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wordingg · 3 months ago

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The Ghost of Wayne Manor

Summary: Even death can't stop Alfred from watching over Bruce Wayne.

Note: This fic was previously called 'Monsters Need Family Too'. I sort of abandoned this fic a while ago, but it's been stuck in my head. So, I reworked a bunch of stuff and have decided to post it as a series instead of a chaptered fic. So, this is now just the first chapter as a one shot. I've edited it a little, but if you've read it before, you don't need to reread it. I hope to do a whole series of oneshots exploring various Bat-people as cryptids and monsters for spooky season, so stay tuned if you're interested in seeing more!

Gotham is one of the worst cities in the world. Everyone in the city knows it. Everyone in the state knows it. Everyone in the country knows it. Even the low level consciousness that thrums beneath the city streets knows it. It basks in its well earned reputation and preens every time Gotham lands at the top of lists like "Worst Places In The World to Live".

Not only is Gotham one of the most violent and crime ridden cities in the world, it is also home to more strange and supernatural occurrences than anywhere on the globe. If people weren't so afraid of being shot or stabbed, it would probably be the paranormal capital of the world and a hub for paranormal investigators.

There are a lot of places in Gotham that purport to be haunted. Most of them are even legitimate. After all, murders and grisly deaths are common place, which makes the creation of ghosts pretty commonplace. But, nowhere in Gotham is more feared or haunted than Wayne Manor.

Wayne Manor sits in the middle of historic downtown Gotham. It's a huge gothic structure made out of sandstone bricks and arched stained glass windows and huge heavy wooden doors with slate roofs topped with parapets. It looks like someone dropped Dracula's castle smack into Philadelphia's oldest street. Despite being in the middle of downtown and surrounded by the ancient courthouse with huge columns and wide sweeping steps and a historic market building just down the street made of ancient red brick, Wayne Manor manages to have a small measure of green yard on all four sides. The small pop of green in the maze of concrete that is Gotham grows riotous with green vines and gnarled oak trees all fenced in with high rock walls topped with wickedly sharp black iron fencing to make climbing over them nearly impossible.

Officially, the extremely wealthy and extremely reclusive Bruce Wayne is the only person who lives inside. The only son of Thomas and Martha Wayne and their only surviving kin, Bruce is rumored to be strange, eccentric and terrified of the world outside his parent's mansion. He very rarely ventures outside and is treated like a ghost story already by the young people who live in the city.

He’s part of what makes Wayne Manor so terrifying. The other part is the rumors of the ghosts that can sometimes be seen from the windows that face the street.

People say they see an old man in old fashioned clothing in the yard or on the front porch or looking out the front facing windows. They say that he has a thin mustache and a fading hairline and that he is usually dressed in a bow tie and tailcoat. People only ever see him for a second before he disappears. But, it’s impossible for him to really be there. The only person who lives in the Manor is Bruce Wayne and he’s nowhere near that old.

The other bigger rumor is of a strange creature sometimes seen haunting the parapets and slanted roof of the Manor. Its huge hulking form merges well with the shadows, but sometimes photographs catch its supernaturally glowing red eyes or the hunch of huge wings extending from its back. They call it the Mothman of Gotham City and it's often seen gliding over the dark cloudy skies to and from the Manor. No one knows what it is or what it wants, but the rumor is that if it ever comes for you that death or madness are soon to follow it.

Nobody knows why it’s so often seen on or near Wayne Manor, but it’s more than enough to keep the natives of the city far away from the old crumbling building.

That’s what the people outside the Manor know of it. But, that’s not the whole story of Wayne Manor or its master, Bruce Wayne.

Bruce Wayne was never a normal boy. There was no chance that he would ever be one even from the start.

After a wedding that was so huge and magnificent that people still talk about it to this day, Thomas and Martha Wayne left on a year long tour of the world. When they returned at the end of that year it was with a tiny squealing baby wrapped in their arms. Alfred had been surprised by the little addition, as neither of them had mentioned anything during their weekly phone calls. When Alfred had asked if the baby was hers, Martha had smiled and only said that he was now. Everyone in Gotham assumed that Martha must have gotten pregnant and gave birth while on their world tour and that Bruce was their child together. Neither Martha nor Thomas ever said anything to the contrary.

Alfred never asked either of the Wayne's where the baby had come from and they never volunteered any information. It wasn't his place to pry into his employers' private affairs. Alfred was always very aware of his place and how to mind it.

Bruce was a strange baby who only grew to be a stranger with each passing day. He barely ate and had little interest in any food that was placed before him. Sweets and chicken and crackers were barely picked at, dinners were often left largely untouched and yet the boy was always on track with his growth. Thomas especially fussed and worried over Bruce, but every time he was weighed and measured he was on track for his age.

He was a quiet baby that never cried and barely babbled and grew into a quiet boy who didn't run or play or get into trouble. He was always watching and listening, absorbing and remembering everything that anyone ever said in front of him. Alfred was shocked many times by the boy's sudden appearance in a dark corner or behind a cracked door. Alfred considered himself very aware of his surroundings, but little Bruce seemed to be able to appear anywhere that a shadow was cast. More than that, sometimes it seemed like the shadows enveloped the boy and blurred his edges in a way that Alfred could not always blame on his old and fading eyesight.

Despite how unnerving Bruce could be, it was hard for Alfred not to fall in love with him. Whenever his parents were away at a gala or dinner party, Bruce would trail after Alfred with big pale blue eyes and curious looks until Alfred explained to him what he was doing and why. Bruce would listen quietly and ask thoughtful questions and continue to trot along after him quietly, always watching, always listening.

School was a disaster. Bruce was incredibly intelligent and his parents were part of one of the founding families of Gotham, so getting Bruce registered with Gotham Academy was not a problem. But, as soon as he began attending, things went downhill quickly.

Both Bruce's classmates and teachers found him unnerving. It didn't matter how gentle or quiet he was, by the end of the month they were all terrified of him. The administration, frustrated with the teachers who couldn't explain exactly what it was about Bruce that was so upsetting, moved him to their only other kindergarten class. Before the next month was out, the new teachers and students were also terrified of Bruce.

Before Bruce could be expelled from the most prestigious school in Gotham, his parents took him out. Unfortunately, it was too late to contain the fallout.

The teachers might have signed contracts agreeing to never discuss their students with the press, but the students and their parents signed no such documents. They went to the local newspapers with their tales of how Bruce could sit completely still and not move and not speak for hours. The students talked about how they were hounded nightly by awful nightmares with little Bruce always haunting the edges of their dreams. The parents told of how their children would cry and beg not to go to school, how they stopped eating, stopped sleeping.

The press went wild with stories of the creepy child of Gotham's royal family. It was the beginning of Bruce Wayne’s urban legend, but it certainly wouldn't be the end. To protect Bruce, his parents squirreled him away in the manor, paying exorbitant prices for the best teachers from around the world to come to the Manor and teach him there.

And then, Thomas and Martha Wayne were gunned down after leaving a late night movie (a special treat for their reclusive child) just a few blocks away from their home. Bruce was eight years old.

They left the care of Bruce to Alfred in their will, likely because he was the only person other than themselves who obviously loved the boy. The other staff were all terrified of him. Thomas and Martha's family members had barely shown any interest in him at all. Though, they sure kicked up a fuss when they realized they weren't getting a dime from Thomas and Martha's estate. It was all Bruce's, or rather it belonged to Alfred until Bruce was old enough to take ownership of the home and the bank accounts. It was the social scandal of the year, all the Wayne wealth left in the hands of a butler of all things.

Alfred paid all the press and interviews with Bruce’s distant relatives with very little mind. He suspected they wouldn’t be kicking up such a fuss about being the boy’s real family if they saw how Bruce had been changed by his parents' death. He would have been no easy child to care for.

He was wild, broken in a way that Alfred didn't know how to deal with. He was still quiet and reclusive, but now that silence simmered with barely controlled anger. He stopped eating completely. Alfred even inventoried the pantry and refrigerator to see if Bruce was sneaking food when he wasn't looking, but if Bruce was eating he wasn't getting food from the Manor kitchen. Bruce should have starved many times over, but he seemed unaffected by his own self imposed fast.

He barely spoke and when he did it was by screaming and railing. Bruce could go days without moving or speaking, no matter how gently Alfred spoke to him or begged him to. Then, as suddenly as lightning striking, he would explode in a frenzy of screaming and destruction, ripping curtains off the walls, smashing tables to bits, shattering any glassware within reach. And then, like a storm passing, he would collapse back into passivity.

Alfred would patch up Bruce's little cut and bruised hands, splint his broken fingers, and carry him to bed. Then, he would clean up the mess and order replacements for the things that Bruce had destroyed.

And, he would worry. It seemed all he could do.

One night, almost a month after Thomas and Martha Wayne had died, Alfred caught Bruce sneaking out of an upstairs window. The fight they had when Alfred stopped him was one for the history books.

"You don't understand!" a tiny Bruce Wayne screamed at Alfred, his voice ringing through the dark wood paneled halls. "I have to do something!" he shouted before choking off a sob.

Alfred knelt down on his aching knees and pressed his hands to Bruce's little trembling shoulders. His bones were sharp and the pale skin around his eyes looked bruised and red. "I can't imagine what you're going through, dear boy," Alfred said as gently as he could.

"You don't understand!" Bruce wailed again, his pale eyes welling with big heavy tears that overflowed and ran down his sallow hollowed cheeks. "I could have done something. I should have done something!"

"Dear child, there was nothing you could have done," Alfred soothed, attempting to pull Bruce into an embrace that he rejected forcefully.

"I mean it!" he shouted. "I'm not normal! I could have stopped it! I could have saved them," Bruce said before collapsing into tears and Alfred's arms at the same time.

Alfred did his best to comfort Bruce as he screamed and cried and railed against the world. His small fists beat against his chest and his teeth dug into his coat. The tears ran and ran and Bruce gasped and cried and sobbed for almost an hour before finally going limp and drained in Alfred's arms.

It was the first time Bruce had cried since his parent's death. Alfred hoped it would be a breakthrough, that maybe Bruce would soon be able to get back to what passed for normal life for him.

He carried the boy as gently as he could back to bed and tucked him in. He always looked so small in the huge four poster bed.

"I could tell something was wrong," Bruce murmured as Alfred tucked the blankets against him tighter. "I could feel something coming for weeks. I tried to tell Mom, but I didn't know how to explain it. I've never felt something like that before."

Alfred stopped with a hand pressed over Bruce's chest and felt the steady rise and fall of his rib cage under his palm. Bruce’s eyelids were drooping and he looked like he would pass out any moment.

"I should have known it meant something bad would happen. I should have known to look harder and find the bad thing before it could happen. I'm a bad son," Bruce whispered with a wet wobble of his lower lip. But, there were no more tears to cry.

"Oh, Bruce," Alfred sighed. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

"You know I'm not a real boy, right, Alfred?" little Bruce turned big tortured eyes up at the old butler. "I'm strange. I’m not normal. Sometimes, I think I'm probably not human," he whispered.

Alfred pressed the hand not on Bruce's chest to his cheek. He stared into his charge's haunted eyes. Eyes so pale blue they were almost white, ringed in red skin and thick dark eyelashes.

"I know that you are a kind and gentle boy. I know that you loved your parents and were loved by them in turn. I know that I loved you hardly before I even knew it. You are smart and strong and even if you could have prevented the death of your parents, that was not your responsibility. It is the responsibility of parents to protect their children, not the other way around, certainly not while those children are still young," Alfred said all this very sternly. "Whatever you are or are not, these things will always be true."

Despite what must be a good bit of dehydration, a final silent tear slipped from Bruce's eye to land in the crevice between Alfred's wrinkled hand and Bruce's soft cheek.

"I love you too Alfred," Bruce choked out, lunging up to throw his arms around Alfred's neck in a brutal hug.

Alfred was startled for a moment before warming and wrapping his arms around the small precious boy in his arms. They embraced for a long time and when they finally disentangled Bruce dropped off to sleep within seconds.

Alfred stayed for a long time, long after Bruce finally fell asleep.

Alfred felt very old just then.

He was perfectly aware that he was old, of course. He had served the Wayne family for years, ever since he was a young man just out of MI5. When he first started working for the Wayne's, he had worked for Thomas' father and Thomas was just a boy himself still in short pants. Now Thomas was dead, a fact that still felt untrue while everything else about the Manor felt normal and familiar. Now, Alfred was in control of a huge manor and held a controlling stake in an even bigger company as well as being the only family and guardian of a strange heartbroken little boy.

At that moment, Alfred felt the weight of the world on his shoulders and sagged beneath it.

But, he only let his grief overwhelm him for a short while. There was nothing for it, really. Things needed to be done and Alfred had to be the one to do it. That was all there was to it.

So, after allowing himself a quiet little crisis in Bruce's dark silent bedroom, Alfred struggled to his feet and made his slow ponderous way out into the hall. The bedroom door clicked shut quietly behind him.

Though his worn body called for bed, Alfred didn't think his mind would be able to rest just yet. Not after all of little Bruce's talk of his own inhumanity. No, maybe a cup of tea would calm him down enough to finally rest.

Bruce's room was on the third floor, two sets of curving staircases led down to the open atrium at the bottom floor. There was also a narrow hidden staircase at the opposite end of the hall that led up into the small claustrophobic rooms of the servant quarters located in the attic and also down into the kitchen. When he was a younger man, Alfred had used the servant stairs in the back of the house most of the time. Though narrow, the steps were worn and uneven and unusually high. They were more direct than the the beautifully curving staircases in the front of the house, but in his old age the servant steps were too treacherous and Alfred rarely used them.

Alfred made his cautious way toward the tall carpeted steps which would lead down to the bottom floor. He was only a few steps down toward the first staircase when his knee gave out. It was an old war injury, one that usually only bothered him when he had been on his feet too long. But, it had never chosen such an inopportune time to make itself known.

Tumbling down the steps, Alfred did his best to tuck himself into a ball. Unfortunately, that meant that when he hit the first landing where the steps turned, he kept rolling into the banister which cracked and gave way under the force of the hit.

