#tw: death; allusion to suicide; mentions of blood

[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

[asterdisaster06]

Always An Angel

joel miller x gn!reader

summary > "You can call me a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot,” You hiss.

“Death is not a lover,” Joel disputes.

“Oh yes he is,” You chuckle mirthlessly. “I am done with my own whorish heart and I have been for a long time. You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take.”

word count: 1.7k

TW > Major Suicide Ideation and allusions to it

a/n > i finished "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy recently and i was inspired

“Everything would be a lot easier if you fucking sat still,” You seeth, attempting to stitch Joel up after a run in with some rogue vagabonds.

“It’s not lethal, I’m fine,” He says with a wince as you tie it off with a little more force than necessary. Just to get your point across.

“I don’t know where we are, you look like hell, and I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” You heave - your stomach churning at the sight of his wound.

Your eyes fall to the stopped clock, every single one in this godforsaken land stopped at a different time. A small voice of desperation wonders how much energy it would take to fix them all, to return to the once taken for granted past. Ellie was asleep in the upstairs room; although asleep is an assumed white lie to make you two feel better. It’s more likely that she’s rifling through the bathroom cabinets for any medicine or keeping watch.

“I wish I was with Sarah,” You lamented.

“You mean you wish you were dead,” Joel growled, bristling at the very mention of her. As quickly as he gets riled up, he gets equally disheartened at the thought of that being your truth. He tries to sit up, and you give him credit that it almost worked, but he quickly relinquishes to the mortal limits his torn and scarred body gifts him. An unwanted present.

“Yes.”

“Don’t say that, don’t you dare say that, darling,” He almost begs, the slick of his own blood staining both of your hands. “We’re survivors,” Joel asserted, his grip on your hand weaker than usual. Almost as weak as this was making your heart.

“What in God’s name are you talking about? We are the farthest thing from that. Death is setting the table for us because it is inevitable; and honestly? I might bring him an early housewarming gift - a thank you for taking us in when nobody else will,” You cry out.

“I am begging you, for the love of- Please just hear me out.”

“No, I’m done. I don’t care. I don’t care if you cry, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Not anymore,” You jeered.

“Please, sugar.” Joel looked pathetic lying there - his complexion pale from blood loss and the salt and pepper sprinkled in his hair reminding you of all you’d been through together. His rough hands softened by the ichor flowing from the wound.

“Stop it,” You plead.

“I am begging, I’d do anything for you.”

You almost feel bad for him. Living cannot be easy, you know this as well as anyone. Living for yourself is ten times harder. You know this because you never would have come this far without Joel and Ellie. Your Joel. Your Ellie. Your only worldly possessions in this hell on earth. You challenge anyone to judge your wording when it’s the gospel truth that the bond between you three is the only tangible thing worth a damn to you anymore.

“Such as what? We should have done it a long time ago when there were still three bullets in the gun instead of two. The army of knaves that almost killed you, killed Ellie, killed me, will catch up to us eventually. You can’t be that naive to think they’re just going to give up on tracking us down after we killed some of their men. Or maybe you just are overconfident in my skills of concealment, which it would do you good to quickly dispel that delusion. I can guarantee you that they will find us. They will find us and they will kill us. They will rape me. They will rape her. They are going to rape us and kill us and eat us and you won’t face it. You’d rather wait for it to happen. But I can’t. I can’t,” You snarled, grieving over the life that could’ve been but never will.

Not anymore. You spat and swore and it is all for naught and you know that because there is nothing you can do about it. The sincerity of it is the only pure thing left in this world. It’s ironic enough to make you laugh, no matter how insane it makes you feel.

“Don’t fucking say that,” Joel rasps. A cursory retort that means very little to you at this point.

“Do you really think that? That we’d be better off dead?” A voice from the stairwell and you don’t even have to turn around to imagine the expression on her face right now. You knew that you’d been too loud and eventually she would come down to check on Joel and yourself.

“Maybe not you two, but we’ve been over this. I didn’t bring myself to this. I was brought. And now I’m done. I’m fucking done,” You sob, curling up into your own limbs stained red and metallic with the facts of your situation.

“That is so goddamn unfair of you. You don’t get to make that decision. Everyone I have cared for has either died or left me,” Ellie swore, “Everyone except for you. I can’t do it without you.”

The tears drive you over the fence, back into the world of the living. The pure anguish and agony you feel at that fact isn’t normal. You know that in the morning you will feel ashamed over your distress, but these are likely the last hours of your life that you can spend with these two by your side. You don’t know why you even patched Joel up - a silly, stupid, childlike hope that he could get you out of this scenario again because he was always the strong one. Always the one that knew what to do and now he’s on the verge of passing out. Or maybe it’s been an old habit ingrained into you for so long that you wouldn’t know what to do with your hands otherwise.

“I shouldn’t have even told you. That would probably have been best. We have two bullets and then what? Joel, you can’t protect us. You say you’d die for us but what good is that?” You sigh, the fight leaving you as quickly as it came. It took too much energy and hope to even argue.

“And giving up is any better?”

The blood roaring in your ears made it difficult to discern who even whispered that, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. None of it. Not anymore. They would come and you wouldn’t be able to stop them, and you weren’t sure you’d even try.

“I wouldn’t leave you,” Joel muttered.

“I don’t care. It’s meaningless. We used to talk about death, but not anymore. Why do you think that is?” You acknowledge.

“It’s because it’s here,” Ellie recites from behind you.

“You can call me a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot,” You hiss.

“Death is not a lover,” Joel disputes.

“Oh yes he is,” You chuckle mirthlessly. “I am done with my own whorish heart and I have been for a long time. You talk about taking a stand but there is no stand to take.”

“For the love of God, darling. Give me the knife,” Joel stressed, reaching out and stumbling as he does so. It’s pathetic.

A flake of obsidian. Sharper than steel. The edge an atom thick. Joel had taught you himself. You kick the gun towards him, an absent look upon your face. Your facial expression betraying a sardonic sort of scorn. His eyes meet yours and search for anything radiant but comes up short of anything but sanguine. There was no argument left to be had. The nights spent debating with the earnestness of philosophers chained to a madhouse wall came to fruition on this night.

You leave with the fitting coldness of it being your final gift. You could hear Ellie begging Joel to make you come back, but it was all nil. Your heart was set. If you were going out, it wouldn’t be without a fight though. The cold dew brushing against your exposed skin as green blades slice up your ankles bring you back to the present. A punishment for forgetting the small moments of life that make it worth it, even if just a little bit.

You take a stand at the edge of the forest, perched in a tree. You sit there, finding comfort in the incommodious malaise. You were starving, exhausted, and cramped, but you refused to let the risk of them finding you while you sleep exist. Eventually the stomps of their footfalls give away their position and you find yourself on the move. An angel of death is what you are, slicing them down where they stand. Joel taught you well, not well enough to avoid all of their bullets or hatchets, but enough to stay standing long enough to make sure they all lay dead. Visceral brain matter and viscera laying, bodies butchered.

You knew that they wouldn’t leave you alone if you stayed in their territory - not now, not ever. You had to move, but you bought enough time for Joel and Ellie. That was all you could’ve asked for. A stray bullet whizzes past you, striking fear into your heart.

“I thought you were done,” Joel calls out from behind you. It was now that you could see he had taken down one last enemy you hadn’t spotted.

“Maybe I am,” You chuckle caustically.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” He sighs, taking your scathing words with a grain of salt. He knew you didn’t mean it anymore. It was simply the principle talking for you.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” You speak, a mixture of the geographical locus and simply being in the living world lacing your reference.

“And yet you don’t want to leave, sugar,” Joel says. It was a gaudy assumption, but a true one nonetheless.

“We only have one bullet left,” You admise.

“You only have one life left. I know which one I’d rather keep,” Joel remarks.

He and eventually Ellie figure out that your threats and claims aren’t to be taken seriously, and that if you were to die it would be in a way that mattered. They share the same sentiment and have their own moments rivaling yours, but you’d never leave each other. Not like this. Not in a way that mattered.

[morallygreysimp]

THE FLASH…II

CHAPTER TEN: OKAY

TW: mention of blood, grave injuries, weapons, trauma, allusions to death and suicide attempt, dangerous and violent actions, medical talk

No one dared to speak. No one dared to move. No one even dared to breathe. Nora’s words hang in the air like a fly caught in molasses. Not one person reacted. Not even their faces showed any sign of surprise or confusion, even resignation. Nothing. Everyone just stood in front of her as if frozen in time, like emotionless antique statues, created for the sole purpose of decor.

She couldn’t tell how much time passed before her eyes caught a glimpse of the gun pointed at her. It had happened all so fast. As Nora remained immobile in the center of the room, mimicking everyone else, Detective West rapidly broke out from the mental restraints of shock, took his gun out of the holster and aimed. Before he forged his reputation as Detective, he was known for his impeccable firing skills.

And Nora knew that. She had heard so many stories about his time as an officer when he’d take her to the shooting range. She swore to never tell her Pa that her aim wasn’t all his doing. That’s why she just raised her hands above her head and stepped back. She knew better than to test him.

He didn’t speak. He just took the gun out and aimed, waiting for the stranger claiming to be his granddaughter to make her next move. Waiting to gain a reason to shoot. Joe West wasn’t a particularly aggressive or violent man. He was taught to use his reason, his witty intelligence and make it his most dangerous weapon. And he did. He never ran out of bullets, not even back when he was an officer. He was a man of words.

But not when it came to his kids. Not when it came to Iris and Barry. He had spent the entirety of his fatherhood teaching his daughter how to get out of any type of hold, pull a good punch, safely use a gun. He had made it his mission, his only goal to raise a strong, independent woman in a world of misogyny and raging sexism. And when Barry came into the picture, he was enrolled in weekly training too. but they were his kids. His children. And he’d be damned if anything happened to them under his watch. Not after the last two years. Not after the countless night spent holding his sobbing daughter in his arms, while clinging to his lifeless-looking; not after the nightmares that mercilessly replayed over and over again that dreaded night, the night he held his boy on the wet floor of the department’s laboratory, screeching for help, begging God to not take him away.

No, not after that. So he waited, and was ready to wait until the end of times for the shadow of a reason. He couldn’t seem to find a reason that seemed so well hidden behind those crystal blue eyes staring directly into his. Hidden behind what, though. There wasn’t a speck of fear, or distress. Not a single glimpse of confidence, of malice. Nothing. Those crystal blue eyes staring directly into his held nothing. Absolutely nothing. Endless emptiness filled her vision, her soul.

She was just a kid. It hit him out of nowhere: she was a kid. Zoom couldn’t have possibly recruited a kid, right? He wouldn’t have gone that far, would he? Of course, he would’ve. He was a monster. but she wasn’t. She was a child. Just a child. He battled with himself, letting his hands shake, his aim buckle, but never drop.

Joe’s eyes moved around the cortex, searching for an answer on someone else’s face, but he only found more questions. Nobody had moved a millimeter, he could see their muscle twitch to release some tension; nobody seemed intentioned to take their eyes off of the foreign girl standing in the middle of the room, nobody seemed intentioned to break the bone-chilling, that thickened the air, trapping them in time like bees in resin.

So, he took action. He silenced his thoughts and took a step forward, gun raised aiming at her head.

“NO!” Barry’s voice melted the silence away, rendering the air breathable again. Everyone was abruptly pulled out of their trance state and they all turned to the speedster. No one understood the look in his eyes: the deep, unconditional adoration he projected toward the young girl; the surprise, the disbelief painted on his face; the big, heartfelt grin that accentuated his dimples and displayed his whole teeth. No one could find a reasonable explanation for the pure terror hiding in his wide pupils; for the shaky hand he extended between Joe and the girl; for the force, the strength, the determination his voice held.

“You’re real” this time Barry’s voice wasn’t strong or determined. This time Barry’s voice was merely a whisper, so hushed, so tender that was barely heard by anyone. But Nora heard it. She heard it loud and clear, like she had heard him call her name when she got out of school; like she had heard him tell her good night when he tucked her in; like she had heard him in her head for the past six months.

She couldn’t let them see that. Nora couldn’t let them see the pain eating her from the inside; she couldn’t let them know about the screams and the cries, about the anger and the sorrow. They didn’t deserve it. They didn’t deserve her, what she had become.

So, she smiled. She forced he muscles to curve he lips upward in a tight, forced, small smirk. She knew she was failing at hiding the melancholy in her eyes, she knew the suffering and the mourning were obvious. But she didn’t budge. She was used to it. She just did what she had been doing for six months: she smiled through it.

“Flesh and bones” she tried to keep her voice steady, but a light tremble slipped the grip she had on herself. “No pun intended” she joked, breathing out an awkward chuckle. No one laughed, just moved their attention to Barry, who was still sitting on the wheelchair, eyes fixated on her, the stranger, the possible threat.

No one understood what Barry meant. Of course they didn’t. No body had lived that welcoming warmth, that felt like home. None of them had seen those big, beautiful icy blue eyes staring at him, those beautiful eyes full of happiness and excitement; so innocent and pure, that he swore a look from those eyes could have erased all the evil in the universe.

Non of them had heard that enchanting, mesmerising voice. That little squeal of joy, that heart-melting giggle, that was better than any song ever created, that sounded like heaven’s music. He wanted to hear that small, high voice yelling “daddy!” for the rest of his mortal existence. Even beyond that.

And now she was there in front of him. She wasn’t that little girl he had received the most outstanding work of art he had ever seen from. No. She was older, probably in her teen years. But it was her. The same big, beautiful icy blue eyes. The same heart-melting warmth in her voice. It was her. His Nora. His.

She was staring right back at him, her look mirrored his wonder and surprise. But there was something else. Something deeper, something she was clearly trying to hide. But what? He could see her smile was forced and tight, but he couldn’t understand why. And frankly, Barry didn’t care: she was there in front of him.

Nora carefully tried to move forward. Joe tightened the grip on the gun, making her step back. Barry’s head snapped towards him, but before he could speak another voice broke the silence.

“Detective put the gun down”

It wasn’t Oliver, although it was. But it wasn’t him, Oliver Queen, no; it was the Green Arrow, The Hood. His voice had dropped a couple of octaves, the words came out as growl of warning, like a lion snarling at his prey out of mercy, giving it the time to escape. Joe turned to look at him, just to find an arrow pointing at his head.

She said Queen. She said Queen-Allen. She was Barry’s daughter. His and Barry’s. In that moment nothing mattered: not the possibility of that being a lie, not the chances of zoom showing up again, not the fact that she could be a threat. Nothing matter, but the fact that she said Queen-Allen. Queen. Like him.

Allen like Barry. His Barry.

So he let all the rationality, all the logic, all the capacity to think drain out of his brain. Blinded in his ability to make decisions Oliver took a fast step forward so that the point of the arrow came in contact with Joe’s temple.

Everyone froze, no one dared to speak. Oliver’s ragged and rapid breathing was the only sound in the room, it covered the low humming of the LEDs and the noise of the computers’ fan. Joe’s eyes darted from the girl to the man a couple of times before he decided to slowly lower the gun and place it on the ground. At that, Oliver let his bow and the arrow clang loudly on the white floor.

Nora waited another couple of seconds to assure that everyone calmed down before speaking again. She may had needed another couple of seconds to make sure her voice wouldn’t break and her eyes wouldn’t start to water. That wasn’t what she had planned. But it had happed, and now she needed to handle the situation properly. She could not risk them know everything, but she couldn’t lie either. Her dad was just starting to deal with the unspeakable situation that Zoom was. And judging by the wheelchair it was he had lost another battle.

She couldn’t risk them knowing, but she couldn’t hide everything from them. She was never able to lie to them. They had to know. Nora found herself in front of the possibility to bring them back, to have them drive her to school and pick her up at the end of the day. She had the chance to knock on their bedroom door and hear them telling her to come in. She could have the afternoons in the lab and the nights in the foundry back.

She could have them back.

But how could she do that? How could she even think of messing with the timeline after the billion lectures about using her speed to travel through time?

She settled for a half truth.

“Now that no one is pointing weapons at no one” she stared “Pops I promise I’m telling the truth. I come from about twenty years from now, and I know what you all are about to say! I know I shouldn’t time travel, but it was an accident!” Truth

“I was just suppose to go to Gotham!” Another truth

“But something went wrong “ again, truth

“And I found myself in Central. I thought I was overthinking and took the wrong turn” not exactly the truth

“But then I saw a news board and the tear was 2015. Dad I’m sorry I really didn’t mean to, but I don’t know how to go back, I tried to, but it didn’t work “ some of this is true, the rest not really.

It took Barry a quarter of a second to forget everything she said. Dad. She called him dad.

“Nora” he chocked on that word. He always wished to honour his mother like that, by naming a possible daughter Nora. And it was going to happen. With Oliver.

“Okay we are gonna need some tests”

••••

“Aunt Caitlin I understand that I’m a speedster, but my blood isn’t infinite!”

Every drop of blood they had put in the system gave the same result: she was Barry’s biological daughter. Even the piece of skin, the hair and the fragment of nail. She was who she claimed to be.

“Do you guys want to go ask Gideon?” She said, earning a couple of confused looks.

“You know about Gideon?” Cisco asked

“Of course I know about Gideon, I was there when dad built it! I guess I will be there, chewing on a plushie”

Barry had tucked himself in a corner, eyes fixated on emptiness and hands clutching Oliver’s. He already knew she wasn’t lying, he didn’t need a dozen tests to know that. She was the little girl excited to show him her draw. Or at least she was. It was going to be.

He was trying to focus on how he was supposed to address her existence rather than her words.

~_~_~_~_~

“I guess you still don’t know” she stuttered, as if she was searching for the right way of saying what she wanted, but she couldn’t find it.

“You have told me so many times about this. Every time I was scared you would”

the clearing of throat seemed to go unnoticed “you would tell me about the time Zoom broke your spine and left paralysed for about three weeks”

Horror flashed on everybody’s faces. The crack was of a spine.

“I think this is the time you were talking about”

~_~_~_~_~

Caitlin had confirmed that. His vertebrae T9 an T10 were completely fractured, and minor damage was inflicted to his T8 and T11.

It wasn’t anxiety, it wasn’t fear or shock. It was a broken back. After about two hours since Nora had shown up Barry could feel the loss of, well, feeling in his legs. It was a strange sensation: it was as if his being stopped under his bellybutton. He gripped Oliver’s hand to keep himself from pinching his thigh until he bled.

He was The Flash. Running was all he had know for the past two years. All he had known for his entire life. And now he was confined in a chair, unable to even get out of the room by himself.

His eyes burned with unshed tears, his throat closed by chocked sobs. Oliver had abandoned the standing and was now crouching next to the wheelchair and had put his head on the nest their arms created.

Oliver wished he could take all his pain away. He wished his fingers could absorb every ounce of suffering in Barry’s body and transfer it to his. Barry had endured so much in his life, he had already walked through hell and now this. If God existed he was an ass.

As he lovingly kissed Barry’s knuckles his ears caught light, unsure footsteps getting closer. The red boots stopped in front of them and the leather covered knees touched the ground.

Nora crossed her arms over her father’s lap and placed her left hand over theirs.

“It’s gonna be okay”

It was.

[d3mon-ology]

𝙰 𝙻𝙴𝚃𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝙾 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙳𝙿𝚂 + 𝙿𝙰𝙿𝙸𝙻𝙻𝙸𝙾𝙽 𝙼𝙾𝙽𝚂𝚃𝙴𝚁 𖤐 ࿐ྀུ  a drabbily wip

A small wip centering around themes of dropped friendships, jealously, depression, and missed opportunities. An expression of grief, in a sense. 

Something written on a whim with the fuel found in autumn’s melancholy. I don’t know how to feel about it, other than it comes from a genuine place. My hope with posting this isn’t to, necessarily, post something of particular polish, but rather to simply write and paste it up somewhere so it is set free, much like a dove. Plus, the motivation, the ease of coming back to it, etc. 

