally doesn't have a middle name, it's supposed to be spencer

- simon may or may not have forgotten to write it down on the certificate

- he was emotional, okay?

- at least he remembered to put his name there at all??

-he misspelled riley by accident the first time and scribbled it out

- when soap found out he refused to let him live it down and reminds him of it every opportunity he gets

- only for simon to remind him of the time bug shoved a snail down soap's throat when he was a child and soap actually ate it so he wouldn't hurt bug's feelings

- shell and all

- soap shuts up quickly after that

- uncle soap <3

- some sad ones comin your way besties

- simon wasnt exactly a good dad for the first couple years of matthew and bugs lives

- you were both young and he was still very unhealed from his (continuously growing) trauma

- a lot of fights were had

- a lot of simon just leaving in the middle of the night out of nowhere

- it took one really bad fight where you completely broke down in front of him for him to realize that he had to get his shit together

- family therapy appointment was booked the next day for as soon as possible

- truthfully he didn't think it would help, he's always been a big therapy hater

- but to his surprise it helped a lot, of course it still took some time and a lot of hard work but he did eventually grow to become a much better father and partner

- luckily by the time matthew and bug were in their most formative years is when simon had become a bit more stable and a better dad

- of course they still had to go through his deployments and the trauma of not knowing if their dad would come home, but they never ever experienced trauma at the hands of simon

- simon actually suffered PPD and PPP alongside you after you had the kids

- neither of you developed PPP until the twins though

- it was a very big struggle for both of you

- there was a short period of time where you actually had your parents take the kids because neither of you trusted yourselves alone with them

- his lasted much shorter than yours did though

- there was a period of time where you were still suffering both PPD and PPP while simon was deployed and it ended up with you and matthew in the hospital

- you hadn't intended to hurt him, he just happened to get in the way of you hurting yourself and you accidentally hurt him as well

- simon didn't find out until he came home from deployment and saw that you weren't alone at home with the kids but instead had hired a nanny who was trained for situations like this

- he felt awful that he couldn't be there for you when you needed someone so badly

- he could've lost you and he wouldn't have known until he came home

- but he didn't

- anyyywaaaayyyys, back to the happy stuff :3

- bug watches markiplier

- matthew watches buzzfeed unsolved (loves watching it with uncle soap<3)

- sleepovers at uncle soap's when he's off of deployment 🥰

- matthew had a habit of bringing random strays into the house from the ages of 6-10

- or even just random wild animals he somehow befriended

- get home from work and he's just sitting there on the couch with a raccoon in his hands

- you just stand there like ????

- "matthew, please get that thing out of my house..."

- "but why? it's nice mummy."

- "i know you think so honey, but it's really not. it's probably very dirty and wants to be left alone. they live outside for a reason, right bud? if they wanted to be in homes, they would be."

- "fine... five more minutes?"

- "two, no more, no less. and that include your saying goodbye time."

- "fine."

[idiotwhowritesshipstuff]

hi! I have a request can I request for Yan! Akane (dra) & Kanade (sdra2) with a childhood best friend? Like would they be more iffy over their behaviors if reader was their childhood friend? Or would they not care? Anyways that’s all!^^

OOOOO I like this request there's a lot of potential with these two and a childhood friend.

Note: The banner for Akane Taira is different depending on if she's yandere or normal Akane, Kanade's banner never changes as she's always yandere also I just wanna say making a banner for Kanade was a doozy as I originally gave her a more vibrant background like her illustration but then I remembered she much prefers rock and metal music so I went through 3 different variations of rock and metal backgrounds before settling on the current one. Also debated on going for her default sprite or a more smug one but I thought the blank smile was the best one to use

Doing these two in one request is interesting as they're very different yanderes.

Due to how long these are they are being put under cut, I'm a bit out of practice with yanderes but I think these turned out pretty good and I hope you like them

Mod Monaca

TWs: Child abuse, allusions to suicide, murder (I mention the murder of a pet in Kanade's portion) and Kanade Otonokoji (That's a trigger right?)

Yandere! Akane Taira and Kanade Otonokoji x Childhood friend reader

For you to be a childhood friend of hers you had to be one of the children at the orphanage she was raised in. You were probably someone who took care of children there after being beaten and abused by the caretakers.

Akane's feelings for you started after you tried to treat her wounds after she got a beating from the matron for accidentally slipping in front of her. Your treatment wasn't perfect, you had no medical expertise and you had nothing but a first aid kit you snuck from the adults in the orphanage but it meant the world to her that someone cared about her enough to try and heal her despite lacking the proper means to do so. From that day onward, you were the person most dear to her in the entire world.

She would follow you around as much as she could, often doing chores for you even if she was injured in an effort to get close to you. It's easy to dismiss her clinginess as her simply being attached to the one kind person in the hellhole you two had to call home.

When Utsuro saved you two from the orphanage, despite her immense gratitude to Utsuro, you were the first one in her life to do anything to save her so she stuck with you and simply remembered Utsuro like the Voids did, a savior who appeared one day then never came back.

Akane is an obsessive and possessive type of yandere, she puts you on a pedestal above all people and she believes as the Ultimate Maid and your oldest friend, only she can be by your side and serve you. She scoffs at the idea of someone trying to take her place by your side as she's a master of household chores and she has been working for you ever since you two were small children, even if you didn't realize it.

Whether or not she hides her true self from you depends on how you respond to her possessiveness, if it disturbs you she will completely hide it from you after getting on her hands and knees to apologize over disturbing you. She is deathly terrified at the idea of you rejecting her, she believes it's worse than death if you reject her so she may go on an "I'm sorry" tirade depending on how poorly you react to her being possessive and calling you "Y/N-sama".

If you're neutral or even accepting of her possessiveness she wouldn't hide it, this is her ideal scenario as she can be by your side and show how much she loves you and protect you from people she deems are out to hurt you or you two's relationship.

Honestly, Akane doesn't necessarily need you to feel romantic love for her, so long as you stay by her side forever, she won't mind if it's as a friend even if that part is a bit disappointing.

If you find a romantic partner or best friend who isn't her, she'll be filled with rage, she has enough control to not be overwhelmed by it and act blindly but she'll make it clear from day one that she doesn't like them. She would sabotage your relationship with this new person by doings things like outshining them with her household talents and athletic abilities in subtle ways to show to you that she is better than them, sabotaging get togethers and dates to ruin your image of them and digging up dirt that'll make her hatred of them appear justified, she is willing to blow information out of proportion to justify it to you, she'll take the knowledge you delighted in teasing someone in grade school and say you were a cruel bully who delighted in the pain of your peer caused by verbal abuse. To be clear, she doesn't believe that but she wants you to believe that so she'll pretend as though she does and may even have the information hit a little close to home just to make it clear she's on your side here though she would never be completely on the nose as the orphanage hurt her as much as it hurt you.

She would resort to murder if you still stayed with them through all her sabotage efforts. She'll use her expert cleaning abilities to either make it look like an accident or like they mysteriously disappeared. She would hate seeing you in pain over what happened to them but she'd simply make it up to you by treating you like royalty to make you feel better.

Her ideal world with you has you being successful in whatever endeavor you choose and you have her by your side as your partner and maid. Akane's low opinion of herself makes it so she wouldn't be able to see herself as anything higher than your romantic partner and personal maid but just because she thinks lowly herself doesn't mean she will allow anyone else to be higher than her in your personal relationships. She'll let you have friends outside of her but don't try to replace her, she will never let that happen.

You never stood a chance in life the day Kanade Otonokoji decided you were not under the category of "Irrelevant person". She probably met you in school when she wanted nothing more than Hibiki's love but you made her crave the love of not just her sister but your love too.

There's no clear event that sparked her feelings for you, she simply decided over time that she didn't just want her sister's love and attention but your love and attention too, she didn't think that was possible but love is a strange thing so she would welcome the change, with her talents and abilities, adjusting her plans to include another person is no issue whatsoever.

If you somehow weren't, she would make you become friends with Hibiki. It's non-negotiable, she'll figure out every single of your interests and use it to make you and Hibiki bond, she'll even lock you two in a room with no one but each other if she has to, all in order to make you two get along and allow you to join their duo.

She'd love watching you and her older twin sister interact. She's not particularly picky over what you two do together but she does find it extremely amusing if you try to "defend her" from Hibiki's bullying. Much like she does with Sora, she'll assure you that the teasing and bullying really doesn't bother her (as it really doesn't), but she'll definitely love the fact you care about her enough that you'll argue with a close friend to defend her honor.