And then Alfred was falling.

And then, he was standing looking down at his own broken body crumpled in the middle of the atrium.

He looked incredibly frail, limbs tossed all akimbo on the polished parquet floors. A tiny trickle of blood made its way between his pale lips, probably from biting his tongue or maybe from a few loose teeth. His head was bent the wrong way, a snapped neck that would have been quick and painless.

Remembering his young charge slumbering above, Alfred quickly looked up but there was no movement from the floors above. It was only he and Bruce in the manor at night, the other servants much too terrified of the boy to sleep in the attic right above him. Alfred knew his tumble must have been very loud indeed, but Bruce was likely also very tired from his breakdown. He must have slept through it all.

Alfred thought of how devastated Bruce still was from the death of his parents. He thought of how he was the only person who knew and loved the strange boy sleeping one floor above him. He thought of how much it would destroy him to wake on his own and come downstairs to find Alfred's crumpled corpse. He wished that there was something he could do.

Well, maybe there was something he could do? There certainly was no harm in trying.

So, Alfred reached down and tried to pick up his body. He found that he could. Easily, in fact. He felt strong and young and the weight of his own corpse felt like hardly more than an unwieldy rug. He gathered the body up and carried it down into the basement and dropped it on the cracked cement in front of the furnace. Something to deal with later.

He returned to the atrium with a mop and bucket, though there was really very little to clean. Still it felt better to be sure there was no evidence on the floor for the observant little boy to find in the morning.

After the floor was clean, he briefly washed out the mop and bucket and stored them in their appropriate cleaning closet. He gathered up the bits of broken railing and frowned when he had them gathered in a heap. He was no carpenter and wouldn't be able to fix the banister himself. Shrugging, he gathered up the splintered bits of polished wood and tossed them into the small garden by the kitchen door. Something else to deal with later.

He made himself a cup of tea and drank it. No adverse effects there either.

Then, he went upstairs and got changed for bed. He laid in his bed and stared at the ceiling of his small room and wondered what was happening to him. It didn't seem possible that he could die and then clean up his own death as easily as he might chuck a German soldier into a hotel basement incinerator. If his body was in the basement, then how was he upstairs lying in bed? Or was the whole thing some kind of traumatic episode? It really just defied explanation from every angle.

The next morning, Alfred woke to his alarm going off. He couldn't say he really slept, per se. More like he blinked and it was morning.

He went through his normal routine of preparing breakfast and greeting the staff as they came in and making sure they had what they needed. He took a small detour to check the basement and yes there was his body just where he left it propped up against the old furnace. No time to panic, though, it was nearly breakfast. He roused Bruce at his normal time and tried to prepare himself for the real test.

Alfred wanted to say he believed with 100% certainty that Bruce was a normal human boy. But, there were just too many strange things to account for. The way he survived without eating or drinking, the way he seemed to appear suddenly in rooms that he couldn't possibly have snuck into, the strange wavering of his image when he was cast in shadow. It was too much to dismiss as mere eccentricity.

If Bruce really was something more than human, then there was a chance that he would take one look at Alfred and know what happened. If anything had happened. Alfred still wasn't sure if it wasn't just a strange hallucination.

But, Bruce was just quiet and exhausted the next day. If something was different about Alfred, Bruce didn't seem to notice.

Death was certainly a bit over exaggerated in the old butler’s estimation. If Bruce was fine with him the way he was and he could do his job just as easily as before, he saw no reason not to just continue with things as they were. After all, Bruce needed him. And, so long as he did, Alfred would endeavor to be of service.

#gotham monsters #alfred pennyworth #bruce wayne #fanfiction #dc comics #batman #alternate universe #tw: character death #tw: temporary character death #wordinggwrites

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greenninjagal-blog · 11 months ago

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Deja Vu pt 12

Hey, pretend it hasn't been eons since the last update!

If you’re new around here you can find the first chapter [here] or if you just want a refresher you can find the previous chapter [here!]

Summary: Remus is falling, and he's just now realizing that he's been falling for a lot longer than he thought he'd been.

Word Count: 10901

Read on Ao3 || Hero Worship Series || My General Writing Masterlist

The thing about freefalls is that there’s absolutely nothing freeing about it, but there’s a whole lot of falling.

Sometimes minutes, sometimes seconds, sometimes years and eons and eternities and blinks: sometimes Remus doesn’t realize he’s falling at all because his brain has mentally reset too many times and he forgot there was ever a feeling that was not falling and then the weightless, worriless feeling becomes its own type of prison because he can’t do anything but fall.

It doesn’t feel like falling though. It feels like floating, like if he closes his eyes he wouldn’t be moving at all, like he could breathe and float and enjoy the dose of overwhelming euphoria that comes from his brain trying to make sense of all the alarms going on inside of him. He’s stuck and he’s floating and time means nothing, and existence means nothing, and Remus Regis means nothing.

Here’s the other thing about freefalls: they don’t end softly.

The sidewalk outside a skyscraper in Detroit that he gave himself access to on a Tuesday afternoon at 3:46 pm, the water surface that tastes like cement when Remus’s foot misses a step on the bridge railing on a summer night so hot it feels like his skin is peeling off, the rocky bottom of the shallow end of the pool from the hotel balcony when Remus got too curious, too tempted, too alone, the windshield of an SUV at 3 AM.

There’s no cushion. No parachute. No hidden cartoon trampoline or careful hands wrapping around his waist to drag him back from the plunges that he’s taking bites out of like they’re all midnight secret pleasures.

Remus steps off that solid sturdy ledge and there is no other ending. There’s no way for him to say wait, no way for him to scream hang on, no way for Remus to think I didn’t mean to lose control like this, please let me take it back, please let me kiss Janus one more time, please let me try on Virgil’s sweatshirt just for a second, please let me see that Roman fucking does care just this once—

Remus would know.

They don’t end softly. But they do end.

But hey, maybe that was for the best. Remus had spent his whole childhood choosing who gets to live and die. He’d been selfish and arrogant and Roman Roman Roman and now the universe was telling him he used up all his good will: the headaches and nose bleeds were all warning signs to knock it off and instead Remus flipped a coin in the air and told Janus that he was going to see this through.

((Remus is twenty one and he knew kissing Janus was like letting go of the railing. Is it any surprise that there’s no soft ending to this either?))

Remus’s body had curled on instinct: wrapping himself around the kid— Logan’s kid brother, Remy— so that Remus would hit the ground first and maybe his body would break the fall for the kid so he didn’t die due to Roman’s shitty ass powers and poor Library structural upkeep and Remus’s own stupid part in all this.

He’s never jumped with someone else before. Never had something to hold close as the tattering, violent winds and the heavy iron chain of gravity, and the long, drawn out, endless, breathless space between his heart’s rapid fire beating and none at all, work in tandem to make his last moments the most memorable. But despite it all, Remus’s arms wrap around Remy’s head and the impulse to protectsavekeepalive consumes the last of his mind.

(He can’t be older than sixteen, maybe seventeen, he can’t be any more enamored with his older brother, he can’t be aware yet that all older brothers are shit and they stand at the top of staircases in houses that don’t feel like home and they say I don’t need you, Remus— )

The noise around them turns to static and Remus can’t hear Remy’s scream, but he can feel it in how Remy clings desperately like he hadn’t been fighting to get away like a wild animal less than thirty seconds before.

Remus braces for the floor, for the pain, for the end because he doesn’t have any type of control and there are no soft endings and he was an idiot for ever thinking he’d get to have anything soft in his--

R emu s wak es up thi nki ng abou t sh ards of gla ss in his spine, barbed and jagged and clinging to his insides, because his inner organs are much warmer than the cool night air and much more accepting than the windshield frame.

There’s blood in his mouth, cotton in his throat, a bursting, bulging headache behind his eyes. The rest of his body almost feels like nothing in comparison. His limbs are a distant memory, or maybe a dream? He can’t quite remember what it’s like to have them, even as his left arm wavers in the air over his head and limp and heavy and Remus shakes it just to see if his wrist will fly off and toss his hand into the fuzzy world around him.

He’s lying on the ground.

His spine is still intact by some miracle. His skull isn’t shattered and his brains aren’t spilling across the white porcelain tile floor he’s on. He doesn’t even think his ribs are fractured although they ache and whine with bruises that match every other part of his body. If it weren’t for the dizzy, distant feeling of needing to vomit up all his organs Remus would think he just fucking died and this was his shitty prize in the afterlife.

He blinks a few times trying to… trying to focus his mind on anything. The taste of saliva in his mouth, or the scent of coffee and Lysol hovering in the air, or the pins-and-needles feeling of his fingers twitching as if they had lost all blood circulation in the blank space where Remus’s brain refuses to make any connection as to what is going on, what had gone on, and what is going to happen now.

It’s like scratched DVD in a video player: his memory plays perfect scenes, Blue Ray edition of his tragic life, right up until the floor breaks— until his arms wrap around Remy— until he tries to brace them both for the impact— then there’s a jump-skip-scratch and Remus is staring at blurry, fuzzy drop ceiling tiles and the outline of fluorescent lights that do not belong in the public library that Remus spent all of the night prior memorizing the layout of.

There are desks, a couple dozen, all around him; a giant window, partially weeping condensation and the blinds slightly bent that colors the entire set in a gold-yellow filter; cement brick walls painted a truly inspiring shade of off-white and if Remus squints he can make out pencil sketches of dicks dusting over the closest wall. But the masterpiece that ties it all together is the shitty poster handing right over Remus’s head, staring down at him in some type of mockery.

You miss 100% of the chances you don’t take, it reads. There’s a hockey puck and a net and fine white print of a “Wayne Gretzky” that makes Remus want to claw his skin off.

Remus is twenty one and he’s staring at a shitty drop ceiling feeling like he’s seventeen again and one of Roman’s friends just laid him out in the five seconds the teacher turned her back after the bell rang to release them. Remus’s lungs hurt as he laughs because— because his head swivels around and the cloudy surroundings begin to piece themselves together, creeping out of the fog to say hello, hello, do you remember the worst years of your life, Remus? We remember you!

He is not in a library. He’s not in the library. Remus thinks he’d rather be dead in that library than lying on the floor in a high school classroom.

It’s not even a classroom he recognizes. But the suffocating feeling of his mother forcing his jaw open and the powdered pill taste overwhelms all the other sensations in his disconnected body. The memory of snipped comments from his teachers rings in his ears, living ghosts that Remus hadn’t been able to shed no matter how loudly he’d screamed and hadn’t been able to outrun no matter where he’d gone. His eyes are burning, but he’s certain that if he closes them he’ll wake up again as that same stupid seventeen year old that let Roman’s shitty friends ruin his life on the blind hope that Roman wouldn’t turn out like them too.

Remus had met people who said they peaked at high school, that college had broken their spirits and grinded their souls to dust, that life after schooling was lofty and uncertain whereas high school had been crafted with such rigid rules and a constant social struggle that surpassing expectations had been a breeze that they no longer could grapple with not having. Remus doesn’t know much about normal people, normal lives, normalness, but he remembers very vividly thinking of blood dripping off his lip onto the boys locker room bathroom tile and knowing that he’d met people whose cruelty peaked at high school too.

((Fourteen year old Remus had been excited for high school. Seventeen year old Remus had gripped the edge of a gas station sink debating which hurt worse: getting run over, or knowing that Roman had chosen those asshole high school friends who were going to kill him at a party Remus hadn’t been able to convince him not to go to over his own brother.))

The sterile silence breaks suddenly with a soft snore, and abruptly Remus is very aware that the reason he can’t move the right half of his body is because there’s someone on top of it.

There are no soft ends to freefalls, but Remus’s chin is pressed against the dark curls of Logan’s younger brother who is completely asleep on top of the other half of Remus as if they hadn’t ever been in danger at all. The kid is drooling, lips barely parted, salvia dripping out onto Remus's leather jacket. The fake bomb vest Remus had been wearing is completely crushed, the edges of the cardboard digging numbly into Remus’s ribcage as the kid just curls up on him like a human sized koala.

“What the fuck,” Remus rasps out.

The kid doesn’t stir. Remus uses his still strangely disconnected left hand to shove at the kid’s body, bapping his face just enough to wake him, but the kid’s face scrunches and he nudges his face deeper into Remus’s chest, perfectly content to continue using Remus’s like a giant awkward pillow.

“Kid. Kid. Damnit fuck— Remy.” Remus says. Then louder. “REMY! Fuck, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

He shoves the kid off his right arm in a slow painful movement that is not made easier by the fact that Remus can’t feel anything that had been pinned underneath the kid, but after all the shoving, Remy still just gratefully curls up on the floor as if he found that just as comfortable as a king sized bed in heaven itself, and lets out a drowsy mumble of syllables and goes back to snoring.

Remus’s head throbs distantly as he tries to put anything together, come to some reasonable conclusion, remember if this was some part of Janus’s plan that he cleverly forgot about. He shifts slowly trying to leverage himself into a sitting position and still Remy doesn’t make any move to wake up and start screaming.

There’s a tsunami of panic in the back of Remus’s mind, blocked behind a glass wall made of confusion, just so that Remus can wave to it casually, experiencing microdoses of jitters that usually would have put him into a frenzied state of needing to drive a car into a guard rail. He needs to get up, he needs to find Janus and Virgil, he needs to find out if they’re okay, if anyone is okay, he needs to figure out what the fuck miraculous thing happened to save them both and why Remy then decided to curl up on a known villain, who may or may not be the most wanted man in the country and take a fucking nap.

He needs to— he needs—

They’re both at the back of an empty classroom and had been awkwardly crumpled against the back wall. Several of the desks closest to them are spread in some sort of weird ass pattern which, at first glance, Remus had assumed all teachers who needed to be on pills much more than Remus ever needed to be liked to put their desks in, but at the second, more clear glance, all the desks at the front are lined up in exact rows facing a wall mounted white board with the words “Homework: pg 234, odd problems ONLY!!” printed on it in blue expo marker. In the back closer to where Remus is, the desks were tossed out in some chaotic, nearly artistic design, swirling inward.