Neil Perry's chest is laid barren in a hot-swill of blood, trickle-down - trickle-down. The gun safe unlocks itself with ease. I wonder if I will meet him, if he will find me as Christmas Future.

Instagram is haunting, as much as it feeds. I miss everyone dearly. An isolated leaf, flowing with the wind, who starts with loneliness as though the reprieve from it were just a dream. Was it?

Halloween is floundering near, blowing up like a sex-doll I don't have a particular urge to order off Amazon, much less fuck, but it offers old comfort, like I am innocent once more in an act so foreign to me. Irony. The real act, just like friendship, causes me pain, and both are alike in the amount of self-enthusiastic debauchery and clumsy greenery. The melancholy that warms my chloro-phallic underbelly. I miss you all dearly.

You all are dressed in costumes, drinking cheap beer and frying the egg-brain off synthetic wax pens at shows I would never attend unless asked. I miss you all dearly, but you will never inquire about me as I've burned the bridge you blocked off eons ago. You live in the Anthropocene, but I hum-drum along in the sepia-toned finality of aged film, frying myself on fiction. It is easier to find friends in actors and writers. 

So Neil Perry is dying. Todd Anderson is crying. I am bed-ridden. And you are all still babies, still children, but so am I. I cry as Neil Perry dies, unsure who I am in this Fischer-Price play.

A chloric, rheumatic swill, metaphorical or real, consumes my lungs and my temperate. On Monday, Halloween, I will rise from my chambers, dress in a mildly inappropriate cloth for my big-girl job, choke down a cup of coffee, and face my 56-year-old coworker who hates me in place of her similarly-aged children and similarly-tempered husband. She knows that same weakness in me that my mother knew, that you supposedly saved from until you exploited it. Why did I stop you? Call me overdramatic, batty, build that cage again until the metal bites my cheeks and cellulite, and let us be friends again!

I am all alone on a Saturday night, having seen no one who makes me feel alive in months (besides the boyfriend, but does he count, when he is the life I have? It is like comparing the nomadic, infantile, and freezing breath when you walk out to heat up the car to the necessary inhale). Tick off the list, try to write, fuck around on the computer and talk to the Internet friends who live too far away, and open that god-forsaken app.

Instagram. An icon of colors that remind me of our friendships, back when they bloomed into technicolor tulip fields any Dutch painter would be twitterpated to capture. I gave up high school to you, yielded it all in favor of the love I though waited on the other side. No such Fate, and now I am scorned. By It or you, I cannot tell, but one of you is culpable for turning me Black with Death. In the coffin, I scroll through a kaleidoscope of your new life, but does that make me dead? Friends found in types of people you hated before, made fun of me for finding appealing. Are we really that different? So grown past our infancy that there is no use in trying to mend tears formed in adolescent mutiny? 

That First Breath, screaming because you are now miserably breathing — I found it with you all. This app, it is the pillow drenched in chloroform. Would you attend my funeral if I offered it as a pyre, just for you to dance around, read from Kant and Whitman, and film Reels to? Protest me, protest me, but please, do not forget me. I miss you all dearly.

Running around Walmart, hollering in the car above the din of some hand-crushed cush in a song written by some wack-job nu metal worker one of you enjoy so much. Next to our ear’s Murder Scene — Gerard Way, still holding my heart in his palm, and yours too. I thought I had a hand on that too, had it in my mouth, pressed pert between my teeth, but it was you who feasted upon me. Rocky Horror fiction, Meatloaf all-cooked and coked up with your eyes, all eight of them, wild over the mahogany table. When I protested, when I asked you to stop, you feigned unfamiliarity with the poltergeists of Hamtramck. You laughed, even, and turned the radio up louder. You toked another bowl while I tried not to cry in the rat-dropping'ed corner of the party. I wanted you to love me, to let me in on your Chloe Sevingy debauchery, the casual-cool mean-girlness coupled with the twang of midwest Redditor to you all. I wanted to be among the baby-doll-burning, confirmation-bible-paper-joint-rolling, Kiwi-Farms-trolling, dirty-secrecy-found-only-in-Limp-Biskit-and-Kimya-Dawson, Gigi's-on-the-weekend-with-x's-on-the-hand-like-gay-Jesus club that you all formed.

Now it's all Harry-Styles, gender-queer, light-hearted cheer, and Monster High — things I enjoyed, too, but felt we would never share. You've boiled down what you were, perhaps grown a bit, I'd hope. Yet, none of you drop a line, invite me out. I shouldn't be surprised; I cut you all out first. I was on the cross, I had my hand on the gun-safe. You all left me behind, left me in the desert to die, and I wanted to. God! I wanted to! Yet, I ran along side the Honda Civic. 'Take me to the drug deal! Take me!' I begged, I begged, but it was soundless compared to what played in the car and your voices overtop. The Strokes, since when? Tumblr 2014, back in full swing, and I am that penchant, needy middle schooler all over again. I'm tugging at your sleeves, asking you to please be my friend. Tears streaming down my face, Virgin Mary, as you all liked to remind me. Too much of a kid for you.

"Lynz?" We were roommates, once, behind the Polish Film Theatre. Cigarette against the windowsill, and not even this I can find aesthetic in. The mice scurried about the kitchen, with the cat sleeping lazily on the weed-puffed couch. He stirred, tried to catch one of the butterflies on the cushion, before rolling over to show his belly. One of you giggled. 

"Yeah?" I rose from my crypt (your mattress, your duvet), wishing you would ask me out, ask me round to whatever y’all are up to. I wished you would ask me why, all those months ago, I unfollowed you on Instagram, and you'd actually listen. 

Months later, Halloweentown on the telly in a fabulously 50′s flat, tucked in bed like a constipated English woman. House coat, pink-plush. But instead, it's just a girl, mourning the marrow meal of Neil Perry, in a smelly pair sweatpants stolen from you and a haircut that reminds me of when one of you fried your hair off with bleach.

image: Bacchante With an Ape by Hendrick ter Brugghen in 1627 (Dutch). Read more here. 

[bits-and-babs]

Mangled || Kane (Annihilation) x Reader

-> Rating: VERY 18+

-> Word Count: 10.4k!!!!

-> When tasked with a suicide mission, feelings for your colleague cloud your judgement. A celebration of Friday the 13th!

Gif Credit does not belong to me!

⚠️ CW/TW: !HORROR! LONG-ASS SLOW BURN ISH FIC BUT THE SMUT IS WORTH IT I SWEAR. Mentions of: war, infidelity, gore, death, injury, I don’t know if you’d call this hunter x prey vibes, kind of? DUBCON THEMES and vague allusions to pregnancy. Definite themes of: Hair pulling, breath play, rough sex, unprotected p in v sex, anal play, cream pie. Jesus, anything else?! ⚠️

When bodies are cast into rivers, they typically sink slowly beneath the surface and into the murky water below for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Only with decomposition and an accumulation of gas beneath the skin does that same body float back up to the surface, often disfigured and putrefied. This wasn’t so unlike the fear you had pushed down upon entering The Shimmer, drowning your nerves inside the depths of your being- but that same discomfort was beginning to float to the surface, twisting and disfigured into something more akin to terror.

Your team of Green Berets had witnessed unspeakable horror in your tours across the globe. People were blown to bits by IEDs in Afghanistan, and the genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar. Friends had lost their limbs, you’d carried your colleague's coffins across the airport tarmac with the Stars and Stripes draped across the lid. None of this could possibly have prepared you for the dreadful beauty behind the oil-slick Shimmer wall.

It had been subtle at first. You’re no scientist, but you had been certain on arrival that some of the flora that grew within the Shimmer was atypical of nature. Crossbreeds between wild roses and bluebells - an impossible mixture. It had painted a thin sheen of uneasiness throughout your body, ultimately grasping that things inside The Shimmer were beyond scientific understanding. That was, you believe, six days ago. It was hard to tell exactly, given the team would frequently lose track of time. Days' worth of food rations would disappear overnight, and you would often awake in entirely new places while not remembering having set up camp.

Continuously breaching your understanding, the scenes you witnessed became more bizarre, more unnerving as time went on. Large creatures far exceeding their natural size, almost Goliath-like, sounds that didn’t fit the fauna of the South-East coast. It was day three that these hybrid creatures had started their attack. One soldier had been dragged behind the bushes kicking and screaming by their legs into the blackness of the night, grasping fruitlessly at the air in an attempt to escape the jaws of whatever had him. Upon inspection of the surrounding area, red blood streaks gave you reason enough to believe he wasn’t coming home. Another vanished without a trace from behind the rest of the platoon with no explanation as to where he had gone or what had taken him.

You knew the prognosis. Area-X had made it exceedingly clear that not one person had passed through The Shimmer and returned. There was no explanation, no obvious guilty party for the missing soldiers, just an unspoken promise that those who followed them would suffer the same fate.

“Well, there are two theories of what went wrong in the Shimmer.”

“One, something kills them.”

Then, on day five, psychosis set in. Shared hallucinations, paranoia. Your fingerprints begin to twirl, spinning like whirlpools at the tips of your appendages. The unsettling and frankly bizarre sight is not the worst of it, however, the third member of your platoon, Mayer, succumbing to sporadic delusions, screaming into the quiet of the army base you had camped in overnight that his insides moved.

Sergeant Kane tied Mayer to a chair at the deep end of the empty swimming pool in the abandoned gym of the military base, insisting that you hold the flailing man by his shoulders to steady his abdomen. No spoken decision led to the events that happened that night, instead, it was as though the three of you shared a hive mind. Resigning to his fate, Mayer had simply heaved agonized breaths as Kane gutted him like a fish with a Swiss Army knife to expose his vital organs. Had it not been for the camera Kane had set up to capture every second of the faux surgery, you wouldn’t have believed you were witnessing your colleagues' insides wriggle throughout his abdomen like giant, fleshy tapeworms.

“Two, they go crazy and kill each other.”

Mayer’s corpse witnessed Kane spend hours frantically scrubbing his colleague's blood from the creases in his knuckles, bloodied army knife discarded in the algae-infested water beside his feet. He had insisted upon taking watch throughout the rest of the night, far too worked up from the events of the early evening to want to go to sleep. There, on the floor of the army base as you grasped desperately at the thread of unconsciousness, it had dawned on you that you and Kane were the only ones left.

Day six, grasping tightly onto your gun, your eyes pass over the lush green of the forest that surrounded you. The beauty of the flowers and the refracted light bathing the floor in rainbows is obsolete now, no longer settling your anxiety like it was probably designed to. The muscles in your shoulders are taut with stress, zeroing your attention on the treeline.

Seven years in the military had strengthened your mind, harderned it to outside stressors that would affect your ability to survive. You’d seen unimaginable horrors, been exposed to the worst of humanity and to life-or-death situations more times than you could count, enough that there was barely anything that phased you. But you can feel it now, horror and insanity twisting in your bone marrow, threatening to claw its way out of you in a scream. Fear.

“Hey Angel,” a soft voice cuts through the silence of the ethereal forest, startling you from your downward spiral into hysterics. When you look, the panicked thrumming of your heart slows to a steadier pulse.

“You doin’ okay?” He questions you gently, settling in his usual spot on your left side as he trudges through the forest flooring. You always considered yourself skilled at maintaining neutral body language, at masking your concerns, but Kane had cracked every single emotional cipher over his time with you like some kind of humanoid enigma code.

You’d known Kane the majority of your military career, having experienced three tours around the world by his side. He’d joked when he first met you in the mess hall in Iraq that he needed a woman to keep him on the straight and narrow after his wife resigned from the military to pursue teaching at John Hopkins, choosing to stay by your side ever since. A religious man, he’d led you in prayer before expeditions, had offered his rations to you when you were struggling for energy on particularly brutal missions. These shared sufferings had made him more of a brother than a colleague.

You nod slowly, a non-verbal acknowledgment of his question as your eyes continue to scan the treeline. It’s an obvious lie. There’s a cold sweat breaking out across the paling skin of your face, the camo uniform you wore clinging to your back and aiding in the claustrophobia washing over you despite being in a wide-open space.

Kane doesn’t argue, doesn’t even speak, instead opting to mirror your motions with a barely-there nod of his head. Guilt washes over you when you glance at him, taking in his uncharacteristically disheveled appearance. His hair, usually meticulously gelled back, falls in loose, messy ringlets around his head. He’s grown stubble after days of not shaving, and his skin is dirtied with dried blood and dirt. Most alarming are his eyes, bloodshot and almost wild, with deep purple under-eye circles that look as though the environment had beaten him down, bruising his skin with exhaustion. He looks unhinged.

Perhaps it was cruel to keep a secret from him, given the circumstances, but you can’t admit to him that you’re scared. That you’re angry with him. The sinking feeling that settled in your stomach upon seeing him sat at the back of the briefing room when Area-X called you in for assessment had made bile rise in your throat, his face the last you had wanted, or even expected, to see in the line up of those who were to take part in this suicide-mission into The Shimmer. Had you not been surrounded by your new platoon, you’d have throttled him in a last-ditch effort to shake some sense into him.

Kane is a talker, waxing lyrically for extended periods during previous late-night missions about his devotion to his ‘brilliantly clever’ and ‘exceedingly beautiful’ wife. Their relationship had been going strong for just over six years, and Kane still adored her with every fiber of his being. As far as you could discern, there was no logical explanation as to why he had signed up on this mission bar his infuriating savior complex.

“Hey, where you goin’?” Kane’s exhausted tone drags you back to reality, to The Shimmer. When you look at him again, there’s a concerned furrow on his brow. “I can’t have you goin’ inward like that, Angel, talk to me.”

A wretched laugh cuts through your throat before you’re able to swallow it down, the bitterness evident when paired with your sardonic expression. It wasn’t as though Kane was in any condition to hear your nihilistic, almost psychotic thoughts. He hadn’t been himself since the faux operation back in the pool at the military base.

“It’s hard to consider yourself ‘okay’ when I just saw my friend's guts move, Kane.” Your answer is brusque, skin-crawling fear pushing you beyond the ability to discuss your mental well-being reasonably. “Something isn’t right with this place! We’re… We’re losing it!”

Again, Kane nods slowly, like you voicing the swimming sensation in his brain had made its deteriorating condition a reality. Inside the iridescent walls of The Shimmer, all matter was breaking down, disintegrating and rebuilding itself- including your minds. You couldn’t shake that feeling, that shared consciousness within the blue and white tiled walls of the military pool, like all three brains had cross-contaminated each other’s thoughts. “I know, Angel. I know.”

An unsteady silence settles between the two of you, sparking like a static charge across the short distance separating your bodies. You’re scared that if your fingers brush it will be like a metal fork in a live plug socket, wholly frying you and setting your body alight. Maybe it’s the realization that it is unlikely that you’ll make it out of The Shimmer alive, if at all, that is causing your feelings for Kane to go into hyperdrive.

The sun is low in the sky, casting a golden glow against Kane’s face as you take in his weary manner. The urge to confess your love for him is intense after so many years of swallowing the bitter pill of rejection in order to support Kane’s love for Lena. The dying light makes him look youthful, almost, with gold banding in his ebony locks that you desperately want to comb your fingers through. It isn’t often you get to see his natural curls, as Kane always opted to gel his hair back against his skull. There were still shiny locks stuck down where the mousse clung to his temples-

“D’ya hear?” Again, Kane pulls you from your trance. You blink to find yourself staring directly at him, the concerned pull of his brow clearly displaying his uncertainty around your condition. When he notes your deadpan expression, he repeats his statement with a gentle tone. “I said we can set up camp at the next building we find. You look like you need some rest.”

“Y-Yeah. Yeah, I do,” you mumble weakly, rubbing at your eye socket with the heel of your palm as you fight back the extreme fatigue. Your legs, your fucking bones are screeching to lay down, to ease the burden of the military-grade backpack and the heavy weaponry you were hauling around with you. You certainly wouldn’t say no to laying down for the night, even if sleep was far beyond your reaches now.

————————————————————————

Nightfall in The Shimmer is easily the most horrendous of your experiences on this mission. While there is no gore, no visible creatures trying to drag you out into the blackness, the stars taunt you from the night sky as you suffer the psychological trial that the setting sun brings.

You’re almost certain that the crickets within the alien forest share their mutant genetic makeup with boom boxes, their screeches throughout the night loud and persistent enough to break down what little sanity you still desperately clung to. So much so, you’re sure you can hear their chirping ricocheting off the bone walls of the inside of your skull when you block your ears with your fingers.

Kane has noted your frustration, throwing needless apologetic looks your way from his spot at the window of the suburban house you had taken shelter in for the night. He had noted the home looked oddly familiar, and yet didn’t seem to be able to put his finger on it, stating the Deja vu the building evoked was a little unsettling. Lacking personal belongings, the bare furniture appeared undisturbed, abandoned for 15 years amongst the desolate Shimmer. While the dark grey paint on the outside of the house had peeled somewhat with age, it remained relatively unscathed by the wooded wasteland. Even plants grew in the flowerbed beneath the ground floor windows, despite their obvious abnormalities, bluebell-hydrangea hybrids splashing vibrant color across the otherwise monochrome house.

“D’ya think if I shoot at them they’ll shut up?” Kane mumbles, quiet in the dark so as to not startle you from your thoughts. He sounds exhausted, his voice cracking somewhat from lack of use for a few hours.

“They might,” you nod slowly, turning your head on the wooden floor to gaze at him. You can’t help but notice your voice doesn’t sound like your own, haggard and strained. “But I doubt that will be as a result of the shots as it would be the Thing the sound attracts.”

He chuckled weakly, the sound lacking any humor and instead edging on pained. It hurts you, works its way deep between your ribs, and settles in the tissue there like a stitch that sparks up your side. Kane had never looked so unhappy, so lost. The soft glow of the moonlight bathes his face in a silver-tone as he keeps watch at the window, washing him out and making him look paler and more tired than usual. His steady, almost hypnotic gaze settled on one spot on the lawn indicates he’s focused somewhere deep in thought now, within the recesses of his brain rather than on surveillance.

It starts creeping up your throat before you’re able to stop it, that burning question that had been twisting the pit of your stomach and filling you with dread more so than the horrific creatures that had picked off the team one by one. You swallow deeply and try to suppress the words before they form in your mouth but it’s too late, the syllables spilling from your cracked lips before you can press them shut.

“Why are you here, Kane?”

A heavy silence follows your pressing question. Kane doesn’t turn, doesn’t acknowledge your query with even the twitch of a finger. You can see his face reflected on the smooth surface of the window glass, his facial expression unmoving and his gaze firmly planted on that one spot on the lawn. You begin to think he hasn’t heard you, opening your mouth again to repeat the question until Kane lightly, barely shakes his head.

“Like you. I want to help.” Kane was never a good liar. Though he could sometimes be cheeky, almost crude, his religious upbringing weighed on him like mountains tied to his ankles. His conscience painted his face with dishonesty- you’d seen it first when he said he hadn’t taken the last of your favorite snacks in the canteen back in your first year working with him, only to swiftly admit his sins when you gave him a stern look that read ‘I know’.

Scoffing with a bitterness you forgot you were capable of, you sit up from the firm wooden floor, staring at your sergeant, your colleague, your friend through the darkness. “We have spent years together, Kane. I’ve spilled blood with you. Don’t you think I know you better than that?”

Further silence, this one weighing heavier than the last. That typical guilty look, the way it creases his t-zone with frown lines, and the downturn of his lips reflect back at you in the window, his eyes now flicking back and forth across the lush grass outside as he seemingly weighs up his options.

It’s the most conflicted you’d ever witnessed Kane. Usually, he threw himself into his decisions, almost recklessly. You and the platoon back with the Green Berets often laughed about his inability to think critically unless he was in the middle of a war zone. The chaos of warfare had suited him, it’s where he thrived- but this wasn’t war, it was alien.