Much like she did with Hibiki, she'll cater which talent of hers she uses most to what your interests are. If your love is music and your love is pop music, she'll have you join her and Hibiki's band, Melody Rhythm, if you love music but not pop music then she'll still be by your side as a guitarist in your endeavors and encourage Hibiki to be a good friend and help out too despite the different genre. If you love art, she'll join you whether it be digital art, oil painting or sculpting. To not exclude Hibiki, she'll encourage you to help make promotional art and album covers for Melody Rhythm. If your passion is in athletic activity, she and Hibiki will be your personal cheerleaders through games and competitions.

Canon makes it clear what she wants with the person of her affections, much like with Hibiki, she'll kill everyone closest to you all in the name of having you dependent on her. She would love to have you in a puppet state like her dear sister and nothing in the world will beat having you and Hibiki by her side in a puppet state, waiting for her to have them do something with that adorable blank face.

She would hide her true self from you very thoroughly in order to maintain her image as a cute and caring girl who despite her shyness is always willing to help you through all the mysterious tragedies happening in your life. The only thing that would ever get her to break character is if someone actually managed to seriously see through her true intentions with the two closest people in her life or if you somehow got the idea you could question her or even accuse her of any of the bad things happening in your life. Kanade can easily repair her mask the second the issue that caused her to break character is gone and dealt with.

Your future is bleak, you will never escape Kanade for the rest of your life no matter how hard you try. She is a highly talented and well connected serial killer who has no limit to what she'll do. Whether it be a beloved pet, your parents or even your favorite teacher from 2nd grade, she'll kill anyone who gets in her way of having you all to herself.

[sapphicslaylist]

[STP] On Borrowed Paths Chapter 9 - Beneath The Brine

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You've been here before. You know what you have to do. Just make it quick, and don't overthink. But trapped beneath the brine, memories begin to distill even further and cut deep into the soul. Phantasmic intervention may not be enough to hold it all back.

(Yep, this chapter is named after The Family Crest song. Namely the ending of it.)

TW:

Continued usage of cannibalistic/vampiric imagery, starvation, significant minor character deaths, fatal poisoning, intensive realistic PTSD episodes, child peril, prisoner of war imagery, active deep scar injury/associated internalized ableism, and metaphoric/allegorical depictions of sexual assault & forced intersex secrecy (Context is a spoiler; tl;dr is reclamation from abuse/forced conformist identity) are all present here. There are also slight allusions to Pristine Cut, but not to spoiler level.

If needed for health, feel free to skip this & the former chapter. The next one will be infinitely lighter now that all major backstories (3, 1, 2 in series chronology) have been addressed.

Thorn did her best to size up these men - carefully. They were an exhausted, bleeding mess, with only one of them spared from the slaughter. Any form of sleaziness they were trying to use right now was to a disadvantage; at least one of their targets was untouchable. And, well, looking Thorn over, they weren’t so sure about the second. Comparatively, a few tiny prickles was worth it when the alternative was a solid rending. So that meant she was exposed. Great.

The key to this interaction was sleight of hand. Nimble hands wove their dark magic - that’s right; nimble. This had been before those deep palm scars had rendered movement and sensation more challenging all the way from fingertips to wrist, and it was a good thing a secondary witness was taking it in so it didn’t have to ache all over again to remember.

“I suppose we should ask the same of you. We’re here for a reason, are we not?”

The bold words left Thorn’s mouth, letting the petals fold and berries stain slightly in her hands. One of the men snickered, drinking straight from the wine bottle. A trickle of viscous, bloody fluid seeped down his chin.

“Princess doesn’t get it yet,” he jeered. “It’s just the way things run around here.”

“Yeah,” a second muttered, wiping a few bloody spatters off their cheek. “They say to catch, and we fetch. Don’t have to make it harder than it needs to be.”

These men absolutely reeked. One of the downsides of Wild Fae genetics was that keen sense of smell around human habitats; they always had that particular stench of sweat; testosterone; estrogen; decay . But these particular captors seemed to have it worse than usual; a fishier smell of vinegar, lye, and other putrid chemicals likely used in distillation. They weren’t good at hiding their intentions, were they?

“You could’ve easily scampered off,” inquired the man with a flick of his cigar, “but both of you are still here. So, tell me, what brings you here? There’s gotta be something you’re after.”

Was it better to be honest? Minus the poison, it could help gauge where they stood. Deflection certainly hadn’t done any good, and asking about the bottle would be a solid way to catch the wrong kind of interest.

“Well… Some better amenities would be nice,” Thorn started, avoiding eye contact. “Perhaps some food, water?”

There was a rattle from the other side of the wall. A cacophony of figures seemed to stir to life at the mere mention of sustenance. Thorn could almost see them through that interwoven sixth sense of the Network; a multitude of frail, clawed hands scraping the air before them; each other; their own arms and severed hands in desperation. The slam of a brutish human arm against the wall interrupted the skeletal trance as it retreated to the hollows of their cells, abandoned once again.

So there were others here. And judging from the ease at which the Network picked up on them, they were dying.

“Thieves don’t get cushy treatment,” the card player snickered. “We get your whole deal - you want to ‘borrow’ this, ‘borrow’ that - next thing, you want to ‘borrow’ the Crown Jewels. Already took care of one Princess, so now you’d better shut your mouth and sit tight. We don’t have to do this whole thing civil-like.”

“I’m sorry, did you actually want to talk or not?” 

The bitter, breathless question slipped out before Thorn could stop herself. Every part of the plan about playing it safe has gone out the window; this was about standing her ground. Already, the fearsome Fae beside her was coiling for another strike. They wouldn’t go for it if they were smart.

The man furthest took another long drag of his cigar. For a moment, his hardened gaze fell upon her, challengingly. Common tactic. Predators in the woods often sized up weaker members in a group. Thorn kept it directly, narrowing it until he finally slapped the broader man harshly on the back.

“Why don’t you shut your gob and pour these ladies a drink?”

 Cigar man must be the leader. The other two were lackeys.

That was about as much thought as they got out before, as expected, these men reached for the bottle and siphoned it into two [likely unsanitized] caps of test tubes. Their residue seemed to already be mixing with what, impossibly, was a less appetizing cannibalistic fare. So much for saving face.

“Oh, that’s not -“

The slender figure in the corner shuffled his deck, squinting. Razor squinted back.

“You’ve been eyeing that bottle an awful lot,” the dealer challenged. “Stuff ain’t cheap.” 

The hunger in the gaze returned. A thick, dazed fear in Thorn ran ragged despite attempts to smooth it back, not even wanting to look over at the sound of small sips and confused trills next to her began. 

Great, so the other Borrower had no issue with vampirism. But then again, that was to be expected with a Fae named “Razor,” wasn’t it?

“Your friend seems to like it just fine,” he added, giving a shrug. “I always figured the lot of you were animals when it came right down to it. And I mean, unless you plan on replacing it-“

“- I would.”

That was an opportunity if she ever saw one. The man squinted at her - as did something… long and blonde curled up around his neck.

By the Wilds, please tell me that’s not a Weasel.

The fun never ended here, did it?

“And how, tell me, would you plan on doing that?” The cold words reeked of anticipation; both man and mongrel seemed ready to pounce. 

“I know what’s in that bottle. You and I both know that. How many of those have you been drinking, and have you actually gained anything from it or not?”

One of the men checked over the label. “Stuff’s too distilled. That’s why we prefer doing it ourselves.” A grin; all teeth. Thorn stood her ground.

“You don’t need our blood for that. You won’t gain anything unless it’s presented to you. But, if you’ll allow me-“

The card dealer turned from his crew towards the heiress. His body language was obnoxiously relaxed. Then, after a moment he turned towards the slinky form on his shoulder. 

“Check her.” 

There was a look of intrigue as the creature - yep, definitely weasel - looked over at its master and gave a nod. Next, there was a twinkle in its eye as the weasel glanced back and gave a wink towards the Heiress. So he was playing both sides for advantage.

Not to be trusted, that one; she knew the moment he slid down to strike. This game of wits was familiar, but low from such a cushy opponent. Weasels were common familiars kept by huntsmen to ravage narrow Borrower tunnels, and the confusing maneuvers of their “war dance” made them harder to evade in the open. But with just as serrated an ally standing a few paces away, this one wouldn’t get far.

…Probably.

This weasel, however, didn’t seem to be coming in for a fight. His headlong stride and clear avoidance of Razor’s path seemed to say it all as he opted for the more vulnerable target. Moreover, it seemed by leaving Razor the space to take her own pickings (she was still fixated on the damn wine), he’d avoided a single scratch.

“I’ll be taking that, thank you.” One of the weasel’s paws shot out, kneeling by Thorn’s own, er… “helping” of the sanguine tonic with a few laps of his tongue. Then, catching her gaze: “What? You certainly weren’t going to be touching it.”