But the more Remus looks at it, the more purpose everything has: almost as if someone or something had rolled a giant human-sized, bowling ball into only the third row of seats.

It’s another second before Remus notices that where the figurative bowling ball would have ended is exactly where he just woke up with Logan’s kid brother solidly asleep on his shoulder.

“Ah,” Remus says to an empty classroom. “Fuck.”

Remus isn’t a genius, but well. He can see the future and Janus can shapeshift into animals and Virgil can talk to targeted people on frequencies no one else can hear. There must have been a reason Logan and his brother were both at the FBE.

All of Remus’s bones crack as he stands up, even bones Remus hadn’t been sure he had anymore. His neck aches so dramatically that would have made Roman jealous of its performance and his ribs are certainly whining like a little bitch and the taste of blood in the back of his throat might be real or it might be a side effect of reenacting a swan dive off a hotel balcony in a thunderstorm this time with the supporting cast of a teenager who may or may not be able to teleport on command. The clock on the wall is covered up with a handmade poster stating that a watched clock doesn’t learn math and Remus thinks that he hates this teacher more than he hated any teacher he actually had.

He squats back next to Remy, watching him sleep for a long second, the subtle in….hale and ex….hale steadily unconcerned in all the ways contrary to most people when a sociopath is this close to them. He’s got all the marks of being Logan’s brother, to be honest: the same nose shape, same eye shape, the same hair color although there’s a distinct lack of gel in his hair compared to Logan’s over-saturation. He’s wearing a black, unzipped biker’s jacket, and skinny jeans with white T-shirt that reads “I’m SLEEPING” in Times New Roman Font, like a joke that someone had half heartedly put together and abandoned half way through.

Remus taps his fingers on his knee twice before he makes up his mind. “If you wake up now, I’m going to shove a calculator down your throat.”

And then he starts a quick process of checking the kid’s pockets for his phone. Jacket pockets, inside jacket pocket, jeans front and jeans back as quick and formal as a bouncer at a casino checking someone for bugs. Remy snores deeply, and his breaths even out again and Remus steps back a healthy distance, filled with a relief he’s not going to acknowledge, and holding a slick black iPhone with a kawaii coffee cup hand painted on the case.

It's one thing to be on the FBI’s most wanted list for super villainy. It’s another thing for him to be on the list for the combination of an empty classroom, a sleeping teenager, and Remus’s reputation for being unhinged.

((Seventeen year old Remus remembers a party that he begged Roman not to go to and twenty one year old Remus sucker punches him in the face so he will shut up and stop bringing those memories up.))

The lock screen is a picture of Remy and Logan standing in front of some model spaceship. Logan’s expression is uncharacteristically open and excited, as if he’s experiencing true joy in the face of a hunk of metal. He looks….normal. Human. As if Remus hadn’t watched him die, as if Remus hadn’t feared that smug smirk on his face, as if Remus hadn’t heard Logan use whatever his bullshit superpower was to utterly dismantle all of Remus’s part of the plan, start a gunfight that could have killed them all, and look fucking good while doing it.

Remus could play the logic game here: the back right pocket is where Remus found Remy's phone, so it's a 56.734% or whatever likely that the kid uses his right hand to unlock. But in all honesty Remus “Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Fuck-This”-ed it and chose the right hand.

The kid’s hand is limp and cold as ice. It startled Remus for a whole moment, sending cracks along that glass wall holding back his panic. It if weren’t for the obvious respiratory movements, Remus would have thought he was handling a four-day-old corpse in the middle of a winter snow storm.

But he presses Remy's thumb to the sensor (a very logical finger choice and not at all picked at Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Fuck This again) to unlock it. And then, once Remus has congratulated himself on his very exciting first time hacking the mainframe, he swipes away every. Single. One. Of the billions of notifications the kid has. Even as he's doing it the kid gets fourteen more, each bright and shiny and terrifying to someone who only gets notifications when his phone is almost out of battery.

Instagram reels being sent by four people, text messages from a group of people who don't know how to say everything they need to in one message and aren’t afraid of double-quadruple texting, TikTok videos alerts, gacha game reminders, six calendar notifications for today alone--

The home screen is a selfie of Remy in a big group of kids, all laughing and smiling and holding boba cups and peace signs in the middle of a cafe. It's a bright day in the photo, and several school backpacks shoved under the table as if all the kids had run to this cafe after school on a whim. Probably Remy’s based on how he’s in the middle of it all, looking rather smug for someone who’s personal space had been reduced to a negative.

"I bet you and Roman would get along fucking great," Remus says.

Remus still stares at it for a long minute longer, analyzing the various smiles and fending off the bitter gritty feeling in the back of his throat that comes from nowhere and everywhere all at once.

"Whatever," Remus says, clicking the call button.

Nearly a dozen suggested contacts pop up when Remus starts painstakingly typing Janus’s phone number, with someone having the same number until the very last digit. Remus's thumb hovers over the call button, his eyes flicking to the dutiful clock in the top left corner of the screen (already crowded by new notifications again).

Math has always been one of Remus's more average skills: his perception of time and his ability to count are probably superior to any living being on the planet, but a childhood plagued by the constant visions of the most important person in his life dying meant that his focus had never actually been on his classes. His report card read out half the alphabet, but he especially cheesed his way through his math classes, using a hand full of futures to copy the answers off tests of various studious kids around him, instead of actually learning how the fuck to solve a triangle.

((Remus had been seventeen when Mrs. Copperson had decided to start making him take the her pop quizzes and tests out in the hallways by himself on account that his psychiatrist mandated drugs made him a distraction in her class and Remus liked adding "uck" after the giant red F's she stamped on his papers.))

Still, it throws Remus for a loop, checking the time and then the date because at most he thought he managed to buy Janus twenty minutes of distractions so that he could download the FBE's records and upload a virus that Virgil made which had the defining features of being able to eat through the rest of the system like acid and leave the FBE and Janus’s mother with nothing. When Remus had woken up in the stillness of this classroom it felt like his entire body had been in stasis for eons; a crumpled ragdoll that didn't need bones, left forgotten in the back of a closet or a computer suddenly being booted up but the whole rest of the world didn’t exist anymore thanks to one apocalypse or another.

In fact, Remus thinks that he might have just woken up from the best sleep he's had since he was eight.

But despite the surge of energy, the distant rolling anxiety, the strange suffocating stillness of the atmosphere, and how deep of a sleep Remy is in, the time reads of less than seven minutes since Remus guessed he'd been in the library surrounded by gunshots, clinging to a railing, and facing Roman’s maybe-brainwashed ass.

Remus thinks he might have spent all of it just getting his fucking barring on the new surroundings and the sleeping child and not being dead and buried in a library he’d never stepped foot in before today.

Janus and Virgil probably hadn't even made it out of the library themselves yet, assuming the entire library hadn’t come down with them.

Remus closes out of the call screen, searching through Remy’s apps for a news app that he doesn’t have, before Remus caves and pulls out DuckDuckGo. The top stories are already flashing on the screen: six different news sites with live reporting videos of what is happening at the FBE center in Portland. Remus taps on one that has a frozen picture of Kidnapped Virgil’s panicking face as the thumbnail.

“—et Down! Everyone, get down!” The female reporter is yelling. Underneath her, the border headline of the new site spells out Karen Davenport: Reporter. LIVE ON SCENE. As if the background wasn’t already enough to show what was going on. The tinted glass windows of the library shatter over the frame, and the camera fumbles as the glittering shards dance through the air to the tune of gunfire.

“Are you getting this?!” The reporter yells, caught between fear and excitement. Her hair is frizzing, a strand of it stuck to her pink lipstick, as she crouches with the other reporters and civilians at the front of the crowd, ignoring the police and hired guards and common fucking sense trying to back them away. The camera doesn’t seem to know what to focus on, struggling to jostle between the reporter and chaos in front of them.

Several people rush out of the doors of the library, nearly tumbling down the staircase and into the crowd, screaming. Remus’s heart thunders as he looks at the glimpse of faces contorted in horror for the people he’d recognize or a flash of those blue-grey eyes that no other person in the world has.

“John, are you seeing this?!” the reporter repeats. “I’m here, live at the newly registered FBE headquarters in—”

The camera and the cameraman pitch to the side, disrupted by the chaotic crowd rightened only at the last second before it topples to the ground. Remus has to wonder how much the person behind the screen is being paid, and how they could possibly think it's enough. The bruises on Remus’s ribs ache distantly and his tongue remembers the taste of tear gas and blood and—

By the time the camera rightens again, Virgil is skidding on the platform at the top of the concrete stairs leading up to the front of the shuddering-but-still-standing library. His mask is down, hung around his throat, and displaying his fangs for the world to see. Janus tumbles into him, nearly knocking him down the flight, and his mouth moves in a WE CAN’T LEAVE HIM way although the crowd and the reporter are too loud for Remus to truly make it out.

Virgil grabs Janus by the shoulder, yanking him down several inches and a blast of Patton’s white, power stealing light explodes over their heads in a narrow miss that makes someone to the left of the report scream so loud it peaks the microphone.

“Where is The Prince?!” The reporter’s mic picks up from someone nearby as the camera zooms in on Janus and Virgil arguing. “He was just here!”

“—where it appears a super power aided fight has broken out with no sign of The Prince. Twenty minutes ago, the controversial twin brother of the Prince, previously identified as Remus Regis, armed with a hostage, charged into the building igniting what was sure to be a direct confrontation with The Prince. However, no new information could be captured by our cameras until moments ago when gunfire from inside the building signaled some type of gunfight breaking out. Sources have even suggested that the Mezzanine level inside the building has taken significant damage and gave way— HEY!”

Logan materializes from the side, ripping the microphone away from the reporter with all the finesse of someone who previously owned it. His black jacket is dusted grey with the dust from the collapsed level inside and there’s a scratch along his hand that’s bleeding bright red. Still he shoves the reporter back and brings the microphone up to his own mouth even though his gaze isn't on the Library or the camera.

“The Prince was inside,” he says to the crowd of people still pressed together at the barricade line. “He managed to move fast enough to save all of those underneath the collapse and barely sustained any injuries himself. Statistically—”

“Give that back!” The reporter says lunging at him.

The camera frame latches on to Janus and Virgil as the camera man probably tries to help his coworker get the microphone back. In those precious seconds, Janus’s head snaps over his shoulder and he shoves Virgil back, pushing him down the stairs and towards the crowd and sets himself in front like a human shield. There are too many voices picked up by the reporter's mic— the fight between her and Logan has it jostled in every direction and the confusion must have jostled the settings, but Remus feels his stomach sink all the same when the library doorways fill with those guards and their guns.

“GET DOWN!” Virgil’s voice booms in the area, echoing off the buildings like a scream in a cavern. The rest of the windows in the library and the surrounding buildings shatter at the sudden pressure, the screen of the camera fractures, but it still gives a decent view of Janus throwing off his stolen lab coat, and the acute tips of his wings slicing through his shirt.

Remus feels like he’s underwater. Like he’s stuck floating in space as his arteries burst from the low pressure. Like he’s watching another (and another and another and another and anoth—) future and he can’t change it despite the fact that it's not 3 AM and there’s no thunderstorm and he’s not falling.

Janus’s wings erupt from his back, flaring outwards and unfurling like yellow and black caution tape, covering the civilians behind him like a burning shield. Virgil grabs the nearest person, Logan, and yanks him and the reporter under the cover, under the protection of Janus, and Remus wants to scream at them to forget the people, to leave them, to run, but he can’t breathe around the sweltering terror that sweeps through the open area leaping from the phone screen right into Remus’s chest.

“��police would know better than to fire into the crowd—” Logan’s voice says desperately.

“Oh MY GOD!” The reporter screams.

The light seers into his eyes with crackling, horrific popping noise. It's like popcorn, or Pop Rocks, or the Pen Clicker Douchebag Olympics and all Remus can think of is the noise that the bones in the human bone make when bullets splinter.

The camera does not catch Janus’s face, and the microphone doesn’t catch his screams over everyone else’s, but his body jerks, his wings tremble, and blood sprays up into a mist over the crowd. Remus thinks he might be dying too, thinks that he might have stopped breathing, that he’s seen Janus die a million times and it should have stopped feeling like he’s being ripped open.

“JANUS!” Virgil’s (unmistakable, indisputable) voice yells, sharp and cracking like lightning, and the blowback over the microphones would break the eardrums of anyone listening with earbuds.

“— multiple people have been reported to have survived being shot that many times!” Logan’s voice tries.

The camera gets a single shot of Virgil’s eyes widening, of his mouth opening, of his hands reaching out to Janus as he drops, wings still flared out trying to protect people who were too stupid to leave, who won’t even thank him, who don’t know his coffee order or how he likes to organize his stacks of stolen dollar bills or what size oxfords he likes to wear.

And then Virgil looks up, at the top of the stairs, opens his mouth, and everything explodes away from him. The camera frame flings into the air, swirling around in a epileptic nightmare of colors before slamming into something and the frame goes completely black.

On the news app, holding a phone in both his hands Remus stares at the “[The video you are watching is experiencing some connection issues]” message with white knuckles, but the video stays cut off, the screen frozen and broken and dark and Remus is left drowning during what feels like the end of the world from the other side of the universe a million years after it's happened.

“H-ha,” Remus’s mouth twitches, a rumble clawing up his throat with fingers made of his stomach acids. He desperately covers his mouth with a hand, pressing the meat of his palm into his lips if only to keep the laughter from tumbling out into the air like a freefall because there’s no such thing as a soft end and Remus was stupid for ever thinking so.

He thinks for a moment, that he’s back on that staircase staring at Roman knowing that what he says next is going to be the wrong thing, that he’s on the ground at a mall blinking away visions of flame grilled corpses and words that Janus doesn’t mean, that he’s in a crowd staring at an empty stage seconds and seconds and seconds too late for someone who trusted him more than Remus ever deserved to be trusted.