“Kane, I just…” You hesitate for a moment, trying to compose the panic rising like bile in your throat. “I just want to understand. Seeing you sat in that briefing room when I walked in? I can’t explain-“

The truth was it had completely devastated you. Kane, over many years of tours, sharing rations and saving each other’s lives, had worked his way into your heart covertly. By the time you realized you loved him, he was five years deep into his marriage with Lena. Regardless of how agonizing you found it, you kept the disappointment, the yearning, buried deep within you, never wanting to compromise the happy family he was building with his wife. To see him grin like that, to listen to him ramble consistently about his undying adoration for Lena almost made the torment worthwhile. It was all that mattered.

So, to see him sat at the back of the Area-X briefing room that day with an empty stare had ripped your entire world from its roots. Knowing he was aware he was going to die in here with you, when he should have been home with Lena, should have been trying for the child he so desperately wanted with her makes you want to shoot him in his stupid fucking kneecaps. You wanted better for him, needed to understand why he would give all that up if he was so happy- wanted to know why your silent suffering of watching him live out your dream with someone else had been all for nothing.

You don’t have the energy to scream at him, don’t have the strength in your arms to hit him, to force the words out of him but the silence is more harrowing than the crickets that have been chipping away at your soundness of mind. Still, he contemplates his words, lips parting as he turns to face you, his jaw pulled taut with anguish while he weighs up the cost of his admission until he appears to be unable to retain his devastation any longer.

“She’s cheating on me.”

The gentle whisper with which Kane delivers this confession contrasts so deeply from the violent emotional turmoil that crashes across his visage. The shocked silence that follows is equally as torturous for him, knuckles white from his tight grip on the gun.

It’s as though the neurons in your brain cease fire all at once, leaving nothing but silent emptiness within the chasm of your skull. The anguish that floods through your chest is freezing cold, stilling the breath in your lungs as your stunned mind tries to translate exactly what Kane has told you. Surely you’d misheard him, maybe you were struggling to understand?

The slow shake of his head and the tightness of his jaw when he catches the disbelief in your frown and downturned lips causes your attempts to rationalize your surprise to halt almost immediately. You find yourself slumping back, steadying yourself to listen without pressuring your friend to clarify more than he was willing to disclose. Casting his eyes back out across the lawn of the house, Kane takes a shuddering breath as he braces himself to divulge the rest of the story to you.

“She… Uh- She met someone at work, y’know? Someone that understands her… brainy biology stuff.” He pauses to swallow down the emotions that were threatening to spill over. “They hit it off, or whatever, while we were on our last mission.”

That small detail makes your blood run hot, boiling beneath your skin. Your last mission was Iraq, defusing IEDs and rebellions alike. The two of you had been shot at in Baghdad- fuck, they’d fucking hit you, in the back! Kane had to sling you over his broad shoulders and high tail it out of the capital city streets. It had been a miracle he’d survived, ignoring your pleas to abandon you in order to bring you back to base. To think he was sacrificing his life, spilling blood for his country, and this bitch was fucking another man when you would never do that to him!

“Anyway!” Kane continues with a sharp inhale, his eyes still settled on those lush blades of grass outside. “She carried on as though nothin’ happened. Didn’t tell me or anythin’. I only found out two days before I left so I just… Set off a day early.”

It’s like no word your lips try to form around can convey your anger, could possibly explain your grief for him, for the time you’ve lost. You press your mouth in a thin line, struggling to your tired, blistered feet. He’s turning his memories over in his head, remembering the feeling of her in his arms. To think she made love to him when he returned from Iraq in the same bed where she was fucking another man?

Crossing the wooden flooring in your bare feet causes the old beams to creak under your weight. It doesn’t startle Kane, but the sound causes him to turn and look. He gazes at you in the darkness, the light of the moon barely illuminating his face enough for you to witness his wet eyes, the tear tracks running down his face.

“Kane,” you whimper, sympathy coiling around your tone like an unwanted embrace. He recoils from it, shaking his head with a shaky breath. Military life taught the both of you an invaluable yet toxic lesson; never talk about your emotions. It was harrowing, but bottling your feelings could be the difference between life and death in most war zones.

This was not most war zones, however, and this was no life-or-death situation. Only obliteration lay beyond The Shimmer, there was no known chance of survival. Perhaps it was silly, the child-like manifestation of your fear, but when you launch yourself forward to wrap your arms around his waist in a tight hold the beat of his heart against your ear soothes you like a lullaby. Kane is stiff at first, causing you to fear having crossed a boundary beyond friendly colleagues. You’d have pulled away, but Kane’s arm winds around your back to hold you impossibly closer to his chest. His palm settles against the base of your neck, fingertips resting delicately on the curve of your skull as you hear him inhale your scent, looking past the dirt, grime and blood to get to you.

Cradling you in his arms, he sways with your body gently. The movement rocks you into a sense of security that should be impossible for a place as horrific and desolate as The Shimmer, his lips on your hairline pressing gentle kisses that warm your skin from the inside. The tip of his nose nudges into the grimey strands of your hair, and the delicate touch is enough to force tears to your eyes because for once, the crickets don’t sound so loud, and your legs don’t ache as much.

The bliss is short-lived, however, his kisses trailing off as he moves his lips to the shell of your ear. “I’m going to go to the lighthouse tomorrow, Angel. Alone.” The final destination, the epicenter of The Shimmer. The closer you got to the lighthouse, the more dangerous things got.

Waiting for the punchline, you focus on the thumping of his heart, counting between the beats like you were numbering sheep. One, two. One, two. It takes at least ten contractions until you realize there is no gag, that he is entirely serious about leaving you here to finish the mission on his own. Find the reason for the Shimmer.

“You can’t be serious, Kane-“

“I am.”

The silence that follows is charged, his fingers gentle digging into your forearms as he pulls back. You’re staring into his eyes, those stunning eyes that you’d dreamed of every night for years and god they’re looking at you with such adoration.

“You’re gonna stay here and wait for me while I take on whatever the fuck is killin’ everyone and get us the fuck out of here.” He’s speaking with such conviction, that patriotic bullshit he would always spin when he knew he was in deep shit in a mission gone south. There’s no arguing with him, no talking him down with the way his intense, fixed look held you in place. He’d strap you to a fucking chair and leave you there if he had to, all so you didn’t come to harm- fucking dumbass.

“Oh yeah? You and what army?” You speak, voice breaking slightly in the knowledge he probably wasn’t coming back, that you’d just be sat in this house going fucking mental as you waited for a dead man until the creatures, or god forbid the insanity, takes you.

“Well. It’s just us,” he points out the obvious, searching your eyes for something you can’t explain. Within seconds he’s found it, that same cheeky grin you loved him for spread across his dehydrated lips, paired with a charming wink. “But that’s never failed us so far, has it?”

Just like so many times before, he pulls laughter from your tears and you hold him even tighter as the sun begins to paint the skyline a faint orange.

____________________________________________

Golden sunshine bathes your face in a warm flush as you sit beside the flowerbed that lies outside the window in the dying light of daytime. The bluebells have surpassed a violet shade and bloomed into a stunning cobalt color, far beyond nature's capacity outside the bizarre walls of The Shimmer. Hundreds of little blue heads blossom into a sea of azure, painting the otherwise green landscape with the striking color.

Beside them, in the saturated soil, grows something substantially less beautiful. Mushrooms sprout from the ground, their grey-green caps turning outwards at the edges. They ooze a strange milky-yellow color from their gills, reminiscent of putrefied corpses. The fungi are unseemly in the gorgeous garden, alien. It’s hard to suppress the thought that flowers in your exhausted brain; the garden is not that dissimilar to The Shimmer itself, dazzlingly beautiful on the surface yet horrifically twisted beneath the facade it had intricately built.

Closing your eyes to relish in the sunshine, you try to remember how long it had been since Kane had left for the lighthouse. You’d seen the sunrise four times since he exited the house through the front door. Given the lighthouse was all of a two-hour journey, you fought the intrusive comments your brain would make about Kane having died already in the relative silence of the lawn- by this time you had grown used to the shrill trilling of the crickets.

Kane’s constant hold throughout the night before he left had made it so you’d fallen asleep against his chest, counting the thudding of his heart until you were lulled into unconsciousness by the gentle smoothing of his palm against the curve of your head. You couldn’t be sure, but you guessed he hadn’t got a wink of sleep in order to maintain watch throughout the night for you to gain some much-needed rest. Kane was selfless like that, always putting you, or anyone else for that matter, before his comfort.

The morning after he had woken you with a gentle kiss to your temple. You’d been groggy, barely able to open your eyes against the oppressive exhaustion that kept your mind swimming in the dream world that clung tightly to you.

“I’m headin’ off now,” He had whispered gently into your hairline, doing his best not to disturb your slumber.

“Kane-“

”No no, Angel. Don’t let me bother you. I’ll be back by midday at the latest.” You remember thinking how odd the whole interaction was, as though he was simply returning to a nine-to-five office job back at home, not entering a suicide mission from which he might never return.

Perhaps you should have ignored his reassurance, should have sat up and begged him to stay, clung to his shins and weighed his feet down with your body weight. It was so hard to describe, but the weariness practically swept you away, and you were slipping into senselessness before you could begin to argue with him.

Four days later you find yourself beginning to regret not having fought with him, or at least tried to convince Kane to take you with him. The room in which you had set up the sleeping bags felt cold and unsafe, even with a chair hooked under the door handle to bolt it in place. Loneliness had set in only hours after he left, your ears missing the timbre of his voice as he rambled aimlessly to fill in the blank space.

The reality was you were starting to lose grip on reality in the quiet. You’d already been clinging onto weathered threads of sanity before Kane’s departure, but the effects of the brutal environment were accelerated in your solitude. The persistent sensation of your fingertips moving had progressed, the skin of your arms irritated as though the fucking crickets were crawling beneath your flesh.

Horrifying intrusive thoughts would worm their way into your mind in the silence. Echoes of Mayer’s pained grunts as Kane sliced into his abdomen rung through your ears, the slick, wet sound of his intestines twisting in his guts causing you to gag frequently throughout the day. It was hopeless for your body to attempt to expel food, however. You hadn’t consumed any of your rations in three days.

Worst of your symptoms were the effects of sleep deprivation. Two whole days into your conscious rebellion against sleep had been celebrated with hallucinations of plants pushing their way through the skin of your wrists. Cultured by the flow of your blood flooding your veins, these green blades of grass and strands of ivy wound their way up to your forearms, decorating your skin like evergreen bangles. When you glanced away from the putrid mushrooms to examine your hands now, you discovered the natural ‘jewelry’ had subsided despite having been there only moments ago, the skin of your arms utterly bare.

Snap

It’s like tripping when coming down a set of stairs. The panic freezes your blood cells in place, a chill bursting from the crown of your head to the tips of your toes. The shock appears to still you in your position on your knees, muscles so tense with fear that you can’t force them into action. The crack of the twig had sounded from behind you, amongst the forest line.

No amount of military training could prepare your already fragile mind to twist your torso in order to investigate the source of the noise. Paranoia had taken hold, your body's flight response triggered before the logical half of your fractured brain could kick into gear.

Slowly, you lower your upper body into the grass, chest pressed to the floor in order to get as low to the ground as possible. If it was a creature, you couldn’t risk it seeing you make a break for it. You had a better chance of surviving if you took your escape slowly, steadily. Without turning your head to assess the threat, you sink your nails into the damp, cold soil beneath you before dragging yourself towards the door of the house.

It’s like the sound of the friction between you and the ground as you pull yourself to the doorstep is too loud, as though the horrifically loud crickets that had tormented you had all ceased to sound in order for the creature to hear the blades of grass snapping beneath the abrasion of your body. If that didn’t give you away, the panicked heaving of the air being sucked into your lungs certainly had.

Despite the odds, still refusing to look behind you in case the creature was so horrific it froze your terrified body in place, you manage to heave yourself to the step, raise back up onto your knees and grab ahold of the handle to the front door with shaking hands. On the count of three, you shove the heavy wooden door open, scrambling to your feet and launching yourself into the corridor and across the safety of the threshold.

Twisting on your heel, you reach with flat palms to push the door so hard it creaks on its hinges. It takes only a second for the door to slam with a bang, but the solitary moment is enough for you to take a look behind you. It’s no creature at all. Amongst the treeline is the silhouette of a man, pitch-black thanks to the poor lighting of the setting sun and standing perfectly still with its hands behind its sides. The unexpected shock is enough to send you into a frenzied terror, hurtling up the stairs faster than your feet could carry you.

There’s no use in being quiet now, your dread taking ahold of your bodily functions. The thud of your feet against each of the steps of the staircase almost reverberates throughout the wood, the banister vibrating under your palm as you clung to it desperately. The support doesn’t prevent you from tripping, missing a step and falling on your patella on the rounded edge of the wooden staircase.

Sharp pain shoots up your thigh and you clutch at your throbbing knee with tears in your eyes. Desperately self-soothing, you rub at the afflicted area with your palm to ease the discomfort enough to be able to continue your escape. The strain of the metal latch in the front door has you springing back into action when you glance over your shoulder to find the brass handle twisting downwards.

“Fuck fuck fuck-“ you ramble in distress, managing to haul yourself up the stairs and onto the landing area before the door opens. The machine gun you had brought with you stands in its place against the wardrobe in the master bedroom, your only truly devastating weapon that you could use to protect yourself against the genetically modified creatures of The Shimmer forest. Grabbing at the cold metal of the barrel that leans against the wood of the cabinet, you set it up expertly so it is ready to fire before opening the wardrobe and crawling inside with the weapon.

Shuddering breaths you expel from your lungs appear to ricochet in the wooden shell of the cupboard, your exhales barely appearing like your own as the sound enters your ears. It does little, however, to drown out the horrifying sound of the man raising himself onto the first step of the staircase.

The wood creaks throughout the silent house under his body weight with each advancing step, like some kind of creepy xylophone. Thrumming in your chest, your heart is tight against your ribcage and seizing up in fear. Your breathing is labored still, more panicked as he proceeds up the staircase and across the landing with purpose.

When he crosses the threshold of the master bedroom door, the threatening man pauses in the middle of the floor. You can see his upper body through the crack in the wardrobe, his face obscured by the poor lighting. He’s wearing a khaki cotton T-shirt that clings to his defined pectorals and a pair of camo-patterned cargo pants- military gear. Still, you find yourself afraid, having realized just days into your expedition that nothing in The Shimmer is as it seems.

Fear grips you. Desperately clinging onto the M4A1 carbine gun, you ignore the instinct to cover your mouth with your palm with the intention of smothering your heavy breathing and ultimately leaving you at risk of being caught out with your hands off your gun. Before you even have a chance to get your finger firmly on the trigger, the man goes from stock-still to springing into action, turning on his ankle suddenly and practically ripping the wardrobe doors off their hinges to get to you.

The horrified scream you let out chokes up abruptly on your lips almost as quickly as it started when you find yourself gazing back into the familiar sight of Kane’s stunning earthy irises. You always thought they looked like soil after it had rained, warm, and full of life. Immediately the terror is washed away by a flood of relief as you scramble to your knees, tears welling in your eyes as you sob out his name.

“Kane! Oh fuck, I thought I lost you!” Days of not using your voice and the intense emotions you feel make your tone croaky as you wrap your arms around his waist and hold your friend, the love of your life, to your body. Perhaps he speaks, but you don’t hear him over your loud weeping while you cling to him as though you’re afraid that releasing him means you’ll lose him for good.

You don’t feel him hold you as you cry into the fabric of his T-shirt, his hands still at his sides as you release the anxiety of the past four days in the form of a dark, damp puddle of tears into the khaki material you have buried your face into. Normally Kane would console you, whisper in your ear and tell you everything is going to be okay, but you assume he’s tired and possibly injured as you embrace him tightly.

“I was so worried about you, you were gone for so long!” You repeat with a weak smile and broken voice, your nervousness alleviating when pulling back to look him in the face again. He looks exhausted, his previously rich brown eyes hollow and off-color as they trail over your face and take in each intricate detail. There is mud smeared in his beard and blood caked in his hairline at the front of his forehead, but there appears to be no serious injury.

“Angel?” His tone is all off, lifeless and almost robotic when he questions you. You’d be lying if you said that it didn’t throw you off, the lack of emotion he presents to you, but he truly looks as though he’s going to fall to his knees in enervation, fingers flexing at his hips.

“Yes-“ You’re barely able to get the singular syllable out of your mouth before his fingers take a firm hold of your jaw, tilting your head up quickly with a bruising grip and pressing a heated kiss to your dehydrated lips. The muscles in your eyelids practically strain with the way your eyes widen in shock. It’s as though he winds you, the air in your lungs exhaled through your nose all at once at the heavy press of his mouth against your own, his arms finally moving from his sides to wind around your waist.

His hand is rough on your jaw, calloused fingertips pressing hard into the skin against the bone and bruising the curling pattern of his fingerprint into your skin. Kane kisses you like he intends to breathe you in, intense and brutal and needy. His coarse beard scratches at your face, nose pressing into your cheek as his teeth sink into your lower lip. The pain is syrupy sweet, flushing your abdomen with white-hot arousal and sparking your otherwise paralyzed body into action.

Kane had never shown any true interest in you before this moment, but his lips against yours after days of intense loneliness and a slow, agonizing fall into insanity had you pushing aside all logic and regard for his (now failing) marriage to enjoy the press of his body against yours. The terror he had set in you only moments ago appears to have heightened your arousal, cunt seizing when you feel his erection push into your thigh through the material of your cargo pants.

There’s a vicious need settling between the two of you, heady and rough. Kane’s hands are gripping at your flesh with painful grasps, his hold on your ass enough to imprint the outline of the wingspan of his palm into the skin in the form of a purple bruise. Maybe you should put up a fight, but when Kane practically tackles you to your knees on the hard-wood floor you can’t summon anything other than a broken moan of his name at the loss of his lips against your own.

Anticipation creeps up the base of your spine as you crane your neck to look Kane in the eyes. He’s deadpan while he stands over you, expression cold as he holds your gaze. Perhaps it should have been somewhat of a red flag with a neon sign that read ‘danger’ with three exclamation points, but your brain seems slow to connect the dots when you see the obscure glimmer in his irises. It reminds you of light refracting in a bubble, faint rainbows spiraling across the surface.

You would question it, the inquiry painted across your tongue as you open your mouth to ask what on earth was wrong with his eyes, but Kane throws you off guard, taking a long sweeping step behind you and out of your line of sight. The attempt to twist your head in order to look at him is fruitless, the tips of his fingers connecting with the soft flesh behind your earlobe acting as the trigger for an Error 505 code for your body - ‘The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration’.

Trailing his touch across the length of your neck, he traces your jugular down to the apex of your collarbone before settling your throat just beneath your chin between his forefinger and thumb. Your skin erupts in goosebumps despite the oppressive heat he’s drawing from you as he pushes his prints against your pulse points. Shuddering breaths vibrate against his palm as he begins to squeeze, slowly, intimately limiting your oxygen intake.

“F-Fuck- Kane,” you whisper throatily to the wall, unable to look behind you. In your lower peripheral vision, you’re aware of his knees coming into view on either side of your waist thanks to the green of his army-issue camo print cargo pants. Realizing that he’s crouching behind you so your body is settled between his thighs, you squeeze your eyes shut when he uses his grip on your vulnerable throat to push your back against his muscular chest. It shouldn’t excite you as much as it does, but you’re throbbing between your thighs, soaking your panties with need.

Subtle burning sets into your lungs, your limited oxygen intake enough to settle raw excitement through you but not enough to cause you to panic. Kane’s free hand snakes around the waistband of your pants, roughly undoing the button that sits just above your navel and ripping down the zipper with a harsh ‘ziiip’. Gasping weakly against the hold he has on your throat, you’d offer to shimmy the pants down your hips, but Kane has other plans. He uses his hold on you to push upwards on the soft underside of your chin, ultimately lifting you onto your knees in order to rip the trousers over your hips with his brute strength. He doesn’t bother to pull them off entirely, the fabric of your waistband bunched up just above the junction of your knees.

