#untether me from the earth

[eoinmcgonigal]

3 and 15 for the ask meme!

3. Who is your favorite character? Why?

I already cheated and picked two did this one! BUT. Hm. To pick another... is kinda impossible a;lsdjf;asdjf I'd want to pick another two XD

I guess I stick with, from the show, Eoin and Paddy.

15. Would you do a parachute jump?

100% yes. I have this weird thing where I can barely cope with being on the second floor of buildings, and the thought of being at the top of a high up building makes me dizzysick, but the idea of being high up in a plane with nothing below me and the freedom to fall? Yeah.

SAS: Rogue Heroes ask meme

[ettawritesnstudies]

Hi scholar

When you're not writing, but just daydreaming, what kinds of daydreams do you have? Are they detailed and specific? Do you repeat the same ones or explore new worlds?

Hey Sleepy!

I usually daydream about my dnd characters tbh. I'm in 4 games and running one of my own and so I have a lot of fodder for behind the scenes backstory moments that never make it into the game itself. Since I play the characters it's a bit like putting myself in the daydream but there's still a plot and such. Recently its been Sora, my airbender character. With the weather being so nice out, I often find myself trying to catch the wind and jump down steps as if its going to catch me. She's had some big moments recently where she got to meet a long lost family member and learn a lot about the spirits she's seeing, and so I've been replaying those moments in my head quite a lot. I also daydream about the upcoming sessions of my game, different options my characters might choose, imagining monologues and description and how to paint a word-picture that puts them in the plane.

There was also a good period after finishing Mistborn and Stormlight I fantasized about throwing myself into the air using allomancy or surgebinding. My campus is nothing but stairs and I'd just really like to be weightlessly throwing myself up the hills a lot of days.

Actually come to think of it when I was a kid I would daydream of floating about like peter pan or having faerie wings. When I was writing storge in high school I would daydream about being an avian and having wings and how I would have to navigate hallways and sitting in human chairs such for worldbuilding purposes. I often daydream about flying into outerspace treasure-planet style or on the back of my space dragons.

So I actually just daydream a lot about flying in general

[bunny-lily]

Tether Me - Prologue

Pairing(s): Geto/Gojo/Reader Summary: You ran.

It's what you did in life. It's all you knew how to do. You ran, ran, and kept running and never stopped, because if you stopped, it meant you were trapped, chained, a bird with shredded wings in a gilded cage.

So, how did you end up here, tucked away into a little village in rural Japan, falling into the depths of two black holes with no way to escape?

How could you run from this? From them?

…Would you? CW: No y/n | polyamory | slow burn | slice of life | alt au - no curses | fluff | light angst | eventual smut | forgive me, there's internal monologues | I like using big words... | Gojo & Geto are whipped for you | emotionally constipated reader | (most of the tags have been condensed, you can find the full list on my ao3 here) AN: this is just the prologue chapter, sort of exposition. No bois in this one (technically), but I'm posting chapter 1 at the same time as the prologue. As a heads up, my most comfortable place for posting my longer fics like this is ao3. You can find more of my blurb thoughts on there. I'm not the best at tumblr posting, so forgive me pls ;-;

Ch: Prologue | Ch: 1 | Ch: 2 | Ch: 3 | Ch: 4 | Ch: 5 - 1 | Ch: 5 - 2

WC: 9.4k

You’ve always likened yourself to a kite, but less pretty and enjoyable.

Every time you glanced at a kite in the children’s toy section, or watched as thousands flew in the sky during festivals, your eyes stung and something bitter and uncomfortable twisted in your gut. In a way, you saw yourself in them; fragile little creatures tethered to the earth by no fault of their own. So easy to snap – to break.

They were always trapped, chained down, forever bound to either get reined back in after one had their fill of fun, or to fall like tragic angels to the ground when the winds died, and they would once again be unable to travel free amongst the stars where they belonged. All thanks to the threads wrapped around their very bones, far too strong for something that looked so thin and prone to fraying.

Yet nobody ever did release the chains. Who would willingly free their prized, imprisoned bird?

Of those pretty, unfortunate kites, you lamented with them. 

You, too, were pinioned to solid ground. Your wings were clipped, feathers torn from flesh one by one until you were born in a body that could no longer fly. Responsibilities, duties, relationships – they all kept you drowning in a suffocating pile of down-stuffed pillows, filled with plumes that were once yours. They progressively got heavier and heavier, locking your limbs between illusions of comfort and safety, sitting on your chest and flooding your mouth until you choked and gagged and couldn’t breathe.

You were different from kites, sure, beyond the very obvious things. You weren’t a pitifully flimsy, inanimate toy, left forgotten in some closet, awaiting the one day you’d be remembered, taken out, and allowed to taste the breath of deities themselves again. But if you could glide in the wind like they could, oh, nothing would bring you more joy, more solace, even if you were still tied down. All for just a kiss of freedom.

You ached to be detached from everything and everyone. An untethered kite, a fledgling bird learning to fly, a paper lantern that glowed its very joy from within for all to see.

Paper lanterns.

You couldn’t stand paper lanterns, because you yearned so deeply to be one. How wonderful it would be to have a warmth alight inside you as you rose to the heavens, lighter than air. 

You envied them. 

They made you nauseous with longing.

They made you want to stretch your fingers high and try to catch one within your palm like a cascading star.

They made you want to reach your fist past your throat and rip out your heart barehanded, just to make the accursed thing stop pounding so goddamned hard in your stomach as it sank lower and lower with each additional candle that got to join their family of stars beyond celestia. 

Because, for fuck’s sake, you belonged up there, too. Free, flaring, blazing and flickering so spectacularly that philosophers would wax poetic about you for ages to come.

It wasn’t fucking fair for you to be stuck on Mother Nature’s spine like this, burdened by the neutron star in your body that just grew more and more dense, urging you to dive into the ocean and let it snare you into its depths. You didn’t choose to spawn with a spirit disconnected from the flesh that acted as its prison, you didn’t choose to be jailed like this.

So, why?

Maybe that’s one of the reasons you were drawn to kites. You pitied them. You pitied yourself.

You weren’t a kite. You didn’t want to be one, to have your boundless form fettered down. But when you caught a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, that’s all you could ever see staring back at you. A kite with faded, worn out paints that barely clung to the tattered paper, feebly held together by thin strips of bamboo that had been aged and mottled from the inside out by time.

You hated paper lanterns. You hated kites. You hated yourself.

As the years dragged on, from the moment your brain snapped into your body with the sudden realization that you were a conscious, living, breathing person, those ugly feelings festered and spread like a fungus that refused to abate even a trace, just a second so you could catch a breath of fresh air that didn’t reek of mildew.

The seconds spanned on for eons without prejudice, destroying your cells at the molecular level with each passing birthday that trudged reluctantly along.

In the back of your mind, the sensation of being asphyxiated by your own feathers that had been shorn away from you etched itself deeper and deeper into your psyche. You became restless, antsy, the variegated world around you fading rapidly. Colors you once saw as a child, before you could latch the inherent sense of wrongness in your chest to a concept, gradually dulled until all you were left with was a world tinged heavily in gray.

The streets you were raised on grew denser, despite the amount of people living on them never actually changing noticeably. The verdant grass of your backyard turned into a dominating presence everytime you laid your eyes on it, unruly and all-consuming, demanding an undivided attention you did not want to give. The orange beams that hung over black asphalt instilled a sense of panic in you that wasn’t there before. 

You used to be fond of walking around your neighborhood in the middle of the night, when you rightfully should have been sleeping. An inverted circadian rhythm suited you well when you were young, unaware that the crushing sensation under your sternum would only get worse. 

Now, though, the thought of straying out where there wasn’t enough light to see straight ahead made sweat form on your chest and palms while your teeth clattered from a nonexistent chill.

Everything caved in on you. Not in a rush, not in a cataclysmic flood. No, you didn’t discern you were fighting for air until you were already gasping fruitlessly. Lost, terrified, unsure, you could only bear witness to the collapse of your own mind.

Then, one day, a soft voice whispered in your ear.

Run.

It wasn’t a threat, not some ominous warning of death looming over your shoulder. It was a suggestion, an offering, an olive branch towards that freedom you coveted. It was salvation. 

Who were you to ignore the hand of deliverance?

The first time you changed your scenery, moved elsewhere, even if it was only a few streets away from your childhood home, felt incredibly liberating. After so long that you had forgotten how it felt, you got the chance to gulp down air as if you had surfaced from beneath the perdition sea after spending your whole existence beneath it. 

Color returned to your world, excitement formed anew, everything felt right. Achromatic wastelands turned into kaleidoscopic meadows, fulgent and lucid. You savored it, reveled in it, frolicked and danced and lived.

…It didn’t last. 

Not long. You exhaled, and it all vanished, sand swept away by an uncaring and spiteful hand.

Once you had become used to the environment, when you no longer had to actively remember where your flat was, or how long it took to get to the store, everything was washed out; water dumped on a painting that had yet to form defined shapes.

That crushing sensation had returned, and with it the reminder that, as much as you wished you weren’t, you were a kite. Tethered, perpetually confined, worn bamboo strips and thin paper threatening to rend under the drag.

Thus, you ran again. A new town, a new city, a new skyline. Euphoria nestled cozily under your breast like a second heart, purring contentedly as it curled up on the nest of blankets it created for itself.

New places, new faces, new people. All of it was fascinating to you beyond measure. It interested you to no end to learn about other human beings; their thoughts, their perspectives, their preferences. What they despised with grit teeth and barely restrained anger clenched in trembling fists; what they loved so dearly that they could never drown beneath the same waves that followed your heels, tide rising progressively. 

They glowed from within, bright and budding and vibrant. Their eyes flickered with life, glazed so clearly that stars sparkled in the depths of their hues. You were drawn to them, a moth to mesmerizing fire.

You felt free. You rode that high as much as you could, for as long as it would allow.

Until a realization struck you with the force of a bullet train one night. A man hung onto your arm, easy laughter shared between the two of you as you let him take you home. Alcohol tinged his breath, but not enough to give him anything more than a slight buzz. He was a total gentleman through and through, and you listened with eagerness as he spoke about his upcoming work project, his excitement palpable with every word. 

His hand linked with yours, fingers intertwined, his warm palm engulfing yours. There was a comfort in that transient window of time, one you held to your heart. It was so unfamiliar, so addictive. And as you stopped before your door, having completely forgotten of your lack of wings, you waited with bated breath for him to slant into you.

A pair of infirm lips, minutely chapped and tasting of wine, pressed against yours, and dread exploded in your gut.

He pulled away from you, lovestruck in the way his eyes shone as he looked into your own, and reality crashed down on you with horrors in three measures, shattering like broken glass in the vortex of your conscious thought.

When you stared at him, watched the way he opened his mouth to speak, you made the connection.

“I really like you,” he had murmured to you that night, nearly shy. Yearning. Hoping.

Paper lantern.

“I want to ask you out properly.”

Tether. 

His words sank into your skin like ice, digging deep, burrowing into your marrow.

Kite.

The illusion of pellucid skies of the richest shades cracked, the lush plains you fantasized of often turned to barren heaths, and all those tormenting feelings came back to choke your breath with a vengeance. Sickly fingers wrapped around your throat, sunk into your mouth, dug past your gag reflex, wrapped around your ankles and wrists until you could barely lift your feet just to move forward. 

You remembered with great disdain what you were. You had managed to sever your thread by running off from the pod you were born in, but it wasn’t a clean cut. The string hung off your fragile wooden bones loosely, just waiting for somebody to grab and yank, to shred your freedom away from you once again, to leave you knotted around a pole to sit like decoration and stay.

You were not free.

You were not a paper lantern. You did not gleam from your soul like he did. You did not pour light from your heart and words and touch.

You’d do anything to forget that, to prove that sentiment wrong, to show the world that you weren’t a rock thrown into a pond. You’d do anything to change the narrative, to force a rewrite. So, you did what you always did.

You ran.

You found somewhere else to live, blipping off the radar unannounced. One moment you were there, the next you had cut your lingering thread an inch shorter, following the wind blindly like a duckling to your next destination.

Each time you settled down somewhere, you had this silent hope: maybe this is where I’ll be happy.

You clung to that hope, fervently ignoring the screeching whisper in your ear that said otherwise. The next place was never the final one. It never would be, no matter how hard you tried to delude yourself into believing you weren’t a lost soul, unable to move on. Some pathetic ghost you’d make, if you weren’t one already.

Whenever you let yourself rest for a heartbeat too long, the rope you had trimmed ever shorter was skimmed too close by too-warm fingertips, and you fled again, and again, and again.

That’s all you seemed to know nowadays.

Perhaps proven now, as you sat on a train in a foreign country, absentmindedly watching rural landscapes race past the window. Your knuckles pressed indents into your cheek, the sensation unpleasant and nearing on painful, though you had stopped paying any mind to it a while ago. Your thoughts laid scattered at your feet, and you couldn’t be bothered to pick them up.

Rather, the white matter of your brain was being filled with the empty, buzzing tune of songs you’d heard a hundred times over playing through your earbuds at the loudest volume possible. It made things easier to manage during this grand, several-thousand-mile-long trip. The less thinking you had to do, the better. It was the absolute last thing on your bucket list, loitering just under the cutoff line, hoping to sneak in a few words you refused to listen to.

You couldn’t let yourself regret this. You wouldn’t.

Not now, not after you’d already dropped everything and dissipated beyond the welkin’s gaze. You had only one place you could go to at all now, and you were already on your way there.

So if you had to blast your eardrums out to bridle the whisper-shouting voices spurned by overthinking, so be it.

Rice paddies blurred by, blending in from one farm to the next. The sun reflected off the waters the stalks soaked in, absorbing the warmth the light provided and feeding the plants with the fruit of life. Somewhere along the way, you had begun counting each field you passed for no particular reason.

You thought it’d lull you to sleep like counting sheep, subconsciously desiring to sink into a dreamless abyss and catch up on the hours that had been eluding you every night for months up to this point, given how far away you still were from your destination. But your cerebrum was not kind to you, and your body refused to succumb to the tempting allure of nothingness.

Thus, you remained as you were, counting paddies as the day never quite moved forward. The sun dwelled high, trying to glare down on you, but it couldn’t get the angle right to invade the shade of your tiny cabin room on the train.