(How can he always be too late?)

The ground is solid and sturdy under his feet, but Remus is falling anyway. Suspended in the middle of a jump he hadn’t meant to take, his stomach is swooping with the acceleration pressing up into his lungs until he can’t force them to accept any oxygen anymore and his limbs are tingling in that disconnected way that makes them seem like they belong to someone else, something else, somewhere else.

He had fallen asleep, fallen into a wonderful dream, fallen and kept falling and forgotten that the real world didn’t end softly. A scream creeps up Remus’s throat, inch by inch, wriggling and thrashing and tearing horribly against his lungs.

His fingers tremble over the phone, fumbling through the apps for the phone even though he knows what's going to happen, he knows what’s coming, he knows, he knows, he knows.

The buttons are not stiff. Remus’s knuckles are not bleeding and they don’t leave behind traces of his blood as he dials. There’s not a gritty feeling along his teeth and the bottom of his mouth from the Cliff Bar that he ate at a rest stop an entire lifetime ago. His knees tremble to the sound of the ringing, leaving him swaying in the too-long silences, in the bated breaths, in the calm before the hurricane that’s left him at the only survivor when he was supposed to be the only casualty.

The line is ringing and Remus is standing in a high school classroom, shaking apart even though he knows that Janus is not going to answer. The line is ringing and Remus is standing at a payphone knowing that his mother didn’t try half as hard for him as she did for Roman.

The line is ringing and Remus is listening to a generic voicemail and his fingers are canceling the call just to start it again because maybe this time he’ll pick up, maybe this time Janus will huff at him for not believing in him, maybe this time Janus will snap about Remus not following a plan, maybe this time Janus will pick up the phone.

Remus remembered leaving his own phone in his bag, stuffed inside a pair of socks that he stole from Janus the second week they’d been together. He knows he watched Janus leave his in his own bag, grinning as Virgil and him had been bickering about if pumpkins were a fruit or a vegetable. So he knows, he knows, that Janus doesn’t have his on him, that answering a phone call would be the least of his concerns after— five, six, seven— bullets landed in him, that no matter how many times Remus’s fingers dial out the number, Janus still isn’t going to miraculously answer and beg him to come home and call him the wrong name anyway.

He’s twenty one and Janus is not going to pick up the phone call.

He’s twenty one and he thinks he’s been falling for far too long. He’d gotten too used to the jolt of adrenaline and taste of the winds. He’d been treating his four-year fall like a never ending dream that he could live in forever, and now he was waking up with a start in his bed with all his muscles contracting and remembering that the real world is a fucking nightmare.

Remus could have call himself a free fall expert, with all the times that he’s tipped himself over the edge, with how many times he’s merged himself with the concrete sidewalks, with the number of times he’s seen the great THE END to his own story but this… this—

He’s been falling for so long he forgot he’d been falling at all.

“I need to go back,” Remus gasps out.

The idea latches on suddenly, and Remus is suffocating in it, trapped in a void that’s approaching absolute zero at rapid speed. The anxiety swelling around him crashes down like a guillotine’s blade, sharp and merciless in all the ways that Remus has always known the universe to be and forgot anyway.

His hands are shaking and his knees give out but it's fine because he landed next to Remy’s sleeping form. He reaches out and shakes the kid’s shoulder, hard enough to jolt his entire body.

“Kid, Remy. Wake up. You gotta take me back. I need to get back to him.”

Remy's head lulls to the side, his skin an icy cold compared to the burning in Remus's veins. There's no movement behind his eyelids, no sudden jolt that knocks him awake, no grimace of his face or swallowing as he drags himself back to consciousness.

“It’s time to wake up!” Remus says. “You have to take me back!”

Because if he can get back he can— he can— Janus was on the ground, they were shooting at him, Virgil was screaming and Remus can see the future and they need him. If he can get back Janus can tell him what he needs to do to save him and Remus will kiss him and tell him and tell him he’s stupid and he’s sorry he left him. If he can get back— He needs to get back, he has to get back because they need him and Remus pinches hard on Remy’s cheek, but even that doesn’t cause the teenager to flinch.

“I have to fix this. Take me Back! Take me Back There! TAKE ME FUCKING BACK THERE!”

Remus shakes him, and Remy’s head makes a dull thud as it bumps the ground with each shove. Remus barely notices; his brain is counting every second he spends here, scrambling to catch the passing breaths like they're grains of sand in an hourglass counting out Janus's life while Remy dreams so soft and peacefully.

“REMY!”

--There’s no bump or bruise or anything under the dark curls, and Remus doesn’t even have a memory of hitting anything on the way down, not even the fucking floor and so there shouldn’t be shit causing him to be this fucking out of it. Janus was dying and Remus was here with an idiot fucking teenager who was sleeping like they had all the fucking time in the Fucking World. If it weren’t for Logan, if it weren’t for Remy, if it weren’t for Remy’s fucking horrible power that Remus didn’t ask for him to use--

--There’s no bump or bruise or anything under the dark curls, and Remus knows too much about being splattered on the ground to think that they might have hit it like that, to think they might have died, to think that the bitchass kid in front of him is doing anything other than pretending like they have time to pretend to be asleep when Janus just took seven bullets for people who don’t love him and wouldn’t care if he was dea--

--There’s no bump or bruise or anything under the dark curls, and Remus took the brunt of whatever hit they did have, was ready to fucking die when Remy did whatever the fuck he had to get them out of there, wasn’t going to let Remy get hurt and he didn’t get hurt so Remus shouldn’t need to keep shaking him to get him to wake up because they need to get back to Janus who just got shot and shot and shot And Shot AND SHOT and Remus needs to fix it because Janus wasn’t supposed to die, he wasn’t supposed to be alone, Remus promised to stay, promised to help, why aren’t you waking up What is wrong with youwakeup,WakeUp WAKEUPWHATDOESITTAKETOWAKEYOUUPDOYOULIKETHIS?DOYOUTHINKITSFUNNY? STOPMESSINGAROUNDHE’SGOINGTODIEICAN’TFIXITICAN’TSTOPITWHATDIDIEVERDOTOYOU?--

Remus blinks his eyes, just barely manages to stop himself from ramming the kid's head into the porcelain tile floor again.

His hands are around Remy’s head, cupping his ears, and Remy’s limp body is impossibly still, barely breathing and the golden yellow light reflects off the poster over them creating a red hue over his pale skin.

There’s no blood.

Remus can’t breathe anyway. His hands are trembling, his fingers stiff and robotic and bending like metal spoons when he pries them off Remy’s uninjured head. The kid’s skull lulls to the side, a soft huff, another snore, and Remus thinks he’s losing his mind.

The cold silence of the classroom has the walls closing in around them, the cinder blocks exchanging knowing looks because even if Remy didn’t wake up, even if that future— those futures— didn’t happen, even if Remus backs away now and swears never to get near the kid again, the sticky feeling of brain matter on his hands won’t leave.

He can't be older than sixteen.

There’s something in Remus's throat that tastes like blood and feels like live bees and burns like tear gas and hot sauce. He scrambles away from the kid, slamming into a desk so hard that his ribs displace further than the desk does as he flees the room.

((He remembers running through halls like these once, remembers his nose feeling like it was broken when one of Roman’s friends grabbed his hair and slammed his face into his locker after the last bell, he remembers leaving his bag behind in his panic to get away, scrambling on nearly on his hands and knees with blood from his second broken nose trailing down his lip. He remembers the laughter of billions of students as he ran away, and he remembers Roman waiting impatiently at his car later, asking where he was, why he took so long, doesn’t he know that Roman has play practice at the community theater today? Why would you deliberately try to make me late? I’m not even going to ask what happened to your backpack. I should have just left you here, Re. Come on, Let’s go.))

He remembers blood on his hands and on his face and a hundred billion bathroom mirrors that show a person he doesn’t recognize and hasn’t recognized for a long time.

The posters on the walls are colorful smears and Remus wants to drag them down one by one and tear them apart as he runs. His shoes skid on the polished tile and he takes the corner so sharply he slams into the lockers and remembers the sound of a sleeping teenager’s cranium shattering under his fingers.

Remus hits the ground, panting, laughing, choking, crying until the world around him blurs. He’s suffocating on oxygen that tastes like tar, on breaths that congeal in his lungs like molasses, on gasps that harden like stone in his tightening rib cage. It burns worse than a fireball to the face, searing, smoldering, scorching his entire body.

And Remus— Remus can’t— he can’t get it to stop, every inhale throttles in his throat wheezing out through the hundreds of puncture holes in him that match every gunshot wound that Janus is currently dying out from, eons and realms and miseries away, because he believed in a promise that Remus had never been able to keep to anyone.

Stupid, idiot Remus.

Murderous, psychotic Remus.

Sick, sick, so fucking sick Remus.

Who kills— who killed— Roman. Remy. Who got Janus killed and dragged Virgil in this. His parents. Those people at school. Those people on the street. Everyone. All the time. Sick, stupid Remus.

Who can’t just fucking seem to kill himself and make it stick.

Fuck. Fucking Fuck.

He can’t breathe.

He’s aware of every oxygen atom fizzling in the air around him, laughing as he gasps for some type of stability, like he’s on the Mezzanine Level of a library that’s centuries away, feeling the floor crack under his feet and staring at a brother who doesn’t love him and probably never has. His throat is sandpaper and dried stucco and blood and every version of I love you that he never said to his father and when he blinks his eyes, the ghosts of every person he didn’t save, couldn’t save, hadn’t saved, are screaming around him because he can’t do anything right, he can’t save anyone, he’s a murderer and always has been and he’s been pretending this whole time that it was Roman’s fault, but it wasn’t, was it?

It’s just Remus. Sick, stupid Remus. Who should have died getting hit by a silver sedan going twenty over the speed limit instead of Roman.

It would have been better if he had. It would have been right. It would have been— It would have been—

Fuck. It would have been good.

Because if he hadn’t survived, Mom would have never known how to be disappointed, Dad would have never stopped coming home, his friends would have never turned into the monsters that he’d brought out in people. Janus never would have been attracted to a Casino where rumors of a person who never lost were and he never would have died a billion times for something as meaningless as money and Virgil never would have been dragged back into this fight kicking and screaming just to watch his best friend, his lover, his everything die in front of him.

Remus laughs, tears dripping off his chin into the polished floor, splattering over the shadowed silhouette of his reflection. He presses his forehead into the tile, squeezing his eyes closed because if he can’t see— if he can’t see it then— then— fucking then—

It would have been better if he hadn’t been born. All he’s done is ruin things and people and places. He’s brought out the worst pieces of people, like a magnet for every terrible thing that the people he loves are capable of doing: he’s stained through the family portrait and leaving black smears on everything he touches.

He’s seventeen again standing outside Roman’s room staring at a closed door and wondering why Mom didn’t come to break them apart, why Dad hasn’t been home for dinner in months, why the future he saw didn’t line up with what happened and why he can’t stop laughing and why he hurts and hurts and hurts and why Roman seems so certain that he’d be okay without Remus when Remus had given him everything there was to give of himself? Why is he the only one hurting? Why is he always the only one hurting?

He’s seventeen and he’s twenty one and he’s eight and he’s eleven minutes younger than Roman and he wishes that he’d just died instead of growing up.

Because— Because if he stares at his reflection and sees that kid, that stupid idiot sick little kid he’d wrap his hands around his throat and s-squeeeeeeeze just to put him out of his misery because it didn’t get better. Because it only hurts more. Because he wanted to be so right that he stopped listening and maybe those pills had made him better and—

Remus wheezes against the stranglehold on his own lungs, painful and grating and choking as his eyes fight against tears he didn’t give permission to leak out. There’s a person staring back at him in the polished white tile floor, and he looks like a boy who he once saw get run over by— fall off of— dropped a toaster in with— scissors— keys—

A hundred million deaths and Remus didn’t learn from any of them.

There’s a reflection of every person Remus didn’t want to become staring at him and then there’s not because there’s a purple blob covering right where his right eye would be.

Remus gasps for air, sucks in, gulps, and his fingers scrabble over the item: small, round, fits in his palm. His thumb grinds into the imprint on the flat side, his nail chipping along the irregular shape, the irregular grooves, the irregular scratches and gouges and furrows.

The color is plum purple with intersects of off-white eroded with wear until its nearly gray and Remus hysterically remembers bruises on his own skin, on his throat, on his ribs, on his shoulders, on his knuckles. He’s staring through burning eyes, through lava tears, through ashy eyelashes thick with slag and he’s thinking, a coin, a casino coin, a casino chip, a promise made between business partners in a hotel room of a place that housed a million deaths for both of them before Janus’s death had meant anything to him.

There’s a snake on the coin, jaw agape, with fangs on display inviting danger, courting risk, encouraging peril because it’s survived it all anyway. There’s gash across one of the unseeing eyes, notches in the scales, scrapes along the trimming edge from Remus’s special brand of stupid, idiot carelessness, but the dirt and grim has been cleaned from it by Virgil’s gentle, kind hands. There’s a coin in his palm that Janus once bet with, bet on, bet for.

Remus’s lungs ache and weep and Remus squeezes the coin to his chest, and breathes.

His chest shudders in rebellion too short, too quick, and Remus’s fingers ache from how they cling and hold and stay. He breathes, he breathes, he breathes. Even when it feels like he’s trying to move a mountain, even when it feels like he’s trying to climb his way to space, even when it feels like he’s trying to un-bury himself from the grave his family put him in at eight years old.

Remus is twenty one years old and he breathes.

When it stops feeling like he’s drowning after every breath, when the fireburningacidic sense pitters out like a resilient spark being snuffed along hot coals, Remus finds himself sitting against a row of olive green lockers. His head feels cotton stuffed all over again and he uses his sleeve to wipe his face numbly, only managing a wince when he tries to uncurl himself from the ball he coiled into. His spine creaks, twinges, complains and whines and Remus makes an awful noise when he straightens out and takes another look around himself.

Right. Hallway. Highschool. Right.