With a huff, the weasel glanced from eager crowd to hesitant Borrower. A few more sips passed in silence as he focused on his target, watching every twitch sadistically. After what seemed an eternity, he pushed over an emptied serving and stepped forward:

“Alright. Toll taken; I’ll talk.”

Immediately, a burst of vines snagged along one forepaw, leaving rigid cuts along his coarse fur. This he merely huffed at, swiping forward with the same paw in lazy ease. The jolt that followed seemed to make his target all too easy as deft claws snared the blooms and clutched them to his chest with a snicker.

Well, shit. There went the only edge she had against these men.

“You’re a jumpy little heiress, aren’t you? Oh, that look of shock on your face is priceless, ” he sneered, pawing a petal jeeringly. “Sweetheart, if you have a weapon, it belongs behind your back.” A paw flicked over the wrapped blooms. What was he doing?!

 “Hmm, not bad craftsmanship. Suppose it’ll have to do for now.”

There was quite an audacity around this one. Right now, he had her cornered, and there was little Thorn could do about it. Avoiding the weasel was one thing, but they were still in the presence of several hungry humans. If only that damn chimera would actually do something other than linger beneath the wooden table - did she actually care enough to intervene?! Clearly, someone who knew the stakes should. Or else maybe it was just that she herself needed to get better at this whole situation.

Someone is going to die here. Please let it not be us.

This all boiled down to how this Opportunist presented himself. And right now, watching him turn and bolt away conspiratorially with the blossoms, it wasn’t looking good.

“Excellent news,” the Opportunist crowed, standing in the center of the table. “She indeed brings magic. And not just any magic; these are a rather special kind of flower. Oh yes! You’ve gotten lucky, boys.” There was a snicker as he looked back over towards the pair of Borrowers, grinning. “Tell me, how long has it been since you’ve had a real high?” 

————

The labyrinth of castle tunnels seemed mostly undisturbed when it came to the lower levels. All fighting came up top, with little support below. The occasional bashed-in weapon or dented gauntlet seemed to glimmer in these empty halls, letting the sounds of footsteps grow on the cobblestone basement below. To the left, the cellar; to the right, an armory. This was the area they should’ve protected to begin with, but what’s done was done. The guards had let it go to waste for a reason as the Princess took neither passage and went straight ahead to greet the abandoned souls within the third corridor.

“Where are you taking us?”

The Princess turned around. It seemed the strange avian was pondering the surroundings worriedly, giving a clack of his beak. Talons clicked unceremoniously on the flooring as he shuffled, uncertain - but it seemed that he was still keeping pace. Hopefully he wasn’t getting cold feet.

“The Bestiary,” the Princess murmured, voice turning more solemn. “There’s someone here who should be able to help.”

There was a click of the lock as the door to the vacant space opened and gave way to the spectacle of remaining chimeras. Many seemed to be recovering from their own specific hunts, gnawing on bones which had been thrown in haphazard to keep the beasts from resisting. Several looked to have been given sedatives to mark them improper watchdogs. Tentatively, the Princess picked up the hem of her dress as she entered. The forms of the remaining creatures awake snapped to attention at the scent of Fae blood, rattling their chains or pawing at kennels as they tried to reach her.

“Hang on, I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Quiet murmured, watching the pack snarling and salivating. “Aren’t they trained to-?”

“Wait, good fellow,” Smitten huffed, putting a stocky paw against his leg. “The Lady has a plan here. We’re just here to run interference if anything goes wrong.”

“How do you know that?”

Smitten chuckled. “I’ve been around a long time, and Wilds’ heirs seldom choose poor company. In order to find Her Divinity this cycle, we have to play her game. That includes trusting her allies and vessels.”

Quiet squinted. “And sic a chimera on her again?”

There was a breath of unease - perhaps offense? - as Smitten squinted back. “Oh… Dear. This really isn’t the time for someone to be catching up on their history lessons. Just watch.”

The Princess waited momentarily for the crowd to settle. Standing in its center, she was safe from most of them as she squinted through the darkness. A single cage had been left unattended in the corner with a large, malnourished creature’s back towards the commotion. A flick of the furry tuft indicated it had heard, but did not wish to interrupt. This was the only chimera who was silent.

A soft whistle swept through the air. Immediately, the gangly beasts retreated. The silent chimera, comparatively, turned their antlered head. The Princess knelt down and patted her knees in indication to approach. The rest clicked into place therein. The relaxed creature obeyed her command, although there was a hesitation in the skittering steps of six legs passing by the others.

Quiet looked over, bemused. “Huh. I didn’t expect them to all just back up like that…”

There was a deep chuckle as Smitten stepped forward. “Have faith in these maidens; they nary leave themselves unarmed by wits. And a damsel of pure heart oft leaves hidden the lengths she’ll go for Justice.” Padding into the room with theatrical banter, the badger settled beside the Princess with a gaze of approval. “Excellent choice. The Old Guard still remembers their allegiance.”

The chimera looked over him and gave a bow of her head. Then, tongue sweeping -

“Gyah! Have mercy; my pelt’s been through enough disheveling today-“

The Princess giggled at the pawing badger, only to squeak in alarm as the creature barreled her over to the stone floor with a flurry of affectionate licks.

“Hey, hey- Den! Get off!” But it seemed her protests and playful wrestling with this animal were only interrupted by the clearing throat of the corvid behind them.

“Princess-“

“Right.” Stumbling to her feet, the Princess held the creature’s cheeks to her face to whisper in close. “We need your help to track a scent. Would you be able to assist?”

Reaching into her pocket, the Princess retrieved a small twig that’d come from her own forest adornments. Den sniffed close, pondering it a moment - her steps took off in the opposite direction from whence they came, leading back around to the other side of the cellar. The door, consequently, was locked - which didn’t help in hearing what sounded like a very tense negotiation between the smaller folk.

“Damnit,” Quiet mumbled under his breath. “I would just slam it in if we weren’t at risk of hurting the Fae.” His blank eyes looked over with a tilt of his head. “Does this open up anywhere else?”

“There’s a trap door by the kitchen that leads down,” the Princess replied. “We’d just have to go back around the dining room, and-“

There was a grimace upon the realization. She’d been hauled off before most of the venoms took effect on the diners, and chances were no one had bothered clearing the area. But it was a risk she had to take; poison or no poison. Besides, the immunity should still be in her favor there.

“We’ll need someone to hold off the guards if they come through in the meantime. Do you think you can do that?”

Quiet nodded. “Show me where and I’ll keep it secure.”

The Princess nudged the chimera towards him. “Take Den with you. She has antivenom; it’ll be safer if anyone comes in with poison.”

“And I’m coming with you,” Smitten echoed as he approached the Princess. “You’ll need someone experienced with handling the castle’s vermin. I have a nagging suspicion someone is here that ought not to be. And I intend to avoid any martyrs.” Several scars glistened along the badger’s rough coat; clearly, he’d seen his fair share of skirmishes. “All set? If so, destiny awaits.”

Quiet winces as he stepped away from the door. The final sound which escaped were raspy chokes from the windows of the old study, and heavy, head-sized thuds against a mahogany table piece.

It seemed, at least, the Fae had won this time around. But how true or not that was, they’d have to see.

——

As Quiet left the adjacent door, heavy breathing filled the castle cellar buried deep below. The remaining shreds of poppy petals laid absent on these thugs’ desk, next to the dead eyes of several voracious men. Looming over, they had been a spectacle; here, paralyzed and choking out, it was almost worse. The Opportunist gave a brief shake of his head, uttering a soft tsk tsk tsk.

“Oh, dear,” he chuckled darkly, scampering over to the face of the card dealer in feigned sympathy. “Well, that’s certainly a high of a lifetime, am I right? To be fair, I might’ve miscalculated a bit; opium does intensify with a bit of drink. I didn’t realize you didn’t know that.” He leaned theatrically against the dying man, placing a claw along their chin with a laugh. “So, you feeling magical now? Or did the cat finally catch your tongue?”

Thorn stared in horror at the state of the room. Bloodied spit had trickled besides their mouths, with only one left to hold on. They deserved this; there was no mistake. But it was still hard to take in the instantaneous effects of her own dark magic. 

A murder, even if justified, was never easy. Especially not the first of several surely yet to come.

The glasses of poppy-speckled wine tipped over, leaving a bloody pool in its trace. Sprays of sanguine fluid flew through the air across from the pair of Borrowers; one flinching, one observing with disturbingly ardent curiosity.

“Hmm… So there are other ways to kill the big ones. I thought I was going to just slice them to pieces.”

Razor’s presence was a grating sound on all things ethical and sane. Even for people this vile, the death they faced was a bit overkill. But a Borrower did not get to choose how they murdered their captors. This was about survival , and no amount of convincing otherwise would change that.