It stayed stuck to the center of the sky, mighty and proud. But then, after what seemed like only a few seconds, you blinked, and suddenly it was hanging off the horizon’s ledge.

With a slight jolt, you realized the train had decreased in speed, and was continuing to lose momentum as it approached an isolated station, all alone in the countryside. You checked the time on your phone, your eyes feeling unusually heavy and sticky. It was only early night, but you were worn down to your sinew.

Right. Jet lag. You had hopped on a plane and traveled to the other side of the planet on a whim, another desperate attempt to grab onto the concept of freedom you craved. It didn’t take you longer than a week to find a small house deep in the pastoral lands of Japan, where mountains wrapped around the valley like a scarf. You chose Japan, if only because you learned the language when you were studying abroad some years ago.

It resided in a town of such a low population, blissfully around 600, it was a wonder you could even find a train that took you this far to begin with. Of course, that meant the house was decently rundown, with a community small enough to consider it unnecessary to repair. You couldn’t care less. All that meant to you was that it was cheaper to buy it outright than rent a more maintained structure. Buying it was a risky move, given your track record of up and ditching the last bed you slept on without any hindrance, but, at this point, you were tired.

You just wanted to be somewhere for longer than a month or two. Maybe owning a house was contrary to your desires to be unbound, with no board to pin your tattered and thin wings to, sure, the pros far outweighed the cons.

Cheap shelter, little to no people, far, far away from anywhere you’d been before. Three for three.

It’d still be a 45 minute drive or so before you actually got to your new residence, but you weren’t in any particular rush. You chose the most isolated place on purpose. Less people, less deafening sounds, less claustrophobic, brutalist structures that loomed higher and higher.

Less chance of being tied down.

With a hiss and a loggy wheeze, the train settled into place, jostling you as you got to your feet and stretched your arms above your head. The muscles in your back and shoulders twinged from sitting in the same position all day, and your legs stung like sparklers, but it was nice to work your joints properly again. After tucking away your phone and earbuds, you tugged your luggage down from the overhead rack with a grunt.

You were hopeful that there’d be taxis outside the station, and that you wouldn’t have to walk to the village. Who knows how long that would take. You’d probably keel over after the first mile. The thought made you snort while you squeezed down the aisle, suitcase with your bag stacked on it rolling behind you, purse strapped across your torso. The conductor – a sweet, older man – nodded silently to you as you disembarked, waving a farewell to you, which you returned. He was nice, you remembered him greeting you when you first boarded. 

He didn’t talk much, just a polite, “welcome aboard,” while the ticket collector pointed you in the direction of your cabin, which you greatly appreciated after hopping off a plane and hurrying your ass over to your required station. You were too spent for conversation.

Leaving the station was much easier than you expected. Unlike your home country, where you could get lost just by turning 45° to the left, Japan seemed to prefer neater environments that were easy to navigate. And, upon stepping out of the building, you rejoiced at spotting a few variously colored cabs waiting along the curb. Outside of one stood a man, roughly in his 50s or so, who waved you over.

“Need help getting somewhere, miss?” He questioned, and you nodded as you pulled out your phone, scrolling through your emails to find the one confirming your purchase of the listing. 

“Yeah, could you take me here?”

He glanced down at your screen when you showed him the address and chuckled quietly. “Well, that’s a surprise. Last time I visited that house was some twenty years ago to take the owner to the station, rather than from.”

You blanched nominally. Twenty years? Had your house really been abandoned for twenty years? The listing claimed it was only ten max, that estate bastard. A sigh left through your nose. Too late to deal with that now, you figured. “I just purchased it.”

The man nodded as he popped open the trunk and assisted you in slotting your luggage inside. “You look like you’ve come from far away. It’s rare for foreigners to choose to live in such a distant location. Not a fan of the city?”

I fucking hate cities.

“Something like that, yeah,” you assented, thanking him as he opened the back door for you. 

You appreciated his efficiency as he wasted no time dilly-dallying around. As soon as he was buckled up in the car, he was on the road, taking you down the last leg of your trip. The world outside the window streaked by in shades of violet and blood orange as the sun hovered on the edge of the skyline, reluctant to rest for the night.

“Ah, apologies. I’m Hayato Kazuhiko, you may call me Kazu, if you prefer,” he quickly introduced himself, and you followed suit. “Why’d you choose this little village of all places? It’s very small.”

You hummed. “That’s exactly why I chose it. I’m not a big…people-person, if you know what I mean.”

The older gentleman chuckled lightly. “My wife is the same,” he nodded as he peeked at you via the rearview mirror. “She had to visit the small town I used to live in one day, and it was love at first sight for us. She was immediately drawn to country life, and we’ve lived out in the neighboring town here ever since.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Twenty-five years,” he nodded, and you could see the pure love and devotion in his eyes as he spoke about his spouse. It was wholesome, and softened your heart a sliver. 

He was surprisingly relaxing to listen to. Pleasant voice that didn’t grate on your ears, a few stories shared about his wife, the occasional tale about some significant structure or location. It was calming, in an odd way. He’d point out a shrine or hiking trail you’d pass by, and offer to take you to them one day to teach you its history and meaning, and you actually considered it.

It could’ve been the harmless nature about him. Even as night descended and you could only really see his silhouette, inspecting him reminded you of your father, but…better, for lack of an accurate word. You weren’t afraid that he’d suddenly raise his voice, or take you down a suspicious road – or, hell, back to the train station to send your sorry ass right back to where you came from.

“Mr.–” you cut yourself off and cleared your throat, mildly embarrassed about slipping back into your mother tongue. Japanese honorifics were something you continued to struggle with. “Hayato-san, do you have children?”

He gave a mellow laugh and shook his head slightly. “Please, just Kazu is fine. And I do, three of them, in fact. A younger son, and twin girls about your age,” he estimated roughly.

So the fatherly air to him you picked up on wasn’t imagined. That brought you a form of reassurance you couldn’t distinctly name.

“My twin girls are all the way up in Tokyo,” he continued, chest puffed with pride, “and my son is still in highschool, causing chaos.”

“Chaos?” You raised a brow.

“Yes, but not the type you’d think,” he hummed. “He’s a gentle child, but his kind nature means he’s unfortunately quite gullible and gets himself into trouble.”

A voice, the faint echo of a memory long lost, intoned in the far reaches of your lucidity; someone shaming you for getting caught up in an issue that wasn’t even your fault. Your stomach twisted with dread, and your head snapped to peer at Hayato, expecting to find disappointment shining in his eyes when you studied them through the rear-view mirror.

Except, there wasn’t any.

Concern at most, a crease in his brow as he warred within himself between protecting and helping his kin, or letting the kid learn on his own. There wasn’t any disappointment, or anger, or exasperation. You could see him reminiscing as he stopped talking, focusing more on the twists that followed the mountain’s curve, and all you saw was just…love, and happiness.

The churning in your gut settled, instead replaced with a sense of hollowness. Not the kind that made you sick; rather, it was like you had a gap in your chest where a puzzle piece was missing, while his was filled with a perfectly fitted heart.

Bittersweet, possibly, but only distantly so. You felt happy for someone who was borderline a complete stranger to you, someone you shouldn’t even care about beyond tipping him well for driving you to the middle of nowhere in the dead of night, but you did anyway. 

Maybe I could have had that too, your thoughts mutedly supplied, if I was normal.

Then again, you didn’t want that, not really. Though you couldn’t tell if that was just who you were as a person, or a result of the coals perpetually under your feet, it didn’t change your mind.

Nothing could.

You were sure of it.

Smooth concrete eventually became a densely packed dirt road when Kazu turned off the main path, the car vibrating as the wheels rolled over loose stones and gravel. It didn’t last long, thankfully, as the shabby looking pile of wood came into view, albeit dark since the stars overhead were too dim to illuminate anything much.

“Where we are, miss,” he spoke as you both climbed out of the vehicle and met at the trunk. He opened it to retrieve your luggage, and you pulled your wallet out of your purse and counted off a few bills, wondering what the right amount to give to him would be.

It was hard to translate currency worth when things were valued differently in this country. Your trip abroad was a long time ago.

“Is this enough?” You peered up at him and held out the bills.

He took one glance at them and chuckled deeply. “That’s far too much, really,” he replied as he pulled only two of the strips out of the small stack you were holding. “Be careful with your money while you adjust to the currency of this country. Do you need assistance with your luggage?”

“Oh,” you analyzed the remaining money in your hands before tucking it back into your wallet. You really hoped he took the right amount needed and didn’t undersell himself. “No, I’ll be okay. You got me here in one piece, that’s all I could ask for.”

“Are you sure?”

Your head bobbed as you inspected your suitcase and bag, popping out the handle. “Yes, I am. Drive safe, Kazu-san. Thank you for taking me here.”

His chest rumbled with a laugh. “Please, it’s my job. You are pleasant company.”

“Likewise,” your lips rounded into a smile as you bowed politely. It was small, and you were tired, but it was genuine, the first one you’ve had for a long while. “Goodnight.”

Kazuhiko waved his hand in farewell, bidding you good dreams as he climbed back into the taxi and drove off, leaving you alone.

Your lungs deflated.

The air here was crisper, stinging your throat in a pleasant way as you inhaled slowly. Faint hints of pine and sap drifted across your senses. Nothing indicated any heavy stenches of smog or gasoline or gods know what litters the streets of every downtown city you’d been to before.

It would probably take you a while to get used to, and you oddly didn’t want to, if only so you could admire the fresh fragrance every time you stepped outside. Your muscles relaxed, surprising you as you hadn’t noticed just how tense you were until you were perched outside the front gate of your brand new (old) lodging.

Turning to face it, you groaned upon the realization that it was on a hill. Said hill was tiny, mind you, but a hill nonetheless. You found you couldn’t give much of a shit right now, just yearning to lay down and pass the fuck out for a while. Maybe the rest of tomorrow, too. A few weeks, actually, if you were allowed to choose. A coma sounded wonderful.

“Home sweet home,” you mumbled to nobody in particular as you pushed open the gate and virtually jumped out of your skin at the near shriek it gave. Okay, it had to have been longer than 20 years, that was loud. 

With your heart fluttering rapidly, you made a note to deal with it (and everything else) later and trudged up the incline, almost eating shit and dying when the toe of your boot caught on the edge of a stepping stone. Another thing to add to the “deal with later” list. You had a feeling it would just keep growing exponentially.

Finding the key was easy, for better and worse. It simply sat in the door knob’s lock, very safe and secure and definitely not putting your house at risk of…what?

There was nothing in there, evident when you pushed open the front door, which wailed just as loudly as the fence gate. You felt the blood drain from your face. Sure, the interior was empty, but the house was a wreck. Peeling walls, strange, crusty scent, and a sticky floor at the entrance that made you grimace when your sole pulled off it like velcro. You knew that it was custom in Japan to take off your shoes at the door, but fuck that. Absolutely not. You were not walking in any part of this house either in socks or barefoot.

Everything was virtually pitch black as you delved further in, so you depended on your other senses, and the ability to smell was one you wished you didn’t have. Your nose wrinkled as various rotting odors welcomed you, making you immediately regret going through all this.

Morning. You’d deal with it all in the morning.

Practically sneaking on your tip-toes, you explored the open space, trying to find the room that smelled the least and was passable to sleep in. Granted, there were really only two actual rooms down a hall going opposite of the kitchen besides the restroom and washroom, but the bigger one seemed decent.

At least you had a sleeping bag and wouldn’t be conking out on the bare floor. You went through the motions of prepping for bed mostly by habit, doing the bare minimum seeing as you didn’t have much of a choice. You brushed your teeth with the water from your tumbler, located and unrolled your sleeping bag, and climbed under the rustling top after yanking your shoes off, zipping it up as far as it went. 

Admittedly, the setup was kinda janky, but it got the job done. 

You couldn’t be bothered to change into pajamas.

With your head plopped on probably the least comfortable pillow you had found to bring with you (also the only one that would fit in with the rest of your shit, it was practically a pillowcase filled loosely with sporadically placed lumps of stuffing), you closed your eyes, and your body finally let sleep take over.

─────•(-•ʚɞ•-)•─────

Morning was not pleasant. Surrounded by the musty scent of gods-know-what, back aching from the restless sleep you got from your pitiful sleeping bag and the hard floor, you were groggy beyond belief and desperate for fresh air. And a massage. And a cigarette.

You didn’t smoke, finding the heavy and pungent funk nauseating, but the temptation was there. You felt you gained a little more understanding of smokers.

Brushing the thought aside, you pushed yourself up into a sitting position and rubbed the heel of your palm against the sore spot on the side of your skull. You would have believed someone replaced your pillow with a rock if you hadn’t intimately known that lump of fluff. Or, rather, lack thereof.

Red lines, tender to the touch and tingling a little, were pressed onto the arm you laid on for most of the time you slept, causing you to hiss when you traced your fingers against them. It seemed to be barely past dawn when you reviewed what was out your window, leaving you questioning just how long you slept, if at all.

Figuring you wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep anyway, you shoved yourself out of ‘bed’ and groaned when every joint in your body popped and every bone creaked. Hell, you weren’t sure you’d be able to sleep tonight again. Not here, anyway. More problems for future you.

She’d certainly be happy about that. She already had so much shit to handle.

The growl of your stomach reminded you that food was something you needed to consume to continue living. 

Reluctant as you were to do anything, you figured going out by starvation was 1) probably not the best idea, and 2) you wanted to be out of this dingy torture shed.

What was unfortunate was that you, like a smart person, didn’t bring anything more than snack bars and those weird trail mixes with the fruit cubes that you just threw into your bag without much care. It was really the only motivation you needed to walk your sorry self out the door. 

After you brushed your teeth and changed your clothes, of course, being very careful to not let anything touch the floor.

Stepping out of your home through the shabby and creaky door with your purse slung across your chest, you were met with the grandiose sight of mountains surrounding you on every side. They rose high, aching to brush the sky and touch a star, just one, just once, just for a second. Covered in thick greenery, you figured the faint yet present scents of cedar, pine, and other woodsy tones were carried down into the valley from the steep inclines.

You couldn’t see any of these details nearly as well when you were dragging your tired ass to this place with ink covering the sky in a thick veil, but it truly was breathtaking.

Had nature always been this green before?