“Fuck,” Remus rasps.

The hall is empty, and Remus almost laughs at the passing thought of hundreds of students being in the building peeking out of the classroom to see a wanted supervillain having a breakdown in the corridor. He’d be the picture perfect symbol of “Reasons to Stay in School”, and he could almost hear the squeaky voice of a well-meaning, underpaid educator clicking their tongue and saying “And this is what will happen if you don’t clean up your act and focus on passing your classes. Do you want to be this type of embarrassment to yourself?”

Jokes on them, Remus thinks idly. He’d been an embarrassment to himself for so long he didn’t know how to be anything else. He was— is— a mess, the stain and splatter on a blank canvas that ruins it for the artist, the blemish in a glass that causes it to shatter at the slightest touch.

He’s also alone, and not falling, and holding a coin made of a thousand promises. He’s a mess and he’s Janus’s mess.

The thought sends a pain down his throat, an itch that only another round of sobs would satisfy. If he closes his eyes he can picture Janus sitting next to him dressed up in that suit he likes, yellow and gold and dangerous. He can picture those blue-grey eyes that only ever looked at him with kindness, and hear his haughty tone repeating that he does have a poker face thank you very much, and smell the cardamom scent that follows after him like a cloak. If he lets himself sink, he knows he’ll fall into that memory of Janus carding his hands through Remus’s hair, warm and gentle despite all the ways that Remus continued to fuck up.

But he can’t let himself. Remus shakes with his whole body, dislodging the warmth of the anamnesis.

He’s not sure where he is, or what he is, or who he is anymore. But he knows he can’t stay here. He knows he doesn’t want to stay here.

His list of other places to go is short— achingly, brutally short— but it's okay because Remus is not exactly in the mood to do a lot of thinking. He feels like someone came and stole all his skin while he wasn’t looking, like he’s raw and exposed for all the world to see and not in a fun way. The walls aren’t leering at him; they’re sharing side eyes with each other, snickering and whispering about Remus just loud enough for him to know they think he’s irrational and weird.

There’s a chill ghosting along his limbs that he hadn’t noticed before, something plucking at his skeleton, wrapping him in a cocoon of cold. He feels sluggish, and distantly hungry. The thrumming of his headache is back, pounding in his skull like a car alarm someone set off in a hit and run.

He drags himself back to his feet, hugging the lockers as his legs wobble and his vision blurs. It clears after he gives himself a frustrated tickticktick of a second.

He can’t go back to that Library. Remus’s mind creates the picture of it without prompting: the gaping broken structure marked off with caution tape and police officers and all private security; News reporters and cameras flashing because horror sells more than common sense; Roman. The frozen picture left of the news video has Remus’s lungs combusting. How many people got caught underneath? How many people got hurt when Remus managed to get out without more than bruises? There’s a body cooling at the top of a concrete staircase for everyone to see, a martyr made of love for strangers who never fucking deserved it.

If he goes back, walking on his own two feet, he’ll fall to his knees next to that body, and that fall will have so much collateral damage that Janus’s sacrifice would mean nothing.

He can’t go to Virgil’s apartment again. Remus knows that like he knows he can’t trust himself to drive a car without losing track of the speed limit. If he thinks too long about Virgil’s apartment, he’ll remember what Janus’s lips taste like, what level of softness Virgil’s clothes feel like, what warmth and safety and hope could be like, and the stability that is keeping Remus’s feet underneath him will give away. If he goes to Virgil’s apartment he’ll remember everything that could have been and he'll try to figure out he's supposed to do without....without.

And if then he’ll tumble off Virgil’s little balcony and the thing that crawls out from the splatter— because something will crawl out— will take a retribution in pieces from every person it sees after that.

((His bones are humming, rumbling, vibrating with the horrible horrible urge to go anyway.))

He can’t go back to the hotel room he shared with Janus just three days ago, before Roman had reappeared, before the world knew his name, before Janus was Janus and before Remus let himself admit that he wanted to be loved like loving him wasn’t a fucking nightmare that got people killed. For all Remus knew the organization of the parking lot, and the sounds of the city at night, he couldn’t remember the name of it as much as he could remember the taste of rain during a thunderstorm.

He breathes. Forcibly.

Remus is awake, jolted out of a dream he didn't know he'd been in and now he doesn't recognize his surroundings anymore and doesn't think he can fall back asleep ever again.

There's no Idahoan Mall. There's no stolen cars with seats reclined enough for Remus to throw his feet on the dash. There's no generic diner with waitresses that will scream over a kiss. There's no casino with sparkling chandeliers and smiling strangers waiting to be business partners.

That’s nothing new. Remus hasn’t had a stationary place to stay since he was seventeen. He slept in cars and in back alleys and hotel rooms he jimmied the lock to. He hitchhiked his way from the east side of the country to the west with nothing but a bag of two outfits and a pair of boots he stole.

Now he’s twenty one and doesn’t even have a bag.

Well. Remus blows out a breath. He doesn’t have his bag yet. The fragments of the plan are coming back to him, like broken puzzle pieces: Janus had drafted up the entire thing on the napkins on Virgil’s coffee table until Virgil had relented into giving him paper. For all that Virgil had been stubborn about not being involved, he’d been drawn into the planning phase like a comet falling into a blackhole, vetoing ideas left and right as a one man council and poking holes in others like he’d been possessed by a bored second grader left alone with a hole puncher and a stack of report cards.

Janus had picked out Linda Maddock the chocolatier and her daughter as his own way in (after several arguments over how to approach the situation: Janus had wanted to give the mother plausible deniability by not telling her at all, and Virgil’s voice had found a pitch that could make glass shatter), and negotiated Remus’s way in with an antsy vampire who didn’t like the idea of having all those eyes on him for such a long time (a whole five minutes). After about an hour of pointless back and forth, Remus had stepped in to personally promise that Virgil wouldn’t be the center of attention for more than thirty seconds; Remus would steal the show himself or he’ll brighten the ever present spotlight on Roman. Virgil had been soothed with promises of being labeled as a victim of a horrible kidnapping, and subsequently forgotten after he’d been “saved” just like all of Roman’s other damsels-in-distress.

“Alright, fine. Fine! Stop looking at me like that!” Virgil had said, chewing on his lip with his fangs. “You both have a way in. How are you idiots going to get back out? Other than in body bags after this blows up in your faces.”

They had a bunch of contingency plans for their exits. The first was if everything went according to plan and it meant that Janus would sneak his way out through the back entrance of the library and then welcome himself in from the outside through the front for the cameras to catch, swooping in to drag Remus out before anyone could figure out what happened. It incorporated time for Janus to throw a few misleading comments about where he’d been, and for him to flash a smile at the cameras, both of which Janus had insisted were non-negotiable points for himself and Remus had kissed him for it.

If Janus got found out and an alarm got pushed, he was to ditch the flashdrive entirely and get himself out by any means, Remus would leverage the bomb threat over Roman and the security until he got outside and then Janus would find him and fly them to safety. If Janus didn’t meet up with him again (meaning he got caught or injured enough that he couldn’t heal), Remus was supposed to use the crowd to get away, stealing what hats and other clothes he could until he was a few streets away and felt safe again. If no alarm went off but Janus wasn’t appearing for their escape, (meaning that something worse than being caught or injured was going on) then Remus was supposed to ditch entirely, use the crowd to escape, and let Virgil figure out what happened.

If Roman called Remus’s bluff immediately, the whole plan was to be ditched and both him and Janus were to leave by any means possible.

If Dragana Witchall appeared at any point, the whole plan was to be ditched and they’d escape by any means possible.

If aliens attacked—

Remus is pretty sure they had everything covered except for what to do when Logan steps forward and steals the whole show. Revealing the bombs were fake, incentivizing the gunfight with innocent civilians around, having Remus suddenly outnumbered and forcing Virgil out of hiding just to save his life…Remus hands shake thinking about freefalls.

In every version of the plan they said goodbye to Virgil at the library, never to see him again, but amidst the gunfire Remus had hesitated leaving him there and it had caused their escape opportunity to explode into fragments and bring the Mezzanine level down on their heads literally.

But also in every version of the plan, their place of residency to lay low after it all is a motel several counties away that Virgil drove to after he’d done the honors of tossing the molotov cocktail through the library window at nine thirty and checked into and left their bags at.

So. That’s where Remus’s best bet is to gather his unstable, unsteady, un-fucking-believable thoughts and figure out what to do next. The Motel. He can get Janus’s things. He can get his own things. He can figure out a plan to get Janus’s body back and he can bury it somewhere safe and gentle and and and—

He takes a step away from the lockers he’s leaning against and the batshit fucking insane amount of exhaustion yanks at his bones. As if someone amped up the gravity on earth and Remus was the only one to get the fucking memo, or maybe the one who fucking cared to notice all the hard work the universe was doing.

The thought nearly drags a laugh out of his abused strained lungs: wouldn’t that be grand? If the universe took gratitude that Remus was paying attention to it and decided to repay it with even the tiniest smidge of kindness? Wouldn’t it be amazing to wake up in a few seconds and realize his entire life was just one nightmare that never happened? Wouldn’t it be fucking fantastic if he could shed this reality the same way he shed every single one of his deaths?

The more he looks around the less the hallways mimic the ones that he’d grown up in: the brick pattern here is off-white and green and he grew up with gold and reds and blacks, the walkways are wider, polished and there’s no graffiti on any lockers that point out exactly who everyone had collectively decided didn’t belong. The lack of real color has him feeling off-balanced and the haze of weariness has his footsteps dragging like a dream he didn’t remember entering: there’s a taste in the air that reminds him inexplicably of being in the middle of a crowd and seeing flashes of white light wrap around him until there’s nothing left of the world he knew.

He only barely knows where he ran, barely realizes that he’s retracing his blurry fuzzing panicky paces until he’s nearly walking right by the only classroom with an open door.

Remy is still laying there, on the floor, unharmed and asleep, chest rhythmically lifting and falling with a deep unconsciousness. It feels like no time has passed, like all the time has passed, like the world is gone and they’re the only ones left, and at any second Remus will turn around and find a billion people behind him watching and waiting to prosecute him for the mistake he makes.

He hovers in the doorway, hands dragging along the fringe of his shorts, and fingers catching on his fishnets. His feet are waiting to walk away, to sing adios as he leaves the kid right there, to forget about the feeling of brain matter on his hands and the shine of blood on the off colored brick walls.

No one would have to know about a future that didn’t happen, and he could keep running away.

But Remus can’t help thinking of the snippets of blurred futures where Remy got shot in that library for the crime of being behind Remus when he dodged and how Logan screamed like the world was ending. Remus can’t help but think of a home screen of a boy surrounded by more people than Remus can count. Remus can’t help thinking that people would miss the kid in front of him more than they had ever missed Roman Regis’s weird younger brother.

“Okay,” Remus says to himself. “Okay.”

He’s not Janus. He’s not a shield to defend against attacks, throwing himself forward without a hesitation to take the brunt of something he won’t survive. He’s not and never has been, but if Janus were here he could never leave this kid to wake up alone after dying or near dying or almost dying or dying-but-not-this-time or not-dying-but-I-thought-I-was. Remus is not a comfort, but even he wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone.

He shoves his way into the classroom before he can think anymore. The desks flinch apart with a little persuasion from Remus’s hands, jolting like they’re afraid of him, of what he did to Remy, of what he could do again. The small shrieks of noise pick and pluck at Remus’s resolve, until he’s moving on adrenaline and animal brained instinct only.

((There’s a phone on the ground, face down, with a coffee cup winking up at him, and Remus’s hands shake as they pick it up. It’s not covered in blood and his hands are not sticky and there’s a billion notifications dinging on the screen and not a single one talks about a murder that just happened on live TV to a man whose last act was trying to protect people.))

But he can’t think about that. He won’t think about that. He told himself not to think anymore, and so he doesn’t, not until he has Remy’s arm pulled over his shoulder and he’s dragging him towards the hallway again, and then after that, the only thing Remus is focusing on is getting them both to somewhere far, far away.

[Next Chapter]

#deja vu au #Remus sanders #Janus Sanders #Remy Sanders #Lets goooooo #sanders sides #demus #dukeceit #tw: panic attack #TW: temporary character death #Remy's existence is enough to get him into Situations(TM)#That Feral Type of Love That Makes You Commit Crimes

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thatgirlyourejected · 5 months ago

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Sagau au part 3

Pt. 2 Pt. 3.5 part 4

Tw. Creator death. first death; killer Morax, A.k.A Zhongli

The creator was surrounded… no, that’s not right… I was surrounded; yes much better. The towering figures of my angered children, pointing their fingers cursing me as an imposter. Maybe I am, I don’t know anymore. Yes this is my body but the soul in it is innocent, they are me and I them. My poor child of light.

“Why can’t I just be happy!?” I cried golden bloodied fingers clawing the grass. “It’s not fair! Just because I have this face that I never chose do you deem me an abomination! I want to live! I want to be happy!” I screamed.

“Silence.”

Echoed the commanding tone of Morax.

“You deserve nothing! You are a heretic from the abyss, who dares to copy our creator, not only their visage; you mock their blood. You truly are an evil beast!”

You sobbed vision bleeding to black, as you took a final gasp of air.

“Next time I’ll be happy”

Was your final thought before you were embraced by the stars, granting you new life.

Asks are open

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serickswrites · 13 days ago

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Sugar Plums Dancing in Their Heads

Warnings: captivity, torture, restraints, blood, temporary character death, nightmares, flashbacks, hurt/aftermath, hurt/recovery

Caretaker ran down the corridor. They couldn't be too late. Their exhausted body protested being pushed further, their lungs screaming for air. But they couldn't stop. They were so close. They had found Whumpee. Whumpee needed them.

Caretaker skidded to a halt at the end of the corridor, where it opened up to a great room. "NO!" They screeched as their brain finally made sense of what their eyes were seeing.

Whumpee hung limply in the chains keeping them suspended the air. Blood dripped from the deep cuts that littered their body. Their head hung low, obscuring their face from Caretaker's view.