Air floods your lungs with a sharp inhale of breath when he lets go of your neck in order to push you forward onto your chest against the floor. The sudden influx of oxygen makes your mind swim, nerves thrumming with need. Exposed to the cool room, you can feel the slick of your arousal smearing the insides of your thighs, sticking them together. You don’t have time to think about it, to get embarrassed about your obvious desperation because Kane is sweeping his fingers through the wetness and the clink of his belt buckle catches your attention.

Fuck, you’re so fucking ready. The cold softwood flooring is uncomfortable as you rest your head against it, cheekbone already sore but you don’t have it in you to complain, submitting yourself entirely to Kane’s advances as you eagerly await the sensation of his dick splitting you open. You don’t dare to help him remove your panties, keeping your palms firmly against the floor both sides of your head.

You’re thankful you do, or you’d have missed the impossibly sexy sensation of Kane’s strong hands taking hold of the waistband and ripping the fabric open with a loud tear. You flinch, a moan slipping from your throat as he works to split the fabric of the crotch too, his knuckles brushing across your slick pussy lips as he does.

“Oh fuck, Kane please-“

“Open.” The one-word order causes your stomach to flip, your pussy to clench around nothing. His tone is bordering on authoritative, like the clipped intonation he’d use for soldiers lower down the rank than him back at base. You’re vaguely aware of him crowding your space as he crouches over you, fingers winding into your hair at the base of your skull for leverage as he yanks your head back towards him.

Instinctively, your mouth falls open with a sound mixed somewhere between a yelp of pain and a whine of pleasure. Kane doesn’t waste his time, pushing the damp fabric of your cotton panties against your tongue. His fingers work the material inside your mouth, effectively gagging you. The heady taste of your arousal floods your tongue, and you can’t help the way your eyes roll back at your own taste. You’d never imagined Kane to be this crude, but you fucking love it.

Pushing your hand beside your face out of the way, Kane plants his own palm in its place for balance. The face of the electronic watch he wears on his wrist is pointed towards you. The screen is distorted, no longer able to tell the time or the date. It’s a quick reminder of where you are, the threat you face and the fact that Kane is just going to fuck you here anyway because he wants to… Who were you to deny him?

You’re ripped from your thoughts when you feel Kane notch the head of his cock up against your opening, sweeping through the dripping wet folds of your pussy to push up at just the right angle. He’s taken ahold of your hips, pulling your lower body up by making you balance on your knees and forcing your back into a perfect arch for him.

“Mpfh-“ you struggle against the fabric in your mouth in an attempt to moan Kane’s name, the following squeal that he draws from you as he sinks into you high pitched and needy. The intrusion is incredible, stretching you out on the width of his cock as he pushes into you quickly. He doesn’t ease into you, opting instead to force his way into you and causing you to push your hips back, flush against his own until he’s suddenly bottoming out and pressing up against your cervix.

Kane’s other hand settles against your vertebrae between your shoulder blades, pinning your upper body to the floor to make the arch in your back almost painful- but fuck if it isn’t blissful. He’s pulling out of your sopping cunt with an obscene wet sound, before setting an immediate brutal pace, fucking into you hard and sharp and savage.

Even in your rooted position thanks to the force with which he holds you down, Kane’s ferocious snap of his hips has your body jolting against the floor, splinters from the wood digging into the exposed skin of your lower abdomen. The biting pain somehow adds to the devastating arousal that rocks through you when he manages to find your g-spot with little difficulty, ramming up against it with each thrust. You want to scream his name, to curse him out for making you feel so much so fast but you can only manage a muffled wail of ecstasy.

The brutality of his thrusts appears to pick up with each push into your heat, the sound of his balls slapping against you echoing in the empty room. The pleasure is overwhelming, flooding through you with each notch against that obliterating spot inside of you that has your toes curling in your combat boots. Your fingers wind around the wrist beside your face, digging your nails into the flesh of his forearm as he draws moan after moan from your throat despite the makeshift gag that muffled your noises.

Jaw falling open as he sets to spear your g-spot wickedly with each merciless clap of his hips against yours, the gag comes loose. You’re sobbing, tears streaming down your cheeks as you work your tongue to push the damp panties from your mouth with a desperate need to tell Kane just how fucking good he’s working your cunt-

All you can manage is a pitiful, salacious whine as Kane breaches the tight ring of muscles between your ass cheeks with little warning or delicacy. He’s clearly coated his finger with his spit, your cum, or something because the slick digit slips inside you down to his knuckle, filling you up more than you ever thought possible as you babble his name over and over with a new level of pleasure-laced anguish.

Twitching inside your cunt, his dick continues to pound into you as he pushes his finger in and out of you, refusing to allow you to adjust to being penetrated in two places all at once. You’re clamping down on his cock, on his finger, body chasing after the high you had waited years to obtain from him. It’s building your orgasm quicker than you realize, faster than you can stave off.

Kane still hasn’t spoken despite your pathetic calls of his name, the only sound you can pick up over the sound of his cock devastating your cunt is his heavy breaths as he exerts himself for your pleasure. Your nails are sinking into the creases of the floorboards, your throat ragged and broken as you cry out against the surge of your orgasm.

Kane’s hand gives way beside your head to balance on his elbow against the floor. It brings his chest closer to your back, angling your hips up sharply as he pounds into you at a new, obliterating angle. Leaning on his elbow allows him to stretch his palm across your throat once more, squeezing your windpipe harder than last time and obstructing your airway. You’re so breathless that it only takes a handful of seconds and a few punishing thrusts of his cock into you for your vision to begin fading black around the edges.

You claw at his wrist, the sounds of your sobs catching in your squished throat, but you’re not telling him to stop- you’re desperately trying to cling onto him as your orgasm rears up suddenly.

“One… Two…” Kane begins to count his thrusts, the intense pace suddenly slowing down to singular, brutal snaps of his hips. Despite his breathlessness, there’s a firm certainty in his flat voice. You feel the slow drag of him pulling out of you before plunging back in with a force so hard that your knees scrape against the flooring.

“Six… Seven…” The blunt tip of his cock punches your cervix and your abused g-spot along with it, your lack of oxygen making your head feel like it’s going to burst. The veins in the back of your hands are protruding, blue and raised as your body fights the deficiency.

“… Ten.” He lets you go and the sudden, needy intake of breath causes a flood of intense tingling over your body. Your spasming cunt tightens around the girth of his cock, gripping him right as the spark bursts through you with devastating impact. You’re convulsing in bliss, flooding his pulsing dick and his curling index finger as your jaw drops open with a cry of his name. It’s blazing hot, your clit throbbing at the intensity of the orgasm without having even been touched.

You’re certain your nails have scratched the wrist of the hand around your throat raw, blood smearing underneath your fingertips from where you have broken the skins as he continues to brutalize your cunt. Thighs shuddering beneath you, it’s like you’re unable to force the muscles there to work and you find your hips slumping forward without his support.

Kane is quick to slip his finger from your tight ring of muscles to grab your hips with his newly freed hand, sitting up and away from your back to allow him to hold them in place just long enough for him to settle his cock deep within your fluttering pussy and cum inside of you with the only low groan you hear from his mouth.

It’s like he’s filling you forever, flooding you with his warm cum until it’s dripping out of you, running down the back of your thighs. Your eyes roll back, a blissful whine working its way from you as he slowwwly fucks the leaking cum back into your aching cunt as deep as he can get it. He’s sensitive, hissing softly as he finally eases his dick from you, eyes settled on the way your walls clench around nothing- as though they miss him already.

When he brushes up the escaped cum coating the insides of your thighs with his fingers and pushes even those remnants of him back inside to ensure not one drop is wasted, you have to quietly beg him to stop in a croaky voice, so overstimulated that you can barely see straight with the way your eyes seem to cross. “Ka-Kane, oh fuck… Please-“

Pulses of your afterglow ripple through your bones as he finally steps away from you, out of your line of vision, and you allow yourself to close your eyes to revel in the exhausted bliss he leaves you in. It’s like you’re hyper-aware of your body from the crown of your head to the tips of your toes, lips parted as you pant through your open mouth to ease your burning lungs.

“Rest.” Another one-word order. It’s not as though you can argue with Kane, truly consumed with weariness after having skipped four nights of sleep and having been fucked into oblivion by the love of your life. It certainly wasn’t how you’d expected your coupling to go- if at all- but you can’t help the warmth that spreads through you knowing he had initiated it. That he liked you too.

Sleep grips you with that thought, the relief of knowing you weren’t alone in your yearning enough to finally ease your unsettled mind into the gentle oblivion of rest.

____________________________________________

Stark white walls of the quarantine zone inside Area-X make the fluorescent lights that hang above your head ever more blinding. You wince slightly, struggling to stare back at the man, the Thing, sitting on a gurney bed before you despite your eyelashes trying to block out the intense lighting.

Much like the initial days following your entry into The Simmer, the journey back to the outside world, back to a world without shark-alligator hybrids or bizarre corpse-like mushrooms, was a bit of a mystery to you. There was no recollection, not even foggy memories of how you had managed to find your way back, or the trials you had faced in order to return from the unsurvivable Shimmer.

Scientists and military officials were the first things you had seen when you came to, flitting around you and forcing you into an unprompted inquisition. Despite doing your best to answer their multi-layered queries, it was hard to recall memories and recount the horrific days you survived given the semi-automatic machine guns trained on your temples.

It wasn’t as though you blamed them. You and Kane were the first to survive the inhospitable land beyond the iridescent walls, they had every right to be afraid of you. When they deduced you weren’t a threat, they worked to inform you that you had been beyond the threshold for over fourteen months and that they had given up any hope that any member of the last expedition would return alive. Despite your insistence that you were only gone a week, the digital devices they had shown you clearly stated that a year had passed, and you couldn’t find it in yourself to argue much more than that.

In your quarantine room, you had spent many nights on your back on the mattress of your own gurney bed after the scientists had run multiple tests and experiments, staring up at the ceiling and recalling parts of your journey. Mayer’s moving guts, creatures beyond all reasonable explanations of science, Kane’s reason for joining the mission, the frenzied coupling after his return from the lighthouse… And his coruscating eyes as he pushed his cum back inside of you before you slept.

A ghastly realization that had taken over your bruised and battered body in the silence of your sterilized room was the reason you stood before Kane in your hospital nightgown now, the room encased by plastic walls not that dissimilar to those you had awoken to upon your arrival back to Area-X.

He’s gazing at you with those same glittering eyes, rainbow refractions sparkling through his irises as his expression remains perfectly still. Unlike you, whose body is covered in multiple contusions and blossoming bruises, Kane appears untouched- almost perfect. Not a hair is out of place, and the split in his hairline that had been there the night he returned to you had disappeared. He looks almost waxy, like a marble figure at a museum.

“You’re not Kane,” you manage with a shaky voice, nausea settling deep in the pits of your stomach and threatening to overcome you. The epiphany had taken root in you a few hours ago, having overheard the team of scientists discussing the planning for an ultrasound. All it had taken was a few recollections of the night he had taken you and comparisons of his personality before and after he’d left for the lighthouse for you to resign to the truth.

‘Kane’ hesitates for a moment, those shimmering eyes passing slowly over your body. His gaze is almost ice-cold, and his answer feels as though someone dumps freezing water over your abused body. “I don’t think so…”

Silence follows his- the Things admittance. Devastation rips through you at the knowledge that whatever it is has probably killed your Kane, has destroyed him, and taken his place in life- a carbon copy. You’re not sure how you figured it out, call it divine intuition and a bit of luck, but whatever it was planned to populate the world with its offspring - explaining its desperation to ensure you were full following the coupling, using your love for Kane to obtain exactly what it wanted- a surrogate. You push aside the new wave of nausea that washes over you, swallowing the bile that rises in your throat and glancing down at your hands.

Those tiny whirlpools on your fingertips continue to spin slowly.

“He loved you, you know.” It says with a level of conviction that has you almost believing it in your desperate, vulnerable condition, fear and grief blurring the lines in your mind and once again overlooking the ‘danger, red flag’ neon lights in your brain in order to find some level of comfort in the creature's words.

“You know that?” You croak.

“I can feel it.“ The creature watches as you put two and two together. It hasn’t just copied him, the thing has absorbed him. Has obtained not only his appearance but his memories- a mixture of part of Kane’s genetics and consciousness.

The terror and disgust that the Thing had sparked in you subsided slightly with this understanding, replacing your fear with a feeling of numbness. Your Kane, the sweet, funny, loveable Kane that prayed with you on military expeditions and held you when you were sad was gone, obliterated by The Shimmer. You had left with a shell of your Kane, filled instead with something far beyond your comprehension.

Perhaps it was the emotional distress, the irreversible damage your sanity had sustained inside the opalescent walls that had followed you beyond them, but you find yourself unable to alert the soldiers beyond the door to the existential threat that sat before you, looking up at you with Kane’s gorgeous eyes.

It looked like Kane, held you like Kane, and even smelt like him. As you work your way into the creature’s lap, encased by its arms, you note that it may not be the Kane you knew, instead your Kane was a part of it, and that you loved Kane enough to settle for even a slither of the man he used to be, in the shell of an extraterrestrial being that had the ability to annihilate humanity. You had waited for many years to have Kane to yourself, waited your turn for many years to call him yours. Now you could, even if it was only part of him.

“It’s okay Angel.” It speaks softly against the shell of your ear, in Kane’s warm voice, “It’s just us now. But that’s never failed us before, has it?”

END

Authors note: this was a really fun fic to write. Though I know it won’t gain much traction, I believe it is so important to write what you want and focus on different themes in an attempt to grow as a writer. I hope you enjoyed, and look after yourself if you have faced any themes inside this piece that are uncomfortable for you.

🏷 TagList: @polaroidpetal @foxilayde @mylifeisactuallyamess @bookfrog242 @wh0reforbucknasty @crystalchrysalis19 @zakizigekwe @ahookedheroespureheart @buckys-other-punk @anxious-sappho @youngr0se95 @alexloveskili @captainrexstan @astroboots @knights-power @southcrnbelle @niallsbunny @wakers-bonkers @ofmortems @hold-our-destiny @xcatnapsx @vermillionwinter @stormkobra-5 @bb-skyrunner @silvery-luna @sebsbelova @erenbissexual @alwritey-aphrodite @maggotzombie @deadpige0n @bakerstreethound @whatthehekko @moonnaught @xwing-baby

Striked tags don’t work!

[eunxyeong]

tw: blood, death mentions, allusions to depressive thoughts and suicidal ideation..

staring at his phone, it took everything to not crush it in his hand. it was rare for eun. the desperate feeling under his skin. growing into something could devour. beryl knew but would say nothing. the other in france knew, also said nothing. something foreboding in the man’s voice when they had spoken about the elder vampire’s confusion. it was caution he heard in the youngers voice. his fingers got marginally tighter around the expensive phone. there were things he could not remember before. post often he approached them with a nonchalance that age could allow him. but not now. not for the one he had run into. there was something boiling in his blood, and he couldn’t name it.

so, he thought of other options. mortal psychology was an option. that, however, took time. patience. a love for oneself that eun wasn’t certain he could give to himself in the moment. sleep would not save him, for sleep never came. there would be now dreams to connect the scents and feelings. then there was magic. magic. something he didn’t often rely on simple because being dependent on others to do it rubbed him the wrong way. his distrust of most people in the world made sure he was careful with everyone he encountered. even if it didn’t seem to be that way. his secrets were his own…

the phones metal casing began to creak with the pressure his hands were putting on it. a bone deep ache twisted in his gut when he closed his eyes. the smell, so familiar, like fire on the wind but the warmth of it. comfort. battle with the emotions that seeped between each conscious thought. hunger, but it didn’t feel the same as it usually did. something pleasant curling up like a cat. a contentment he didn’t understand.

those were all muted. nothing compared to the gut-wrenching despair. it colored every moment eun tried to dig more. it grasped at his heart, that some days he forgot he had. he ached. like something raw torn open for the world to touch. the taste of blood on his tongue did nothing to ease it. it tasted like ash. as if he was swallowing down what had been left behind by the fire burning within him. a sympathy of confusion and a pain he didn’t fully understand. when the crescendo of his thought finally crashed… there was only one thing left behind…

with a cry, more akin to a snarl out of his mouth, the phone was crushed in his hand. the pieces thrown to the side as if it had offended him… it starts from there. his rage tearing him apart from the inside out. he is only lucky enough that he somehow keeps himself from leaving his home. the devastation eun would unleash would only be upon himself.

the inferno raged…

nothing near him was safe, as he tore through his living room. priceless antiques. carefully hunted down artifacts. they all crashed against on his cold floor. shards of them digging into his skin but the flash of pain was nothing compared to the inferno in his mind. eun didn’t stop. not when slivers of wood and glass dug their way into his skin. rapid healing encasing them as if they belong there. his bare feet not safe from the damage but it did nothing to cause him to cease.

soon enough, there was no object within the closest of his reach that stood in one piece. nothing but destruction all around him. it was a miracle that he didn’t go further. that he was able to plop onto the ground and leave the moment at that.

in silence, he sat. gone was the heat of his rage. the flames doused in something so numb all he could do for a moment was blink. his own blood covered his skin, but the wounds were healed. tomorrow, he would need to dig out the shards. tomorrow, he may clean up the living room. leave it barren and as empty as he was feeling in the moment. tomorrow he would present himself as if nothing changed. as if there will be no discomfort in his limbs until he picked out every piece out of his skin.

eun would smile and flirt like there was no desperation in his soul. like he didn’t wish to crawl into a cave. never leave. but that wouldn’t due. he had items to get for his favorite little bedlam. she would help him in her own way when they finally got the chance. a sudden strike of anger hit him deep at the thought that he had to wait because of fucking hunters. useless humans that feared everything that was more powerful them... if given the moment, he could kill most of them himself.

there was a sigh, one he didn’t need to let out but the practice of it seemed to calm him slightly. quietly, his eyes closed as he slowly leaned back. soon enough he was laying in the shattered pieces around him as if they weren’t there. one more sigh, moved over his lips as he simply laid there. with intention of moving. with no urge to move, eun allowed his muscles to relax

nothing around him but destruction and the darkness of night. silently, he wished for oblivion to fill him to the brim. swallow him whole. if only for a moment. for a small amount of time. perhaps he could leave all of the rest there too. in the dark.

[gibbarts]

Any book recs similar to aftg and trc?

I haven’t finished aftg (and I fully don’t intend to) so I can’t give you any book recommendations similar to that series. As for books similar to TRC, I guess the six of crows series is similar? I’m honestly not the best person for recommendations -- I don’t read as much as I used to since I’m very busy.

However, if it’s simply YA books with queer representation that you’re interested in, I can suggest a few? I’ll include a link to each book’s goodreads page + a list of trigger warnings for those interested. (NOTE: There are SO MANY amazing books out there, and if I were to make an actually in depth book rec list it would be very long. These are just ones I can think of off the top of my head.)

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (TW: Misgendering, allusions to deadnaming, depictions of gender dysphoria, exploration of parental death, non-violent references to blood magic, some descriptions of self-harm for ritualistic purposes)

The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigirdar (TW: racism and homophobia based bullying, cultural appropriation, homophobia, public outing, racism)

The Weight of the Stars by K. Ancrum (TW: alcohol & drug use, mention of death of parents, attempted rape, teen pregnancy, mild violence, mention of attempted suicide, homophobia/d slur, abandonment by parent)

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson (TW: anxiety, panic attacks, death of a parent, chronically ill loved one, outing, homophobia)

[leonasbitties]

Lilith Grimoire

tw // very brief mentions of death, murder, allusions to suicide, insanity, and demons because my daughter is horrible

Name: Lilith Grimoire

VA: TBA

Age: ???

Aliases: Akuma-chan,

Birthday: March 31st

Star Sign: Aries

Height: 5’3 with 1” boots

Year: 3

Origin: Hell ???

Personality: Cryptic, humorous, chaotic evil, devilish/demonic, unsettling, creepy

Dorm: Caldera @calderadorm

Unique Magic: Manic Panic - Lilith has ability to induce a state of insane/sociopathic/psychotic that usually leads to death of themselves or others, restraints, and general psychotic tendencies and chaos

Hobby: Causing chaos and also gambling

Quote: “The bloods not on my hands so who are to say it’s my fault?”