Having only done some cursory research on the village – namely, population – you didn’t bother giving yourself time to actually inspect photos of the tiny rural town. From what you’d seen anyway, pictures could never do it justice. A velvety breeze brushed against your cheek, prompting you to tuck your hair behind your ear and pivot towards the direction the gale came from.

Your breath left you in a silent ‘oh’, mesmerized by the incredible view of the rising sun you had. It shone valiantly and radiantly through the gaps it had carved out between the towering peaks itself, illuminating the land in shades of brilliant gold with its splendor.

For perhaps the first time in your life, you felt…nothing.

Not a sense of hollowness, nor a void in your chest, no.  A peaceful kind of nothing, as if not a thing in the world could take your mind away from this newfound elysium you found in sharing the morning’s shine with its source.

Invisible fingers caressed your jaw, threading through your hair with the gentle touch of adoration, as if you were delicate.

You hated to be treated like you were easily breakable, as fragile as glass, but this sensation was consoling, rather than degrading. The wind cherished you, not akin to a brittle figurine, rather as someone who was beautiful and worthy of gentleness unsullied by pity or licentious intentions. As if you were someone to be worshipped and revered.

A mother combing her fingers through her daughter’s hair, humming a lullaby only she knew the tune of.

Perhaps it wasn’t impossible to find what you were searching for. You didn’t know what it was exactly, a question without an answer, but it gave you a place to start.

With a deep breath swelling behind your ribcage, filling your soul with air untouched by sickly city pollution you were so accustomed to, you turned and began heading down the beaten dirt path that led into the heart of the village. The early summer warmth was pleasant on your skin, not too hot given the time. It seeped into your cold fingers and made them ache a little less with each minute going by.

While the town you had chosen was visually quite a bit older in style, with smaller structures dotted about reflecting traditional Japanese designs, there were some modernities. Electricity was, fortunately, one of them. 

Based on the fact that you found and bought the listing online, you figured there was likely a way for you to get your hands on some Wi-Fi here, too. You’d probably die without it.

The nearer you drew to the center of the population, the denser the structures became. Not to say they were rubbing walls, but neighbors were only a short few steps away, compared to the distance between your own house and the one closest to it.

Minka houses in significantly better condition than yours spanned either side of the road as the terrain shifted from soil to asphalt. They were beautiful, and you bet that living in that kind of house in this kind of place was either absurdly expensive, or dirt cheap, with no real in-between. You were personally on the latter end of this, which probably wasn’t a good thing. 

Doomed by the narrative once again.

Off in the distance on an elevated surface, you could see what you thought was a Wayo Kenchiku temple, if you had to guess. Its overlapping roofs were a deep green in shade, nearly black. They protected the desaturated brown walls of the building, and you were taken aback by how easy the temple was to see from where you were.

It sat across a wide river, one surprisingly calm as you approached it. It rushed along, springing with glimmering waves that shimmered under the light and frothed white around raised boulders. Despite it coming across as fairly deep, you could see clear through to the bottom, with the water itself being a refreshing shade of clear blue. A bridge spanned the rift, made of sturdy wood that had dark railings protecting either side of you, matching the aesthetic of your surroundings.

The bridge whined under your weight, but didn’t shift, giving you some reassurance that you wouldn’t go crashing through the planks. It led into the most packed section of the whole area, with structures built closer together, bearing a more modernized likeness, while retaining its unique characteristics.

In truth, though you remained apprehensive, the voice that scratched at the back of your skull everywhere you went and pestered you to run, run, run, had quieted. You hadn’t registered it, the silence, too focused on taking in your new surroundings as a serene blanket covered the thoughts that usually pranced wild and free in your cranium, putting them to rest with a whispered mercy:

This feels right.

It didn’t take you long to spot what you figured was the local grocery store. The bell above the door chimed as you stepped inside, peering at what products you could see on the shelves and aisles from where you stood. Being an anxious little creature, you double-checked to make sure you had your wallet, as well as the translated bills within. Last thing you wanted was to embarrass yourself in a place where everybody knew everybody.

Reassured, you chose a random aisle and headed down it, skimming the products to see if any of them appeared even vaguely familiar to you. Besides cans of soup and tubes of Pringles, there wasn’t much for you to grab onto. Sure, there was ramen, but you didn’t have a way to boil water. Cereal and milk, maybe?

Shit, no, you didn’t have any cutlery or dinnerware. Unless you wanted to be a sad raccoon and eat raw cereal straight from the box, but you weren’t that desperate.

Yet.

Mentally crossing out your options as you went through them, you nearly knocked over an entire row of items when you almost ran into an older lady who stood in the middle of the strip, watching you.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” You hopped back a foot, raising your hands in front of you placatingly. “I-I didn’t see you there, am I in your way?”

The woman laughed and shook her head, her smile reminding you of a grandmother that’d sneakily give her grandkids candies while their parents weren’t watching. “You’re quite alright, I was actually wondering if you need help?”

“Oh, uh…” Bashfully scratching the back of your head, you glanced at the various bags of foodstuffs beside you and debated your choices. Say no, when it was painfully obvious how green behind the ears you were, or set down your pride and ask for assistance.

Your stomach chose for you, warning you to suck it up and get food before it began eating itself.

The woman’s chuckle was heartier the second time around, her eyes glimmering with mirth as she motioned for you to follow her. Feeling a bit like a scolded child, you trailed after her while she wove her way around her store towards the produce section at the back. She pulled a random fruit from the thunder-rain-shelf-thing (you honestly had no idea what it was called) and rubbed it against her apron before handing it to you.

“Eat,” she insisted.

You blinked rapidly, peeping the fruit, the sign for it, then her. “How much…?”

The lady waved her free hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it. Eat, I insist.”

You were going to argue further, but a deep cramp in your gut had you sinking your teeth into the sweet and wonderfully-textured treat. As embarrassing as it was, you borderline moaned as you chewed, quickly taking another bite. Whatever it was, it tasted divine.

This time, when she directed you to move with her, you followed without hesitation. “Thank you so much,” you mumbled as she pulled out a chair from behind the counter and urged for you to sit on it.

“It’s nothing, I can’t let you go hungry, now,” she swept away your worries. “You’re new here,” she stated, rather than asked.

You nodded through another bite, waiting until you swallowed before continuing the conversation. “Yes, I got here last night.”

“Oh? Are you visiting someone?”

“No, I moved here.”

Her brows raised. “Really, now? Who are you staying with?”

Mid-bite, you stopped to address the matter. “Oh, no, I’m not living with anyone. I purchased the house just outside the village.”

The way her eyes widened was nearly comical. “That place? Now, that’s a surprise.”

If you had a nickel.

“That’s the second time I’ve heard that now,” your lips tugged into a frown and you stifled it with another chomp into the sweet object in your hand.

At that, she simpered mutedly. “I apologize. I’m merely awed that it was still standing, let alone that someone had bought it. Last I heard, there hasn’t been anyone living there for, oh, maybe 20 years or so.”

The realtor, that dog. He did lie to you after all.

You scornfully hoped he was enjoying spending your money.

Picking at your cheek with your free hand, you looked away with a nervous giggle. “Yeah, it’s…not in great shape. I have a lot of work cut out for me.”

“You’re going to try to repair it?”

“Yeah. Keyword being try.”

“I’m not sure that’s a wise choice.”

You sighed. “Me neither, but I don’t have much of a choice now.”

The woman shook her head, smiling regardless. “You let me know what kind of help you need. There are plenty of handymen in this village of ours, I’m sure they’d be happy to help.”

“Oh, that’s very nice of you, but…I’m sorry, I didn’t ask for your name,” you pouted, hurriedly introducing yourself.

“Just call me Granny. And I won’t take no for an answer, missy,” okay, now you really felt scolded. “I won’t stand for you trying to fix up that cluster of wood by yourself, it’s far too dangerous. And you shouldn’t be staying there while it’s in that condition, either. Give me a moment, let me find someone you can stay with.”

Panic rose up in you and you waved your hands frantically in front of you. “N-No! It’s fine, I’ll– I’ll figure something out, really, don’t worry. Please.”

Granny eyed you suspiciously, her hand hovering over the landline on the wall. “Are you sure?”

“Yes! It’s fine, I’m fine, I promise.”

Her eyes remained squinted, even as she lowered her arm. “Alright, if you say so. But if you need any kind of help, big or small, come to me right away, okay?”

Relieved you wouldn’t have to interact with more strangers, you nodded and deflated. “I will.”

“Promise me, young lady.”

“I promise.”

She grinned brightly and ruffled your hair. “That’s a good girl. Let me pack you a few things to take with you so you have something to eat.”

“Ah– wait, I…I’m not very good with currency yet,” you halted her sheepishly. The prices were still confusing as fuck to you. Man, how the fuck were you going to manage this when you get a job? If?

“Nonsense, it’s on me. I won’t charge you.”

Sorry, what? Did she do that for every person she met five minutes prior?

“But– but that’s not–”

“Finish up your peach,” she asserted as she was already walking away with a bag in her hands that wasn’t there a second ago. What was it with grannies and having some weird, innate magic?

Your eyes darted down at your half-eaten peach, surprised to learn that it wasn’t some foreign fruit you’d never even heard of before, let alone tried. It was an exceptional blend between succulent and rich; easy to bite into and chew without pouring juice all over yourself.

The fuck kind of peaches have you been eating before?

Sensing you might be buying these often if they were this good, you had well-nigh inhaled the rest of it by the time Granny came back with a stuffed bag.

“Here you go, dear,” she held out the shopping bag to you, which you took graciously after tossing out the peach pit into the small trash can by the counter.

Glancing into the bag, your lips shifted downwards. It was filled with a few different fruits and veggies, a couple bags of snacks, but mostly packaged food that looked like it could be eaten as is without needing to worry about cooking it. Your guilt skyrocketed. “Granny, this is too–”

“Don’t worry about paying. Save your money for the repairs of that home of yours.”

Your head shot up, eyes widening. “I can’t–”

“You can because I say so, young lady,” Granny puffed out her chest proudly, using a motherly tone that easily put you in your place, much to your bafflement. You didn’t even listen to your own mother like this. “Come back in the evening, I’ll have something cooked up for you.”

“You really don’t–”

She made brushing motions with her fingers, shooing you off the chair. “Off you go. There’s a lovely little pergola in the park, go have breakfast there. Just turn right when you leave and keep walking straight.”

Flustered, you let her push you along out the door, your confused brain trying to catch up. “Granny–”

“I’ll have a list of handymen for you when you return,” she informed you right as she managed to get you out the door. “Explore the town while there’s still daylight!”

And just like that, she was back in her store, sweeping with a broom that you swear materialized out of nowhere. You stared at the shop for a good minute, blinking dumbly until you processed whatever just happened.

You still weren’t wholly sure. You went in, expecting to grab a bag of something random to ‘feed’ yourself with, and left with a bag full of free food from a woman who spontaneously decided to give it to you. 

The fuck. She’d go bankrupt if she just kept giving strangers sustenance off her own back.

Your own feet seemed to carry you along as you exhaled through your nose and took her instructions to heart. Too late now, you’d feel bad if you went in and returned everything. It’d be insulting at this point, and you were hungry, anyway

A cooked meal did sound lovely as well, discomfited as you were. You had never met your own grandmothers – not in person at least, so you had no idea if grandmothers were simply like that or not. Regardless, you had a feeling she was going to fill that role in whether you liked it or not. 

Luckily, you were drifting towards like. She did give you free food, after all, and was going to find help for you. That part you were more apprehensive about, however, stubbornness and introversion making you want to be stupid and attempt to pick up carpentry out of nowhere.

All you could do was try to accept it and sigh, taking in the sights, stores, and dwellings as you walked past them and towards the park. A couple shops caught your eye, particularly a clothing boutique, and what could possibly be a hardware store. You weren’t certain, and didn’t want to find out yet. The prospect of entering one and facing the big ass sign that said ‘you don’t know what the hell you're doing!’ was too daunting to approach for now.

It didn’t take you long to get to the park. In fact, it was such a short walk that it bemused you. A population of 600 people seemed larger on paper than it was in reality. Most of the town was behind you, granted, but the uncanniness was uplifting, in a way.

It didn’t feel claustrophobic. The trees in the park were closer together than some of the buildings outside it, and they smelled so good that it knocked you back a step. The entire wild garden carried the fresh perfume of sweet and fresh vegetation, from blooming flowers scattered about and the grass underfoot, to the rustling leaves above. You couldn’t recall the last time you were in a park, let alone one that was as vibrant and alive as this one.

The pergola was easy to find. It resided in the center, right beside a large pond that you saw was filled with koi fish when you got close. 

They swam to-and-fro, carefree, intermingling, playing, and searching for food. 

Your stomach twisted when you made an unintentional connection in your mind. They reminded you of kites. Pretty, ultimately trapped.

The koi fish, however, didn’t seem to mind one bit. Not that you could understand fish language. They just went about their business calmly. It perplexed you, didn’t spending their lives in a single body of water bother them? Didn’t it make them depressed?

Could fish feel depression?

Shaking your head to rid it of the peculiar journey your mind had gone off on, you set the bag down on the table under the pergola and settled into one of the chairs, reaching to dig through your options. Of the items present, you opted to munch on a sandwich Granny had tossed in with everything else, bundled in saran wrap and clearly made by her.

While you were skeptical of pre-made food bought in a grocery store like this, one sniff had you biting into it ravenously. You were way hungrier than you thought as you devoured it, trying to will yourself to slow down enough to at least savor the taste of it. Your earlier guilt and trepidation disappeared three bites in, and you were now very much anticipating Granny’s handmade cooking if this was the kind of sandwich she was capable of creating.

You questioned again if all grannies were like this, or if you lucked out. Either way, if it meant you didn’t have to struggle with food for the time being (or ever, if Granny let you mooch off her forever), you didn’t mind getting spontaneously adopted by her at all.

About halfway through your meal, the koi fish in the pond caught your attention again. They were gorgeous animals, graceful and sleek with scales that twinkled iridescently when the sun flickered over them from between the gaps in the canopy above. They had you mesmerized, sights focused solely on them as they showed off.

Maybe they had managed to hypnotize you, because you decided to tear off a piece of the ham, rip it into tiny pieces, then throw it towards the pond. There was a large splash as all the fish rushed towards the food, making you snicker.