"Whumpee, no! Say something! I'm here!" Caretaker shouted as they raced forward. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.

Whumpee didn't move. Didn't groan. Didn't so much as even breathe as Caretaker called to them. "Whumpee, please, say something," Caretaker said as they reached Whumpee.

Caretaker gasped as they could finally see Whumpee's face. Their eyes were closed, their features lax. Blood and saliva dripped from their mouth. "Whumpee, please. Please, you have to be ok. You have to be ok." Caretaker pressed two shaking fingers to Whumpee's throat.

"NOOOOOOO!" They screamed as there was no pulse beating beneath their finger tips. "PLEASE NOOOO!"

"Caretaker, Caretaker," a voice called gently, wrenching Caretaker out of their horror, "Caretaker you have to wake up."

Caretaker jolted awake. They blinked against the bright lights in the room. Where were they? Whumpee? "I didn't fall asleep."

"You were having a nightmare," Friend said with a gentle smile, "you fell asleep after we got home from visiting Whumpee. You were so exhausted, I thought it best to let you sleep."

Caretaker breathed a sigh of relief. It was a nightmare. It was only a nightmare. Whumpee was alive. Whumpee was alive and healing in the hospital. Whumpee wasn't dead. They had arrived in time. "Thanks for waking me."

Friend nodded. "How about we get you some nice chamomile tea and see if we can chase that dream out of your head."

Tags: @mousepaw @jumpywhumpywriter @knightinbatteredarmor @hufflepuffwritingstuff2 @anightmarishwhump

@steh-lar-uh-nuhs @celestialsoyeon @st0rmm @ay5ksal @pedro-pedro-pedro-pedro-pe

@pepeniascat

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skyward-floored · 2 months ago

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Whumptober Day 26 - Nightmare, regret

Continuation to days 10 and 18, the culmination of the blood curse fics.

I’ve had parts of this written since September I’ve been so excited for it :) please enjoy.

Warnings: all of the same for the previous days, (a lot of) blood, aftermath of torture, severe injuries, violence... I think that’s all.

Ao3 link

Day 10

Day 18

————————————————————

Getting to the dungeons is no easy task.

Legend had been hoping Ganon would leave Hyrule unguarded, but he’d known immediately it was a fruitless sort of hope. He’s proven right as he, Warriors, and Wild all tear through the monsters flooding the hallways, armored knights, hulking moblins, dozens more creatures Legend doesn’t even recognize.

He’s beyond grateful the captain came along with them— Warriors’ crowd control is a truly beautiful thing.

Between the three of them they manage to work their way downwards, the halls growing darker, the stonework older. Legend’s palms sweat the further they go, heart thudding in his throat. The princesses said Hyrule was alive, and he believes them, but...

Is it possible they’re wrong?

Their voices are silent when he whispers a question, and Legend no longer feels the warmth of their connection. Ganon must have blocked them off again.

The Links fight past a group of moblins, and make their way down yet another flight of stairs, this one even darker than the others. A single lit torch meets them at the bottom, catching on shiny armor and glowing eyes, a hoard of darknuts standing before them. They’re all gathered tightly in front of a solid door, and Legend knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that that’s where Hyrule is.

If nothing else, the bright smear of blood on the door would be proof enough.

Nobody hesitates despite being grossly outnumbered, and they leap into battle yet again, the squad of dark knights meeting their swords with their own. Legend is focused solely on getting towards the door, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t get through.

The darknuts may be slow, but their numbers are vast, and their swings are wide. Whenever Legend tries to duck past, another sword swings for his head, another hulking body covered in armor blocks his path.

He lets out a snarl as he’s pushed away yet again. We don’t have time for this!

Warriors leaps in front then, separating a head from a darknut’s shoulders, and gives Legend a tense nod.

“I’ll clear a path. Get him out,” Warriors says with gritted teeth, forcing back a wave of enemies with a spin attack. Legend nods in return, and they plow their way towards the door together, Wild snapping off another hail of arrows before jumping into the fight with a claymore.

Legend spots something glittering on the belt of one of the knights, and he lunges forward, sliding under a blow and snatching the key at the same time. Warriors managed to create a small pocket of space by the door in the meantime, and Legend bolts for it, jamming the key in the lock and turning it with fumbling fingers.

The door creaks open, and Legend scrambles inside, Wild following close behind. Warriors slams the door shut behind them, staying outside, but Legend barely notices, staring at the center of the room with relief and horror crashing together in his chest.

They found Hyrule.

Wild makes a soft noise of distress, a hand covering his mouth as they both stare at their friend. Legend feels like he can’t move, his feet frozen to the floor as he stares at the nightmarish sight, bile rising in his throat.

Hyrule is silent and unmoving where he hangs off the floor, strung up like a rack of meat. Chains are clasped around his bony wrists that have him dangling a bit above the ground, and at least one shoulder looks dislocated from the stress.

He’s soaked in blood— Legend doesn’t even know how it’s possible for there to be so much blood on him, it’s like he took a bath in the stuff. Most of his skin is red, or brown with dried blood, and somehow despite the vast amount of blood he’s coated in, there’s still more steadily dripping from his wounds, and falling to land in a basin below. Legend almost vomits at the sight, and he hears Wild swallow thickly.

The longer Legend looks at Hyrule the worse it gets, his eyes catching on countless cuts and lashes, gouges and stabs. There’s fang marks on Hyrule’s neck, and his shoulder looks like something bit into it and pulled, the flesh torn nearly to the bone.

The realization that Ganon must have been drinking Hyrule’s blood straight from the source makes Legend’s vision go red with fury, but anger won’t serve him here, not now.

They need to get Hyrule out and safe, and then he can rip Ganon to pieces.

“Watch the door,” Legend finally manages to say, and Wild moves to stand by it, knuckles white where they grip his weapon. Legend hurries over to Hyrule, viciously kicking aside the basin that’s catching the blood dripping off his unmoving form, and it shatters, spilling red across the floor. He reaches a hand towards Hyrule, then hesitates, unsure of where even to begin.

He breathes out and lightly touches Hyrule on a part of his leg that seems mostly unscathed. The traveler twitches, a weak attempt at flinching away from him, and despite how small the movement is, it gives Legend a bit of hope.

“Hey ‘rule,” Legend whispers, keeping his hand on Hyrule’s freezing skin. “We’re here.”

I’m so sorry we weren’t sooner.

Hyrule doesn’t reply, doesn’t act like he even heard Legend’s voice. He doesn’t do anything except let out a broken whine as Legend stretches up to reach the chains and free him, and accidentally brushes an injury on his chest.

“Hey, just hold still,” Legend soothes in a voice he hopes doesn’t shake. He unlocks the chains as fast as possible, and then carefully catches Hyrule, the traveler letting out a weak moan as Legend lowers him to the ground.

Hyrule’s head lolls against Legend’s arm, blood trailing from his nose, his lips. If he hadn’t heard him make a noise mere moments ago, Legend doesn’t know what he’d think.

“Link?” he asks quietly, patting Hyrule’s cheek as he holds him in his arms. Hyrule doesn’t react, and Legend swallows back the terror beating wildly in his chest.

He’s alive. He’s alive.

You just need to keep him that way.

Legend breaths out, then pulls a fairy from his bag, hoping she’ll do some good. The moment the cork is out she rushes over to Hyrule with a jingly shriek, and sparkles fall onto his bloodstained chest, making blood shine in the light. The fairy spins in tight circles over him, a sweeping dance of healing, but... nothing seems to change.

The fairy chimes worriedly and tries again, but still nothing happens. No color returns to Hyrule’s cheeks, no wounds are sealed closed. His breath remains just as thin and rattling as before, and the fairy chimes a sad apology at her failure.

Legend looks at Hyrule, pale as death and stained red everywhere else, and breathes in sharply. The curse Zelda spoke of, the one where Ganon is drawing his power from Hyrule’s lifeblood.

It must be making healing magic ineffective.

“We’ll try again later,” he whispers to the fairy, and she actually zips back into the bottle, like she knows she’ll be needed.

Legend swallows, and looks down at Hyrule again, his friend looking like more of a corpse than anything.

“Link,” Legend whispers, thumbing away a dark glob of blood from his chin. “Come on Rulie, wake up.”

Hyrule shifts minutely at the gentle touch, his face twitching. A single green-brown eye that’s bloodshot and haunted drags open, the other too encrusted with blood, and takes a long moment to focus, staring blankly at Legend’s face. Something flickers in it, just barely, and Hyrule squints, his gaze trailing dully across Legend.

Then his eye widens.

He mouths Legend’s name, either too exhausted or too shocked to actually speak, but Legend nods, and briefly presses their foreheads together.

“It’s me. We’re here,” he whispers, holding Hyrule’s head with a shaking hand. His hair is greasy and almost entirely matted with blood, and Legend runs a careful hand through it. “It’s okay.”

Hyrule nearly collapses into the touch, shaking with a silent sob, and Legend doesn’t waste any time in lifting him up, uncaring of any stains he’ll receive from doing so. Hands fumble weakly as they attempt to hold on, and Legend simply adjusts his hold, running his hand through Hyrule’s hair again.

Hyrule tries to say something, but all that comes out is a rattling sound, choked and distraught.

“I know, it’s okay,” Legend murmurs, standing up with the utmost care. “Save your strength. We’re taking care of things.”

Hyrule looks at him with tears in his eyes, and then his breath shudders as he goes limp, energy spent. Legend quickly checks that he’s still breathing, then looks towards the door.

“Wild,” Legend calls, and the champion is at his side in an instant, face pale. “I can’t heal him, I think it’s the curse. How are things out there?”

“Not great, but I think we can get him out if we have to,” Wild stammers, still staring at Hyrule. “The captain cleared the worst of things, there’s only a few higher-level enemies now...”

He trails off, setting a hand on Hyrule’s head, and too many emotions to identify flicker in his gaze.

“All this in a week?” he whispers finally, and Legend swallows.

“I think it’s been longer for him.”

The cell is quiet for a moment as they digest that, the sounds of battle outside muffled by the thick door. Legend shakily breathes out, then straightens his shoulders, shifting his hold on Hyrule.

“Okay. We need to break whatever’s tying him to Ganon,” he says, shoving away the distress at seeing Hyrule so broken. Legend kneels back down, and grabs a cloth from his pouch, dumping some water on it. “Look for a mark, a weird injury, anything out of the ordinary. I’ll see if I can find it magically.”

Wild nods, and Legend hands him the cloth so he can clean Hyrule up enough to actually see his skin. Then he gently places a hand on Hyrule’s forehead, sending out a little flicker of magic.

As expected, instead of Hyrule’s magic meeting his flicker with its own, Legend’s is lost in an abyss, deep and black and red. Legend hisses at the feel of it, dark and ugly, and he gets a small but intense flash of the sheer pain Hyrule is in, injuries that won’t close, blood eternally dripping from them, a curse constricting his spirit and sapping him dry.

Keeping him alive for the sole purpose of enhancing Ganon’s power.

Legend harshly breathes out, and carefully reaches around it, prodding lightly at the perimeter, trying to locate the source. It takes him a long time, and he and Wild speak at the same time.

“There.”

Legend opens his eyes, and sees that Wild is pointing to the same spot he is, right over Hyrule’s heart. Wild wiped away enough blood that they can both see the mark on his skin, something shaped vaguely like a handprint. It’s like a warped version of the one over Ganon’s heart, angry and red, and glowing just a bit, and Legend swallows.

“Yeah, that’s it,” he breathes, setting a careful hand over the mark. Hyrule twitches, face screwing up, and Legend quickly draws back again. “Now we just need to figure out how to break it.”

A loud clang comes from outside the cell, and Legend and Wild both jump.

“...I think that’ll have to wait,” Wild says with a frown, and Legend nods, pulling Hyrule more into his arms again and carefully standing. “...You have him?”

“Yeah,” Legend replies, adjusting Hyrule as gently as possible. Hyrule’s head lolls. “He’s... not that heavy.”

Oh Hyrule, I’m so sorry.

Legend barely finishes the thought when the door explodes open, and Warriors goes flying across the floor, nearly hitting Wild. Wild grabs his shoulder in alarm, and a darknut appears in the doorway, a black one.

“You okay?” Legend asks quickly, and Warriors spits blood out of his mouth as he stands. He’s got a few more injuries than before, but nothing that looks too major.

“I’ll live. Hyrule?” Warriors asks in return, eyes going wide as he quickly scans the limp figure in Legend’s arms.

“Alive,” Legend reports grimly. “He won’t stop bleeding, and a fairy didn’t work. Ganon’s doing. From what I could tell, their connection is keeping him alive but stopping any healing.”

Warriors’ face twists briefly with emotion, and he sets a few quick fingers under Hyrule’s chin, obviously feeling his pulse. Legend sees the captain’s shoulders droop just a little in relief after a second, and he runs a hand over Hyrule’s head before drawing back. Warriors retrieves his sword, turning back towards the enemy, and rushes forward to meet the darknut’s weapon with his own.

Wild grabs his bow again as another appears behind the first, and Legend clutches Hyrule to his chest, mentally apologizing as Hyrule’s breath hitches. They need to wrap his wounds, figure out if they can heal him at all, break whatever curse Ganon has tied them together with, but it’s not safe here.

It’s not safe anywhere.

“What if we get him away from the castle?” Legend thinks out loud, staying close to Wild. “Maybe distance will weaken Ganon enough for the others to stop him.”

“You want us to just leave them here?” Wild asks in dismay, and Legend swallows.

“You have any better ideas?”

“I don’t like it,” Warriors grits out as he blocks a wide swing. “But you may be right. Leaving might be our only option.”

“No.”

The voice that speaks is barely there, and Legend and Wild both startle, looking at Hyrule. Somehow he looks even paler than before, but there’s a desperate gleam in his eye, cracked open again.

“No?” Legend repeats as Warriors finally kills the first darknut and falls back to their small formation.

“No. Get... me, to him,” Hyrule rattles, breathing labored. “Ga...non...”