“What did you put in that?” A growl rose in the leader’s throat; the only one who hadn’t fallen for the trap. Without the heavy lacerations from Razor’s assault, he was just as formidable here as had been before - only this time, all the cards were on the table.

“I was merely making sure that you knew this was a trap; sometimes it takes a few expendables to make the point,” the Opportunist chuckled. “Really, when you come right down to it, you should be blaming her and not me-“

“You.”

Hands slammed on the table. It was taking all of Thorn’s current concentration not to fall over, wincing as he geared up for a definitive strike. The air bristled with impact as muscle memory took the place of cognizant thought. She had a weapon. This would just take a quick strike-

Thorn wasn’t quite sure how the palm of his hand met her teeth first. But that certainly seemed to be the case as the man gasped and recoiled, inflicting a bleeding wound across her face with the flick of a nail. But it seemed the immediate backwards slide wasn’t of his own momentum; that chimera was dragging him by one foot with a sharp bite of her own.

“Faster,” Beast growled from behind bared teeth. “Go back to your pack and reconvene before it’s too late; and make it count . I’m putting a lot on the line staying here for prey like you.”

Thorn didn’t need to be told twice. Taking the lead this time, a catlike scurry through the tunnels was all that it took to finally make her way through. A few poppy petals were the final thing left in her place; a warning, perhaps, for whoever recovered the bodies.

These Borrowers were not going down without a fight.

——

And neither was the Princess.

There was no decorum as the darkened room began to filter in with the heavy, putrid air of burning charcoal on hanging sconces. With purple drapes, gold-trimmed carpets, and visages of stained glass across the centuries, the dining room would’ve been an exquisite sight, if it weren’t littered with the spatters of blood - both human and Borrower in the form of sanguinary consumption. Axes and unsheathed weapons laid waste to cavernous, disassembled bodies; some guards, some royalty, some… Familiar.

It was hard to take the sight of the slaughtered king sitting at the head of the table. His mouth still trickled the same elixir that had taken them hostage from its stolen magic. Somewhere, the Princess knew how she was raised wasn’t the pinnacle of loving parentage. The Fae seldom lent out their own magic, and it seemed he intended to keep its existence within these walls like some awful secret. Like a disappointment on an otherwise “normal” child.

A secret kept even from her. For while her powers grew stronger, the more insistent the calls for total obedience. The supernatural, and anything outside of royal protocol, were forbidden. To question for oneself was an act of betrayal.

At least, that was until she met Witch. Two traitorous teenagers joined together by spite and love - ones who paid dearly for the crime of free spirit. She wouldn’t let this end here. It couldn’t.

Now, the only thing left of that rule was a few bloodied bodies. For all intents and purposes, she was free. But that alone was hard to fathom.

“This place is… Unnatural.” 

Smitten pranced onto the table, knocking over a poisoned roll of bread.

“Yes,” the Princess breathed. “It is.”

“So artificial,” he continued, raising his claws in anguish. “So lifeless. Drab scenery like this can really alter the mind, no matter how they dress it up. This is sacrilege. Torment. They kept you here for an awful long time, didn’t they?” His eyes met hers, tilting his head. The Princess bowed her head in a respectful nod.

“They tried to keep me away from the world beyond. Permanently, if they’d won.” A few chipped pieces of oak fell from the table legs. “They didn’t want me to know about any of this. About who I was.”

Smitten sighed, raising his head.

“They ask for the Fae’s assistance, then scorn the child delivered to their doorstep. They decide to keep you locked up here and deny you all information about your birth. How humanity continues to defy all sensibilities.” There was a tone of remorse as he shook his head, sniffing the sulfuric air.

“I wasn’t what they were looking for; I was too curious,” the Princess responded, her voice distant as she scoured the area for anything useful. “They didn’t expect the Fae side to be noticeable enough.”

Smitten scoffed. “And so what? Seems they could use a reminder that caged birds don’t sing.”

“They wanted to keep the dance their own; to bring me up to take over. I suppose I paid the price for disobeying.”

“And mighty good you did; can scarcely imagine an arranged partner bringing you that same joy as your own.” Smitten sighed, jumping off the table to circle back around to her.

“Well, now you’re free from all of that. You took it into your own hands. It’s yours now.” The badger pawed over to a sconce on the wall. “Everything that they kept from you, take it.” With a swipe of one paw, the light evaporated. “Be you Fae or human or in between, you are a force of nature they tried to stifle. Humanity be damned, if they cannot see what you have to offer then we’ll show them, once and for all.”

A swift, angered slash knocked the sconce to the floor. The Princess jumped, and he bowed his head apologetically. 

“Ahem… Getting ahead of myself. We shouldn’t linger too long with your betrothed in chains. Even if they did manage to throw off their captors-“

“Wait. I think we’re being followed,” The Princess whispered. 

“Oh, good,” Smitten grumbled. “This is exactly why you needed accompaniment - you know what to do.” This time, the Princess breathed in deep to attune herself. The heavy stench of copper, metal, rot and gore -

It was unpleasant, yes. But it was another way of getting around this place, long forgotten. No longer having to rely on sight and the swirling torrent of images, the  unwanted presence became clearer.

There was a black feather not unlike Quiet’s trailing from the heavens. The scent of fresh meat hung lucid from the perch of a ravenous creature who had either not noticed, or not cared.

A singular raven stood beside the windowsill, pecking. The scent trails finally aligned as the click of talons settled on the ledge. The turn of his head was almost mechanical.

“Hello there.”

The deep voice sauntered down from the stained glass above as a sizable raven stood stagnant from his perch. The Raven studied both figures for a moment. There was an agitated puff as the black and white familiar stood his ground, eyeing the opponent with heavy suspicion.

“Echo.”

“Servant.” The Echo denied the dignity of a title. “Go crawl back to the Wild where you belong.” A talon dragged along the stone walls. “We don’t have to make this difficult.”

“When he descends, run ,” Smitten whispered. “I’ll hold him off.”

“But-“

“I can handle him. And you have more chivalrous things to attend to than this mere mongrel.”

The silence was deafening. A beak of razor sharp teeth illuminated in the pale moonlight, as though questioning his move. By the time that wings fluttered open and began their descending dive -

-The badger’s coarse body leapt up, catching him midair. There was a shriek of rage as Smitten tussled him to the floor, wincing at the slash of claws that worked its way into an exposed neck.

“Now!”

Smitten’s eyes leapt desperately towards the Princess. There was a pleading glance and nothing more; footsteps found their purchase despite the guilt, knowing for a fact that time was of the essence.

She had to get their first. There was no alternative. There was no telling what could possibly have happened in that basement, but the sound of its progressive assault began to carry from up the steps.

——-

Back at the cages, it seemed that the remaining three Borrowers were left uneasily on standby. “She should’ve been back by now,” Prisoner grumbled, placing a hand to her forehead. “Please tell me she actually dealt with it.”

“She will; I’m sure of it,” Adversary asserted.

Prisoner wasn’t as impressed. “Should we be worried yet?” 

“Why would we? She’s fought off far worse than a couple brutes back home. Probably just making sure the job is done.” There was a flick of agitation as Adversary’s tail traced the metal prison. Her grip still remained firm on Witch’s stirring form, seemingly recovered from the most of the poison’s effects. There was still the weariness as she settled in Adversary’s grasp; the past hour or so had been a confusing, hazy blur, and she twitch of sleep seemed it wouldn’t shake. But during that interval, the words she’d heard were… Interesting.

Keen hearing and a sharp sense of wit picked up the familiar in the midst of the unknown. Somewhere trailing far above the grates, there was that angelic voice that had charmed her from the start - but it was harsher; more determined.

There was a bubbling ache in her chest. Correct; this clearly was the castle. And if this was the cellar… 

Did the Princess even know they were here?

“There you are.” Adversary’s gruff voice echoed out at Thorn’s approach, her own tail raised assertively. “I knew that you could do it. You know how this goes just as well as I -“

Witch’s body stiffened. “She’s hurt.”

Witch wriggled out of Adversary’s grasp, running quadrupedal towards her sister. The weeping wound across the side of one cheek was clear even from here, leaping up with a touch of her own magic.

Any attempt to meet her sister’s gaze was slighted. Numb eyes wandered imaginary lengths as the cut healed unevenly; the remainder tore a scarred gash in its place. The wrap along tender fingers was the only way Witch could tell she’d even noticed.

“… Thank you.”

Some things just wouldn’t heal. It was a lesson they would both have to learn the hard way; blood had been spilled. There was no turning back.

“You kill all of them?” Prisoner turned towards Thorn expectantly. There was only the solemn nod; it seemed the heiress understood this was above emotion. “Good. Then we can finally get out of here.”