A sort of childish glee bloomed within you, persuading you to indulge them a smidgen longer before you finished off your food. The park seemed like a sacred place where nothing could touch you, where the lands would remain lavish and healthy, and where you could let all your worries fade away.

Arcadian – that was the best way you could describe it. Placid, halcyon, grounding, mellow. You could go on and on, really, but you–

The hairs on the back of your neck prickled when you sensed that someone, or something, was watching you. Heat grazed against your nape, slow, measured breaths right behind your ear. A kiss from a pair of soft lips that never reached your skin. A demanding presence wrapped around your figure, a prey caught in the trap laid out precisely by a steadfast and salivating predator.

Ghostly fingers slid down your shoulders, crept over your forearms, and encircled your wrists, holding them in place with a deceptively lax hold. Something firm and wide pressed against your shoulder blades, keeping you between it and the table.

Your heart kicked in your throat, preventing you from swallowing anything more than a tiny gasp.

And, like the cornered quarry you were, you shifted slowly to peek from the corner of your eye, avoiding any sudden or abrupt movements. You expected to find a beast hovering over your shoulder, eagerly anticipating your reaction. 

There was nothing. 

Only foliage greeted your wide-eyed inspection, expansive and untouched since you came here. The feeling of being hunted on had evaporated as soon as you checked, and though uncertain of this verdict, you chalked it up to being in totally unfamiliar territory. A result of a soundless, featherlight brush of wind, a critter in the foliage envying the fish you fed, lasting no more than a sigh.

Your brow furrowed as you searched through the plant life, seeing not even a hair out of the ordinary. That dovish sensation the park carried returned like it had never left to begin with, coaxing you to let it go and relax.

Maybe that was your cue to leave.

You shook off the lingering sensation with a shiver. Everything was okay in the wooded pasture, and as tranquil as your surroundings were, you knew you’d have to face the elephant in the room eventually.

You dusted yourself off as you got up to dislodge any lingering crumbs, carefully packed everything back into the bag, and took one final look around. This place would become your safe haven, you determined. Already, you were thinking of coming back, the memory of your adrenaline spiking fading rapidly. Imagining returning here gave you that minor push you need to fill your lungs with courage and turn to head back out the way you came.

You could explore the town later. Right now, you needed to address the state of your new stead and gauge what laid ahead of you first. Maybe it’d give you at least an idea of what you required to get started on all of this, though you doubted you’d come out of witnessing it in the full glory of the sun knowing more than you did now.

Absentmindedly, the milieu filtered into your subconscious, automatically noting small landmarks here and there to assist you in finding your way around the streets while they still confused you, until you had learned to traverse them and knew every path and alley like the back of your hand.

(Just in case, you assessed the back of your right hand. You know, to reacquaint yourself with it.)

Glumness overtook. You knew you probably wouldn’t stay here for too long, no matter how much you liked it. You could fix up the house, flip it, and head off someplace else again in pursuit of something that probably didn’t exist.

It’s always been this way for you. The same old pattern, the same old story, the neverending book that looped in on itself over and over, caught in a wormhole where the exit was the entrance.

So it was easy to convince yourself to not get attached to the valley, nor the people, nor that damn sticks-on-bricks abode. Not even the grass filled with flowers and protected by tall trees you had already found yourself longing for.

It was easier this way. This was all you knew, after all.

You had it all figured out.

Didn't you?

banner by cafekitsune ♥

[steddieas-shegoes]

Request: Hop & Joyce don't really like or trust Steve & he knows it. He can tell by their behavior towards him. Post spring break from Hell, Steve tears into them both after they insinuate that it's his fault for the kids being hurt. Steve YELLING at them in front of the party bc he is injured more grievously than the kids & he once again protected them, to the detriment of himself.

Joyce & Hop are forced to acknowledge that their behavior was cruel. And they have to apologize but Steve doesn't accept their apology straight away.

I am usually such a sucker for Hopper adopting Steve and treating him as his own that this was really difficult. Like, maybe top 5 most difficult things I have ever written. It's kind of short, but I wanted more of the focus to be on people standing up for Steve and Steve standing up for himself than the actual angsty part. My darling, I hope it lives up to expectations! -Mickala ❤️

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“I guess I just don’t understand how Max ended up like this if Steve was supposed to be protecting them all.”

Joyce’s words echoed in Steve’s head.

She was whispering to Hopper in the waiting room, but it was surprisingly quiet, and easy to hear just about anything.

The kids were asleep on the couches, waiting for any news on Max or Eddie, but the nurses told them it could be hours. Hours were a long time to wait when someone was bleeding out and the other someone had multiple broken bones and was unconscious.

Steve felt untethered, his connection to the earth cut the moment he saw what happened to Eddie, pushed into a dangerous orbit when he saw what happened to Max.

“He’s never really let me down like this. Did you hear Dustin say he thinks he was distracted by Eddie?” Hopper asked quietly.

“What did he mean by that?” Joyce paused. “Oh. Do you think so?” Steve couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t see the way they were having a silent conversation within a conversation. “It wouldn’t be the first time Steve let his romantic feelings get in the way of their safety.”

And that really wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair because he always put these kids who weren’t even his first whenever he could. It wasn’t fair because it wasn’t his job to be perfect. It wasn’t fair because they were the adults who should have been here to help and they weren’t.

He could feel tears building up, his vision getting just blurry enough that he knew he needed to walk away or he would start actually crying, and he couldn’t let anyone see that.

Especially not Joyce and Hopper.

Apparently, they already thought so little of him, he couldn’t possibly show them that he was struggling now.

“I think we’ll have to have a talk with the kids about trusted adults. They seem to rely on him for a lot and maybe if we just explain to them that Steve can’t handle it-”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hopper?” A nurse, thankfully, interrupted them.

Steve turned to see a young nurse, probably barely older than him, standing in the entranceway to the waiting room.

Hopper walked over to her, actually whispering this time, as if what was being said right now was a secret, but not the way he felt about Steve.

He glanced over at Steve, then nodded to the nurse. He called Joyce over to them, whispered something, then they both looked at Steve.

He hated what was happening. He was used to being a disappointment to adults, but in a silent way. His parents weren’t really ever around long enough to show their disappointment for long. Seeing it now, on the faces of people he respected and wanted to impress, hurt.

Hopper started walking over to him, his face serious.

“They have Max stable. She may not wake up from the coma, but they’re hoping she makes a turn for the better soon. Eddie woke up a few minutes ago while they were trying to stitch him up and he kept yelling for you. He isn’t quite stable yet. He passed back out as they were trying to put him on oxygen.”

“But they’re both alive?”

“For now.”

“Can I see Max?”

“I don’t think that’s a great idea right now. They’re trying to reach her mom, but the phone lines keep going down. I’m standing in as the adult responsible until she can be contacted.”

“So now you want to be the adult responsible? Not any other time when we needed you?” Erica said from behind them.

She’d been asleep with Lucas and El only a minute ago.

“Erica, it’s fine. I’ll just wait with you guys.”

“No, Steve, it’s not fine.” Erica put her hands on her hips, scowled up at Hopper and Joyce, who had just joined them. “Steve looks out for us every day. Even when the world isn’t trying to end. He drives us to school or from school or to the arcade, he pays for our food at the diner all the time, probably spends all his paychecks on us. And where are the parents? They don’t even know where we are most of the time.”

“But-” Joyce started to interrupt until Erica held up her hand.

“You left your kids to fly to Russia when you knew something weird was going on. You could have died, and then what? You know who would have stepped in? Steve. Because that’s what he does for us. Do you know one of his worst concussions was because he was protecting Lucas and Max from Billy? You know he drove Max everywhere she needed to go all year because she didn’t wanna be around anyone else? How about the fact that without him, we wouldn’t have even been able to get Eddie back here? But sure, blame him for this. It totally makes sense to point the finger at the one person who has protected us over and over again.”

Steve was crying.

The other kids were starting to wake up from her voice getting louder as she spoke, and it didn’t take long for them to realize what was happening.

El and Dustin surrounded Steve, cuddling into his sides to comfort him. He needed it, and he was always willing to accept love from the kids. They so rarely gave it, not because they didn’t love him, but because they were at that age where they didn’t want to.

These kids were his in almost every way that mattered, and he was just grateful that they weren’t hesitating when he needed them most.

“You kids could have died. Steve should have never allowed most of this to happen. He’s the adult, and he let you all go into this without even considering you could die.”

“You think we were just gonna sit around and wait for the adults to handle it? When have we ever done that?” Dustin asked incredulously.

“It’s what you should have done. Steve knows that.”

“Mr. Harrington?” A different nurse was standing in the doorway now, older, definitely less nervous.

“Yes?” Steve responded, wiping his tears away quickly.

“Mr. Munson is in a recovery room. He’s woken up a few times for a minute and each time he’s asked for you. Are you family?”

He was pretty certain hospital policy meant only family could go back, especially during natural disasters, so he lied.

“Yes, he’s my cousin. I can’t reach anyone else yet.”

The nurse smiled, though she probably didn’t quite believe him.

“Right this way, then.”

Dustin tugged on his arm.

“Can I come with you?”

“Sorry,” Steve shook his head. “Not yet. Let me check on him, and I’ll come right back out for you.”

“See? This is what I meant about letting his feelings get in the way! What if we weren’t here? Would you just leave the kids to sit out here alone?”

This time, El spoke up.

“Steve is always putting us first. He can put himself first sometimes. That is allowed.”

Steve wanted to hug her again, but the nurse looked like she was going to walk away, and if he didn’t follow her, he wouldn’t see Eddie.

“Go see him, we’ll be here,” Lucas said from next to Erica.

He nodded at them all, giving them a smile before he followed the nurse without looking back at Hopper or Joyce.

Eddie was asleep when they entered the room, so the nurse whispered to him at the door.

“He’s on a lot of morphine, and he’s still receiving a blood transfusion. He may wake up off and on, but he probably won’t make much sense until they lower the dose. Just be here for him,” she smiled before leaving the room.

Steve turned to Eddie and couldn’t hold back more tears.

He’d let him down. He’d let all of them down.

He was supposed to be the hero, despite the jokes about it all, they all knew he was.

But not this time.

Eddie almost died. Max almost died.

He could feel the bat bite on his stomach burning and itching, like it was already getting infected, but he ignored it.

He could wait.

He sat down on the side of the bed, slowly so he wouldn’t wake Eddie up.

But Eddie’s eyes fluttered open once, then twice, then a third time before they managed to stay open enough to see Steve.

“Stevie?” His voice rasped out, a small smile hidden under his oxygen mask. “You’re here.”

“I’m here, Eds.”

He had to be strong, but his brain was so focused on everything he’d done wrong and if he’d just been faster or got out of the vines quicker, Eddie probably wouldn’t be here and Max would be awake and-

“Stop.”

“Hm? Stop what?”

“Bein’ mean.”

Steve’s brows furrowed. He hadn’t even said anything else, had he? Was he so exhausted that he was actually talking without realizing it now?

“I’m not even saying anything.”

Maybe it was Eddie hearing things. He knew morphine was pretty intense.

“To yourself.”

“What?”

“Bein’ mean to yourself. In your head.”

“I-”

“‘S okay. Me too sometimes. Just gotta stop.”

Steve couldn’t help but smile at the way Eddie’s eyes kept drooping closed as he spoke. He would probably fall back asleep any second.

“I’ll be nice. You get some sleep.”

“You rest?”

“Not yet. Maybe later.”

Steve couldn’t really rest until he knew everyone was home, safe, and sleeping off some of the worst of their injuries.

“Yes yet.”

Steve snorted. Eddie was so high. He knew it was better than whatever pain he would feel when they eased him off of everything, but hopefully he wouldn’t remember all this.

“Sleep,” Eddie said, his hand managing to find Steve’s and tugging weakly on it.

“I can’t sleep here, Eds. This is your bed.”

“Our bed.”

Steve’s cheeks were hot, he knew if he touched them, they’d feel like fire. Eddie just had that way of completely rendering Steve speechless. He’d done it so many times over the last couple of days, Steve lost count.

“I’ll stay right here until your uncle gets here, okay?”

“And after?”

It probably wasn’t smart. It would look weird for him to stay in general, but he also had to get the kids home, try to patch himself up at home, maybe shower before he did some rounds and made sure everyone was taken care of.

“I have to take care of the kids.”

“But they have parents.”

“Yeah, well.”

They were interrupted by a knock on the door.

Hopper walked in, face as serious as Steve had ever seen it.

“I was able to contact your uncle, Eddie. You can go now, Steve.”

But Eddie gripped his hand harder, frowning at Hopper. He seemed more awake all of a sudden, but with the way his eyes kept trying to close, Steve could see it was a challenge.

“I want him here.”

“Eds, it’s fine. He’s not too happy with me right now, so-”

“What? Why? You helped save the world.”

Eddie was looking between Steve and Hopper like an answer would suddenly make itself known, but Hopper was just staring at Eddie, and Steve was just staring at his feet.

He didn’t want to get Eddie involved in this. He just wanted to pretend it never happened, maybe try to look Hopper in the eye again someday, and apologize to Joyce for not keeping the kids as safe as he could have.

But Eddie apparently took the “no running” thing very seriously now.

“Steve? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just. I kinda let them down, didn’t keep everyone safe.”

Steve shrugged it off, but he knew he wasn’t very convincing, or really even shrugging it off. He still felt the ache of disappointing people in his chest.

“Hold the fuck up. You’re serious?”

Eddie sounded as outraged as someone high on morphine could. His voice was barely distorted by the oxygen mask on his face, and his eyes were nearly at their normal size.

Steve couldn’t look at either of them.

“Steve is trusted by all these parents to keep their kids out of danger, and he brought them headfirst into it. It just made Joyce and I wonder how often they were doing stupid things,” Hopper explained, though he didn’t even sound convinced he believed his own words.

Joyce was walking in just as Eddie was about to speak.

“Steve, I think you should bring Dustin home. Claudia is going to get worried.”

He didn’t need to look up to know that Eddie was glaring at Joyce and Hopper.

“Let me get this straight. Steve provides free rides, and babysitting services, and meals, and fun for your kids damn near every day. He protects them during this shit every time it happens, literally puts his body on the line to keep them alive. Tried to somehow keep them as safe as possible when it seemed like the world was ending this time, did keep them alive, and you’re still finding reasons to blame him?”