Fun facts:

She prefers not to use her ability she’d rather seen people fall into madness slowly and fall apart bit by bit

She’s kind of from hell and her entire job is to to cause chaos, madness and just general unrest but we dont talk abt that part

She usually targets people without unique magic and people who a emotionally vulnerable with promise of whatever they wish and what not

Should you make a deal with her you’ll get what you want but she’s very cheeky abt it like 100 bucks and she’ll give 100 male deer

But if you do manage to have specific enough she’ll grant it but at an extremely heavy price like idk death of people close to you or sumthin like insanity

When she’s not causing chaos and general trouble she’s probably bothering Andreas

She’s a general nuisance and a terrifying demon but it’s fine

Her tail moves around like a cat when she’s not using it

i love her she’s horrible and i regret nothing

[juulsvaughn]

roman wickham - 24, gravedigger @ bloom funeral home, timothee chalamet

tw: murder, allusion to suicidal thoughts

as a kid, his father was blamed for the mysterious death of his sister; years later, the curse follows roman as he’s arrested for the murder of his high school sweetheart. whispers went around about how they can’t help but think it makes sense. the police release him due to a lack of evidence but is found guilty by the general public; he comes from bad blood, and his prior record of recklessness, anger issues, hard partying and petty crime did nothing to help him, nor did his complete unwillingness to cooperate with the cops. upon his release, he finds solace in alcohol and a job where he can be close to millie again, if only because it’s the only job he can get now. doesn’t know how to cope with his own feelings so covers them up with chaos instead. no loyalty, no responsibility, no cares; doesn’t really understand what there is left to live for but he saw how one wickham suicide affected the family and won’t put them through that again.

plot ideas: the byrne family and millie’s friends, many of whom probably aren’t fond of him / an ex-girlfriend from high school (perhaps he cheated on her with millie?) who was very outspoken about his obvious guilt in the roman’s a killer campaign / an old friend of millie’s who always believed in his innocence and he wound up growing quite close with, who has been trying to clean up his messes even though he gives her nothing in return - guilted into friendship at this point as she knows she’s his only link to stability, she’s slowly getting over it / ppl to drunkenly fight in the drug store parking lot at an ungodly hour / funeral home workers / the grief support group, although he hates to be there / anyone who openly accused him of murder?

roxy valero - 21, unemployed, alexa demie

tw: death, mentions of lying about abuse/suicide

at the age of thirteen, a friend of hers mysteriously vanished in an accident that her friend group caused - not that anyone knows that. roxy was showered in love, attention and care for the first time in her life as she struggled to cope afterwards and soon turned to compulsive lying to feed her addiction to attention. paints herself as a fun and exciting party girl with a dark, mysterious past; wants people to think she’s magnetic and alluring and has meticulously crafted a charismatic persona. seeks out people who are troubled because she finds them more interesting, feeds them lies about an abusive childhood and suicidal thoughts - anything that she thinks will hook them. and, she swears, they’re the only person who she’d ever tell this to. flighty and unpredictable, just wants to be everyone’s dream girl with a tragic twist, as she swears death follows her everywhere she goes. recently ghosted all of seven devils when she ran away to a different state, desperate for a new start, but came back defeated as she never quite found the attention she craved; unfortunately, most are upset that she’d run away in the midst of a string of murders. she cries and apologizes and pretends she didn’t time it that way on purpose.

plot ideas: i’m requesting her friend group so tba on that but feel free to dm me for further info / an ex-boyfriend she ghosted when she ran away who is probably every bit as fucked up as she is and has went through a wealth of highs and lows with her already in their short relationship; she’s desperately trying to win him back with sob stories now / a friend whose couch can crash on without paying rent for an indefinite period of time while she “tries to get back on her feet” (read: refuses to look for a job because she’s too pretty and troubled to work) / past victims of her lies / new victims of her lies / grieving family and friends of dead/missing girls who she can pretend she relates to

talia bloom - 19, cheerleader & student @ hastings college, kristine froseth

cruel girl, if only because the world has been cruel to her - of course, it’s quite easy to argue that she deserved all of it. going into her third year at hastings, she’s been on the cheerleading team for the past two and quickly developed an affinity for hazing after being an easy target in the first year. the absolute worst, most vile tricks come from her, including an incident in which a member of the squad got hypothermia. talia’s family money hushed it all up quite quickly, though. vindictive, volatile and downright evil, but prone to emotional outbursts and quietly desperate for some form of acceptance and friendship. talia hides it all beneath an aloof, mean girl exterior because she’s too embarrassed for people to see her be vulnerable. incited the violence on the night that julia riley died and, while she still feels guilt over it, she now wears the same necklace that julia wore every day in a desperate bid to take her spot. throws a hell of a lot of parties at the bloom funeral home in part of her bid for acceptance and popularity. poster child for inferiority superiority complex.

plot ideas: cheerleaders, especially ones that she’s brutally hazed or that have helped her haze / funeral home workers who are tired of cleaning up after her parties / people who attend said parties / some Cool Girl high school friends who she was always deeply jealous of / a boy who'll like her back for the first time for her to completely obsess over and let out some of her insanity on / envision an esme/zig/frankie relationship where she’s the esme and cons some poor pushover new friend of hers into being their third to keep her bf’s attention lmao / idk. people to stab in the back because they slighted her and made her feel inferior with one (1) small comment so she decided they needed their entire life ruined 

[kaylaissad]

TW - death, allusions of self injury, mentions of suicide

December 9th, 2020 1:00 am

I wish we had more pictures together

I wish a lot of things were different right now

I dont think I've ever experienced a loss like this before

You were here when my oma died and I know my reaction was like hella sadness

It felt different when it was you

It felt like someone simultaneously sucker punched me in my heart and stomach

It felt like reality stopped working on a nearly imperceptible level

Like I know that everything is fucked but nobody else seems to feel it

Would you absolutely roast me for being melodramatic about your death

Absolutely

I would expect no less

I just really fucking miss you and I want to keep talking to you until you respond back to me

I cant tell if this is a healthy or unhealthy coping mechanism

I mean I'm not physically hurting myself so I'm counting it as a win right now

I've been wondering about [A]

And how he's doing

I dont know how I would even go about reaching out so I guess I'll just have to wonder

I'm wondering about a lot of what ifs to be honest

What if you never hurt your foot

What if you weren't on that birth control

What if the hospital hadn't sent you home

What if you weren't on such strong blood thinners

I just hope beyond literally anything else that you weren't scared when you died

The thought of that is tearing me apart megan

More than anything else I hope you weren't scared

I'm so sorry I wasnt there

I know that's stupid because we're in the middle of this dumb ass pandemic but God I wish I could've been with you

I hate this

Nothing feels right

My body feels weird my voice sounds weird my face feels heavy

Everything seems to move slightly too fast or too slow

It feels like I'm just super conscious of my heartbeat now

Like I can feel my heart beating and its weird and I dont like it

We joked about dying a lot

Like a LOT

Maybe we were both passively suicidal

I feel guilty for a lot of things that were just entirely out of my control

I was joking with my mom about something earlier and I felt guilty that I'm not just constantly sobbing 24/7 but I still havent even processed that you're genuinely gone

You aren't coming back

It doesn't feel like that

I love you megan

Goodnight I'll talk to you tomorrow

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Thirteen

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

Sleeping Beauty (c) Disney, Wednesday Addams (c) Charles Addams

TW/CWs for this chapter--swearing (there's swearing in every chapter ok), allusion to child abuse (Daryl's history), gagging, mentions of trying not to vomit, a gross story about food coming out someone's nose, mention of scars, mention of blood, mention of needles

Word count: 2.7k

"Ooh, I got one. Do you have an embarrassing story to share? If you share one, I’ll tell you one of mine. Make it fair,” I said.

We’d been driving for a little bit, just shooting the shit on our way to find Aaron a foot. It was nice to sit back and talk with Daryl while we cruised down the empty road. Made things seem a little bit normal, like this was just a cross-country road trip with a friend and not going to find a prosthetic for someone whose foot I had to cut off with an axe after a walker bite. He was easy to talk to, a bit awkward with some of the things he said, but it was an enjoyable experience regardless. The little bits of awkwardness were cute and made me think that maybe he was getting a little nervous, which I thought was adorable. It was going well so far, and I felt like I was actually starting to get to know Daryl, even if it was just a tiny bit.

“Nah, don’t got one,” he said. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my body slightly in his direction, sighing a little.

“Come on, please? I’m sure you do,” I asked, making a pouty face to tease him, “we all do. If it helps, I have some that are pretty bad.” He looked over at my pathetic attempt of a pouty face, and his features relaxed a little, like he couldn’t say no and was accepting defeat.

“Fine,” Daryl said, “when I was a kid, got lost in the woods and accidentally used poison oak after...yeah. Ass itched somethin’ awful.” I stifled my laugh a bit, though it was mostly the phrase “ass itched somethin’ awful” that made me giggle.

“Oof, that’s brutal. How long were you lost for?” I asked, expecting him to say hours at most, or that he was out camping or something when it happened.

“Nine days. Dad didn’t even know I was gone.”

I could feel my heart breaking for little Daryl. To be lost for that long, especially as a child…how alone and scared he must’ve felt…how he wouldn’t have known what to do to survive and be trying to figure it out as he went, all while trying to get home...and to not even have anyone out looking for you…I knew he would never say it, but it had to be traumatizing. I felt terrible for insisting he share. I’d never felt like such a piece of shit before.

“Why ya look so sad?” Daryl said, looking over at me and seeing the somber expression on my face. There was a tear trying to escape my right eye, but I quickly blinked it back.

I softened the tone of my voice. “You were a child, Daryl. That’s awful. No kid should have to endure that. I’m so sorry.” I wanted to throw myself over the center console and wrap him in my arms and give him a giant hug, but I restrained myself. “I feel like such a piece of shit for pushing you to share, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“’S’alright. Ya didn’t know,” he replied. Something in him looked different, but I couldn’t explain what it was. He seemed more relaxed overall. Maybe no one had shown him that kind of empathy before. Maybe he’d wanted to get that off his chest & he felt relieved. Maybe he was nervous about how I’d react. There was no way for me to tell. That handsome, stoic face of his made it so hard to tell how he was feeling. However, that stoic expression was quickly replaced with a devious little smirk. “Ya can make it up to me by tellin’ a couple stories of your own.”

I raised my eyebrows at him in surprise. “Like more than one? You drive a hard bargain. I gotta think about this.”

“How many ya got?”

“There’s three that come to mind, but you’re only getting two.”

“Why not all of ‘em? Feels fair,” he teased.

"No, if I tell you the worst story, I'll have to throw myself out of this car,” I explained, “it’s bad.”

“If ya tell the worst one, ya only gotta tell one.” I huffed and twirled a chunk of my ponytail around my finger.

“Fine. But I’m warning you, it’s gross.” I took a deep breath and tried not to immediately start gagging at the thought of the story I was about to tell. “So when I was probably 21 or 22, I went on a first date with this guy I met in one of my classes. We met up at this random off-campus restaurant, and I made the terrible mistake of getting spaghetti. Well at one point, he’s telling a story, and I have food in my mouth.” I stopped and covered my mouth as I gagged. “So he’s telling his story, and I sneeze…and I wish I was making this up, but one of the pieces of spaghetti came up through and out my nose…I was trying not to throw up the whole time I was pulling it out. He immediately got up and left. Like didn’t say a single word, just left. I haven’t been able to look at spaghetti since. Even the sight of a box of spaghetti makes me wanna vomit.”

He didn’t say anything at first, but I could tell he was fighting back laughter. All that came out was a small, adorable chuckle. “That’s so much worse than I thought it’d be.”

“Worse? Alright, time to throw myself out of the car,” I said, pretending like I was going to unbuckle my seatbelt. “I never share that story. If we weren’t friends before, we definitely are now. And I think it goes without saying that you’re sworn to secrecy with that story. Are we even now?”

“Yeah. We’re even now,” he replied.

We continued chatting for the short remainder of the ride to this medical center, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how terrible I felt for what felt like forcing Daryl to share such a sad story. I was worried it would have an impact on our interactions when we got back to Alexandria, worried that maybe he hated me now or would never speak to me again once we got back inside the walls. But I felt worse about bringing up what was likely painful memories for him. He seemed alright, and he said we were even, but I wondered if there was another way I could make it up to him.

We turned down one more road, and there was a decently-sized brick building just down the street from the corner. As Daryl pulled into the lot, I read the promising large letters across the top of the building—orthopedic surgery. It wasn’t orthotics and prosthetics, but it was about as close as we were gonna get.

“Ortho surg,” I said as Daryl put the car in park, “nice.”

“That good?” he asked. I grabbed my backpack and put it in my lap, shoving my water bottle back inside.

“It’s potentially promising. If push comes to shove, maybe there’ll be a walker we can steal one off of.” He unbuckled and started to get out of the car, but I reached my hand out and lightly grazed his forearm with the tips of my fingers. “Daryl…are you ok?”

“Yeah,” he said as he turned back to me, clearly confused, “why?”

“Just…the story you shared earlier. I know better than to push people like that, and that was very not cool of me. I’m really sorry if it brought up painful memories for you.”

“Like I said, ya don’t gotta apologize. Ya didn’t know. But thanks,” he said, “apology accepted. Plus, I had ya cryin’ in the store earlier talkin’ ‘bout Eli. We’re good.”

“Oh my god, are we bonding?” I gushed playfully.

“Shut up,” he joked, turning and getting out of the car. I took some things out of my backpack and tossed them into the backseat to make room for anything we might find inside. I brought my spear out and unsheathed it as I got out of the car and followed Daryl inside.

Clearing the office out was easy enough. There were several more walkers than there had been at the other places we’d been to, but it was manageable between the two of us. I walked around to what looked like the front desk area to try to find a directory or anything that could indicate if they had prosthetics, and if so, where they might be stored.

“If you see anything that says orthotics or prosthetics, lemme know,” I said, setting my spear down on the front desk. I started flipping through a binder of random papers while Daryl started checking some of the rooms. There were a few that had keypads on them, which likely meant that there was supplies in there with a code for staff to use. Even if we had the codes, there was no power, so we’d have to manually find a way to break the doors down.

“Find a paperclip or somethin’,” Daryl called out to me from down the hall, “we can try to pick the locks.” The binder I was looking through didn’t seem to be useful, so I started searching drawers for office supplies. I pushed my sleeves up to my elbows. It was starting to get warm, and I was regretting wearing a jacket without a shirt underneath. One of the drawers had a small box of paper clips in it. Score.

“Got it!” I yelled. I grabbed my spear and jumped back over the desk, scuttling down the hall to meet Daryl. I took a larger clip out of the box and handed it to him. Our fingers briefly touched again, and there was that same electric feeling from this morning when our fingers touched as he handed me my coffee. The same electric feeling from when my fingers grazed his forearm in the car before we came inside.

He slung his crossbow across his back and straightened out the paperclip. Getting down on one knee, he started trying to pick the lock, and I went back to try to find something that would tell us what was in these closets. I could hear him fiddling around with the lock, and eventually, a click echoed through the silence of the office.

“Got it,” he said, and I could hear him cautiously pushing the door open.

“Lockpicking just increased to 30,” I whispered to myself as I went down the hall to meet him.

This particular storage closet had mostly been cleared out. It looked like it was used to store gowns, paper for the beds, gloves, masks, braces, and probably some first aid stuff. There was a box of gloves and some braces, so I went over and put those into my backpack.

“Damn it,” I huffed, “alright, let’s try another one. I’ll keep trying to find a map of this place or something.”

I rummaged around the front desk more before finding a paper map that had been thrown in a trash can. I pulled it out and held it up so it matched the direction I was facing. It looked like a poorly scanned paper copy of another poorly scanned paper copy, so the text that was legible enough was tiny and barely legible. I could make out “pros” on one of the square spaces.

“Daryl, I think I found it.” I was already walking back towards him when I yelled out, looking down at the map at the tiny print as I walked, and I bumped right into him. He was standing in front of another closet door, which he had already picked open.

“So did I,” he said, stepping into the room.

Looking around, there were shelves of different types of prosthetics, including feet, hands, partial arms, full arms, etc. I figured they were likely used for fittings so a prescription could be submitted for the right size and type, but there were options, which is what we needed.

"Geez. Someone with a foot fetish would have a hay day in here,” I joked, “try to find different sizes. One of them is bound to fit. Oh, Aaron’s gonna be so excited when I show him.” My face was lit up. I felt like I was getting to do something similar to my type of specialty again. I got down on the ground and grabbed a couple of prosthetic feet, placing them into my bag. There was just enough room for both of them. I grabbed a third and held it in my hands, flipping it around and daydreaming about my days in the ER.

“Ya okay?” Daryl asked me, squatting down next to me. He had grabbed a few prosthetics and put them in his bag as well, carrying a couple more under his arm.

“I just miss my job is all,” I said, continuing to flip the fake foot around in my hand as I talked, “I sat with people on what was usually the scariest day of their entire life. Sat with them while they died. Yeah, it was intense. But I think it’s what I was meant to do. It was fulfilling. It gave me purpose.” A single tear escaped my eye, and I quickly wiped it away with the back of my hand. “Sorry, I don’t mean to get all cheesy and shit.”

“Your patients were lucky to have ya,” he said. I could see in my peripheral vision that he was staring at my scars as I fiddled around with the prosthetic. I pulled my sleeves back down to cover the thick bands of scar tissue.

“That means a lot. Thank you.” I wiped another tear away with the back of my hand, laughing a little. “God, you’re gonna make me cry again.”

“C’mon. Might as well clear the place out. Still got upstairs to do,” Daryl said, lifting himself back to his feet.

We made several trips in and out, carrying out all of the prosthetics we could. It would be good to have these in the infirmary in case I had to perform another amputation. After that, we went upstairs. The second floor contained a blood draw station and an X-ray lab.

“Blood draw might have some stuff,” I said, going behind their front desk, “don’t reach into any sharps containers though.”

There were some more boxes of gloves and masks, rubber bands for putting on people’s arms to take samples, needles, and alcohol pads. I found an empty sharps container to put the needles in and carried out what I could in my arms.

“Good luck charm strikes again,” Daryl joked. He grabbed some of the boxes of gloves and followed me back downstairs.

After we loaded the car and got back in, I laid back in my seat and stared up at the ceiling, feeling exhausted from all the hard work we’d put in. I was sweating buckets, and I felt disgusting.

“We crushed it,” I said, holding my hand up for a high-five, which Daryl returned, “teamwork makes the dream work.” I turned my head towards him. “Thanks for bringing me here so I could get a prosthetic for Aaron. He won’t need it for a while, but I’m gonna have to stop myself from telling him in the meantime. I wanna make it a surprise.”

“Welcome,” he said as he backed us out of the lot and onto the road back to Alexandria, “what else ya gotta do today?”

“Uh, well I’m starving, so I guess start with that. Rosita said she wanted to see me, and I need to reorganize the infirmary now that we have all of this to sort through. What about you?”

“Don’t got watch ’til later. Do what you gotta do, I can make us food.” I smiled and turned my head back up towards the ceiling.

“Thanks Daryl.”

He was such a sweetie. And I was falling very hard, very fast, with no idea where I was going to land.

Taglist: @raddydaddydude

[ryanthedemiboy]

Things I Tag

(trigger warning for mentions of triggering things below. I did not tag any of my tags in the actual tags of this post, because you all have a clear warning warning here. If you just want to know if I tag something without seeing it on here, feel free to shoot me an ask.)