“There’s hundreds more Borrowers here in the other room,” Thorn choked. “We shouldn’t just leave them there.”

“We need to make sure we don’t join them,” Prisoner stated plainly. “Going in would stall vital time. And in case you’ve forgotten, we need you to stay alive.” There was a look of cold empathy as she regarded the rising queen. “We can’t save everyone. Do you even have any clue how you’d bust open the locks?”

There was a heavy stomp of a hoof behind her as Adversary cracked her knuckles.

“No. You can’t seriously expect to break each one by hand-“

“Try me. Give me five minutes.”

A lingering scent was beginning to trail in from the top of the corridor; faintly bloodied, but palpable. Witch could smell the distinct cascade of familiar foliage;  giving a small sniff to the air, it seemed to be getting closer. But it was mixed with something else…

There was someone else in the fray. But it seemed between the squabbling, she was the only one who noticed until the steps were near the cellar’s entrance. A chirp of alarm arose; one which only caught Thorn’s attention. But thankfully, a slam against the wall above seemed to be the thing that cued the others in.

“They’re gathering recruits,” Prisoner scoffed. “Their scouts must’ve been out of commission for too long and they’re checking up. Run.”

The final word came out more like a command than an urgency. Razor didn’t budge. Adversary’s gaze lingered from monarch to strategist, unsure whose hand to take.

Thorn’s attention had, much like Witch’s own, drifted above. That desperate child’s voice, now filled with a sense of dignity and rage… It was familiar. But that didn’t mean that staying out in the open was the proper protocol. 

“It’s her,” Witch murmured. “I don’t know how or why-“

There was a sharp bite against the sleeve of her dress. She didn’t have to even look over to tell what that signal meant; Thorn wasn’t about to hear her out on this one.

“We need to get to shelter,” Thorn finally echoed. Her words remained dutiful, albeit stripped of anything but hollow tones. “If there’s time, we can go back. For her; for anyone else. They’re right; we need to get out of here ourselves.”

“She sounds like she’s being followed-“

“That’s my point. We’re not going to be able to fight off armed guards like this. Tunnels; now.”

Prisoner gave Thorn a nod of respect. Finally, it seemed the heiress was taking the proper steps forward. Her hand locked around Razor’s functional wrist, dragging the protesting Borrower towards the tunnel in the corner. This one, however, was more of a semi-dugout corridor than one that lead anywhere. Hopefully Razor behaved, or else they were all in trouble. 

“I can take them! Let me go; I can slice them down just as easily as last time!”

“We need to get out, not start a battle,” Prisoner scolded like a disapproving parent. “If things go south, you know what to do.”

Adversary looked over from Prisoner to Thorn, giving a curt nod. “As much as I’d love to see them bleed this time, it’s not a fair fight. There’s no honor in a place like this.” Instead, her gaze drifted down to her partner; it was obvious that speaking, much less moving was difficult for her other half. This was easily fixed with a brisk snatch around Thorn’s waist, throwing her over one shoulder. “Come on; you need to stay alive if we’re ever going to get that fight. And I am personally looking forward to going down in battle for your ascension.”

“Once we’re safe,” Thorn murmured. “Then I’m yours.”

With the other hand, Adversary ushered Witch to her side. The door opened from above; the descent was silent. Cautiously the three descended down the path towards safety. Witch followed suit, but as Adversary made her way down with Thorn draped over one shoulder, something caught her attention. A flick of an elven ear caught what was footsteps growing closer -

A hand jutted out. Stinking of sweat and bloodied from another skirmish - this wasn’t something she wanted to arise from the shadowy confines of this prison. Instinctively, she dodged and scratched, managing to throw off the felon draped in dark clothing. But as they went in for another attempt to grab the youngest of the group, something sharp hit their back and made them recoil with a yelp.

The flash of a silver blade found its target, and proceeded to retract. There was a kick of scuffed up regal flats in their direction as the assailant stumbled back, chest exposed. And that was when it went straight for the heart. Again and again and again, but missing vitals. A shaky breath seemed to come from the attacker, as though trying to stifle an apology they didn’t deserve.

Despite it all, Witch stopped to watch with a tilt of her head. “Jugular,” she murmured, raising her voice just enough to be audible. As if on command, the blade danced across a bloody throat, finally dropping the choking body to the floor. “Close enough.”

Glancing up like a cornered predator, the attacker glanced up. Blue irises glinted from what little light shone down from above. The shadows could only hold so much; light reflected well off of their own eyes, yet this was different. And even without a proper introduction, even with the jagged edges of a dented helmet concealing the top of her head, the little Fae could tell who she was staring at.

Humans didn’t usually have eyes that shone in the dark. It was definitely her, but something was wrong. She smelled different; reeked of a scent Witch dared not place on a blood-spattered face. But that gaze, oh; it was paralyzing. Longing. Feral.

What was she supposed to say to this? Did the Princess want her back as a partner, a friend? Or perhaps now weak and vulnerable, she intended on holding them hostage as pets now. A chirp of alarm signaled to Witch that regardless, it was time to go. A nod of acknowledgement down on fours was all the speech Witch gave back; she’d seen and known who this was, but lost the ability to trust. 

“Wait-!”

But it was too late for a quick recovery. As the Princess scrambled to Witch’s side, all she caught of the Borrower in her escape was her tail.

Two sets of feral eyes widened in horror. The grip was strong, but tender as the tufted end lashed in protest. Carefully, Witch turned around, claws raised to inflict the first wound in the coming altercation -

But it never came. The Princess looked over towards her with a pleading gaze, and Witch merely shook her head. 

“I’m leaving. You had your chance to make things right.”

A saddened, understanding vow. The Princess allowed the final ligaments of the tail to pass through the space between her fingers. Witch scurried towards the table legs, noticing the resigned status of her companion. And to her back, she also noticed something else.

Despite everything, the Princess deserved a fair fight. And if there were still people there trying to wrangle them back up, it was better to have someone large enough to take them on in their stead.

“Behind you!”

The Princess blinked upon Witch’s warning. Her reflexes were just a bit too slow to do much more than swipe to the side as another dagger lunged towards her side, staggering to the cellar floor on all fours. The threat was close again; this was a chance to lash out. But nevertheless, Witch had to wonder: wouldn’t that just put them all as targets?

“Shit! Damned pests!”

Witch didn’t get a chance to ponder for long. Thick brambles has ensnared the attacker’s hand to their weapon, stabbing deep into an unprotected knee. Looking down, Witch caught the focused gaze of her sister weaving them further along the man’s arm. And then, a glance again for Witch to follow.

“My my, that’s why you need protection,” the Opportunist seemed to have merely spawned in again on cue as the man writhed against his viney entanglements. “Let’s see if you have what it takes to earn my council. So far I’m not impressed.”

Witch could tell that was her cue to leave. Taking her turn to leap headlong off the table, the little Borrower found herself caught alongside her sister as Adversary raced them towards safety. 

It was all up to the Princess now. Hopefully, she was strong enough to take them on.

“Go towards the back,” Adversary instructed, lifting each sibling off her shoulders and shoving them into the crevice. “If they try anything, they’ll have to go through me.” A prideful claw pointed towards her chest, slithering in alongside them. With five borrowers in the narrow space, it was hard to breathe; an anxious, freshly scarred tail flicked against the tougher of the three. Adversary returned it with her own, firm and supportive; and it seemed to be enough to relax Thorn for the present moment.

The Princess hadn’t moved from her spot, goading the new opponent to charge her again. The hesitation to strike back gave the assailant the advantage as she stumbled to her feet, noticing an easier target on the other side of the room. There was a thick slash of a blade as the mercenary turned tail to make her move; grimy fingers just barely missed as sharp metal sunk into their unprotected back. The princess was back up again, and determined to keep these brutes on the back foot.

Clearly, these merchants weren’t expecting a fight with their quarry. Steely thuds hit the doors upstairs as he wheeled around, taken aback - only to find a single child standing before her, the Blade gripped in steady hands. The woman hunkered down, then chuckled dryly.

“Princess,” the woman spat, “I thought you were supposed to be at the altar.”

There was a deep, seething rage that began to brew upon the words in Witch’s heart; of course the Royal heathen got out of things unscathed. And here they were instead, left to nearly… No, it wasn’t even something she wanted to put into thoughts. Moving on, getting away - why was she even here?

Here was the girl that she loved; that deep, sinking cacophony of a four letter word crashing into the past seeing the visage of gore along her face. While taking a stand against this merchant, she could finally pinpoint what was on her face. The stench of the vinery was just as potent on bare cheeks and arms as it mingled with her once sweetened scent.