They both had the decency to at least look like they regretted it.

But they still didn’t say anything.

“Fuck this. I’m not gonna pretend to know everything about your little Upside Down Club, but I’m in it now. None of us wanna be here, but we are. Steve’s been doing his best for years, since he was a kid, and all you can do is complain that your sweet angels aren’t completely unscathed? This is a team effort, you know that. They volunteered. Steve would have had to lock them in a prison cell for them not to help.”

Steve looked up at Eddie, watched as he started to lose the fire that had overtaken him temporarily, his eyes dulling as the morphine dripped into his veins and flushed through his system.

“Best damn babysitter…” Eddie mumbled as his eyes fell closed.

Steve watched him for a moment, waiting to see if he suddenly woke up again. When he didn’t, he stood up slowly, didn’t want to risk him feeling the bed move, and made his way to the door.

But something hurt in his chest, something he knew wouldn’t go away unless he said something.

He turned to see Hopper and Joyce staring at each other, having a silent conversation.

“I’m used to disappointing people. I’ve been disappointing my parents my whole life. Disappointed friends, Nancy, bosses. But I have never let those kids down. I do my best with them. I try to be there for them the way I wish someone had been there for me. I make sure they’re kids because life handed them a shitty card or whatever and they deserve to still be kids. You can be mad at me if you want, but I know I did my best. They know I did my best.”

He didn’t wait for a response, didn’t want to hear them say anything else about how wrong his decisions were.

But Joyce stopped him from leaving the room, hand on his arm.

“Steve, wait. Honey, I’m sorry. I think…I think we got caught up in the moment and just needed someone to blame.”

“You do the best you can. We know you do a lot for them.”

It was nice to hear, but he couldn’t get over the uncomfortable itch in the back of his head that he deserved more than that.

“Thanks, but I don’t think I can accept the apology right now.” And then the anger really set in. It came over him so fast, he could feel his hands shaking. “A lot of things are out of our control. We all wanna blame someone for this stuff, but it just boils down to the same people over and over. Max is in a coma because of Henry Creel, not me. Eddie is in the hospital because of demon bats, not me. Eleven and Will are connected to the Upside Down because of the government, not me. I’m just trying to be whatever they need, and that’s better than I can say for either of you at this point.” Steve left this time, Joyce dropping her hand from his arm halfway through his loud speech.

Okay, he was yelling.

But Eddie slept through it, and it felt good to get all of that out.

He made his way to the waiting room, hoping everyone would still be there so he could check in.

Everything felt too fresh, too much like Vecna could show back up and take any of them at any moment.

But the waiting room was empty, not even Dustin remained.

Steve did his best not to panic. Their parents had all been contacted, so they most likely had just been picked up and brought home.

“They’ve all been picked up, sugar,” an older nurse said from the front desk.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“They left you a note, though.”

He recognized her as the woman who had been here the whole night, handling phone calls and people walking in like she’d been doing this for decades. Maybe she had been.

He walked over and grabbed it from her, giving her a small smile in thanks.

He walked outside before he opened it, not sure why he was suddenly nervous.

But as he read, he felt tears in his eyes for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

Steve- Go home and sleep. We’ll be okay for a day while you rest. You don’t ever do that. We don’t agree with Joyce and Hopper, and we hope you know you’re the best damn babysitter ever. Love, Dustin, Lucas, Erica, El, Will, Mike, and Max (if she could)

He folded up the note, put it in his pocket, and walked to his car.

He ignored the blood in the backseat, rolled his windows down to ignore the stench of iron.

Knew he would be spending most of his day tomorrow trying to clean the stains out, but figured it would be a good mindless task.

He thought about Eddie, about how quick he was to defend him. About how he’d gripped his hand like it was a lifeline.

It felt that way to Steve.

He hadn’t let Eddie down. He’d saved Eddie.

If he didn’t do anything else right, he’d done that, and nothing Joyce or Hopper said could take that away.

[vidavalor]

This is the face of an angel who just realized that his oppressors are afraid of him and his friends because, together, they are a force that threatens the regime.

This is the face of an angel that just realized all of this Metatron nonsense is to separate them and keep him-- the best strategist-- from starting a revolution. If they are split up, The Second Coming goes off without a hitch... but if Aziraphale unites them, then Heaven will fall. Crowley & Aziraphale alone are enough trouble together to stop Armageddon. Crowley & Aziraphale with the eons-long leaders and commanders of Heaven and Hell in Gabriel and Beezelbub, though? That is a coup.

How little would it take to overthrow it all at this point? How long until it's Crowley & Aziraphale & Gabriel & Beez... & Muriel & Eric & Furfur? How til they get Michael and Dagon on their side? How long until it's actually most of the demons and a sizable portion of the angels teaming up against what's left of Heaven?

Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death. Aziraphale took the coffee. The Metatron thinks it means subservience. He thinks it means he's tricked Aziraphale and that he's won and he was almost right, so is the level of trauma these beings have suffered. He didn't know, though, that coffee is already coded as liberty. He handed Aziraphale a cup of symbolic freedom and didn't realize how so very true that was going to be. Just like a certain empire once did when they gave some of their people the option to form some colonies, thinking that the empire would always remain in control, and now we call those colonies not part of Great Britain but The United States of America.

"Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks leap out"-- the Job quote on the matchbox. The matchbox containing the fly, containing Gabriel via Beez. Out of Gabriel's mouth goes burning lamps-- Gabriel lights the way. He's the path forward. He is first shots fired in the rebellion...

...and sparks leap out.

Some Boston Tea Party stuff afoot, you guys.

That is the face of an angel that just realized that he and Crowley were both wrong: the solution isn't running away but it's also not taking over a broken system that doesn't want to be fixed... it's fanning the spark that Gabriel lit into a flame and then into an inferno and burning this entire mother to the ground.

Aziraphale is no longer headed to Heaven to run it.

He's headed to Heaven to *overthrow* it.

He's headed to Heaven to *liberate* it.

No idea how much of a chance he will get to succeed alone but this is Aziraphale. He will give them hell if it's the last thing he ever does-- for Muriel and all the angels like them. For all the persecuted demons. For the humans Heaven wants to destroy. For Gabriel.

Most of all, for what they did to Crowley and the 6,000 years of fear and pain they've put them through.

That is the face of an angel who just realized that he had almost been drawn back into Heaven's web of darkness again, only to hear that Heaven wants him to oversee the destruction of 8 billion people and the Earth he calls home and the stars the love of his life built and he has reached his absolute last remaining straw.

They've taken his home and hurt his friends and they took *Crowley* and at this point, Aziraphale no longer gives one flying fuck what it might be that God wants because God can go fuck herself if this it is. The elevator scene is Aziraphale saying Crowley was right:

That angel is *untethered* with barely controlled rage. They nearly played him for a sucker. He might die doing this and they fooled him and he broke Crowley's heart and they've taken too. Fucking. Much. It's just utter destruction. There will be no system of Heaven and Hell done when Aziraphale is through with it.

Aziraphale is about to go from not sure if he should stop Armageddon in S1 to being the angel that destroys the system of Heaven and Hell in S3.

Yes, you can save everyone, Aziraphale, but not alone. You need Crowley's imagination and Gabriel's leadership and Beez's intelligence. That's what they're afraid of. You finally got it in that elevator, so get up there now, get your gang back together, and make some trouble.

[enviedear]

ִֶָ ࣪˖𓉸ִֶָྀི ִֶָ་༘ᯓ enviedear's FEAST OF THE DEAD

𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚟𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚠𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚠𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚙𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚠𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚟𝚘𝚠𝚜 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚘𝚍𝚜—𝚊 𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚞𝚊𝚕 𝚖𝚎𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚗𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚍—𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚊𝚠𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚗 𝚊 𝚕𝚘𝚗𝚐-𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚘𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚗 𝚜𝚙𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚝—𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚔 𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚢𝚜𝚘𝚗. 𝚊 𝚐𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚘𝚏 𝚊 𝚐𝚛𝚘𝚘𝚖 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚊𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚊𝚕𝚝𝚊𝚛, 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚗 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚞𝚙. 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚑𝚎'𝚕𝚕 𝚌𝚕𝚊𝚒𝚖 𝚊 𝚋𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚎, 𝚗𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚑𝚊𝚜 𝚙𝚊𝚜𝚜𝚎𝚍—𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚠𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚊 𝚋𝚎𝚊𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚏𝚞𝚕 𝚊𝚌𝚌𝚒𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚕𝚎𝚏𝚝 𝚊 𝚠𝚎𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚋𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚘𝚗 𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚟𝚎. 𝚑𝚎'𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚒𝚝 𝚊𝚜 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚊𝚕 𝚎𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑.

CW | corpse bride au, ghost!dick grayson, reader doesn't want her arranged marriage, dick doesn't want to be a roaming spirit anymore, written like if victor chose emily. 0.8k words

NO GRAVE CAN HOLD MY BODY DOWN

the night air is stout with the scent of pine and earth, thick and heavy, almost too potent—mystifying. as you wander deeper into the woods, the last rays of evening slip between the ochre and russet leaves, casting flickering shadows on the path. there's a certain solace in the quiet rustle of the trees, so far from the chaos of wedding plans and the weight of expectations—the very thought of it all feels like a heavy cloak draped over you, stifling instead of freeing.

you started walking aimlessly after slipping away from the rehearsal. drifting through the woods and muttering practiced vows, but the words still feel foreign on your tongue. as if they belong to a life that isn’t yours. step by step, a strange unease tugs at you, wrapping and coiling around your heart. it isn’t that you don’t care for him—it’s just… complicated. there’s a yearning in you, a longing for choice, for a different path, seemingly left unbeaten.

eventually, you find your way upon the old graveyard, a place so veiled in melancholy and life's only certainty that it feels oddly comforting. headstones lie weathered and half-sunk, moss eating up the carved words, whispering secrets of lives long past. in the fading light, you find a quiet spot beneath an ancient oak, its branches stretched wide above you like protective arms.

you kneel in the soft grass and set down the small velvet pouch holding your wedding ring and tied with a blue ribbon. something about saying your vows here feels almost sacrilegious, yet the isolation within your chest wraps around you as you close your eyes, the weight of it pressing in.

"from this day forward," you begin, voice wavering and off-pitch. "in sickness and in health, in joy and in sorrow…" each word floats into the silence, a promise of things hoped for but unfelt. perhaps forever. left to crave a love that’s less like a cage, something free, wild, untethered.

as you finish your vows, the ring slips from your shaky fingers, catching a glint of twilight before it lands beside an unmarked grave. the ground seems to hum beneath you as the ring settles into the earth.

"forgive me." you murmur, suddenly hyperaware of the fact you're disturbing someone's resting place. as you reach down to retrieve it, your fingers brush the cool ground, and the earth beneath you trembles, the wind stirs, whipping the leaves into a frenzy. the shadows seem to thicken, leaving your seeing splotches in your vision.

and then, he appears.

stepping from the shadows, a figure woven of moonlight and sorrow—he stands in a weathered suit that calls out from a time long gone, his jaw is sharp, dark hair tousled, and his eyes plunging, glimmering with a haunting loneliness.

you stumble back, heart pounding. "who—who are you?"

"they called me dick," he says, his voice low and lyrical, woven with threads of regret. "i was a groom who once made promises. now they're a memory…and you have called me forth."

his gaze falls to the ring in the grass, a faint smile tugging at his lips. "how fitting, your offering. a proposal, i assume?"

"no! i—I didn’t mean to—" you're fumbling for words—the correct words.

"but you did." he steps closer, a spark of hope flickering in his eyes. "your vows, your longing, your regrets…they pulled me from my rest." his fingers graze the edge of a headstone. "i am bound here, wandering, longing for what i’ve lost. but you stand before me now. what else is there for me to do...but say yes?"

a shiver runs down your spine as he draws nearer, the weight of his presence both enthralling and terrifying. "but i can’t marry you. i don’t even know you."

"ah, but you do." he steps into the moonlight, his figure almost merging with the shadows, an apparition knitted from sorrow and darkness. "you feel it too, don’t you? this pull, this haunting need. i've wandered empty, bound to nothing but silence… until you came."

you shake your head, reality shattered and narrowing in. "i'm engaged—i have a wedding to go through with. please..."

"yet here you are." he counters softly, almost mockingly, "rehearsing vows you don’t believe in, in a place where time has no grasp." his gaze locks onto yours, piercing, searching and he leans in. "what do you truly want?"

your heart hammers as you grip the ring in your palm. "i want freedom. i want a choice in my own life."

"then choose me." his voice is soft, a plea dressed in honey. "let me be your companion. not to bind you, but to journey with you. i'm sure it's more than most could give."

the air around you grows thick as you weigh his offer, the pull of the life you know against the thrill of an unknown freedom, shimmering like distant stars.

"will you take my hand?" dick’s ghostly blue eyes are full of expectancy, a light in the darkness. "come on, it would be so easy. allow me to unravel the ties that bind. just say yes."

caught in a fork in the road—your life path divulging into two. you feel the ache of longing, the lure of something that feels like fervent fate. and so finally, with a trembling breath and a shaky hand, you whisper, "yes."

[the-kr8tor]

Solo Mission

Pairing: Hobie Brown x fem! Reader

Word count: 15k

Summary: What was supposed to be a simple mission goes awry. Your choices have consequences.

Tags: Use of Y/N sparsely, no specific physical description of the reader (except for clothing), CW food mentions, TW death, TW blood and gore, Body horror, CW injury, TW violence. Space exploration AU, Set in the future, Established relationships, space scavenger! Hobie and reader, horror elements.

A/N: Heavily inspired by the alien franchise and oats studio's zygote short film.

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Octobie 🎸

You float weightlessly in the vastness of space like an untethered satellite. Space, all encompassing, dark and foreboding land of stars and galaxies.

You dance in the windless place, swimming amidst the rocky asteroids, and gaseous gas that parts for you like seafoam on the shores of your old home. The sounds of twinkling wind chimes clink sweetly. Your eyes shine as you continue to fly, Saturn's rings wave by, Pluto's speck whizzes past you. Your fingers rake through the dust of ancient cosmos. A burnt smell of metal and steel enters your lungs, and as you look up to see the source, A blackhole appears, it sings an empty song.

And then suddenly, there's nothing but emptiness where the sun used to be. Your screams are taken from your throat as tendrils of darkness envelope your weightless being, stretching, and tugging and pulling at your body until you're nothing but a part of its ancient mass.