“Are you insane? Absolutely not,” Warriors replies, wiping some blood off his brow with a fierce look. “Hyrule you can’t walk, you’d be a sitting duck in there. And no offense, but you’re essentially a living Ganon battery at the moment. The last place you should be is anywhere near him.”

“Need... get,” Hyrule insists, voice breaking with exhaustion. “Break the, c’nne...ction...”

Legend pauses, and looks straight at Hyrule. “You know how to break it?”

Hyrule weakly nods.

“A... guess,” he rattles, his eye closing again. “P...lease. Need to... fi...”

He doesn’t manage to finish, blood dribbling from the corner of his mouth, but Legend can guess what he was going to say.

Fix my mistake.

For a moment, the only noise in the cell is that of Warriors and Wild keeping the darknuts back, Legend rifling in his pouch for a weapon he can use while holding Hyrule.

“I think we should take him.”

Wild is the one who speaks up, and Legend looks over at him as he fights. His face is twisted with an emotion Legend doesn’t entirely recognize, but there’s understanding in it. Of the need to stop something you were unable to defeat before, to fix what was broken because of you. Make up for a failure.

Wild knows what that’s like.

“If anyone can break it, it’s Hyrule,” Wild continues, eyes steely. “We should give him that chance. And the others will need us, we can’t leave them to fight alone.”

Legend catches Warriors’ eye, and the captain looks torn as he dodges an attack, looking at Hyrule, unconscious again.

“I think we have to,” Legend finally admits, hating the idea of bringing Hyrule anywhere near the monster painted in his blood, and yet... knowing it needs to happen.

“I think you’re right,” Warriors agrees quietly.

His faces gets even more fiercely determined, and Warriors turns to face the darknuts at the door, scarf rippling out behind him. He stays beside Legend, Wild on his other side, and Legend pulls out an ice rod, even knowing he might not be able to use it while carrying Hyrule, but feeling better with a weapon in his grip.

“Okay. We’ll get you there,” Legend says as he stands, even though Hyrule is unconscious and doesn’t hear him.

And without another word, they rush at the monsters.

(...)

Fighting their way back to the throne room is easier than leaving it was, but still isn’t easy. They killed most of the beasts on the way down, but more come to take their place, and they’re down a fighter now.

And also trying to protect Hyrule, who is an instant target.

Legend occasionally manages a blast from his ice rod despite the weight in his arms, freezing a monster’s footsteps, actually destroying a few fire-based enemies. But mostly he stays close to Warriors and Wild, keeps Hyrule out of the line of fire, and tries not to think about how sticky and damp his tunic is starting to feel.

It’s a good thing it’s already red.

Hyrule must be stuck somewhere between unconsciousness and clarity, for his eye flickers now and then, and Legend sometimes feels his hands try to weakly hold on to him. At one point he looks down and sees a tear making its way through the dirt and blood, and Legend swallows thickly before wiping it away.

He wants nothing more than to take Hyrule far away from all of this, but they can’t. Legend knows better than most about attempts to escape destiny, and he has a funny feeling this is one of those times.

Whether he likes it or not, Hyrule has to face Ganon.

Red light spills across their faces as they come up from the dungeons, crimson rays falling through the window. Hyrule twitches when it falls on him, and lets out a soft moan, face screwing up in pain. Legend turns his back to the light, and the three of them hurry back towards the throne room, Hyrule’s breath rasping more the closer they get.

The door is still open from earlier, and they charge in, Warriors and Wild standing in front of Legend like bodyguards. Legend quickly surveys the battle they’re now in the middle of, and winces.

The room is in much worse of a state than before, windows shattered, cracks in the floor, a small hole blasted into the wall. Four is lying unmoving at the base of a pillar, blood on his back, and Twilight is defending him against any stray magic or blows. Wind and Sky are working in tandem trying to keep Ganon distracted, Time on their heels, and it looks like they’ve had some small luck in actually hitting him.

They’re all bloodied though, and obviously drained, and Legend knows they wouldn’t have lasted much longer.

Ganon swings his trident in a huge thrust, forcing the heroes attacking him to retreat, and turns on the returned group, his face furious. But the moment his eyes land on Hyrule, the fury is replaced by surprise.

And then pure glee.

“You brought him right to me?” Ganon howls with laughter, a malicious grin stretching his mouth wide. Hunger glints in his gaze. “I should be thanking you, I’m in need of refreshment.”

“You’ll have to go through all of us first,” Legend spits, grip tightening on Hyrule.

Ganon’s laughter booms, and Hyrule jerks in Legend’s arms, eye shooting open at the sound. Sky takes advantage of the distraction, leaping forward and managing to slice the master sword right across Ganon’s shoulders. The blade shines and Ganon howls, whirling around inhumanly fast and hitting the side of Sky’s head with his trident.

A deafening crack rings through the room and Sky goes sprawling, landing in a motionless, bloodied heap on the ground. The master sword clatters against the stone, Sky and Ganon’s blood staining it, and the battle immediately kicks back into high gear.

Someone runs for Sky, Legend doesn’t notice who. Four starts to get back to his feet, shaking, but awake.

And Ganon turns towards Legend, yellow eyes fixed on Hyrule.

The other heroes immediately jump to his defense as Legend scrambles backwards, and Hyrule makes that horrible wet rattling sound again, like his lungs are rotting inside of him. Legend looks down and Hyrule looks up, expression frantic through the pain.

“Sword...” he says with a wet cough, spattering more blood on his chin. “Sky’s... the...”

“Got it,” Legend says firmly, and before he can overthink his newly-made plan, thrusts Hyrule into Warriors’ arms, his own hands sticky with blood. “I’ll get the sword, you play keep away.”

Warriors nods, then holds Hyrule tight to his chest, staying behind the others and running whenever Ganon gets anywhere close. Legend sprints for all he’s worth to the other side of the room, never more grateful for his pegasus boots as they glide across the stone. He skids to a stop beside Wind, the sailor’s eyes damp as a fairy finishes up on Sky, his eyes already fluttering open.

“You okay?” Legend asks in alarm, and Sky slurs an affirmative, dizzily raising himself to a sitting position.

Wind looks extremely relieved, and Legend grabs the master sword, her steel cool and warm all at the same time. “Is Hyrule..?” Wind asked nervously, and Legend stands back up.

“He’s alive. We’re working on the rest, he needs the Master Sword,” he replies quickly, before sprinting back to where Ganon is trying to plow through the heroes. He dodges a blast of magic and a wide trident swing, and pulls up short beside Warriors, Hyrule’s breath coming in short, quick gasps.

“Here,” he offers, and presses the hilt into Hyrule’s hand. Hyrule’s working eye goes wide, and he grasps weakly at it, the master sword lighting up.

Ganon stumbles, then roars, more deafeningly than ever before. Legend sees the mark on Hyrule’s chest glow, the traveler’s face screwing up in pain, and Ganon storms towards them, eyes blazing.

“She’s working on breaking it, keep him busy!” Legend yells, then runs for Ganon, ducking under an attack and trying to hit his face. The others get the hint, and they rush Ganon, trying to overwhelm him through sheer numbers.

All they need is to keep him busy until the master sword is done breaking the curse.

Warriors stays back, always moving, always staying as far away from Ganon as possible, occasionally handing Hyrule over to someone else. The master sword grows steadily brighter, and Legend can hear Hyrule’s struggling breaths from across the room.

Ganon’s face only grows more enraged, and his attacks get faster, harder, more desperate. Hope flickers in Legend’s chest, and he even manages to score a hit on Ganon’s arm, the beast reeling back with a snarl. By the three, this might actually work.

He never should have had the thought.

Ganon’s eyes glint maliciously, and he goes invisible, blood and all. Legend freezes, as do most of the others, their shields up and ready. But none of them anticipate the burst of magic that spreads out like an explosion, launching them all backwards with a concussive force.

Legend is thrown to the ground, ears ringing, but he still hears a cry that makes his blood run cold.

He struggles to sit up, and sees a crystalline barrier blocking off part of the room, Ganon sneering inside of it.

And Hyrule on the ground a few paces away, unmoving.

“No!” Legend yells, lurching to his feet and slamming his sword against the barrier. It knocks him backwards, and Time catches him, both of them almost falling over.

Vaguely Legend registers Warriors also on the ground, Four helping him up, the others struggling to their feet and gasping in alarm, but he’s too busy running wildly through plans in his head, options and items and desperate, stupid things coming to mind.

“You must have known it would end this way,” Ganon grins, stalking closer to Hyrule. His voice seems slightly strained. “Your friends dying around you, you at my mercy yet again. Your shadow has proved more useful than I thought.”

Of course this is all his fault, Legend thinks furiously, slamming his sword against the barrier and getting launched back again.

Hyrule tries to scrabble backwards, but he can’t move fast enough, and Ganon stops him by putting a hoof on his chest.

“Shall I show your friends what I showed your princesses?” Ganon leers, his hoof pressing down. Legend swears he hears something crack, and more blood bubbles at Hyrule’s mouth, the traveler letting out a choked shriek. “That you’re nothing more than a slave, a failure.”

“Don’t listen to him!” Legend yells with the others, blindly grabbing weapons from his pack and slamming them at the barrier. Nothing makes so much as a dent.

Hyrule’s shaking all over as Ganon speaks, but his grip is still firm on the master sword, open eye blazing. He drags it closer to him, and Ganon makes no move to stop him, amusement on his face.

“What are you going to do with that, little hero?” he sneers, licking his tongue along his fangs. “Going to kill me? You can try all you want, but I’ll always return. I have an endless supply of blood, and it will bring me back no matter what you do, or how hard you try to stop it—”

Legend almost misses it it’s so fast.

One moment Ganon is leaning towards Hyrule, his fangs bared wide, and the next, the master sword is buried in his throat, almost up to the hilt.

Blood drips from between his teeth, and Ganon looks down at Hyrule in shock, the traveler gripping the hilt with all he’s worth.

“And I,” Hyrule gasps, obviously using every ounce of strength he possesses to hold onto the sword, “will kill you, every... single... time.”

Ganon howls, lurching backwards, Hyrule’s grip lost. A spurt of blood comes from his mouth in a hacking cough, eyes wild and enraged, and a deafening roar shakes the room, shattering any windows that aren’t already broken.

There’s a blinding flash, a shockwave rippling across the room. The barrier breaks as Ganon collapses, and Legend bolts, scraping his knees as he falls beside Hyrule’s limp form.

“Link,” he says frantically, Hyrule pale and limp as Legend tries to find his raspy breathing. The mark on Hyrule’s chest is just a pale scar now, but Legend doesn’t care. “Link don’t you dare, you’re not allowed to put us through this again!”

Legend feels for a pulse with shaking hands, checking his wrist, his chin, anything. Hyrule’s chest is still, eyes closed, expression slack. Legend lifts his upper half onto his lap, checking for any signs of life, but the horrible rasping has stopped, heartbeat stilled.

Blood still drips from his wounds, but it feels more final, more like his life is what’s trickling out. The curse isn’t unnaturally keeping him alive anymore.

Hyrule’s gone.

Legend can’t stop the sob that bursts from his throat, the emotion of everything suddenly hitting full-force.

“No, no no— no,” Legend chokes out, clutching Hyrule to his chest, pressing his face against his shoulder. Blood smears on his face, and Legend sobs again, unable to hold it back. “No— I’m sorry Rulie, I’m—” I’m sorry I left you this mess, I’m sorry we weren’t faster, I’m sorry we couldn’t get to you I’m sorry I’m sorry—

Legend doesn’t know how much of anything he’s said out loud, but he doesn’t care, tears mixing with blood. Ganon lets out another dying howl, and someone’s hand sets on Legend’s shoulder, heavy with grief.

Something shifts at his side, and Legend doesn’t even notice, he’s so lost in the nightmare. It’s not until pink drifts into his vision that he realizes what’s happening.

Legend startles, raising his head, and sees the fairy from earlier hovering in front of his face.

“Can...” Legend rasps, barely daring to hope.

It didn’t work before, but now..?

The fairy chimes, and her glow brightens, lighting up tearstained faces. The others are all gathered around Hyrule, some keeping an eye on Ganon as he dies, but otherwise focused on the fairy, and their missing member.

She dances over him again, sparkles drifting from her like pink flurries of snow. They shine on tears and blood, disappearing as they touch Hyrule’s skin, and Legend watches through damp eyes, barely daring to breathe.

The fairy finishes, letting out a bright chime, her wings fluttering. She wobbles over to Warriors’ shoulder and sits, and then... Hyrule moves.

Legend jumps, realizing now that some of Hyrule’s wounds have been closed. He’s still a disaster, and the fairy could only fix a few of the very worst injuries, and not fully, but it worked. Legend holds a shaking hand on Hyrule’s cheek, and then the traveler’s eye slowly blinks open again.

Legend lets out the breath he’s been holding in one huge exhausted exhale, the end hitching in a relieved sob. He clutches Hyrule tight, and the others press in around them, warm hands and relieved sighs, exhausted sniffles and hiccups. There’s relieved crying in the back of Legend’s mind too, and he knows the princesses are safe.

“He’s gone..?” Hyrule rattles after a minute, and Legend nods, sniffing horribly as he wipes his nose on his sleeve. He smears blood and tears and all sorts of gross things around, but he’s already covered in blood and dirt anyway.

“He’s gone,” he confirms in a thick voice, still holding Hyrule tight. “He’s gone. You did it, Link.”

A trembling laugh comes from his arms, thick and sniffly and weak. It fades into a hysterical sob, and they don’t say anything more, Hyrule clutching weakly at Legend, Legend running a few shaking fingers through his hair. The others press in again, holding them tight, and Hyrule only looks up once at where their enemy used to stand.

Ganon is nothing but a pile of ashes, the Master Sword glowing softly atop the pile.