This was no mere accident. She had become something else. And even meeting eyes with her so desperately, she wanted someone, anyone, to tell her it was something other than a trap.

There was nothing they could do. There was nothing to be done. Trapped between definitive enemy and supposed ally, the only thing left was to watch. 

The fight was fire itself. The blade pulled from the merchant’s pocket was jagged and uneven, maneuvering towards the steadied ground of the Princess. A swift dodge and kick sent the British woman flying backwards, the impact of the wall behind them breaking her skull. There was a notable look of horror even then as she looked back over, giving the Borrowers an apologetic look. The Princess would’ve still been cute if it weren’t for the dribble of Spirits condemning her to consumption.

A backup rogue managed to leap down from the staircase, blade digging into her shoulder. Giving a yelp of pain, the Princess staggered back, wincing.

“You’re going to regret only taking that helmet,” the weasel sighed, leaping from the wall to drape across her shoulders. “Clearly, you need some support. Alright, now follow my lead-“

The very sight of that foul Opportunist said it all, watching all the cunning fade away as she struggled to balance out and wield a weapon. But Witch knew better than to feel sorry for her. “What the hell is she doing? Do beans not train up their royalty? I could take that bastard down with my two hands.”

“She’s fighting more like Fae,” Prisoner commented, “but not well enough. Her knife work is sloppy. She’s not going for vitals.” Then, a little backhandedly: “It’s no wonder the coup succeeded. I doubt that she managed to escape it without help, much less back here.”

“No survivors,” Razor shrugged. “At least, that’s what they thought. I do wonder if she’s missing on purpose? Would make for a more exciting fight.” An eager grin spread across her face. “Maybe she wants help.”

Adversary blocked her way. “Don’t.” 

There was a coarse laugh from her opponent. “I thought they were joking when they sent out this many reinforcements. But no, they were right; you’re a monster .”

The words were familiar as they hit the younger Borrower’s ears; these were no mere mercenaries. Judging by the way they navigated the halls with haughtily divine grace, they were all Tower’s scouts.

And then it clicked.

That kind of altar. There were no wedding vows to be exchanged; this was a fight for their lives. Whatever rope had tethered them together had strung its cord tightly around the Princess of humans and second-born sister, but if that was by mere association or not Witch could not tell.

The weasel on the Royal’s shoulder was whispering something to her. But what, she couldn’t tell. There was a steadying grip as the Princess tightened the blade, and a twitch of one ear as she swiveled to locate her opponent.

Even under the helmet, Witch could see that spaded tip of an ear nestled beneath. Her blood went cold as the word whistled low like a warning through her brain: 

Fae.

There had been reason that the Princess had found them. There had been reason that her presence felt so strange, yet familiar. If the world ceased to let live what they could not understand, then there would always be those would find them and cherish them for what they were.

“Unconventional to them, perhaps,” Witch echoed out from the open tunnels, “but it takes one to know one. Their excuses are weak. Something nasty finds itself on those stairs, but it isn’t you.”

There was a momentary hesitation as the Princess glanced over. Their eyes met for a moment, both brimming with tears.

It was sometimes said that Scorpion’s Tonic steeled more than just resolve. And right now, looking from the advancing horde of monsters and a girl just trying to survive, there was only one entity who felt particularly stabbable right now.

Unfortunately, the moment’s hesitation had given the enemy the upper hand. Another glancing blow, another advancing foe to deal with. The Princess’s initial target went straight for his quarry as the Borrowers huddled in the corner. There was a single, sweeping blow of cold air as the flickering torchlight swallowed up its hostages in the darkness. The reaching hand had settled its grimy fingers along the peeling sediment of the wall, nails scraping just a few inches away from the Borrowers. But this time, Witch did not permit the hand that tried to sweep her back and stood guard in her stead. Instead, she nuzzled Thorn back a moment, placing gentle clawtips against unwavering fingers.

“No. It’s my turn, sis. You go get the rest of them out; there’s something I need to do first.”

There was a splutter of hesitation from the eldest sister. Witch bared her fangs, flicking her tongue over one of them.

“Please. Let me show you once that I can get us out of here and fix this mess I started.”

The draw of the fingers got nearer. It seemed the only thing stopping Razor’s aid was the proximity of the tightly-packed earth, or else it would’ve been easy. But even still, Witch knew what had to be done. With a broad leap forward, her teeth ensnared against the ragged flesh of the invasive entity. Venom injected into the assailant’s skin. There was a shriek, and a rough grab - and that was all there was to it. In the end, allowing the jagged brambled hands to scoop her up and drag her out was Witch’s alone, giving a short nod as they snapped up their target and retreated.

Every second of being dragged out of that tunnel in reverse had Witch’s heart beating a mile a minute. The foul impact of calloused skin, the stink of human sweat along clammy palms - it would’ve been torture far beyond endurance if not for the knowledge of what was yet to come. But Witch was clever, even then; by the time this villain wrenched her free, she could detect he was not alone.

Human sight was limited in the pitch black corridors. But to Changeling and Borrower, this was perfect. Bite after bite, Witch inflicted newfound venom deep and wriggled free. The form fell dead not long thereafter.

This was a momentary pause; Witch knew she wouldn’t get another chance like this. Ragged claws scrambled across the darkened paths, tail twirling along damaged tulle and silk as she made her ascent from the hem of the Princess’s dress straight into her trembling arms.

“You really came back,” Witch squeaked.

“I wasn’t leaving here without you,” the Princess chuckled, nuzzling her face close to the little Borrower. “We’ll have to be quick. It looks like someone tipped off the guards -“

“- There’s other Borrowers here besides us. Lots of them.”

The startled look in the Princess’s eyes lasted only a minute. Time was of the essence; in and out.

“Take me there.”

Witch nodded. Clambering up to her lover’s shoulders, she shoved the Opportunist to one side and scrambled towards her ear.

“It’s in the study. Door’s locked, but I can get you in.”

The sound of heavy footfalls shook the ground beside the other Borrowers as the Changeling advanced. For a moment, everything appeared to be calmer as the pair of them approached. A small tangle of roots slithered from one side of the door to the other, and with a soft click it opened before them. The stone-cold storage room showed its horrific spectacle bit by bit; first cages, then hands, laden in a spattering of blood. It seemed several of the hostages had chewed off their own limbs to avoid starvation; others to free themselves of thick, binding chains. No amount of protests could hold the heiress back as the sight grew more and more prominent; the creeping tendrils of the Network had slithered on from untrained hands, and wouldn’t stop until it made it to their destination.

One way or another, this ended now.

Walking behind Witch and the Princess, Thorn stepped into the room with a shaky breath. It was too late for most of them - but with luck, there could be a few survivors.

It was time for the lost to be spared the fight. Kneeling down in respect, Thorn placed her hand against the stony foundation once more; properly summoning the Network would be crucial. 

An echoing of solemn voices filled the space around her. The brush of an invisible hand against her cheek. The paths divided to collect more in this ceremony of quick, painless death; a final relieved exhale, and then no more.

The neural webbing slunk into cage after cage of dying form, wrapping the bodies of countless Borrowers in weaving tendrils as final breaths choked out. Their embrace was delicate; a nest of cerebral salvation that brought each one down to their thankful graves. There, they would be safe at last and join the expanses of trees that rooted deep beneath; to soil, to earth once more. And once the path was cleared, they vanished without a trace of their mortal bodies. Humanity would not exploit the dead.

It took a certain kind of emotional control to maintain the crucial role of reaper. This was not something Thorn had much ground on yet. And thus, as the flicker of fading magic dispersed, it seemed that so did the tears.

It was mercy. But why did mercy feel this hard?

“You did the right thing.” Adversary padded up to her side, the click of hooved feet echoing across the floor. “We can’t save all of them. At least this way, they get to die with a bit more dignity.” 

Thorn leaned into the soft grasp of her hand along one shoulder. There was that strong yet gentle press against her chin as Adversary lifted it to her face. “Once we carve our own path down there, you won’t have to worry about making the executive decision. It’ll come naturally, you and me…”

“It’s… Not now.” Thorn’s voice was barely a whisper. “We need to get the survivors out.”

There was a hesitation from the captives as the Changeling Princess approached the cage doors. Many of the remaining Fae backed up and cowered; others snapped aggressively at the bars of cramped cages.

“I’m with you; it’s okay.” The Princess dropped her helmet into her hands and tossed back her hair. Upon the sight of those familiar ears, many of them ceased. Some bowed in respect.

“How are we going to get them out of here?” 

Witch looked over inquisitively as the Princess raised a hand, eliciting a small spark in the palm. One by one the locks glowed with a warmth that melted them clean off, freeing them from the confines.