Gone and forgotten.

“Fuck!” You wake up in your cot, head almost hitting the top bunk that has been empty since you've claimed the cabin for your own. Heaving, hand on your chest, you feel arms snake around your middle, and his nose nudging your side. “Sorry, nightmare.”

Hobie inhales, looking up at you through half lidded eyes. “What's it about this time?” His voice is gravelly from sleep, palm softly pressing on your stomach to lay you back down.

“A blackhole this time.” You whisper as you lay down on the soft pillow. The cot barely fits the two of you, but you wouldn't have it any other way. “It swallowed me, I think.”

He hums, chin placed on your shoulder, one eye closed from sleepiness. “It was a metaphor for capitalism.”

Smiling, you wipe at the crust gathering in the corner of his eyes. “You're so good at interpreting dreams.”

“I should have made it a career instead of bein’ a scavenger.” He pulls you towards him so you don't fall over the edge of the cot. His hand is warmer than the summers back on earth.

“Well, if you did go into that industry you wouldn't have met me, captain.” You snuggle closer, “also, I think you wouldn't earn much.” Your hand finds penchants on the back of his neck, fingers kneading softly.

Chuckling, he pecks your cheek before closing his eyes, completely relaxing in your gentle touch. “You never know, we might've met because you wanted me to decipher your dreams.”

“Go back to dreaming, you sap.” you giggle, “We might have a long day today, we need you bright and sharp, cap.”

“Don't have to tell me twice, doc.” He yawns, hugging you tightly. “You feel alright though? I can stay awake if you need someone to talk to, lovie.”

“I'm good, thank you, but holding me like this is already helping me.”

“Maybe I should've become a professional hugger then.” He mumbles as he drifts off to sleep. The soft whirring of the station lulls him to dream of better things, and the big space metal he calls home floats and rotates in place, almost like it's rocking the two of you.

“Yeah, maybe.” You inhale sharply at the familiar scent of the space station. It's metallic in nature, but the gentle smell of home trumps the acrid scent of steel.

Your eyes roam the grey room that you and Hobie have made your own. Various posters and pictures of your travels across the galaxy are taped to the walls, numerous tools, both medical and mechanical, lay about the room. But the thing that hasn't stopped you from staring at it is the large circular window sitting at the far wall just across from the bed. It's an eternal darkness out here, with no way to tell what time it is, or what day it is without a watch. It can make anyone go insane without proper training. It's like living underground, except you get to see the sky and everything above and below it.

Amidst the darkness of space there lies Mars, in all its crimson glory, stares back at you. The red planet drenches your room in its hue as the station floats and rotates, it bathes you in its magnificence. The planet is a large beautiful thing, and it makes you feel small in its primordial presence. It has you thinking that home is only a stone throw away— Earth, even though it's thousands of miles away from you. Thousands of miles away from the salty sea, miles away from the chirping birds, and sweet flowers. You miss home. But with Hobie in your arms, this is the closest to home.

A knock echoes in the room, the comms cackles to life, and a tired raspy voice speaks in a mechanical tone from the old comms. “Either one of you awake?”

You sigh, taking a peek at your sleeping captain. With a double tap in your ear, you turn on the communication on your end, “Someone better be dying, Yuri.” You whisper, making sure that Hobie doesn't stir awake as you rub your knuckles over his arm affectionately.

“This night shift is killing me but that's not why I'm here.” You hear her sneeze on the other side, and then a sniffle. “Sorry, but I think we found something.”

“What kind of something?”

“A big payday kind of something.”

—

The door hisses as you enter the kitchen of the space station. The sudden bright lights make you wince in your fatigued state, one eye open while your hand roams all over the wall next to you to dim the lights. Once you feel the knob of the light switch, you turn down the harshness of the white light.

“I've gone blind.” You blink rapidly, adjusting your sight to the now darker room.

“Will a pot of fresh coffee cure your blindness?” Yuri asks behind you. In her arm is a holopad where hundreds of flashing dots appear. It's gibberish to you, but to the ship's personal navigator, it comes natural to Yuri.

“Maybe? Is it the good stuff from AE-67?”

“What are we, the emperor?” She raises a brow, and you shake your head with a pout. “When we scrap this ship we're tailing, we can drink that shit every single day, babes.”

You walk towards the coffee pot, grabbing two mugs, knowing that Hobie is bound to wake up now that your warmth next to him is gone. “You said that last time. And we almost ended up space scrap ourselves.”

“Oh this one would be different because…” she turns her holo pad to face you, revealing an old government issued ship just floating in space. “I think we might've found the motherload.”

“That looks ancient.” You pinch at the screen, zooming in on the chipping markings. “And very much confidential. This is an army ship, Yuri—”

“At three fucking A.M. Yuri?! Really?” James walks inside the kitchen, fuming and very tired from how his eyebags sag underneath his blue eyes. Ned follows behind him, hair disheveled and still in his pajamas. “Where's the captain?”

“Sleeping, but I bet he's waking up from how loud you were screaming.” You toss a balled up napkin at him, hitting him right on his chest.

“Everyone shut the fuck up,” Ned yawns, hands placed on top of his ears. “I need my coffee stat.” He takes your cup instead of getting his own. Putting three scoops of sugar and four spoonfuls of creamer, which he stirs quickly before chugging it.

“We live with a barbarian.” You roll your eyes, getting a fresh cup. You meet with Yuri's eyes, she gestures towards the dining table, and sits the holodeck on top of it, which immediately activates the projector that shows a bigger, much clearer picture of the ship. “Damn.” Hands protectively over the two cups, you watch as Ned’s eyes widen at the sight.

James whistles lowly, “wait, I know that ship. I remember my dad reporting on it fifteen years ago.”

Yuri snorts, “so back when you were in diapers?”

“No—”

“Is that what I think it is?” Hobie appears in the doorway, bleary eyes blinking at the projection. He walks towards the table, hands swiping at the hologram to turn it around, and zooming in on what's left of the markings. “Fuckin' hell.” He curses under his breath.

You close the distance, sliding his cup next to him as you sip on your own. “What is it? You recognize it?”

“It's the ‘Herodotus.’ It's been missing for years. How the fuck—?” You remember that name, and how infamous it became over the years. It's a myth spread across the galaxy, where treasures could lie.

“I came across it on our radar. A more modern radar isn't designed to detect old ships like this, but ours is old as balls, so our old girl found it.” Yuri answers him, patting the table as if it's sentient. “Then I sent our little droid to take pictures of it. It's in the zeta quadrant in the Remus constellation. Not that far from where we are.” She looks over to a bewildered you. “I knew we had something.”

“Some people say they're carrying tons of credits to be transported to some planet in sector seven.” Ned enters a few codes in the panel on the table, and a second later, the news article about said ship pops up. A picture of the ship looking shiny and new is on top of the page. “Some say it exploded, or looted while en route.”

You read through the article. “There were no survivors.” Your hand instinctively wraps around Hobie's, making him squeeze you. “There were no escape pods recorded to have left the ship.”

“That they know of,” Hobie replies. “No one found the bloody ship, until now.”

“So what's the course of action, captain?” Yuri asks.

Hobie looks over to you. And your mind runs a thousand miles per second. “What if there was a disease that wiped them out instead? It happened before on Romulus five years ago, what if—” you sigh, knowing the crew's minds are made up. “The ship looks pristine, no sign of explosion or pirates looting outside.”

“Or we could find millions inside.” James adds. “If there's no credits on board— it's an army ship, the weapons alone could be worthwhile. Or hell, even the power core and the cryo pods.”

“I can't believe I'm saying this but, James is right.” Yuri sighs and James fist pumps the air victoriously. “This could be the one we're waiting for.”

You purse your lips, and Hobie looks at you through pensive eyes. “If the captain wants to go, I'll go.”

Hobie cups your cheek briefly with a smile before returning his attention towards his small crew. “We'll take precautions in case there's a virus,” Yuri, claps her hands with a grin while Ned and James share a look. “And we take anythin' valuable.”

“Crunching the numbers, I think we're looking at ten mill, each.” Ned smiles, clasping Hobie's shoulder. “So just like any job then?”

“Just like any job.”

“Let's go get rich then.” Yuri hoots and hollers down towards the cockpit to punch in the coordinates.

The crew leaves to prepare, but you can't help but ignore the gnawing worry in your stomach. Hobie notices while drinking his coffee. He turns his attention towards you, calloused hands rubbing along your arms comfortingly.

“You alright?”

“Mm-hmm, just worried. The usual.” You take his hand from your arm to kiss the back of it. “It's nothing.”

“You know I trust your gut, right? Remember that heist we had on earth?” You nod with a faint smile. “You said you had a bad feelin’ and it turns out it was a trap. If not for you tellin’ your concerns we would be talkin’ through our cells in blackwater right now.”

“Okay, I worry that something is wrong with it.” You glance at the projection of the ship. “Just— I have an eerie feeling about it.”

“Tell you what, just say the word and we don't do it.” Hobie cups your jaw, thumbs rubbing along your skin gently. “We go about our way through the bloody cosmos like usual.”

You inhale. “We do need the money though.”

He gives you a smile, lips meeting your forehead. “I know. We'll be set for life if we do this.” You hum, eyes closed. “No more space farin’, no more diggin’ through dead ships for scraps.”

“And we can go home.”

“And we can go back to earth, and buy that place you like.” He whispers the last part.

You chuckle as he kisses the tip of your nose. “With the reading nook, and large bathtub?”

“Big enough for the two of us. All that and more, love.” He smiles, and you feel reassured. Tilting his head, he kisses you properly this time.

—

You sit just behind Yuri in the control room, you're tucked in safely with the seatbelts that's properly secured. Hobie sits at the front, navigating through the asteroid belt expertly. His hand flexes over the controls as the ship goes to a cruising speed once the decommissioned ship appears in sight.

Behind the large circular ship lays a red planet with its storms brewing just above the surface with yellow lightning that sparks and illuminates the dark space for a brief time.

“No wonder no one found this ship.” James mumbles in his seat.

“Until now.” Yuri smirks at him, eyebrow raised in a teasing manner which James scoffs at.

“Is that?” You narrow your eyes at the broken down droid floating aimlessly, it's barely a dot in the radar. The mechanical eyes are dim, wings broken in half next to it, and its tail is sparking from its broken down state.

“Damn it!” Yuri curses, eyes flicking towards Ned, who's groaning in anguish.

“No, Terry 2.0!” Ned thumps his head on the seat headrest. “He was my favourite!”

“I see something behind the ship!” James exclaims as he activates the ship's radar, your screen lights up like a Christmas tree in the shape of another ship.

“Wankers.” Hobie guides the ship carefully, rounding the corner to stare down at the rival emerald coloured ship. With a few clicks on the panel, he calls up whoever is left on the ship.

“I swear those martians are always right on our tail.” Yuri shakes her head with an angry look on her face.

The call rings and rings, yet no one answers. “Fuck it, let's dock on the other side. I bet we'll come across those arseholes.” With an annoyed grunt, Hobie moves the ship on the other side to dock.

Everything happens by the book. Hobie lines up the ship perfectly along the docking clasps while Riri makes sure that the crimson spider is nicely locked on the military ship. And once everything is in place, you make sure that Hobie has his double lined suit on and everyone else that's coming on board the decommissioned ship. It's not needed most of the time, but with your worry of unknown disease that could be on board, it's a necessity.

“Yuri, you stay ‘ere in case things shit the fan.” Hobie instructs Yuri and she slumps down just as she's about to put on her boots.

“Come on, cap! I wanted to give those dicks a piece of my mind!”

“Sorry, James stayed last time.”

James smirks under his helmet, forgetting that it's completely see through.

“Oh fuck off, James.” Yuri kicks his shin, causing the smug blond to hold his leg and jump in place. He winces, the sound echoing through the comms.

“Ow! I just smiled!”

“Alright, enough of that. We have a job to do.” Ned says before you could. You give him a thankful nod. The other two doesn't seem to get the message, their arguing echoes throughout the ship.

Your suit hugs you in its silicon material, helmet fitting snugly and smelling faintly of jasmine. You can bet that Yuri used it before on a routine space walk. Tapping on the controls right on your wrist, you make sure the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels are alright. Sighing, Hobie sidles up to you, hand grabbing onto the med kid on your belt, pulling you closer to him.

“Just say the word, love.”

“I'm starting to think you're the one who's more worried than me.”

“It's my job to worry.” He smiles, “and it's part of the deal in lovin’ you.” He whispers the last sentence, making sure the other three are still arguing right behind you.

“You make it sound like I blackmailed you into loving me.”

“Nah, I walked right into it with open arms.” Hobie winks, sending your heart into a marathon.

You hold onto his wrist, wishing that you could feel his warmth under the suit. Smiling, you draw circles around his wrist. “Now that we're here, I actually feel good about it now.”

He chuckles, “you're a bad liar, love. I have to teach you how to lie better.”

You feign annoyance with a click of your tongue, smile betraying you. “Damn it, you saw right through me—”

“Fine!” Yuri's angry voice pops the bubble of affection around you and Hobie. She gives James the middle finger. “When you come back, your room will be filled with fucking jelly!”

“I hope an alien abducts you while you're alone here!”

“Moron, aliens aren't real!”

“Enough.” One word from Hobie and they both quiet down. (The ghost of his smile betrays him though) But their glares don't subside. “We have to move quickly or the Martians will get the loot before we can.”

“Aye, aye, cap.” Yuri says with a roll of her eyes, clearly annoyed at the situation. “Get me something good, babes.” She says to you as she moves out of the room and back into the cockpit. She opens the airlock, waving goodbye through the glass window.

Alarms blare, a high pitched sound declaring that the air lock has been opened. Red light illuminates the room as the air hisses and squeaks from the pressure change. Hobie holds onto your hand, squeezing three times when the giant door opens and reveals the state of the old ship.

“It's dark.” James says through the comms, voice a bit muffled by the system. “There goes looting the power supply.”

“Maybe the emergency system shut it off after whatever happened to them.” Ned steps inside first, opening his flashlight perched on his shoulder. “Besides, basic shit like doors and gravity would still work without it.”

The unmistakable click of a gun's safety goes off in James’ hand as he takes the rear end of the line right behind you. Your hand reluctantly lets go of Hobie, fingers stopping once you feel the familiar indents of your pistol right on your hip. Hobie's back is in front of you, no doubt holding on to his own gun just like Ned and James.