Format:

[tag] - [parameters for the tag]

Things I have been asked to tag:

cass don’t look - this is a catch-all that includes (but is not limited to) explicit porn, gore, needles, medical model language for autism, and positive mentions of Christianity

Halloween - this is for any and all mentions and references to the holiday

cripple - this is for whenever the word cripple or its derivatives are used. I do not differentiate between when it is reclaimed and when it is a slur. Please let me know if you’d like me to differentiate.

undescribed - whenever an image/video is not described

People tags:

groovy Andy Gray - @siriusly-not-over-remus ’s face

quirky KP - @localbeeking ’s face

zesty Jess - @sirussly

peachy TT - @asktheboywholived

Jes Really - @jesreally

Miscellaneous tags of mine:

accessibility is not a privilege - when I make a post accessible (by adding video/audio transcriptions and/or image/video descriptions)

aesthetic people - when I have the spoons and find the person/people in the post aesthetically pleasing for whatever reason

art!! - post contains art of any kind (although this usually refers to visual art)

ask to tag - a post that contains potentially triggering content, but I have not been asked to tag it. Please let me know if you need it tagged.

boost - usually a post that is asking for donations, but could contain important information

long post - when a post is long. This is a kind of nebulous definition, but. Eh.

not safe fw - previously nsfw. This is a bit nebulous as well. Anything that contains nudity in any way I tag as not safe fw. If you would like me to tag more, please let me know.

u  r  a  q t - my old queue tag

u  r  a  queue t - my new queue tag

uncaptioned - whenever a video does not have captions

untranscribed - whenever video/audio does not have an audio transcription

General triggers:

Notes: There are four different ways that I tag each trigger, unless otherwise specified. All of them are after the trigger, with a space between the trigger and the type of warning. (if there is nothing after the word, it means that I tag with all four, when they meet the paramters. If it has something after it, I only tag it that way (and will do so unless asked to do otherwise).

cw: short for content warning. This means that the trigger is in the content - it isn’t a static thing. It properly occurs/exists. For example, if it was a banana, someone would eat a banana, or maybe the thing follows the growth of a banana. Alternatively, it could appear in an image of any kind.

tw: short for trigger warning. It’s kind of a catch-all, but I use it for anything more than a mention. So maybe someone eats a banana, or it is in an image, but someone could also eat banana bread.

m: short for mention. This is for when the trigger is only mentioned. Perhaps somebody says they like bananas, or the text says there is a banana on the counter.

/: kind of a catch-all, but unlike tw, this includes mentions. This also includes allusions to the trigger. So while it might not have said there’s a banana on the counter, it did say there is a long yellow fruit on the counter.

abortion

abuse

alcohol

blood

body horror /

calorie m + tw + cw

calories /

caps /

death

drug m + tw

drugs

miscarriage

needle m + cw

needles /

rape

self-harm m + cw + /

sexual assault tw + /

sexwork /

smoking

suicide

violence /

weight m + /

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. If you have anything you would like me to tag, or notice that I missed something, please feel free to let me know.

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Thirty-One

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, PTSD

Each chapter will have its own TW/CWs listed

This story, Lydia Vector, her family, her bestie, Jake, and Adam (c) me, TheVeganDarkElf

TWD & its characters (c) AMC & Robert Kirkman, the writer of the comic series

TW/CWs for this chapter--swearing, blood, violence, gore, discussion of scars, allusion to past rape, victim blaming oneself

Word count: 3.2k

As the life left his body, his arms went limp underneath me, and his good eye rolled back into his head. With one final exhale, he was completely still, his mouth agape and pooled with blood. I grabbed him by the ears and picked his head up, slamming it as hard as I could into the ground once. Then again, and again, and again.

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!" I repeated with each slam of his head into the dirt road. I knew the back of his skull had broken open once I saw blood and brain matter begin to leak out around it. My sobbing had picked back up, more intense than ever as I repeatedly smashed his head into the road. My eyes clouded with tears once again, and the sight before me became nothing more than a blur of red as blood continued to pool around him.

After more hits than I could count, I stopped and let go of him, resting my hands on the ground so I wouldn't fall forward onto him. The back of his head had completely caved in and was nothing more than a pile of hair, skin, blood, brain matter, and skull fragments. I let out a cry that didn't even sound human, a sound I didn't even know I was capable of making, before I fell backward into Daryl's legs and continued crying.

He crouched down to my level and wrapped his arms around me, picking me up enough to move me off of Adam's body and onto the road next to him. He gently set me down and sat behind me, propping his legs up on either side of me and snaking his arms around my waist to pull me close, resting his head on my back. He probably had no idea what else to do. I didn't blame him.

"I'm sorry," Daryl whispered. That was all that was said between us for what felt like a very, very long time.

My eyes burned, the tears scorching my skin like fire as they streamed down my face. My chest was tight, my head was pounding, and my body ached like every bone in it was broken. My stomach was cramping. I was ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated beyond comprehension. I wanted to peel my skin off and let it bake out in the sun until it burned. I wanted to take a bath in acid so my body would be as if he never touched it. The pain, both inside and out, was indescribable. Daryl's warmth against me was the only thing keeping me grounded in reality.

Eventually, I lifted my head and looked up at the sky. The sun had shifted a bit, but I was no astronomer, so I couldn't tell how long we'd been out there for. However, it still appeared to be a while before sunset.

"Fuck," I groaned, my throat bone-dry from my prolonged crying. Daryl slipped out from behind me and came around to squat in front of me. He took my face in his hands, and although I couldn't see his, I knew he was looking at me with the most tender expression he could muster. I was sure there was still residual anger under the surface. "I—" a series of coughs, likely from how parched I was, cut off my sentence.

"Let's get ya home," he said, stroking my face with his fingers, "we can talk then."

"There's one last thing I have to do," I whispered.

I crawled on my hands and knees back to his body, setting my bag on the ground next to me and shuffling through it. I took my pen out and gave it a few good shakes before yanking back on his hairline, pulling his forehead taut. I etched the word 'rapist' in large capital letters from his hairline to his eyebrows. This wasn't just for me—if there were others like me, if he had other victims, it was for them as well.

I wanted anyone who came across his body to know what kind of man he really was and that his fate was well deserved. I put my pen back in my bag, and I opted to leave the vibrator in his eye socket. Maybe someone who found him would get a good laugh out of it.

I slowly pushed myself to my feet, using my hands to balance myself. I was able to take a couple of steps towards Daryl before the waterworks came full force once again, and I stopped, dropping my gaze to the ground and running my hands through my hair. I wanted nothing more than to disappear.

"Everything hurts," I choked out. Daryl came over and put an arm around me, placing the other one under my legs and scooping me up in his arms. I draped my arms around his neck, and he gave me a kiss on the forehead.

"I know," he replied, "I'm sorry."

He carried me back to the car and gently placed me in the passenger seat. At some point prior, he had gone over and opened the door, like it was his intention the entire time to carry me back to the car. I moved my backpack into my lap and hugged it tight against my chest. Daryl was gone just long enough to get his crossbow, which I had left on the ground, before he returned and we began our journey back to Alexandria.

The car ride was silent for some time. I leaned back in the seat, staring at the ceiling of the car and listening to the wind as it whipped past the vehicle and the tires crunching the pebbles of the dirt road underneath them. Daryl had his hand on my arm, and he occasionally drew shapes with his fingertips or gave it a small squeeze to remind me that he was there. After a long period of silence, I was the one to break it.

"Maybe he's right," I croaked. My words came out shaky, like I feared I would get in trouble for saying them. "Maybe I am damaged goods."

The car almost immediately came to a rolling stop. There's no way we're already back at Alexandria, I thought as I poked my head up just enough to see out the window. Sure enough, there was no sign of the walls.

"Why'd we stop?" I asked, turning to Daryl, "you have to take a piss or something?"

He didn't look at me at first, didn't say anything for what felt like ages. He took my hand in his and squeezed it, bringing it to his lips and planting several kisses on the back of it before turning to meet my gaze. My vision was no longer clouded now, and I could clearly see his sweet face, with care in his eyes and empathy and compassion written all over it.

"I don't want ya listenin' to a word that prick said. Not a single one. Ya understand?" I couldn't form any words to respond with. I simply nodded, the tears beginning to flow freely once again, and Daryl put the car in park. "C'mere." I unbuckled myself, and Daryl immediately grabbed me over the center console and roped me in for a hug. My face fell into the soft crook of his neck, and I allowed my muscles to relax as I melted into him and continued crying.

"You're not there, you're here," he reassured, rubbing his hands up and down my back.

I was traumatized from having to see his face in-person again. I was humiliated that he said the things he did in front of another person and essentially put my trauma on full display for his own sick enjoyment. I was angry at him for what he did to me. I was angry at myself for ending up in that position, which could've been avoided had I just killed him the first time. More than anything, I was exhausted, though that didn't even seem to adequately encompass what I was feeling. There was my interaction with Jake from earlier that week, coming clean to Daryl about my history, and not sleeping well for the last few days that he was gone. The exhaustion I was experiencing felt so overwhelming that even if I laid down and slept for weeks, it wouldn't be enough.

After a while, I picked my head up and looked at him. Dare I say I thought I saw a tiny glimmer of a tear in his eye, but it quickly faded once our eyes locked. He gave me a kiss on the cheek before taking my face in his hands.

"Was supposed to have watch tonight, but I'll have 'em get someone else to do it. Ain't gonna let ya be by yaself after that," Daryl assured, "anythin' ya need, just say the word. I'm all yours for the evenin'."

You can be mine forever, I thought.

"Thanks, Daryl," I sniffled. I couldn't help smiling, just a little, as all my love for Daryl swelled in my chest and threatened to break free.

The ride back to Alexandria was a quiet one. I almost felt like I was in shock, though the initial shock would've worn off by now. Daryl kept my hand in his, squeezing it every once in a while to comfort me. Usually, when we'd come back from outside the walls and pulled up to the gates, any sort of PDA would stop, as it made him uncomfortable to be soft or affectionate in front of other people. It didn't bother me, as I knew that's just how he was, and it was nothing personal. This time, though, he didn't let go of my hand when we rolled up to the walls.

"Anyone asks, we had a close call," I said as we pulled through the front gates.

Daryl turned to me after he pulled off to the side and put the car in park. "Gonna run 'n talk to Rick real quick. Ya gonna go home?"

"Yeah. I'd rather avoid anyone else if I can help it," I nodded. He gave my hand one last squeeze before letting go.

"I'll be there soon," he replied.

I was covered in dirt, sweat, and a little bit of blood from my altercation with Adam. I'm sure I looked like a mess, which was further corroborated when Maggie came running over to me from the garden, looking concerned.

"Jesus, are you ok?" she asked as I slammed the car door behind me, throwing my backpack over my shoulder.

"Yeah. None of the blood is mine," I responded, trying to avoid eye contact with her, "had a close call is all." She looked over the car at Daryl as he wandered over to Rick.

"Is Daryl ok?"

"He's fine," I assured as I wandered towards the dirt path, "neither of us got hurt. Just a too-close call." Maggie jogged to catch up with me, kicking up dirt as she slowed her pace next to me. I shielded my eyes from the sun, limping as we walked despite not having any injuries. The soreness that had spread throughout my muscles was nearly debilitating.

"Vector, are you sure you're ok?" Maggie asked. She reached out to grab my arm, but I shooed it away as I turned to her.

"I'm fine," I snapped. Tears were threatening to escape the corners of my eyes, and I did my best to blink them away. That was to no avail, however, as Maggie clearly saw them and roped me in for a hug before I could push her away.

"Are you and Daryl ok?" she wondered. "Like...is your relationship ok?"

"Yeah, we're good," I reassured, a small smile tugging at the corners of my mouth, "great, actually."

She laughed as she released me from our hug, which elicited a laugh from me in return. "Well good. You haven't caught me up on it in some time. You owe me an update."

"I'll catch you up on it later, ok? I just...I need to decompress for a while," I explained, "but I promise I'll update you later."

"If you need anything, let me know," she said as she gave me a comforting pat on the shoulder.

"Thanks, Maggie. You're a good friend," I replied. She gave me a nod and wandered back towards the garden.

Once I was safely home, away from the prying eyes of my friends and community members, I threw my bag on the ground by my boots and collapsed next to them, curling up into a tiny ball and hugging my knees to my chest. I'd hardly made it past the front door before I went right back to being a blubbering mess. The reality that I had intentionally taken a life was beginning to set in. Daryl came in a few minutes later, dropping his crossbow on the ground by my boots and sitting next to me, scooping me up in his arms and pulling me close to him.

"Daryl, I killed someone," I cried, "I've had people die in my care at the hospital, sure, but I—I've never done it on purpose." I ran my hands through my hair and tugged at it in a futile attempt to distract myself from the pain in my chest. Daryl took my hands and gently pulled them from my scalp, uncurling my fingers and taking them in his.

"We all done it," he explained, "sometimes, ya don't got a choice. It's you or them. Ain't sayin' it gets easier, but ya learn to deal with it. Do what ya gotta do."

I picked my head up and looked at Daryl, sniffling and taking a deep, shaky breath to get my sobbing under control. "I'm supposed to do no harm. I promised to do no harm."

"The world ya promised that in don't exist no more."

"I guess you're right," I sighed. I turned and yawned into Daryl's shoulder, resting my head on it. "I'm so fucking exhausted."

"Ya had a rough week," he commented.

I chuckled softly. "And that's putting it lightly."

"C'mon." Daryl rose to his feet and reached out for me to grab his hands. "Gonna do somethin' for ya." I wiped tears off my cheeks and took his hands, and he pulled me up. Keeping one of my hands in his, he led me upstairs and into the bathroom. Needless to say, I was confused, and it was difficult to keep the confusion from appearing on my face.

"G'on, take a seat," he instructed, gesturing to the toilet. I raised an eyebrow at him, but I did as he told and popped a squat on the toilet seat.

"What are you doing?" I asked, my voice still hoarse from sobbing.

"Gettin' clean always makes ya feel better, so I'm helpin'," he explained. He crouched down and grabbed a washcloth from under the sink. "Don't want ya havin' a panic attack. Ya been through 'nough already."

I was swooning so hard, I thought my heart was going to explode. He didn't have to go out of his way for me like this, but he wanted to, and that meant more to me than I was able to put into words.

"I don't know what to say," I choked out, wiping away some tears with the back of my hand.

Daryl brought his sweet, loving gaze to me as he ran the washcloth under the faucet. "Don't gotta say nothin' if ya don't wanna."

Daryl wrung the excess water out of the washcloth and got down on one knee in front of me, taking my hand and working gently at my skin to remove the dirt, grime, and blood that had accumulated on me. He alternated between cleaning me and wringing the towel out in the sink. He worked around each of my fingers, eyes fixated on what he was doing like he was taking a test. He got down to my wrist and skipped over my scars to start working on my arm.

"You can touch them," I said, "to clean them, I mean." His eyes met mine again, and I gave him an approving, reassuring nod. As touchy as Daryl was with me, he'd still never laid a finger on my scars. He took the soft cloth and started carefully cleaning them.

"Can I ask a question?" Daryl asked, and I nodded, "d'they hurt?"

"No, they don't hurt. There's some little patches here and there that are numb, nerve damage and all that. But no, there's no pain." He cleaned in-between the little crevices of the different bands of tissue. "Just unsightly is all."

"Hardly call 'em unsightly," Daryl commented. I dropped my eyes to the ground, which Daryl took notice of, as he always did. "Don't gotta be ashamed of 'em. We all got unsightly things 'bout us."

"There's nothing about you I would deem unsightly," I responded, lifting my eyes back up to meet his and giving him a half-smile.

"I'd say the same 'bout you," he echoed, working the washcloth up my forearm.

The cool water was soothing against my skin. I wasn't sunburnt, but I was certainly warm from being out in the sun all day. Daryl cleaned my arm up to my shoulder, then worked on the other one, doing the same before tossing the towel in the sink. He grabbed another one from under the sink and moved on to my legs. I happened to be wearing a longer pair of shorts that day, one that went almost all the way to my knees, which I was a bit grateful for. As much as I loved having Daryl's hands on me, I did, for now, still have my limits.

"I'm such an idiot," I sighed, folding my arms across my chest, tears still cascading down my face, though less this time.

"Why ya say that?" Daryl wondered as he worked at cleaning my knee.

"I could've avoided this. I could've just killed him the first time, and this never would've happened. I wouldn't have had to see him again, wouldn't have been retraumatized, wouldn't have—"

"Hey," Daryl interjected. He draped the towel on my knee and placed his hands on my shoulders, "overthinkin' 'bout what coulda gone different'll only make ya feel worse. Ya safe now, and he's gone. 'S'all that matters." I took one of his hands in mine and kissed his fingers, keeping it pressed to my lips.

"At least I wasn't alone," I said into his hand.

After my legs were clean, he moved up to my neck and my collarbone, cleaning with the same tenderness as he did the day I got punched in the nose. Once that was clean, he took my glasses off of my face and rested them on the edge of the sink. He started working on my forehead, then over my eyes and down my cheeks.

"Daryl, my face isn't dirty," I said, scrunching my nose at him as he wiped the non-existent grime off my jawline.

"Well now it ain't," he sassed as he gave me a kiss on the nose.

Taglist: @raddydaddydude @lovenormandixon @angeldemoncrowley

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Thirty

Masterlist

AO3 link

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist <3 (18+ only, MDNI)

Please please please proceed with extra caution for this one & read the TWs for this chapter below. This is your warning. Take care of yourself first 🖤

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, PTSD

Each chapter will have its own TW/CWs listed

This story, Lydia Vector, her family, her bestie, Jake, and Adam (c) me, TheVeganDarkElf

TWD & its characters (c) AMC & Robert Kirkman, the writer of the comic series

TW/CWs for this chapter--swearing, blood, violence, gore, vomiting, someone who was raped being taunted by their rapist (seriously, proceed with caution), guns are used in this one, memory loss around a traumatic event, victim blaming, a sex toy is used as a weapon, allusion to past rape

Word count: 3.3k

It’d been a few days since I came clean to Daryl about my past. He was out on a hunting trip for a couple of those days, which gave me a lot of time to think over 1) our relationship and 2) everything I had said in the follow-up, particularly about how I didn’t think I could ever go by Lydia again. I’ll admit, I didn’t totally hate the way my name sounded when he said it. But it wasn’t in the cards right now. Maybe one day, he’d have permission to call me that. Maybe. Or maybe I’d just go by Vec forever. I don’t think he cared either way.

But he was back now, and he had taken me out for another day of hunting practice.

We were somewhere outside the walls, far enough out that we had to take the car to get there. Daryl and I had to practically beg Rick to take it out for something other than a run. Why not the bike, Rick had asked. But after a series of stories from me about people I’d fixed up in the ER after a motorcycle accident, and me putting my foot down and refusing to get on the bike without a helmet, he obliged.

Hunting practice was still just target practice for me, but calling it hunting practice in front of the others did a number in terms of boosting my ego. My skills had certainly improved over time, and I was so damn close to being able to hit a target dead center. I was past the point of needing to balance the bow on a log or another surface to steady it, but Daryl always insisted on having a hand, or two, on me to help keep me steady. A need? No. A want? Yes.

I was on the ground on one knee, and the scrap of paper on the tree in front of me was my target. I’d hit close to the center a couple of times, but I was determined to hit the center at least once before we were finished. Daryl had his hands on my hips, “keeping me steady.”

“Think ya got this one,” he encouraged as I loaded the crossbow one more time.

“Know I got this one,” I said. I lined my eye up with the scope, balancing the bow on my shoulder and aiming center like I had so many times before. I took a deep breath, and on the exhale, I released the trigger. And this time, I hit the paper just off of dead center. The excitement coursing through me nearly sent me catapulting into the air like a cannonball.

“I did it! Holy shit, I did it!” I dropped the crossbow next to me and threw myself around to hug Daryl, falling into his arms and nearly knocking him over in the process.

“Knew ya could do it,” he congratulated. The tight embrace he had me in, with his perfectly sculpted arm muscles flexing and relaxing against my back, was better than any trophy I could receive for such an accomplishment.

I picked up his bow and handed it to him. “I’ve got the best teacher around. Of course I could do it.”

He got up to grab the bolt out of the tree, and I slung my backpack over my shoulders. We’d been out there for hours, the sun was high in the sky, and I was in desperate need of sustenance. Daryl twirled the car keys in his hand, the soft jingle echoing through the otherwise quiet wooded area.