“I’ll be damned. You actually did it.” Prisoner looked over in calm confusion, watching as they hopped down and dispersed. Some leapt into the overturned helmet in the Princess’s hands to be deposited on the floor. So perhaps there was some sense in rescuing them, after all; Borrowers were safer together than alone, and this would make things simple enough. “Well done. I know which tunnels lead outside of the castle; presuming everyone keeps up, I can take them with me.” Despite her cold demeanor, Thorn could tell there was a spark of pride in those eyes. She’d finally earned this strategist’s favor.

Several borrowers lined up where they’d been signaled. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

“We’ll follow. We’ve already gotten your scent.” Now that the area had been cleared, there was one more thing to do.

Paths cleared as the Borrowers followed Prisoner’s lead; it seemed that in the midst of things, the only one missing was Razor. Most likely she was slinking off for some new unfortunate soul to torment - and thankfully, that didn’t seem to be any of them this time. Perhaps her absence would make the newcomers less wary. Even still, there was an eyeroll from the seasoned captive as she made her way down, watching each and every Borrower trail behind her. The only one who stayed behind to wait was Adversary; always faithful, always prepared to take on a scuffle. But even she knew here and now was not the time as she leaned against the far side of the wall near the tunnel.

“Ready when you are.”

Thorn nodded, slowly approaching. But a raspy cough caught her attention millimeters away from their way out, followed by a chirp of concern. 

That was right. Witch was still with the Princess.

“Witch, come on-“

Her voice was calm yet urgent; they couldn’t linger long. But the flicking of a nervous tail along the royal’s shoulder revealed the cause for stagnant concern.

Heavy lacerations had raked themselves across her back, sides, neck. While the Princess had managed to hold off the onslaught and release the remaining survivors, she has taken a toll indeed; blood trickled from weeping wounds, falling to her knees. There was a yelp of alarm as Witch held on-

Judging by the way she was holding up, she wouldn’t last long with how tremendously she bled out. Even if vitals had been missed, the sheer number of marks told the tale well enough.

“You’d better go,” the Princess coughed. “I’ll… Figure something out.”

By now, the Opportunistic weasel had fled the scene; things were no longer in his favor. Figured.

Witch leapt down from her back. Now that the Princess was hunkered down before them on all fours, she seemed somehow less immense. Her eyes pleaded for them to leave, tears streaking down her cheeks. But it was obvious by the way that she was wounded that  leaving her here was condemning her to die. 

Was that really fair, after everything? Thorn could scarcely imagine leaving a child amidst the decay of dead, poisoned bodies - much less one as young as Witch. There was much more life left in her, and her first fight for autonomy shouldn’t be her last. Witch didn’t move from her spot, either. 

It seemed the choice was made.

So against better judgment, it was Thorn this time who approached their massive ally.

“You’re going to be okay,” the heiress echoed, gulping back the fear. “You deserve so much more than this.” 

At nineteen, the situation was horrific; thirteen was unimaginable. And yet, both she and Witch had undergone it and survived; no, they would survive. And that was the thought that finally shifted her towards scratched palms as soft vines wrapped around them like a bandage.

“We… We’re staying?” Witch chirped back in confusion, but soon noticed how tenderly her former lover was taking things in with an appreciative look towards her sister. “Those wounds are deep; if we stay to heal everything-“

“If we don’t, she’ll die. ” 

Witch jolted, looking over at the Princess with a resigned laugh. “Even now, you manage to hinder things, don’t you?” But it was obvious by the way Witch scuffled over, the sarcasm was full of fondness and fear. It was hard to know where to start.

“It doesn’t need to be all the way,” Thorn instructed. “Just enough to stop the bleeding and wrap things up.” For a Borrower who had little medical powers, Thorn was definitely onto something. “She saved us. Now, it’s our turn.”

Witch let the moment pass with a nod. “Right. Wretches stick together, after all.”

Nervously, Witch extended her hand. Pressing it against the pulse of the Princess’s wrist, she continued once more in switching over her magic.

Bog moss to package the wounds to ease the bleeding; small clumps of aloe smashed and prepared like a paste to smooth over the injuries. There was a hiss of pain as Witch placed the topical ointment on, scurrying around to get the rest. With each one, it seemed the softer vines wrapped around their applicable purchase, be it shoulder or across the neck. Working together, then seemed to be doing just fine.

“Here; take this. It should ease the pain.” Thorn approached the Princess tentatively as she conjured up the proper dosage of petals. After everything that’d occurred, spawning the poppies again left a sickened twinge in her stomach, but carried on regardless. They had just as much ability to help as harm, after all; as was the vine of life and death that strangled them both. Even if humanity had condemned who they could not understand, the Princess still had allies amidst the Fae. She was, after all, one of them. 

“Your best move is to play dead from here. Those should help make that easier. We can’t exactly carry you out-“

It seemed the Princess’s stamina got the message before her mind. A slip of one hand from beneath her and the crouching figure collapsed, eyes closing in dazed exhaustion.

For a moment, both siblings watched uneasily. But the moment was brief. Shakily, Thorn took her sister’s hand and retreated to the darkened corners. 

“You always were soft,” Adversary chuckled. “Come on; let’s get out of here.”

The memory began to dim as somewhere behind the three of them, there was a scream and shatter of glass.

The neck of the chimera, their staunchly standing scapegoat, tugged against an unyielding chain. A scolding yell from her captor, crying out for them to flee. A triad of weasels emerging from the tunnel; the familiar face which stood out between them, growing draped in vines and briars. Clawed hands raked against the Opportunist’s throat. A second, a third -

“Thorn, we have an opening! We need to leave.”

“ They won’t let us. They’ll just keep chasing and chasing until we’re dead-“

All other voices fell to silence. Even knowing that the fight wasn’t alone, the ringing in Thorn’s ears and the focal glint of vision kept her hostage. Biting, clawing, kicking against every foothold - and oh, how the claws lashed out in turn. Shreds of fabric turned mangled in unknown grasps. Forepaws lanced the length of arms and legs in deep, bloody scars. And what’s more, through all the rage and pain even Adversary couldn’t reach her. It was all spent on making sure that Witch didn’t befall the same fate.

They were always going to be gladiators. To this end, at least they got to choose how they died - not stuffed between the cork of a bottle. Surely, anything was better than that. So for everyone’s sake, that’s how she’d carry on - thrashing the creatures who turned their backs to the woods. But soon, even holding onto him was bad enough as another weasel took their turn.

In all technicality, she was right. But trying to take on a triad of mustelids unarmed was a rather foolish miscalculation - Daughter of the Wild or not. Poisonings, mercy kills to the Network - just how many more people needed to die before they got to live? The question spun round and round as feral mortality sprung back to the surface and claimed all sense of self once more. It was just luck that there were two others in this mess with her. Two others, two weasels- their luck could be better.

But it wasn’t until another weasel pried her off that the hopelessness really sunk in. Their grip wasn’t gentle; it was taking all instinct not to cry out as claws gouged into the backs of her hands. With just a few scratches all sensation was lost as a bite to the back of her neck sealed the deal; it was time to take her own advice and “drop dead” for the moment as more and more blood was lost in pools on the floor.

“Okay, that’s enough to prove the point,” the Opportunist scolded. “We need her to stay alive, remember?”

The Opportunist waited beside Thorn almost mockingly as he gave a whistle for the new humans to arrive on the scene. The other two each grabbed a Borrower - this was taunting and unfair. But nevertheless, the lashing of a defeated tail continued as he curled around her, grinning with amusement.

“You’re certainly quite the fighter. Honestly, gave me more of one than I expected -“

His gaze turned towards two looming figures, giving them a nod.

“By the way, no need to thank me for saving your lives. Any other way and they wouldn’t even bother buying you more time in the arena. Now you’ll be just as prepared to take them on as-“

The rest of the damn weasel’s rambling was silent. It seemed exhaustion and blood loss were the culprits this time of a lost and hard-fought battle, only feeling the weight of the mustelid’s teeth carrying her by the collar. The other two creatures followed suit with equally combative hauls, struggling to walk with Adversary’s grip around their neck and Witch’s kicking form. But even this seemed to be a temporary measure. 

It seemed that her mind went next as the world became hazier. Thorn wasn’t entirely sure if she’d seen or imagined a shadowy figure levitating the body of the Princess somewhere above the grate and through the corridors of the castle. But even still, a shakily bleeding hand reached out -

And everything went dark.

…..

…………

……………………

—The next thing she could remember in the midst of it all was the clatter of metal and twist of a tiny, frightened body around her.

Witch.

There was no stopping the inevitable in a new environment stinking of wildlife and bloodlust. Three out of twenty-five Borrowers lined up for the slaughter.