The doors close right behind you, and the crimson spider’s light is snuffed out, plunging the crew in darkness. Your hand shakes as you click your torch open. The air is stale and stagnant, with dust particles flying about. The ship is a mess inside, full of broken down metal, and scraps of papers strewn about. But still no sign of life.

The visitor's desk that should've greeted you on the way in sits empty. The booth is cracked, and the inside looks like a hurricane ran through it. Your hand unclips the holster, thumb practically glued on the gun. You have a bad feeling about all of this despite what you just told Hobie.

The comms cackle to life in your ears. “Everyone alive in there?” Yuri's voice echoes, and you hear her munching on her breakfast.

“Good on our end.” Ned answers, walking at a reasonable pace. “Are you seriously eating right now—!” He hits something with his foot, and whatever it was, it lights up the hallway, bathing it in blue light. “What the fuck!”

“Calm down.” Hobie clasps his shoulder as Ned moves to the side, giving you the perfect view of a droid on its last life.

“What happened?!” Yuri yells.

“It's just a service droid.” You sigh, answering her question. “We're good, Yuri.”

“You're a fucking scaredy cat, Ned.” James chortles behind you. Ned rolls his eyes, flipping the bird at James.

Hobie crouches down, turning the droid’s head to the side to see its cracked screen. It still smiles as sparks fly from its joints. “Ned, can you splice its memory?”

“Child's play.” He says, still clutching his chest. “It might take some time but I can do it remotely once I've connected to its head.”

“Good, thanks, mate.” Hobie stands up, letting Ned do his work. He looks at you, wordlessly asking if you're alright with just a nod.

You send a wink at him despite your anxiety crawling up your neck.

“And…I'm in. We can go.” Ned groans as he stands up, Hobie gives him a helping hand which the man takes.

“How long?” You ask, looking over Ned’s shoulder.

“Fifteen minutes, give or take.”

“I'll take the lead this time.” Hobie says, gesturing for Ned to move behind him and in front of you. You don't like how Hobie went further down the line, but you sucked it up as it's part of the job you signed up for.

The crew continues to stalk the hallways, guns raised, and with your heart rate quickening with every step. The place has become more disheveled with every move you take, tables turned over, consoles broken into pieces, shards of glass littered across the floor and broken wires sparking on the walls. And there has been no sign of the other crew, or other life forms amidst the destruction.

“Where are they?” You ask, swallowing thickly at the broken down dining area you passed. Good thing you have helmets on or the smell would've been rancid with the leftovers you saw still on the table.

James scoffs behind you. “Fuck them, Y/N, why are you so worried? It's a big ass ship, odds are we don't see them.”

“If they're going where we're going, we're bound to walk into them.” You raise a brow, looking over your shoulder. “Besides, we should've seen a sign from them by now.” Peeking at your small console on your arm with the map of the ship, you surmise your group has already reached the middle of it, which means you should've heard the other group talking or even their footsteps echoing by now. It has been silent ever since you stepped foot inside.

You pat your pistol on your hip, the hair on your nape rises with your anxiety boiling inside you. Maybe it's better if you do see them, it would mean the place is safe from any contaminants or other dangerous obstacles bound to happen when you're exploring a decommissioned ship.

The group walks in silence with each of their heavy footsteps echoing around the winding hallway. On your right sits numerous rooms where the crew would've slept in. On your left are large windows that showcase the vast space just outside of the ship. You're used to the view, but you always loved looking at the dark with its numerous stars and planets dotting the view. You always wonder if someone out there was gazing at the same view as you, and you always have an answer to it, and that's Hobie.

You meet with his eyes just as when he looks away from the window to you. He smiles beneath his helmet, winking casually, reassuring that he's right there with you. You grin at him, pursing your lips and mocking a silent kiss that makes him chuckle before shaking his head and taking his attention back towards the front.

“Heads up.” Yuri's voice cackles on the intercom. “Cryo room inbound.”

Hobie stops when he sees the big letters on his right. The large double doors are tightly sealed with the panels on its left still blinking and softly beeping amidst the darkened room. A number is painted on the doors, and a few symbols indicating the rooms importance and what lies inside.

“Do you want to check it out, Hobie?” Ned asks, lifting his head briefly from his console to look at the doors. “The pods could still be intact, we can sell them if they are.” His console beeps, and he presses a few buttons on it. “We got time anyway, decryption is at seventeen percent.”

“And there could be people inside.” You add, “it is protocol to get inside a pod if all else fails in the ship.”

“Imagine if they were,” James mutters. “they've been sleeping and waiting in there for fifteen or so years. Fucking creepy.”

“Probably,” Hobie says while lining up his torchlight at the dinging control panels. Your heart thumps with trepidation from their words. “Ned, could you?”

“Sure thing.” Ned walks towards the panel to connect his console with it. “Good thing we saw that droid, now I've got access to most of the ship.”

“Everyone say ‘thank you, dead robot.’” James chimes.

“Thank you, dead robot!” Yuri laughs in the coms, “we'll be sure to remember its memory once we get our own mansions.”

“Cryo pods are worth half a mil each in the market nowadays.” You say while you wait for Ned to open the doors. Hobie sidles up next to you, leaning against you casually. “And with how vintage this is, it could fetch us a handsome prize from the right collector.”

He turns his head towards you, bumping his helmet against yours gently. “You're brilliant.”

You show him your console that is showing how much a cryo pod is in the online blackmarket. “I was reading off of it.”

Hobie chuckles, moving away to pat your shoulder. “Should've said so, love.” You giggle at his reaction. “You're still gettin’ reception from ‘ere?”

“It's a bit choppy now, but yeah.”

“It's because of my genius with the net expander—” Ned pats himself on the back, literally. “There, it's open.” With a chiming sound and a hiss of compacted air, the cryo room opens to you.

Hobie and James go inside first with their weapons drawn, their steps calculated, and eyes watchful at the blue lined walls. You follow closely with Ned by your side, he shifts his head around the expansive room. Unlike the hallways, the room is pristine. With its walls and floors clean as if it's the first time someone has stepped foot inside. In the center sits a dozen or so cryo pods. Its cylindrical shape and glass lid sparkles from your flashlights.

Once Hobie and James cleared the room, you peek inside one of the pods, finding it empty. “Ah shit.” You look inside each pod to make sure, only seeing its white padded walls instead of what you expected. “It's all empty.” You sigh, hands placed on your hips.

“Thank fuck.” James takes a peek at one of them with a relieved sigh. “I would be freaked out if there was someone in one of these.”

Ned raises a teasing brow, “weren't you born in one?”

“Fuck off.” James flips him the bird.

Hobie smiles at the interaction while punching in a few buttons at the control panel in the center. You walk closer to him, hand placed on his waist while looking at the display.

“It says that it's in optimal condition.” You say while reading the rest of the information. “Even the cryo fuel has never been used.”

“I can read y’know.” He tilts his head at you, glancing briefly while he presses a few more buttons.

“Ha ha.” You squeeze his side, if not for the suit he would've felt it better. And yet he still yelps, as if it hurt him.

With a chuckle, he calls Yuri. “Ready the ship at dock number three, I'm sending the pods to you.”

“Fuck yeah!” Yuri's happy cheers ring in your coms. James even claps in place but when Ned doesn't show his excitement, he nudges him, and Ned scoffs at him in return before turning his attention back towards his screen, probably monitoring the decryption.

“Right, stand aside, I don't want you lot getting pulled in.” Hobie pulls you back by your belt, you stagger backwards, earning a yelp from you. When you stare daggers at him he just grins playfully. “What? I was jus' lookin' out for you is all.”

“Thank you, Hobie.” You say sarcastically, head bopping to the side while the floor around the cryo pods open with a mechanical hiss.

“You're welcome, love.” He pats your behind, chuckling as the pods descend from the floors downwards to the docking bay. You pat his flat ass in retaliation, which James makes a face at the two of you. “You got it from ‘ere, Yuri?”

“Got it, cap.” You can hear some clicking and whirring on the other side of the call. “Anddd… It's in! We're rich!”

While the others celebrate with high fives and fist pumps, a trilling sound from outside the room takes your attention. You walk towards the door, peeking over the doorway, eyes roaming around the dark with your flashlight following your line of sight.

You turn your head to the right. Nothing, just an open shutter with another dark hallway.

You turn to your left, nothing but dust flitting about.

A hand suddenly grasps your shoulder, and you jump from the shock of it. “Jus’ me, love.” Hobie rubs his gloved thumb over your shoulder blade, amused eyes turning into concern when he notices your anxious self. “You alright?”

“Y–yeah, I thought I heard something.”

He gives you a tight smile, pulling you towards him for a quick hug. “It's an old ship, it creaks and groans.”

You inhale sharply, “yeah, I know. I'm just jumpy.” Placing your hand on his cheek, the helmet stops you from fully feeling his warmth against your skin. “We can go now, right?”

“You kidding?” James appears from behind, grinning from ear to ear. “We gotta get the power source now, doc. Go big or go home, right?”

“I'd rather go home now actually, James.” You frown at him.

“Come on, there could still be valuable shit in here.” He pushes in between you and Hobie, going out of the room to spread his arms to his side. “You never know there could be that treasure we've heard about.”

“That's a load of shit.” You say, annoyed. “We got what we need, let's just go back to our ship instead of chasing some old wives tale.”

“We're not leaving until we see for ourselves that it is just some story.” James doesn't back down, “right, cap?”

You turn towards Hobie, clearly contemplating his choices. “How ‘bout we put it to a vote, like usual.”

“Come on, Hobie—” You start.

“I vote stay!” James cuts you off.

“Sorry, gorgeous, but I also vote yes. I have debts to pay, y’know.” Yuri adds to the conversation, you were hoping that she was on your side in this.

You shift towards Ned, who finds himself in the middle while he stares (or pretends to) at his screen. “What?”

“You need to vote, Ned.” You say, arms crossed atop your chest while leaning on the doorway.

“Vote yes to be a multi millionaire, Ned.” James teases you some more with a smirk playing on his lips.

“I found the ship map from the files I got from the droid.” Ned says, and James groans loudly. “And it says here that there's a hidden chamber deep inside the ship—”

“The treasure!” Both Yuri and James exclaim.

Hobie beckons Ned over, looking at the map on his console to see it for himself. You glance at it, and sure enough, there's a large chamber right in the center of the ship that wasn't in the original map placed around the ship walls.

Hobie turns towards you, and you already know what he's about to say. “Love—”

“Fine, majority wins.” you slink off outside without another word.

Hobie tries to reach for you but you're already walking away.

—

The group stays on course. With Hobie leading and with you in the back of the line, frowning and jaw clenched at the hallway ahead. At least the view outside is pretty. You glance at Hobie, finding that he's focused on what lies ahead.

With a huff, you open your screen to amuse yourself with some good old space invaders but you find that the net has stopped connecting with you being so far from the crimson spider. You could still play to spite the team, but you opt not to be such a child in the face of uncertainty. So you put the console to sleep, a flicker of Hobie's photo appearing before the screen turns to black.

You bite your lip when the group turns a corner towards the ship's cockpit. Again, the hallway is empty save for a few glass shards cracking under your boots. The air is as stale as before, and there hasn't been anyone you've come across through the short walk from the cryo room to the control room.

Hobie tries to open the door on the panel to the side, but it beeps in a high pitched tone, indicating that he can't access it.

“Ned,” he looks over his shoulder, only to find that Ned’s already by his side, console at the ready.

“I should send you all the authorization so you don't need me anymore to do this for you.”

“Aw, but we always need you, Neddy.” Yuri jokes in the coms, and you manage to let out a small chuckle.

Hobie hears you, turning to smile at you, which you slink away from, still annoyed and frustrated by him and his decision. His expression falters as the entire team hears a beeping sound from their screens to find that Ned has given you and the rest the access codes he got from the droid.

“There, in case we get separated, we can all open doors now.” Just as Ned says it, the cockpit doors open with a groan and a hiss. But it stops halfway, only opening enough for one person to pass through one at a time. “Damn it.” He tries to fix it by banging at the panel, but the doors only wheeze as sparks fly. “Note to self: don't do that.”

“It's fine, we can get inside anyway.” Hobie squeezes himself inside, you stop him immediately with your hand on his bicep. “Yeah, love?” He pauses in place right in between the double sliding doors.

You quickly scan the room, finding no one else inside or anything that would put him in danger. “Sorry, just checking.”

He pats your hand with a smile, reassuring you. “Thanks, love, I've got this, don't worry.”

“She always worries.” James utters under his breath. You snap your head at him, eyes narrowed. “What? I didn't say nothing.”

You hum, still staring daggers at him. “Watch your tone, James or I'll give you all those vaccines you keep avoiding, all at once.”

James surrenders while Ned goes inside the control room. “Jeez, sorry.” He gestures for you to squeeze yourself in next.

With a roll of your eyes, you move to shimmy yourself in, but that same trilling sound echoes from down the hallway towards you. It sends goosebumps to your arms, hair standing on the back of your neck.

“Did you hear that?” You ask James, who's standing next to you, waiting for his turn.

“No, it was probably the pipes. Old ship—”

“Yeah, I get it, this place is old.” With a quick push, you get yourself out of the doors.

The command center is as dark as the rest of the ship. The air seems to be more stagnant here than the rest with its lights flickering on and off, bulbs buzzing, threatening to pop. You scan the floors, finding it as disordered with broken glass, and scattered papers. But what gets your attention is the oozing dark matter still dripping from a table down to the floors. You briefly scan it with your device built in with your console, but after a few seconds of it trying to identify the substance, an error code pops up on the screen.

“What is it?” Ned sidles up next to you, eyes narrowed at the slimy material. “Goo?”

“I don't know, my console can't identify it.” You feel a sense of deja vu around it.

“Weird, it's probably on the fritz. I'll check it once we're back.” He nudges your arm. But when you could only stare at it, he shakes you lightly. “Y/N? You alright?”

A bright light seems to appear from inside the ooze, as if something is moving inside it. Something alive, ready to reach towards you with its dark tendrils.

“Hey.” Ned shakes you harder this time, managing to wake you up from your haze. “Do you feel dizzy?”

You inhale, craning your neck to look at him. “I'm fine, Ned. And that's my job.”