“Gonna hafta start bringin’ ya on huntin’ trips,” he commented, “y’know, good luck charm ’n all that.”

“To be honest, my hunger was the primary motivation,” I confessed as we stepped out of the tree line near the car.

“Hey Vec?” Daryl asked. He grabbed me lightly by the arm to turn me around. He looked nervous, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. And his eyes were darting between mine and my lips.

Daryl had never looked at me like that before, but I knew exactly what he was about to ask.

“Yeah?” I replied, unable to keep a huge grin from forming on my face. I kept my eyes locked with his, and my cheeks were quickly changing from baby pink to an electric fire-engine red. He brought a hand to my face, his fingers lightly dancing over my cheek. I feared the heat radiating off my face would burn him.

“Can I—“

A rustling in the trees across from us followed by a figure stumbling out interrupted our blissful moment.

Daryl whipped his locked-and-loaded crossbow around. I didn’t have time to grab my spear out of my bag and unsheathe it, so I grabbed my gun out of my leg holster. It wasn’t loaded, but whatever just stumbled out in front of us wasn’t going to be around long enough to find out, I hoped.

Its back was facing us when it came careening out of the tree line. At first, I thought it was a walker, but it wasn’t making any of the typical moaning or groaning noises that were quintessential to walkers. Then it had to be a person, but the way they were walking was off, like they had two left feet.

Or like their feet were backward.

He stumbled around to look at us, and his horrifyingly familiar face came into view. Immediately upon seeing him, I recognized him. That evil smirk warped its way across his face, eyeing me up and down, realizing it was me. My body physically recoiled, and without even a second of warning, I turned into the grass and started vomiting.

“No, that’s how you’re gonna react after not seeing me for so long?” His voice was like nails on a chalkboard, and I covered my ears so I wouldn’t have to hear him speak. Hot waterfalls of tears began to flow freely, already clouding my vision.

This can’t be happening, I thought. It shouldn’t be possible. There’s no way he would’ve survived, and even if he did, his limbs…how was he walking?

Daryl’s crossbow tapping on my back pulled me from my spiraling thoughts. “Vec, you know this guy?”

I whipped around and held my gun up at the man, my hands shaking violently, unable to keep the weapon steady. I spoke through gritted teeth, afraid I would start vomiting again if I opened my mouth. “Daryl, look at him.”

“All I see’s some jackass—“

“No Daryl, I want you to really look at him.”

He stared at the man for a minute, looking him up and down over and over again, scanning over every small detail. I saw a shift in his face when it finally clicked. He didn't have to say anything. The look of realization on his face said it all.

The man who had raped me, whose wicked face and lifeless eyes haunted my dreams every single night, who should’ve died over a year ago, was here, alive and well, right before our very eyes.

“Vec, you’re shakin’, put the gun down,” Daryl instructed. He stepped around me towards the man, getting between us and blocking his view of me. “Ya gonna get one of us hurt.” He didn’t know it wasn’t loaded, but that didn’t matter.

“How is it possible?” I whispered, my jaw starting to ache from how hard I was gritting my teeth together.

“Put the gun down,” Daryl demanded. I could tell he was trying his hardest to speak softly to me, like he always did, but the rage was seeping through. The redness of his face and the bulging vein in his neck further corroborated that.

“Name’s Adam. Maybe you can help me,” he asked as he put his hands in the air, his face still donning that horrific smirk. That was the first time I’d ever heard his name. “I’m looking for a place called Alexandria. Supposed to be a safe zone. Just point me in the right direction and we can part ways peacefully.”

Every joint in my body weakened, and I was on the verge of collapse. The heavy dose of adrenaline pumping through my system was the only thing that kept me on my feet. I slowly lowered my gun, sliding it back into my leg holster and reaching for what was supposed to be my knife. However, in the chaos of that morning, it'd appeared I accidentally grabbed my most unique weapon, the vibrator, and put it in the holster instead. It was going to have to do. I pulled it out and held it in a way that hopefully, from his distance, would make it look like a knife.

“Peace ain’t an option for ya,” Daryl seethed. He was practically foaming at the mouth in anger now.

“You’re not g—getting anywhere n—near my p—p—people,” I snapped, my voice beginning to shake as violently as my hands were.

“Your people? Would you look at that. We can be together again.” Adam paced back and forth in front of us, hands still in the air. He still hadn’t pulled out any weapon of his own, and he didn’t look like he had any on him. It was as if he had a death wish. “Do you remember all the fun times we had? Though you weren’t conscious for most of them.”

I turned to the grass beside me and began vomiting once again. My face was soaked with tears, and my vision was so blurry, I almost couldn’t see anything. Fun times, with an S? As in plural? As in more than once? My head was spinning, and I was sure I would pass out at any second.

Daryl reached into his pocket and absentmindedly threw the car keys back in my direction, not taking his eyes off Adam for even a second. The jingle of the keys landing at my feet cut through the thick tension that lingered in the air. “Vec, get in the car.”

“Yeah Vec, be a doll and get in the car,” Adam taunted, “let the men talk.” I wasn’t sure what I hated more—him calling me ‘doll’ or him calling me Vec. He turned his gaze to Daryl, gesturing to me. “This your woman?”

Daryl and I hadn’t made anything official yet. I expected him to say ‘no’, ‘none of your business’, or nothing at all. But he didn’t say any of those things.

“And if she is?”

Under different circumstances, I might’ve had the energy to ask what he meant by that.

“Did she tell you? She’s damaged goods, buddy.” Just when I thought I’d emptied my stomach of all of its contents, I threw up in my mouth, the acid singeing my teeth and tongue. I leaned over and spat it on the ground, coughing and gagging as my stomach heaved, attempting to pump more acid up my esophagus.

“Vec, get in the damn car!” Daryl ordered. Though I didn’t appreciate being snapped at, I knew he was just trying to protect me from Adam’s vile words and soulless eyes. He probably still felt guilty about what happened with Jake and didn’t want me to have to go through the same thing again.

I slowly knelt down and grabbed the keys, keeping my eyes locked on Adam, though I don’t know why I bothered. My vision was so clouded with tears that everything before me was a blur of vague shapes and colors. I put the keys in my pocket. Thankfully, I hadn’t accidentally thrown up on them.

“You two are cute,” Adam teased, far from complimentary, “you got him whipped, doll?"

"Ya best shut the hell up 'less you wanna get whipped, doll." Daryl took a few steps closer to him, his crossbow aimed at the center of his forehead. I shakily walked up and stood next to Daryl, the sex toy in my hand poised and ready to knock him upside the head if he so much as leaned further in our direction. This wasn’t Daryl’s fight to be had—it was mine.

“I’ll f—fucking k—kill you,” I threatened. My trembling voice made the threat seem far from credible.

“Couldn’t do it the first time, you coward,” he taunted. He was eyeing me up and down, and I could only imagine what sorts of thoughts were swirling around in his sick and twisted mind. It made me queasy.

“C—c—could a coward f—fuck up your limbs that b—badly, y—you f—f—fucking incel?” I swallowed hard and tried to control my rapid breathing. If it got out of control, I was going to start hyperventilating and pass out.

“Oh yeah, these,” he acknowledged, holding his hands up in front of him and lightly kicking his feet up one at a time, “took some getting used to. Learning to walk again took ages. You’re a pretty good doctor.”

Didn’t matter how good of a doctor I was—they never should’ve reattached in the first place. But we now lived in a world where the dead were walking around with the living. Stranger things had happened.

“Pretty good at a few other things too,” he taunted. I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him undressing me with his eyes.

My body couldn’t handle the stress any longer. My knees gave out, and I dropped to the dirt road, catching myself and falling on my butt. Tiny pebbles dug into my hands and the back of my legs. The jagged dirt particles scratched my skin, the heat from the road bathing in the sun all day adding to the pain. I wrapped my arms around myself, like I was giving myself a hug. In reality, I hoped that if I squeezed tight enough, I would shrink down so small that I’d vaporize and disappear.

If I was with anyone other than Daryl, the embarrassment coursing through my veins surely would’ve killed me.

Daryl had decided that that was enough, and before I could say or do anything to stop him, he launched himself in Adam’s direction, tackling him and sending them both flying back and onto the ground a few feet away. Daryl started wailing on him, and he wasn’t holding anything back. Blood was flying, but thankfully, none of it was Daryl’s. He alternated between punching him in the face or chest and grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and slamming him into the ground. I’d seen Daryl angry before, but I’d never seen him this angry. I didn’t witness him beat the shit out of Jake, but if I had to guess, this was worse.

“I’ll fuckin’ kill ya!” Daryl screamed, once again grabbing him by the collar and slamming him into the ground head first.

I knew Daryl was going to keep that promise. If I let him continue, Adam would be dead in minutes, if not sooner. But something came over me. Whatever little fight my body had left in it came shooting to the surface, swelling in my chest and dancing across my fingertips, making them tingle. A small, almost non-existent glimmer of hope flickered in my eye.

This was my opportunity to do what I should’ve done a long time ago.

“Daryl!” I cried out. He ignored me and kept swinging. The only sounds echoing through the quiet forest were the man’s cries and groans of pain and Daryl’s fist making contact with him. I shakily brought myself onto my hands and knees, calling out to him again. “Daryl, let me do it!”

I got myself to my feet, my legs shaking like a baby deer as I stumbled my way over to them. Daryl was holding him up by the collar of his shirt, his legs straddling the man and keeping him pinned in place. As I approached them, Daryl took his eyes off of him for the first time since he’d shown up. He looked back at me, and even though I couldn’t see his beautiful face through the waterworks, it brought me some comfort to have his eyes on me.

“Let me do it…I wanna do it,” I choked out. A set of fingers touched my boot. It had to be Adam’s, so I stomped my foot onto his hand and twisted it back and forth, causing him to cry out in pain once again.

“Ya sure?” Daryl asked. I nodded and swallowed hard, my throat bone-dry from all my vomiting and heavy breathing.

“I need to,” I iterated, “I should’ve done it before. Let me do it.” He nodded and let go of Adam’s collar, his body and head hitting the ground with a loud thud.

Daryl got up and grabbed his crossbow off the ground, handing it to me. I took the stealthy weapon in my hands, which were still trembling ever so slightly. Daryl’s fingers touched mine, offering little strokes of encouragement. I turned my attention to the bloody pulp of a human on the ground, his moans and groans further evidence of just how much pain he was in. I stepped forward and stood over him, one leg on each side of his body.

“Shut up,” I ordered, bringing the crossbow up and striking the side of his face with it. He screamed, and based on the breaking of his voice, he was on the verge of tears. I dropped to my knees, using them to keep his arms in place. I brought the crossbow up again and struck the other side of his face. Y’know, to even it out. Daryl stood behind me, occasionally patting my shoulder, making sure I knew he was there to back me up.

“Fuck…you,” he seethed. He attempted to spit on me, but he was so weak that it just dribbled out of his mouth and onto his chin. I held the crossbow up, the bolt centered on his face.

"There's a special circle of Hell designed just for you,” I sneered. I aimed for his face, but not his brain. I didn’t want this to be the fatal shot. I had another idea for that.

I placed a quivering finger on the trigger and lined the bow up with his mouth. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. The bolt hit the back of his throat at point-blank range, causing him to scream the loudest he had so far, followed by a string of sick, twisted cackles. I expected him to start crying at this point, but he didn’t—he started laughing.

I tossed the crossbow beside me and rubbed my eyes with my fists, clearing my vision for the first time since the waterworks had begun. I saw his face, crystal clear on the ground in front of me, covered in blood and dirt. There wasn’t a single sparkle of life behind those cold, dead eyes. He was smirking, but not smirking like he did when he was undressing me with his eyes or recollecting the day he assaulted me. He was smirking like he was pleased with me, delighted by my actions even. I grabbed the vibrator, which I had tossed on the ground earlier, and held it up to his face, ready to deliver the fatal blow.

Taking my rapist out with a sex toy felt fitting.

“Well look at you,” he coughed, spitting blood up onto me. The tone of his voice was that of a proud parent. “You got it in you after all, Vec.”

I brought the vibrator up, pointed end facing him, and used every ounce of measly strength I had left to force it into his eye socket. He howled in pain as blood poured from it, his howling becoming slightly gurgled as some of the blood pooled in his throat. I pushed it in slowly, as I wanted to make sure my voice would be the last thing he heard before death scooped him up in its arms. As it penetrated his brain, his screaming began to die down, and his body went limp underneath me. Before he faded completely, I locked eyes with him and hissed the final words he’d ever hear as I pressed it all the way into his head.

“My name is Lydia.”

Taglist: @raddydaddydude @lovenormandixon @angeldemoncrowley

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Twenty-One

Masterlist

AO3 link

Let me know if you want to be added to the taglist <3 (18+ only, MDNI)

We get a little Vulnerable!Daryl in this one & it makes me emotional I’m not gonna lie

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, PTSD

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

Legolas & Lord of the Rings (c) J.R.R. Tolkien, Sleeping Beauty (c) Disney

TW/CWs for this chapter--swearing, allusion to child abuse (Daryl’s history), discussion of sibling death (Merle), mention/discussion of scars, discussion of an alcoholic parent, smoking

Word count: 3.3k

"What's this last one?" he asked, flipping it over. It was a picture of me wearing a blue off-the-shoulder ballgown with flowers around the neckline and crystals adorning the cinched waist. There were tulle sleeves and a slit up one leg. My hair was cascading around me in loose curls, and I was leaning back against a tree, hands holding the edges of my dress out as if I was about to start twirling in circles.

"Oh, that's from a renaissance festival I went to. Kathryn took that picture. I wanted to do my own version of the Sleeping Beauty dress," I explained, "so in the movie, there's a dress that the fairies make for her, and there are two that keep arguing over whether the dress should be pink or blue. They go back and forth, changing the color when the other isn't looking, and--"

"She chose blue," Daryl said, his voice so soft he was almost whispering. He was fixated on the picture of me, running his fingers over the edges, and I questioned if he meant to say that out loud or if his mouth got the best of him. Was he talking about me?

"Hmm?" I hummed, pretending not to hear what he said in case he didn't mean to say his thoughts out loud, "oh no, it goes all the way to the end of the movie. Like they're still changing it when the screen fades out."

"This's a real good picture o’ ya. Ya look real pretty," Daryl said.

"You're sweet," I thanked, "I went to a lot of ren fests growing up. I loved to dress up and go all out. This one was by far my favorite." He flipped the pictures back in order to give them back to me, but they spilled out onto the floor, scattering themselves around.

"Shit, sorry."

"It's ok, really," I assured, "shit happens." I leaned over and grabbed the photos closest to me, and Daryl grabbed the rest, handing them to me.

"Thanks for showin' me. Was nice to see the people ya always talkin' so much 'bout," he said. I opened the back of my notebook and placed the photos back, pulling the notes out of my pocket and putting those in as well. "Ya really tied to that thing, aren'tcha?"

"My notebook?" I asked, flipping it around in my hands, "yeah, I guess you could say I am. It's like a security blanket. It's comforting to have it on me, even when I'm not doing anything with it."

He was hesitant before he asked his next question. "Could I...maybe read somethin' of yours sometime?"

I'll admit, I was a little surprised, as he'd never expressed an interest before in reading any of my work. Sure, he'd asked me about it here and there, but he never asked to see it. Part of me, though, was grateful for that. I wrote a lot about Daryl, and he didn't need to know that. Not yet at least.

"Tell you what. If I ever decide that anything in here is quality enough to show to someone else, you'll be the first to know."

"Ya think ya stuff's bad?"

"No, not bad," I said, "just...personal is all. A bit intense at times. It's...it's like a catalog of everything I've gone through since the world went to shit. I'm hoping one day, I can look back on it and be proud of myself for surviving all the stuff in here."

"Should be proud already," Daryl advised, "ya's by yourself out there. Couldn'ta been easy."

You don't even know the half of it, I thought.

There was silence between us for a while as we stared off beyond the walls. It was a comfortable silence, as they had come to be with Daryl. I remembered our first run, the first time we really spent time together, and thought about how far we'd come since then. Just a month and a half ago, I never thought we'd be here. I never thought we'd be up in the watchtower together, spending the night keeping the community safe, nor did I think Daryl and I would have come as far in our relationship as we had. We were essentially a couple, minus the confession of our feelings to one another and more intimate physical contact.

"Hey Daryl? Can I ask you a question? If you don't wanna answer, that's more than ok."

"Sure," he said, a hint of hesitation in his voice, "shoot."

"Do you know where Merle is?"

I held my breath while I waited for his response. I'd been wanting to ask more about Merle for some time now. What I did know was that he was the older one, he was in the military at some point, and he was the ringleader when it came to the drug escapades he and Daryl got into. And that he was a bit of a creep and kind of an asshole. But Daryl never talked about where he was now or if something happened to him. I was worried that maybe it was too fresh of a wound, or perhaps it was simply too painful. It'd been quite a while, though, since I last asked about Merle, and with how close we'd become since then, I was hopeful that maybe, even if he didn't answer, it would open the door for him to share in the future.

"If you don't want to answer, I promise it's ok," I reiterated. He was staring out the window, crossbow popped up on the frame, resting his arm on it. I bit the inside of my lip and waited with bated breath for him to say something, anything.

"He's in Georgia," he finally said. Seeing as it'd taken some time for him to answer with that, I didn't dare ask the follow-up question that came to mind—why didn't he come to Alexandria with Daryl? However, I didn't have to wonder for long. "Dead."

He kept his gaze out the window as he told me everything. He talked about the prison, Woodbury, the man called The Governor, what happened with Merle and the Governor, and how Daryl found him...after he had already turned. And he told me something that I don't think he'd shared with the others before—that the only reason they ever went to Rick's original camp in the first place was because they planned to rob them. But things changed, and Daryl found a family in Rick, Glenn, Maggie, and the others, and chose to stay with them.

My heart was shattering as Daryl filled me in on everything. Having had to kill one of my brothers after he turned, I understood the pain—the pain of wondering if they're ok, then finding them and realizing they're far from it, the farthest in fact. But the gut-wrenching pain of Merle having been killed at the hands of someone else before turning...I wasn't going to pretend to understand that hurt. Daryl was such a good person, and to see such a good person lose so much was heartbreaking.

Daryl was quiet when he finished talking. I wasn't sure whether he was waiting for me to respond or was attempting to find more words of his own. I approached the window and leaned against the wall next to it, looking up at Daryl with the softest, most empathetic expression. I said the only thing I could.

"I...I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve that."

He didn't say anything, didn't move or turn his head to look at me. He kept that same stoic expression, looking off at something far in the distance outside the walls. I swallowed hard, feeling bad for asking the question in the first place. "You know that I know how it feels. To have to do that to a sibling. It's awful. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I'm sorry you had to experience that pain too." I reached a hand out and stroked his forearm, drawing small circles with my fingers. "And I'm sorry I brought it up. I'd been avoiding asking because I was worried it'd be too painful. I don't know what came over me." I felt Daryl's muscles relax under my fingers as I worked slowly from his elbow to his wrist, continuing to draw tiny circles.

"Don't gotta 'pologize. I ain't mad at ya," he said, his voice soft. He still didn't look at me. "It's 'cause ya care. I know that."

I tilted my head slightly to try to get him to look at me. "You of all people didn't deserve to experience pain like that. I'm sorry, about everything that happened. But I'm glad you're here now. And I'm glad I am too."

He fidgeted a little before he continued. "Was worried tellin' ya 'bout the robbin' the camp story might..." His voice trailed off before he finished his sentence, though I had a feeling I knew where it was going.

"Might what?" I asked, "make me view you differently?"

"Maybe."

I gave him a soft smile. "Well, you have nothing to worry about there. We've all got a past, Daryl. That's not who you are now. That's all that matters." I was cautious to follow up with what I wanted to say, but my mouth was betraying me before I could do anything to stop it. Maybe it would help him feel less alone. "Hell, there are things you still don't know about me that I feel the same about. That they might make you view me differently."