Five or so were auctioned off immediately to bidders in the Black Market. Some were classified as Domestic Fae and would live a somber life in captivity. But at least those ones would likely live. Two who didn’t survive the trip over - tossed out to whatever creature would take them. Those blackened talons now felt distinct as the now-familiar fiend of the raven took every scrap he was offered.

Eighteen Borrowers shoved from travel crates into birdcages- tighter, more compact. Seventeen as one cage tipped itself over and a singular Borrower managed to evade all obstacles and dart out into the night. So there was hope, after all. Another likewise seemed to cross the threshold and make their way to freedom. Despite the upcoming tournaments, spirits grew bolder. 

Naturally, Adversary was the first opponent. It seemed the challenges could be survived as she brushed off the new scrapes proudly upon recapture. The opponent would have to heal up first before taking on another, she’d said. There was time until then.

Sixteen cages, lined up one by one. A variety of chatter from Borrowers; some fearful, others determined. The tales of daring escapes from former households and wild predators filled the gloom with some light, and the time spent didn’t feel nearly as desolate. The brash form of their first champion, Adversary, arrived from the arena and back again to tell the tale each time, with more ideas to share on how to brave the tides.

Others thought they could do it; it’d be easy. But what they seemed to lack was the knowledge that within a single blow, an unseen figure would abscond in the night and lay claim to six of them with no trace but clawed-open cages. Be it some predator or thief, they did not know. But the outlooks for the remaining ten seemed tenser, and sleep did not come easily. For now, they had to keep close watch on their adored ones and pray for a kinder end.

The sparks of hope were dying out.

Ten full birdcages. Nine, then eight as two Borrowers befell a lone chimera upon their escape; the captors had learned to keep it guarded now. Seven, and Adversary’s place at the arena was moved. Clawed hands reached out desperately one last time; vines pulled away at the bitter grip that dared to try. But it seemed that strong as she was, Adversary had her own limits; a final glimpse and a promise of return were all that remained as she, too, vanished without a trace.

With every single snatch, every Borrower dragged off and cage removed, the lights got dimmer and dimmer. No tales filled the halls and stories of escape were a horror story; no one got out of here unaided. No one lived, only died.

This was torture.

Five cages remaining. The classification continued in solemn diligence. A hand snagged on briars as it tried to reach towards the angered, shaken teen within. It bought them time.

Moved to another corner. Forgotten. Alone, clutching at the final remains of a dying society. A stifled breath as Witch buried her face towards the final heart in the area still nearby. Days turned to silence, cradling the thread that untethered.

Three cages. The final shouts of a triumphant Borrower making it out of combat by the skin of their teeth. Moved back to the corner of the room with a final cage as rigid hands yanked another poor soul away.

Two. No one had made it out thus far. Just a hasty, two-man shuffle of blood tests and shunting from one place or another. Fae, or common Borrower; survivor, or cattle. This was how it worked as those hands finally reached out towards them again.

There was no one left except two sisters in a cramped birdcage, knowing what happened next.

One.

The light finally dissipated before the hand could make its way in, releasing the all-familiar sting. Somewhere far above the enclosure, there was that familiar voice echoing empathetically.

“I think that’s enough for tonight.”

The hand that extended in its place was not one of a bloodstained killer, but phantasmic; comforting. Not a moment’s hesitation passed as Thorn took it and allowed it to pull her from the bindings.

Weakened starlight began to fill the open air and sweep through the chilled night. Hushed silence spread as the world, too, faded; only that tender gaze laid upon her as Spectre pulled her upwards. The soft, half-open gaze fell open and closed. Releasing control without the knowledge of what came next would’ve been unthinkable in any context but this.

But now, it was time to let it breathe, and let it go. What had happened, happened. There was no changing that. Yet surrounded on all sides by that flickering gaze, Thorn wasn’t alone anymore.

All the secrets kept from a child too young, all those nights unslept - finally, after years there was someone else who knew. So even when that viscous, bloodied tint came through the piercing darkness of the sky, Thorn merely held her breath and let her ethereal guide take it from there.

The acidic, bitter taste of copper and fermentation choked at her lungs. The sting of alcohol threatened to clog up all senses and render them inert. Yet still clinging on, there was a gentle finger running along the tapestry of latent scars that finally broke it.

I’m not letting go. It’s okay; Breathe.

Thorn took the command and exhaled - deep. The fizzing sensation of potent residue finally let go, allowing her to surface. A gentle hand finally dragged her crawling body onto a small hill next to the tide of wine and released her, gasping.

It felt like getting spat up by an unrelenting monster. There was a shudder as the pool of viscous fluids lapped at the shores, returning to its spot down below with qualm, not quarry. The deadened gaze seemed to threaten to return, to bury it all back in - but something seemed to stop her.

Spectre’s shaky gasp. Her ardent, patient watcher, hovering just a few inches above the nonexistent landscape. It was just this hill, and the sea of bloody wine.

For a moment, no words. Hardly a glance forward. The only sound was the unceremonious drip of rotting fluids along Thorn’s drenched, aching form, begging for some kind of answer.

This time, it seemed the coy ghost was just as lost for words as she. No retorts, no clever comebacks; just an eternity staring deep and mutually horrified. The soft trickle of empathetic tears seemed to cascade gradually, even if no words came out. 

It was enough. It was vindication. The permission had finally been granted to let it all free, and Thorn took it all.

Coarse, ragged screams of rage and torment began and they did not stop. The stream of tears, every hitching, struggling breath; the dizzying sensation of relieved sinuses at the downpour of snot and saliva. There was no longer anyone to pretend to; to save face. It didn’t matter anymore how much ground beneath was dug into, how much strength was lost and gained. It just mattered that she was here, finally safe, with someone old enough to finally understand the depths of what could not be explained.

And then, it stopped.

A warm pang settled deep within an aching throat. The chill along back and spine felt soft, comforting as Thorn let the remaining purge of spit trickle down her chin. There was no honor in any of this - just the steady, finite release of cortisol throughout pleading nerves. Everything felt like it was on fire, chilled, extinguished all at once - but finally, something other than numb. The long-gone spark had begun to return to Thorn’s deadened eyes, letting this dreamscape carry on its brutal mercy.

Spectre’s gaze trailed down once more, still uncertain. A hand reached out, retracted, attempted again. There was no jumpiness left as the heiress stared up long and hard as she finally stumbled to her feet.

“……. I thought I would have more thoughts on how to help once I’d seen it,” Spectre admittedly, embarrassed. “I’m sor-“

No need. The quickened chase of footsteps launched itself into open arms - and this time, they caught her in full. The opaque form of Spectre was no longer intangible; in this lucid, fearful landscape, every silken trace of her hair and gossamer trail of that once-bloodied gown was palpable. Caught in the gentle embrace of possession, she could feel it all.

No wonder Spectre always looked so lost traversing the world outside.

But this wasn’t about her. It seemed for once, it was okay to know that as the phantom nuzzled her chin against ragged, frizzy strands of hair and draped her arms around her. Hand in hand and gazes locked, it seemed natural to take that lean forward in heady momentum -

But the moment stopped just short of Spectre’s lips. The soft brush against the phantom’s hand seemed to cue her in well enough the moment was over, looking over her with almost pleading apology.

“I’m sorry, I… Can’t.” A restless rage seemed to bubble beneath her hollowed form, tail lashing at her side. “Not here. Not now. I don’t -“

“That’s okay.” The hold against her was no less tender. “You know you don’t have to.”

“I want to,” Thorn lamented. “It’s just…”

“Too soon. I can see that.”

The sadness seemed to be mutual, even if it seemed despite the empathy the pain was apparent on Spectre’s face. But even still, that willful vulnerability wasn’t cast aside when the other’s desires weren’t met. So perhaps she really was more than just a pretty face to kiss.

“I like your company no matter what form it takes. Take your time to figure it out; that isn’t the reason I’m here. I could tell you needed help.“

“And you needed someone to talk to who understood you. I guess this still serves both of us, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

Talking through it felt better than the act itself. What needed communication broke the silence was understood; it was too early to move on with wounds transcending beyond the surface of skin. It would take time to become independent from Spectre’s tender care; necessary now, but too soon to determine the realness of romantic connection. Not like this.

“Do you still want me to stay?”

A resigned nod met Spectre’s words. Leaning closer once more, a gentle tilt of her head planted a chaste kiss on her forehead instead of on the lips; a reminder that someone else understood. It was okay to breathe it in.

Thorn took every opportunity.

Here they were, two victims of inhumane sights and scars that ran far beyond neural tissue. If it had been possible, this moment could’ve lingered on forever. But as promised, it seemed after checking in Spectre intended for the nightmare to end. The last moments lingered under sanguine starlight and began to fade into nothingness but the dull, healing wound that grew heavier in a dreamless sleep.