#(there may be a short part 4 but I’m unsure as of now)#linkeduniverse #linked universe #lu legend #lu hyrule #tw blood #tw violence #tw temporary character death #oop #whumptober #whumptober 2024 #fic #no.26 #regret #nightmare #writing from the floor #please enjoy I’ve been working on this for forever

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evenmoreofadisaster · 1 year ago

Note

Hey :] . If it wasn't anything annoying or rude, could I ask for a drawing of the moment they "turn off" One from the last chapter?(Just imagining what Two looks like intrigues me haha). No problem ignoring this if it might be rude of me, it was just so shocking that it really REALLY left chills you know?

I'm glad you liked it :) It's a super interesting scene to draw thank you for the idea! I did say I would continue to make short comics for EMD...

Spoilers for EMD Smart Lair and tw for (temporary) character death and (greyscale) injuries below the cut

I listened to evil by melanie martinez all day.. all day (/pos)

oh and I guess this is Two's redesign reveal HAHA

#emd au #emd asks #emd au one #emd au two #teaaart #rottmnt separated au #even more of a disaster au #tw character death #its temporary but there's no way to tell from the comic

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promptsforyourwhumpfic · 1 year ago

Text

Whump Prompt #1302

The whole ‘limbo moment where the whumpee sees a dead loved one who tells them they have to stay alive etc’ is touching and all, but what if the loved one was more aggressive?

Whumpee: “Am I dead? [Loved One] it’s so good to see you - I’ve missed you so mu-“

Loved One: “What on earth do you think you’re playing at? Get the hell back down there!”

Whumpee: “But- but it’s so painful.”

Loved One: *slaps whumpee*

Whumpee: “The hell was that for?!”

Loved One: “And now it hurts up here. Get back down there, you idiot, you’ve got people waiting for you. I’ll still be here when your time comes.”

#Whump #writing #prompts #angst #death tw #temporary character death #near death experiences #family dynamics

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randooffthestreet · 2 months ago

Text

Kaleidoscope

Ghost x Soap

2.5k words (may make a second part)

Ghost was fine. Completely fine. Today was no different than the day before, or the day before that. Same breakfast, same coffee, same rookies, same…everything. Routine was what he was used to, part of the reason he joined the military, but it made it easy to go on auto-pilot most of the time.

Everything was normal. Everything was fine. The only break in his schedule would be a mission here and there. Lately all of them were low risk, Price still being overly cautious after their last one. Though to be fair, Makarov was dead. There wasn’t any big terrorist to go after, so of course their missions were slow.

It was making Ghost go crazy.

Luckily their latest mission was a bit more exciting, however, there was a downside. He had to go to Mexico. It was nice to see Rodolfo and Alejandro again, but it felt stiff, more formal than it was last time. He knew why. They knew why. None of them brought it up.

After a successful mission, they went out for drinks. He could do bars pretty well. He could bury himself in some dark corner and the others felt bad enough for him to leave him to his bourbon. Or scotch, depended on how drunk he was.

It seemed he would get no such mercy tonight. When he went for an abandoned corner, Alejandro caught him. “Hermano, where are you going? We’re buying drinks for everyone tonight.” He had no choice but to nod and take a seat on the farthest end of the bar.

It felt wrong, seeing everyone laughing without hearing the laugh he loved the most. He sighed. He was too sober for this.

After his third bourbon, he felt muddled enough to not care anymore. His first scotch burned his throat. He didn’t really hate scotch, but the taste was so much better now. He took another sip, frowning. No, maybe not. He was just drunk and sappy.

He flinched when somebody suddenly threw an arm over his shoulder, relaxing by a fraction when he saw it was just a very drunk Alejandro. “Ghost, you look so sad over here…” He whined, his breath reeking of tequila. Ghost casually shrugged the arm off. “I’m fine.”

Alejandro slunk into the seat next to him. “Y’know, Los Vaqueros were very sad when we heard about Soap. I still am very sad. You are too, I see it in your eyes. You two were close, no? Like- like Rudy and I.”

Ghost felt like crawling out of his skin. “No. Not like that.” He said carefully, hating the words. Were they ever like that? Were they ever close to it? It felt like they were, but that could be his own damn feelings twisting their innocent interactions into something more to keep his own perversions satisfied. He didn’t want to tarnish Johnny’s memory like that.

Oh god. Johnny. That was what he called him, wasn’t it? Not Soap, not Sergeant MacTavish, not him, Johnny. His Johnny.

“Only Ghost can pull that off.”

He stumbled to his feet, breathing harder than he should be. “I- have to go. Bathroom.” Alejandro nodded solemnly, slumping over the bar.

Ghost practically rushed to the shitty bathroom, slamming the door a little too hard for someone who was supposed to be in control. His mask felt like it was choking him, so he ripped it off, turning the sink on and splashing the lukewarm water over his face in an attempt to calm himself down.

Nobody had said his name since he died. He hadn’t called him by his name since he died.

“Y’know, Lt?” He’d said one night after one too many drinks. “I think I’m afraid of being forgotten. It’s stupid, but…I don’t want to be just another dead soldier, killed and forgotten, I want to be remembered. I want to know that even if I die, there’s proof I existed.”

Ghost understood. There was nothing left of him when he died, considering he was dead on paper, but he understood the fear. He wanted there to be proof of Johnny’s existence too. He was too good to be forgotten.

“I’ll remember you, Johnny.” He’d said, which had earned him a blindingly bright smile and a warm head on his shoulder.

Oh god. He was going to puke. He went over to the toilet, the alcohol burning his throat on the way back up. He gripped his hair, his eyes watering from the bile. His breath was catching on sobs, his chest hurting with every ragged inhale. Was this the first time he’d cried?

Someone was in the bathroom with him, falling to their knees next to him and saying something. Was the bathroom always this small? Whoever was there started taking deep, exaggerated breaths until Ghost instinctively started matching their breaths. Finally, he calmed down. He blinked his eyes open to see Rodolfo looking at him, concerned.

His gaze softened. “There you are, fantasma. I saw Alej say something to you, and then you kinda…fled. What did he…?” Ghost winced, grabbing his mask. “...He…we never… he thought we were like you two. But I never-” He sighed, rubbing his hand over his face, taking a shuddering breath. Rodolfo just looked sad.

“You’re allowed to grieve, Ghost. Even if it wasn’t like that.”

They didn’t say anything else, just sat there on the probably filthy floor. Ghost couldn’t bring himself to care.

They eventually had to move when a drunk stumbled in and hurled in the toilet. Ghost grimaced and pulled his mask back on, standing up. “...I’m leaving. Can you tell Price?” Rodolfo nodded, smiling gently. “...you can call us whenever, Ghost. We’re friends, no?” Ghost nodded, despite being sure he probably wouldn’t call.

He didn’t sleep at all that night. He honestly hadn’t slept except for when his body shut down and forced him to. In a few days, it would be half a year since he’d hit the floor in that godforsaken tunnel. He’d saved Price’s life. Ghost doesn’t know if he’d have reacted like this if Price had died instead, but he knew that wasn’t fair to either of them.

His Johnny would never be able to live with himself if he could have saved Price and didn't. So he died instead.

He knew Price felt horrible about it, remembering how the captain had occasionally shared the dark corners in bars with him, apologizing to him for not being dead. He remembered comforting him, even when he selfishly agreed.

It seemed he was doing better lately, even if he was still keeping his remaining boys as close as possible. Gaz had been wrecked, taking a week of leave after Makarov was dead, but he was healing. Ghost was once again left as a spirit, alive but not living.

The sun rose on another day with a routine, another day of Ghost being completely and totally fine, mentally stable, and definitely not having panic attacks in bar bathrooms.

That’s what he told the psych evals anyway.

He just nodded at Alejandro’s panicked apology the next day, quietly reassuring him that it really wasn’t a big deal. After all, they hadn’t been anything but friends. He was nursing one hell of a hangover, but the headache may have been from sleep deprivation. Didn’t matter.

He was slowly destroying himself, even if he couldn’t admit it to anyone else, the lack of sleep slowly creeping into his subconscious as he started to hear a Scottish brogue just around corners, started seeing a mohawk and pretty blue eyes just in his peripheral. During the first few days he’d turn around and nothing would be there, but the hallucinations grew stronger the longer he stayed awake.

A few times, he’d catch himself trying to talk to it, but he never got past a small sound before it went away. He learned to listen, just to hear the voice a little longer.

The night before the 141 left, some of the Vaqueros insisted on taking them for drinks again. Ghost had a feeling they just looked for any excuse to drink, but he went anyway, taking care to avoid any and all drunk people. He watched the blurry body that wasn’t there sit in the seat in front of him, staring right back.

“Scotch, Lt? This early? You really do need to sleep, don’t you?” He sighed, nodding along to it’s words without really realizing. It could be sweet at times. At others, it tormented him. He didn’t know whether he craved it’s attention or wished he never had to see it again.

Laswell appeared later into the evening. He hadn’t even been aware she was there in Mexico.

He saw Price look at her, his face as confused as he felt. “Laswell? What the bloody hell are you doing here?” …okay. Maybe she hadn’t been in Mexico. She made a pained face, looking guilty. “...there’s someone I want you to talk to. We were going to wait until you got back to base, but he wanted to talk to the Colonel and Sergeant Major too.” Price sat up. “Another mission?”

Laswell glanced behind her. “Not exactly.” The bar had gone quiet. She sighed. “Look, just- don’t blame me. I didn’t even know about this until a few weeks ago, and then you boys went on a mission…” She shook her head. “I’m going to grab him. Give me a second.”

She walked out of the bar, people murmuring. Ghost downed the rest of his drink, walking over to Price. “What the hell was that about?” He asked softly, eyeing the door wearily. Price tapped his fingers on the bar counter. “Not a clue. We’ll have to see, won’t we?” Gaz hummed from next to Price.

Laswell walked back into the bar, crossing her arms and stepping to the side for the man behind her. He was on crutches, his brown hair falling into his bright blue eyes slightly. Ghost stared at the man, sighing. Of all the times for him to hallucinate, he was projecting his image onto this new member of the team, most likely. He heard Gaz gasp painfully, and saw Price tighten his hold on his glass in a white-knuckled grip.

“What the fuck?” He heard Alejandro say behind him. Price stood up, pulling the man into a tight hug. “You scared the shit out of us, John.” Ghost exhaled, feeling his chest constrict. “You can see him too?” He heard himself question. He saw the man’s blue eyes grow concerned and Price give him an alarmed look.

“Ghost, have you been hallucinating?” The man ignored Price and hobbled closer to Ghost.

“Hey, Lt. Did you miss me?” He made a pained noise. There was no mistaking that voice. People, hardened military men, were crying. Ghost made a wounded noise, stumbling out of his chair, nearly eating shit on the bar floor. “I- I have to go.” He wheezed, pushing past the man that couldn’t be there and running out the bar doors, ignoring the shouts of his name. His footsteps pounded against the concrete, his legs giving out on him. He scrambled into a side alley, curling into a ball because it was wrong. Everything was wrong.

It was pathetic, really. The big, bad, unshakable Simon “Ghost” Riley, who could withstand the most disgusting and gruesome bits of torture this world had to offfer, trembling in an alley because he couldn’t handle the fact that the person he cared the most about in the world might still be alive. He felt his phone buzzing insistently in his pocket, but his vision was growing black and he couldn’t bring himself to move and pick it up.

He had no idea how long he sat there before somebody found him. Logically, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide forever, with Price having the location on his phone at all times, but he hadn't been expecting them to go after him so quickly. Or maybe it hadn’t been quick.

He heard the clacking of crutches against a brick wall and a soft grunt of pain as the man lowered himself to sit next to him. He shut his eyes like a child, hiding like it would keep him from having to face the truth.

“Simon.” He said gently, and Ghost couldn’t help but gasp quietly and flinch.

They sat in silence for a bit, before the man sighed. “I’m so fucking sorry, Ghost. The doctors- they told me I really shouldn’t be alive. I died, but…they brought me back. Didn’t really understand any of it. They told me you held a funeral for me. I…actually don’t know how you did that. But…christ, Ghost, I never meant to die in front of you like that. Always thought I wasn’t going to make it, but… I guess I never really accepted the reality of it.”

Ghost dared to open his eyes, looking at him for the first time. He could see the scar from the bullet, but it was unmistakably Johnny, even if his signature mohawk was gone and his beard was fluffier, even if he had hearing aids.

He caught his eye and smiled. “There you are.” Ghost swallowed around the lump in his throat. “You…you really are alive, aren’t you?” He said hoarsely. Soap shook his head slightly, huffing fondly, and the familiarity of it made Simon’s heart ache. “Aye. Just could nae stay away, Lt. Grown too fond of ye, ya bastard.”

Ghost’s shoulders shook with relieved laughter despite himself, leaning his head against the wall. “You fucking asshole. I really thought you died.” He couldn’t help the way his voice cracked on the words. Soap hummed, grinning lopsidedly at him. “Can’t get rid of me that easy.” Ghost worried his lip between his teeth, frowning.

“I…I can’t- I don’t want to get rid of you.” He said quietly. The grin on Soap’s face slipped into something more understanding. “I know, Lt.” Ghost shook his head, feeling almost desperate to get his point across in case he disappeared again. “No, I- you can stay. Forever, if you want.” His throat felt tight all over again. “Johnny, I- I love you.”

He heard him inhale sharply, and he rushed to fix what he felt like he ruined. “It doesn’t matter if you feel the same, I just want to be by your side. I wanted that bomb to go off, fuck, I wanted to die by you.” He put his face in his hands.

“...I can’t live without you.”

The silence was deafening, but it was broken by Soap’s wet laugh. Ghost looked at him, confused at the tears on Johnny’s face. He wiped them off, a wide smile on his face. “You daft bastard. I love you too. God, we’re so bad at this.” He leaned against Ghost.

“...I want to die with you too. But I can’t rejoin the 141. I lost all my strength, and my hearing has gone to shit. I can’t die on the field with you, but…maybe we- maybe you could live. Would you live for me?” Simon’s mouth went dry.

“For you, Johnny?” He took a deep breath, tucking his face in the crook of his neck, shutting his eyes. He was home.

“...For you, I think I could try.”

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