"You?" He sounded amused when he said it, like he thought I was bluffing. “Dunno what someone like you could do to make me see ya differently." I crossed my arms over my chest.

""Someone like me?" What do you mean by that?" I asked, looking at him quizzically. Being someone who didn't have much of a way with words, I thought he might ignore my question and start talking about something else, or there'd be a long period of silence before he finally gave a response. Neither was the case here. It was like he already had his answer queued up, knowing I was going to ask.

"Someone perfect," he said. My shoulders relaxed as I let out a gentle sigh. I stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around his torso, careful to avoid the bandaged wound on his back, and gave him a gentle squeeze. I rested my head on his chest.

"Oh Daryl, you're very sweet, but I am far from perfect." He snaked his free arm around me and placed his hand on my back, just above my waist.

"Well, ya ever wanna share those things I don't know 'bout ya, I'm all ears," Daryl assured.

"Thanks."

"Since ya asked a question that's been on ya mind a while, can I ask one?" he wondered.

"Sure," I replied, biting gently at the inside of my cheek to quell my anxiety, wondering what he was about to ask. I waited with bated breath for him to speak, my mind spiraling in all the different directions he could've been going, but I had a hunch about where we'd end up.

"Do...do ya scars got anythin' to do with what you dream 'bout every night?"

I clicked my tongue and let you a shallow, shaky breath. "Yeah...yeah they do. Figured that's what you might ask."

"How ya figure that?"

"I've caught you staring at them before. You're not very subtle with it," I chuckled, "it doesn't bother me though. Not you looking at least. I know they're kinda hard to ignore." I lifted my arm in front of us, shifting the sleeve of his jacket down and exposing my hand and wrist. I was writhing a little inside. I hated looking at my scars. "I have a fantasy that one day, tattooing will be a reality again, and I'll be able to get them covered up. I think vines with flowers on them would look cool."

I rotated my hand, inspecting both sides of my wrist as if I was looking at my scars for the first time. They were thick bands of scar tissue that adorned both of my wrists like bracelets. They didn't hurt, but there were some sparse patches here and there that were numb. I didn't like them being touched, and despite me never sharing that, Daryl seemed to know. In all the times he'd touched my arms or my hands, he never touched my scars, not even grazing them on accident. There was an unspoken understanding between us about that. I shimmied the sleeve of his jacket back down my arm, covering my scars again.

"Can I ask you something else that's been on my mind for a while? You don't have to answer if it's too much," I said.

"Might'as well," Daryl replied, fidgeting with his crossbow in anticipation.

"You said that I haven't really mentioned my dad much," I said, my words shaky as I tried to control my voice, "you haven't mentioned yours either."

His body tensed under my arms, and his hand on my back curled a bit. I was sure he would've accidentally scratched me if I wasn't wearing his jacket. His answer was short, to the point, but told me everything I needed to know.

"Where ya think my scars came from?"

I didn't want to believe what I was hearing. This wonderful human being, suffering at the hands of one of his parents? My stomach ached. My heart was breaking, shattering, and exploding all at the same time. Tears tried to form and escape my eyes, but I wouldn't allow it. I needed to be strong for Daryl in this moment. No wonder he had the best survival skills I'd ever seen—he didn't have a choice.

How could someone do something so awful to someone so good?

"Daryl..." My voice trailed off, and the only thing I could think to do was wrap my arms around him tighter and give him another squeeze.

"Merle got it first. 'ts why he ran off to the army," he continued. I tilted my head up to look at him. He hadn't once taken his eyes off whatever random object he'd fixated on out in the distance. I'd never seen Daryl cry before, not even come close to, but I could've sworn I saw a tear welling up in his eye. Just one, the moonlight catching it and making it glimmer.

"Daryl, you don't have to—"

"Old man was a drunk," he said. He rested his bow on the windowsill and reached into his pocket, pulling out his box of cigarettes and lighter. He hadn't smoked once in front of me since the first time he did. He knew I didn't like it, but I wasn't going to say anything now. We all had our vices, and I was going to let him have his.

Daryl pulled a cigarette out of the box with his mouth, still keeping his other arm wrapped around me. He had tightened his embrace and brought me closer, like he thought I might slip out and walk away if I had the space to do so. He shoved the box of smokes back into his pocket and lit the one in his mouth, turning his head to puff in the opposite direction of me.

I knew I was privileged to have such a close, loving family, I was never ignorant of that. Being a trauma surgeon, I knew some of the horrors that people experienced at the hands of family, at the hands of people who claimed to love them. I knew not everyone was as lucky as I was. But sometimes, there would be that person who landed on my operating table, and their story would hurt just a little bit more than others.

This one, though...this one hurt the most.

Sweet Daryl, the man I'd become so close to, the man whose shell I'd cracked wide open, the man I'd gotten to open up...the man I'd fallen in love with. To know someone so kind, so protective, so empathetic, had suffered at the hands of his father...and at such a young age...

For his father's sake, I hoped he and I would never cross paths.

I wanted to kiss every single scar on his body and remind him of how appreciated he is, how loved he is. Not just by me, but Carol, Rick, Glenn, Aaron...I wanted to hold him and whisper all the sweet little things I wrote about him in my notebook. I wanted his pain to stop. Such a tender soul shouldn't have to know pain like that. My little Georgia peach shouldn't have to know pain like that.

"You didn't deserve that," I whispered, my gaze still transfixed on his face. He took another puff of his smoke and finally tore his eyes away from the outside world, looking down to meet me. Our noses were barely touching, and I would've certainly taken that opportunity to plant one on his lips if the situation was more appropriate. I did, though, take the opportunity to kiss his cheek. His skin was softer than I was expecting. He flinched just a little, then quickly melted and relaxed under my lips.

"You're so loved Daryl. Don't think for one second that you aren't." I brought my head back to his chest and nuzzled in closer. "I may not have experienced it firsthand, but I know what that kind of thing can do to someone. What it can do to their self-worth, their confidence. Just remember that you're important, and you're deeply loved and appreciated. I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

"Ya really know how to make a guy feel good," he told me, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"Only guy I care about making feel good is you," I said. I was almost immediately kicking myself for what I said. My supposed-to-be flirting was more of a sexual innuendo than anything. I quickly took it back to the subject at hand in an attempt to gloss over it. "I'm glad I could do that for you. Thank you for being vulnerable with me, Daryl. It means a lot that you're so open with me."

He took another puff of his cigarette. "Ya make it easy." His hand on my back slid off for just a moment before coming right back, this time slipping underneath his jacket and resting on the bare skin of my side. "This alright?"

"Sure is," I hummed before nuzzling my head further into his chest and closing my eyes. His calloused hand against my soft skin felt heavenly, and it tickled just a little, but not enough to elicit a reaction from me.

Daryl flicked the ashes off his smoke and stomped on them once they landed on the ground. "Thanks for always listenin' to me. Bein' there for me. Dunno what I did to deserve ya."

My heart swelled in my ribcage, the warming sensation that accompanied it seeming to radiate off my body. "Being you. That's what you did."

We spent the rest of the night like that, hooked onto each other like our lives depended on it, like we were afraid the other person would slip away if we loosened our grips too much. We talked for hours, and despite standing the whole time, I almost fell asleep. The rise and fall of Daryl's chest against my head nearly lulled me into dreamland. At one point, his nose nuzzled into my hair, and he kissed the top of my head. His sweet Southern accent whispered something into my hair that I didn't catch. I was in some half-awake, half-asleep state, eyelids heavy and struggling to stay open. A delirious smile spread across my face. What I was feeling was nothing short of absolute magic.

I would be forever grateful that Daryl asked me to keep him company in the watchtower that night.

Taglist: @raddydaddydude

Divider found on Google via searching for stock images

[thevegandarkelf]

Finding Myself, Finding You: Chapter Sixteen

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, PTSD

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 sibling death, discussion of parent death, mention of depression, mention of medical procedures, men being creepy, description of nightmares (being tied up, being held at gunpoint, allusion to rape), PTSD, panic attacks

Word count: 2.8k

Though it was already getting late when he came in, Daryl and I sat on that infirmary table and talked for a long time. I talked more about my mom, and he started slowly opening up about the things he and Merle got into before the world fell. There were a lot of drugs and drinking from what I was able to gather, but he was a bit conservative with the details. I didn’t mind that at all. Just the fact that he was willing to even lightly approach the more vulnerable subjects meant a lot to me. It made me feel like he felt I was a safe person to talk to, to be open with, and it made me happy that I could do that for him.

“My mom, she always saw the good in everyone. Both of my parents really, but her in particular. She was so caring, giving, always wanting to do the absolute most she could for the people she cared about,” I explained.

“Guess that’s where ya get it from,” Daryl replied, eliciting a small, flattered smile from me.

“That’s why watching her spiral after Preston died was even harder to watch. For two months, she sank deeper and deeper into this bottomless pit of depression. My dad, Jay, Eli, and I did everything we could to try to help her. Mind you, Jay and Eli had been deployed in the middle of all of this, and I was still in med school, so we tried our hardest with everything else we had going on. And then she just…couldn’t take it anymore.”

I could feel myself getting emotional, and I tried my best to turn it off. I blinked back some tears, and tiny droplets flew off my lashes onto the lenses of my glasses. “She tried her best to be the best example she could for my brothers and I. She told me that when she was growing up, she’d always say that if she ever had kids, she would do everything she could to make sure we made the world a better place. I didn’t learn that until I was older and had already decided I wanted to be a doctor, but it helped reaffirm for me that going to med school was the right decision.”

“She’d be proud of ya,” he said, his tone a little softer now. I had to do everything in my power to stop myself from turning into a blubbering, sobbing mess right then and there. He reached out and stroked the back of my arm with his fingers, just like he had done earlier during target practice. “Speakin’ of med school, don’t think I ever asked ya what your favorite part ‘bout bein’ a doctor is.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite, but what I find most fulfilling is when people come in, alive but unconscious or barely conscious, and they don’t think they’re going to make it. They may have already started making peace with the fact that they were likely going to die. And then hours or days later, they awaken & I get to be there to greet them and tell them that they made it. They almost always start crying, and their family might come in, and pretty soon it’s just a room full of people sobbing. They thank me over and over, sometimes followed by a story about how now they’ll be around to see their child get married or their grandchild graduate.” I took my glasses off and set them beside me on the table, using the back of my hands to wipe the tears off my cheeks. “I do what I need to do quickly so that I can give them their time together and also try not to start crying myself. I also find doing skin grafts really fulfilling because it can help people who’ve had really bad injuries or burns feel semi-normal again. The world is cruel towards people who don’t look “perfect,” so if I can help someone feel a bit more confident in themselves after an accident, that makes me happy.”

Daryl leaned over and grabbed a tissue box off of the counter, handing it to me. “Could ya show me some stuff ‘bout skin grafts?”

I pulled a few of the tissues out and dabbed at my eyes with them. “Umm, sure. Yeah, I can teach you about them. Why?"

"I like learnin’ ‘bout the things ya interested in. I may not understand it, but if it's important to ya, it's important to me." That warming sensation returned to my chest, this time so intense that I thought it might burst through my ribcage. Thankfully I was sitting because I felt my knees weaken, and a big, stupid grin spread across my face as I stared down at my feet swinging back and forth. That was exactly what I had said to him when I asked him to teach me things about his bike.

“Yeah, I can teach you some stuff,” I said, “whenever you want works for me.”

“Later ‘cause ya lookin’ real tired,” Daryl said, hopping off of the exam table and gathering his bow off the floor.

“Hey Daryl?” I said, and he turned his body to face me. I slid myself off the exam table as well. “There’s been a lot of…heavy emotions in here tonight. I just wanna make sure you’re ok.”

“‘ll be alright,” he replied. I took my tissues off the table and tossed them into the nearby trash can. “What about you?”

“Me too. I’ll be ok,” I said as we walked towards the door together, “and thank you for being vulnerable with me. I appreciate it. I hope…I hope you don’t regret it.”

“Nah, don’t got regrets with tellin’ ya things,” Daryl said. He opened the door and held it for me. I flipped the light switch off, and I was grateful for the darkness of night that now concealed my blushing face. He let the door swing shut behind him.

As we reached the path, the guys that were on gate duty with Daryl were walking by, heading home after their shift change. One of them walked by without so much as a glance in our direction. The other two walked by slowly, the looks on their faces ones I knew all too well. Every woman under the sun knew that look—being ogled, them undressing you with their eyes, thinking about the things they wanted to do to you. It made me nauseous. I took a step back, and Daryl held an arm out in front of me as if to let them know that if they wanted to approach me, they’d have to go through him.

I wondered which one of them was responsible for Daryl’s injury. If I ever found out, there would be hell to pay.

We watched them in silence until they were down the path and approaching their homes. Only then did Daryl move his arm out from in front of me.

“I don’t like the way they were looking at me,” I said as we continued home.

“Me neither,” Daryl agreed, “don’t worry though. They know not to say nothin’ to ya. Let me know if they do. Rough ‘em more if I gotta.”

“Thanks Daryl,” I replied as we went inside.

I kicked my boots off and yawned, stretching my arms out over my head. “I think I’m gonna go to sleep. I’m sure it’s late.” I hadn’t eaten since lunch, but the exhaustion I was feeling from my busy day was overshadowing my grumbling stomach.

Daryl sauntered into the kitchen and pulled a pot out from one of the cabinets. “I’ll save some food for ya.”

“Thank you,” I replied. I turned and started to make my way towards the stairs to go to my room, but stopped and turned back around. “Goodnight my little Georgia peach.” I’d started calling him that a couple of weeks ago, only in private, and even though he almost always scoffed at me when I did, I knew he didn’t hate it. He might’ve even liked it a little.

“‘Night short stuff,” he said. He’d taken to calling me “short stuff” because of my reactions to being called “tiny.” I knew he was only teasing when he called me “short stuff” or “tiny,” but I would be lying if I said I didn’t absolutely love it when he called me by one of his nicknames for me.

What Daryl and I had had definitely evolved beyond just a friendship. It was more of a…flirtationship, if you will.

At this point, I’d been at Alexandria for a month and a half or so. And the night that I’d been dreading for weeks finally came—the night that the horrible nightmare I’d been having became crystal clear.

Every sound, every touch, every sight was as clear as could be. It was like I’d been sucked back in time and was right back in that moment again.

I felt the cold barn floor underneath me and his crushing weight on top of me. I felt my hands tied above my head and the rope digging into my skin as I writhed around. I could hear his heavy breathing and the gun scrape against my teeth as it was forced into my mouth. I felt hot tears stream down my cheeks as I realized what was happening. And I could see his face—his evil, smug fucking face no less than two inches from mine.

In my head, the scream I let out could’ve shattered glass.

I awoke on the floor, running my hands all over my body in a panicked state. It took several moments for me to realize I was awake, back on my bedroom floor in Alexandria, like I always was. I hadn’t felt fear like that since the incident itself. The adrenaline that was coursing through my veins was the only thing that kept me upright.

I curled up into a ball against the bed, sobbing hysterically into my knees. My tears felt scalding, burning my skin as they slid down off of my cheeks. I was so wrapped up in my fear that I didn’t think about how Daryl would be coming in at any moment, just like he always did. Nor did I hear the door open when he finally did.

I heard his familiar footsteps move from the door around the bed over to me. He knelt, then sat down next to me. I didn’t look up at him, I couldn’t. I felt so ashamed, both for how my nightmare made me feel and for Daryl having to see me like this. Sure, he’d seen me cry on a few occasions, but none of those times were like this. None were this intense, this visceral, this raw.

“Hey, are ya ok? Ya get hurt?” Daryl asked, his tone velvety soft and a level of concern in his voice I’d never heard before. I didn’t know what to say or do. I wanted nothing more in that moment than to curl up into the tiniest ball possible and disappear. Even if I had anything to say, I couldn’t find my voice.

When I didn’t say a word or move an inch, he scooted himself a little closer to me until his knee was against my leg. He placed a hand on my back, rubbing it up and down between my waist and my shoulders.

“Vec, what happened?” he asked, more worry in his voice than before, “talk to me.”

I practically lunged at him as I fell forward and wrapped my arms around him. It was like I didn’t have control over my body. I needed something familiar, something safe. More so someone familiar, someone safe. And he was right there. My body was reaching for him whether I wanted it to or not.

“It was so real,” I choked out between sobs, “it was so clear.” His strong arms wrapped around me and pulled me even closer to him until my head was resting in the crook of his neck, my heaving chest pressed to his. And he held me there as I continued to sob.

He was warm, like a heater, and his embrace around me was strong, but there was so much care and tenderness behind it. Even though the intense fear was still plaguing my nervous system, I felt safe wrapped up in his arms. He rubbed one hand up and down my back again.

“You’re ok. You’re safe. It can’t hurt ya,” he reassured.

It was a long time before either of us said anything. After a time, he moved his hand that was rubbing up and down my back to the back of my head and stroked my hair. He held me while I cried, and at one point, he started gently rocking me back and forth. I only continued to feel more ashamed, my face getting hot from embarrassment. I felt like such a baby.

“It was like I was right back in that moment.”

I immediately regretted what I had said. If someone said that to me when referencing a nightmare they had, I would assume that this nightmare was them reliving a horrific experience. And knowing that Daryl listened to every single word that came out of my mouth, he now knew that this, in fact, was real. That I dreamt of a real-life horror story night after night.

“You’re not there. You’re here,” Daryl said as he continued to stroke my hair. He handled me like glass, like he thought I might break if he was even just a little too heavy-handed.

“I could see, hear, feel everything.” I sobbed harder. I felt disgusting, vile, like a thousand showers in bleach couldn’t even scrub away the feeling of disgust I experienced.

Daryl stopped rocking me and moved his hand back to my back. “I know that’s scary. But you’re here now, and I got ya.” He somehow pulled me even closer to him, which I didn’t think was possible.

“I just want the pain to stop.”

“I know.” He didn’t know. He had no idea what I was talking about. But I know he knew how it felt to carry the pain of a traumatic incident and wanting that pain to go away.

My sobbing didn’t let up for a long time. When it started to, it was very gradual. Daryl held onto me the whole time, giving me reminders now and then that I was ok, he was there, and I was safe. After a long, long time, my crying had almost stopped, and I picked my head up off of Daryl’s shoulder. The crook of his neck and the shoulder of his shirt were soaked.

“I’m sorry I got your shirt wet,” I said. It felt like a silly thing to say, but I felt terrible.

“Nah, ’s not important.” He pressed tenderly on my shoulders, ushering me to lift my head out in front of him. For the first time in what felt like the hours we’d been sitting here, I met his gaze. My eyes were puffy, I didn’t need to see them to know that. I’m sure they were red too. I hated that he had to see me like this. “How ya feelin’?”

“Like shit,” I said, “I’m too scared to go back to sleep.” When I would fall out of bed after my initial nightmare, the nightmare never continued once I fell back asleep. That wasn’t what I was worried about.

What I was worried about was seeing that stupid, smug face every time I closed my eyes.

“You can go back to bed,” I said, resting my head back in the crook of his neck, “I’m sorry I kept you up for so long.”

“’s no trouble. C’mon, I’ll stay with ya ’til ya fall asleep,” Daryl said. He got up and stood over me, reaching his arms out for me to grab his hands. He pulled me up, and I was barely on my feet for a second before I fell back into the bed. My whole body felt weak, like my muscles were made of jello.

“Are you sure? I’ve already kept you up for long enough.” Daryl came around to the other side of the bed and sat down, scooting back until he was resting against the headboard. I used what small amount of energy I had left to move until I was laid down, rolling onto my side to face him and pulling my blanket up to my chin.

“I’m sure.” He extended his hand out, resting it next to me, palm up. I reached out and placed my hand in his, and he gently stroked my fingers with his thumb. I’m sure the moment would’ve felt more magical if I didn’t feel like such garbage.

“I’m so sorry, Daryl. I feel like such a burden.”

“Ya ain’t a burden, sunshine. Ya never are.”

Taglist: @raddydaddydude