He chuckles, “not trying to take your job, doc.” Walking away, he looks over his shoulder, waiting for you to follow. “Come on then, before the captain worries.”

You take one last look at the substance before following Ned. It looks the same as before, maybe it was the trick of the light coming from the planet slowly rotating in the large window up front. It's a gaseous ball with its numerous storms laying waste to the entire planet. Its red lightning flaring, lighting up the cockpit with brief crimson. Hundreds of hurricanes' swirling clouds can be seen from where you are. It's magnificent, a terrifying force of nature. If this ship plummets down, there's no surviving it.

Tamping down your dark thoughts, you make your way towards Hobie, who's connecting his console with the main control panel. He glances at you, nodding briefly before returning his attention towards the blinking panels. His helmet reflects the storm in front, a dance of lightning and clouds circling around the glass of his helmet.

“Good thing the emergency power is keeping this place afloat.” James sighs, arms perched atop his rifle. “I really don't want to go down with this ship.”

“Stop it, James.” Hobie mutters, brows furrowed at his screen. He's still trying to keep your worries away even though he's busy. “It's not giving me any of the captain's logs.”

“You might need a higher clearance.” Ned connects himself to the controls, trying to override the clearance. “Wait— the decryption is done.” He unplugs to check the files, finding hundreds of audio files from a crew member named ‘Harry’.

The team shares a look, and you inhale deeply. As Ned pressed play on the last known recording, the crackling sound of the garbled audio echoes around the dark and silent room.

“Log 277, I've run out of food up here.” His voice is weak, as if he has been running a hundred miles before recording. “Serves me right for not stopping by the mess hall before shit hit the fan.” Something metallic can be heard in the audio, as if a gust of wind is blowing a tin roof away. “I can't— I can't do this anymore.” His sobs fade away for a second before he composes himself. “I've only got three days worth of water left— and I keep seeing that fucking face whenever I close my goddamn eyes!” He sharply inhales. “I–If you're hearing this recording that means I've successfully sent my logs to all the droids in the ship. I could at least warn you. And if you're still on the ship, run.” The recording cackles until it ends.

“What the fuck?” You whisper yell, palm gripping at your chest to ease your quick heartbeat.

Hobie reaches for you, hand placed on your nape, and his eyes swimming with fear. “We should get out of ‘ere.” You grip his hand, lips wobbling as you look at the side of his face.

“But—” James starts, eyes wide but clearly wanting to push through.

“We need to go, James.” You shake your head at him, steely eyes staring at him.

“Yuri—” Hobie calls for her.

“I heard, cap, I'm already docking the ship to the nearest exit.” She replies, tone serious.

“Let's go—” Ned gestures to leave, but a strained cough from somewhere freezes the group in place.

You flick your eyes at everyone, finding each of their faces morph into a terrified expression.

“P–please…” The mysterious voice pleads. “Behind…the controls.”

As terrified as you are right now, you can't help but try to save them, whoever they are.

Sliding away from Hobie's side despite his protests, you go around the panels to find the stranger. You gasp at his slumped state, his helmet is shattered to bits, lungs desperately trying to intake air, and his eyes— they're nothing but bloody sockets in his head.

Hobie follows you, immediately freezing when he sees what you're looking at with your wide eyes. “Fuck.”

Ned and James watch on with similar horror etched on their faces while Yuri’s gasps can be heard while she sees the stranger from your camera connected to the ship.

You slowly kneel down, trembling hands trying to open your med pack from your belt. Hobie's hand tries to keep you in place, protecting you from the man. The velcro from your pack rips as you open it, and the man raises a bruised hand to stop you.

“Not worth trying.” He wheezes. “I'm a dead man.”

Hobie narrows his eyes at the familiar patch on the man's suit, he sports a similar logo as the martians who got on the ship before you. “Are you with the—?”

“Commander Andy Landers at your service.” He salutes weakly, chuckling which was quickly replaced by a pained cough. “Who are you fuckers?” He points at his nonexistent eyes. “I'm not wearing my glasses right now.”

“Hobie Brown…” he kneels beside you, hand never leaving your shoulder. “You’re with my team. What happened ‘ere?”

Andy licks his cracked lips, hands flexing into fists as a wave of pain washes over him. “You need to get out of here.”

You try to patch up his eyes with a cloth of bandage but he stops you by suddenly grabbing your wrists in a bruising grip. “L–let go.”

“Don't look at it, or else it will know where you are.” He squeezes you tighter, his eye sockets dripping with fresh blood like a tear. Hobie comes to your side, trying to pry Andy away from you. “You can't kill it, but you can take your eyes away before it gets you!”

You desperately pull your hands away, Hobie manages to yank you off, and you immediately crawl away from Andy and towards Hobie. Hobie embraces your side, fingers gripping onto your suit, shielding you from the strange and eerie man.

The former commander gasps, as if his breath is being sucked right out of his lungs. His head is held up high, chest heaving and gasping for air. Bloodied tears flow down on his cheeks, leaving trails of crimson on his battered flesh. As fast as it came, he falls back into place, sockets seeming to stare right at you.

“It’s coming for you, doc.”

Your vision turns hazy with a kaleidoscope of light, but before you could blink it away, you're yanked up to your feet with Hobie dragging you out of there.

“We need to help him.” Just as you said the words, alarms blare out in the cockpit. Red lights suddenly illuminate the room, and a blue fog creeps from below the vents to the floor. The ship has activated its waste protocol, which means it has detected a foreign and dangerous object within the room.

“There's no helping him!” Hobie runs, while Ned manages to squeeze himself through the doors before it suddenly shuts closed. Hobie and James hit the steel doors harshly from their speed. And you run into Hobie's back right after. “Fuck!” He punches the doors, it doesn't even dent it. “Ned!”

“Already on it!” Ned's frantic muffled voice can be heard on the other side.

“That's it! I'm coming in!” Yuri screams into the coms as you hear her running footsteps in the background.

“No, Yuri, stay on the bloody ship!”

While Hobie and James try to pry open the door with their bare hands, a sound akin to crawling coming from the vents gets your attention. It seems to get closer amidst the blaring alarms.

“Take me, oh magnificent one!” Andy shouts from his place, and now you see fingers gripping the metal vents from below the floors, then another, then another as if three pairs of hands are trying to open it.

“Hobie.” You stagger back, hands grasping at Hobie's suit.

“‘m tryin', love!”

With the rattling of metal, the vent hatch disappears from beyond, sucked inside. The fingers reach out until a bloodied arm appears, then another, and another until you see dozens of fingers attached to three mangled and melded arms. A grotesque being of unfathomable nature.

“Hobie!” You shake him, and he finally looks back to see the creature rear its ugly head from under the vents— Heads, there's dozens of heads stuck together on its thick bloodied neck that oozes dark tendrils. Faces all morphed together into agonized expressions. Their voices are warbled, screaming in different tones and jumbled up words of suffering. “Ned, we need this opened now!”

You stand and watch as the being crawls out of the dark as sirens ring in your ears and ruby lights flicker in and out of place with the kaleidoscope haze in your vision. Its skin bends into a mass of flesh, a rat king of sorts, limbs tangled together, strewn together by a black substance ebbing out of its pores.

“Water!” The creature gargles out the words from deep within its throat. “Help!”

“Oh god.” You walk backwards into the wall, seeing the creature wobble towards the commander behind the control panels. Panting in place, you see James aim at it. “Don't!” You yell at him, arm outstretched. “You'll get its attention. Andy's giving us time.”

“I'm here!” Yuri's muffled voice from behind the door gives you hope. “Ned, tell me what to do!”

Their conversation falls from your ears as the mangled mess of flesh and muscle gets to the commander. It rises up to its full height, revealing you more of its hands and feet on its belly, all melted into place to create a wall of bloody and beaten flesh. A rainbow light flashes in your vision as it devours the man. Blood gushes out on the floor while it tears into him. He doesn't scream or plead for mercy, he stays in place, accepting his fate.

“Y/N!” Hobie's voice takes your attention away from the gore filled sight. “You go first!” He pushes you towards the crack in the door that Ned and Yuri managed to open. You can see their faces freeze in fear as they see the creature feed.

“What about you?!” You grab his arms, pulling him towards you.

“I'll be right behind you, love, I promise, yeah?” He pushes you further out while Ned and Yuri help pull you outside.

You hit the floor in a grunt, back aching that you push down to help Hobie get out. Standing up, you take out your pistol, aiming behind him while you cover Hobie as he scrambles out.

“Hurry!” Yuri yells, “James, you're next!”

Hobie manages to get out just as the creature's delighted hums of pleasure stop. You pull him closer to you for an embrace, he hugs back, face hidden on the crook of your neck.

“Fuck!” James' rifle buzzes and then goes off, and you immediately move away to help him. He shoots at the alien, bullets getting absorbed by its wall of flesh whenever he hits his mark.

“Forget it and just get out!” Yuri sticks her hand out to pull him out. She manages to grab hold of his belt, pulling him out into the barely opened door.

A spray of bullets rain inside while you join Yuri in pulling James out. “James! You need to go!”

Ned panics on the panel as it beeps an error sound, warning of the doors closing. “Fuck! Hobie—!”

Hobie stops from pulling James to help Ned. “Shit, it needs a fingerprint!” He presses his own thumb on the scanner to no avail. He realizes what happens next. “Pull him out now—!”

The unmistakable click of the empty rifle rings like a death knell. James' body is only a quarter from getting through as the creature grabs him with its multiple hands, pulling him away from your grasp, lifting him up while it opens its bloodied maw. He's face to face with rows upon rows of mismatched teeth, a dozen tongues lolling out and flicking the same dark substance on his helmet.

“Yuri!” James screams while you try to push yourself back into the room to grab his legs but Hobie yanks you away from the doors. Giving time for Yuri to replace you.

“Yuri, no! Get away!” Hobie yells as he holds you in place with his arms around you.

“James!” Yuri continues to push herself inside, prompting Ned to dive for her and pull her away but Yuri fights. “I've got his foot—!” As she says it, James' screams are cut abruptly. His blood dripping down on the floors, raining down on Yuri. “No!” Ned manages to pull her back enough but her arm is still taking hold of his limp leg. “I've got him—!”

Bang!

The doors suddenly shut on Yuri's arm, and her screams of sorrow are replaced with agonizing pain. The sound of muscle and bone being ripped apart from its sockets would haunt your dreams.

“Yuri! Oh god!” You crawl towards her while her shoulder sprays blood on your suit, “I've got you— oh fuck!” Your eyes fill with tears as your hand shakes around the bandage you're desperately trying to wrap around her wound. “Hobie!” With your cry, Hobie jumps to help, eyes wide with shock. “We need to stop the bleeding!”

He takes more bandages from your kit, pushing the cloth inside as she wails in pain. Ned cradles her in place, hand placed over her eyes as he shields her away from the sight.

The cockpit doors bang with every cry she lets out. You glance at it briefly, heart buzzing to the beat of the brute's knocking.

Once you've gotten your entire supply of bandages around her, Hobie inhales deeply. “We need to get back on board.” You and Ned nod while Yuri's sobs quiets down dangerously. “Help me get her up.” He sniffs as he stands up, “love, can you manage to cover us?”

You swallow down your fear. “Y-yeah, I think so.” He hands you the gun while he puts his arm under Yuri. She yelps, sobbing while she continues to bleed out. “She needs a lot of blood, Hobie.” You say while you put the gun strap over your shoulder.

“We'll get her some, don't worry.” The banging gets louder, “we might need to run. Yuri, which dock—”

“James…” She says in between sobs.

“I know, I know.” Ned calms her down with his hand wiping away at her blood soaked helmet. “We'll get him once you're alright, okay? For now, which dock, Yuri?”

“T–thirteen, near medical.” She gasps out before her head lays on Hobie's chest.

The three of you look at your right, opposite of the way you came from. “Alright, no time to lose.” He fixes his hold on Yuri, earning a staggered exhale from her. “Hold on for us, Yuri.”

Ned guides you all throughout the hallway while you can hear the banging echoing from behind. You take the rear, gun at the ready even though you aren't.

“Just a few more minutes, Yuri!” Ned yells from up front, numerous boots clanging against the metal floors.

You keep running despite your lungs heaving out. Checking your weapon's ammo, you glance at the floor to find the rest of commander Andy's team laying on the ground with numerous parts of their bodies missing.

“Fuck! This is fucked!” Ned screams but he keeps running.

The team turns a corner, that's when the lights flicker into the same shade as the bloody floors. The identical alarms ring from the cockpit, filling the entire hallway with blue fog. Your vision fills with a rainbow of light briefly.

It's here.

“Keep running!” You yell as you hear its heavy footfalls behind you. Hobie spares you a worried glance, “I'm fine, Hobie, keep going!”

You can see dock thirteen in the distance.

There's a new set of footsteps running in the halls.

“Who the fuck is that?!” Ned shouts, pointing ahead of him where a couple of strangers are running towards the dock. “Oi, no!”

They get there before you, sporting a similar suit like yours. But they don't wait for you as they open the dock hatch.

“Wait!” You point the gun at them as a warning. “Please!”

They look like they're arguing, but once they see the creature stalking right behind you, they don't stop to wait. With a frantic hand they shut the hatch close without your team making it inside your ship.

“Motherfucker!” Hobie yells, body hitting the glass hatch from his running momentum. Ned tries to open the doors with the panel to the side, but it beeps, error code reflecting on his helmet. “Open the fucking door!”

You look behind you, seeing the mass of flesh running towards you sloppily, body hitting the sides of the hallway as it gasps a gravelly voice.

“Yuri!” It says in James' voice, and you immediately aim, rifle powering up for a second before you shoot at its legs.

It staggers back as you hit its enormous knee caps in a shatter of bone and blood. You keep shooting, its skin tearing off from the bullets.

“I'm sorry!” The people on the other side say as they get into the ship, leaving you all behind. You can hear Hobie's console warning you of your shared ship undocking.

“Fuckers!” Ned punches the glass as it cracks under his fist.

“We need to go!” Hobie shouts above the rain of gunfire. He yells your name, and you immediately feel someone's hand grip the belt of your suit to pull you away.

Twisting around, you follow your team out of the hallway as you hear the deep rumble of the organism’s footsteps. Without looking back, you hear the shatter of glass and your ship's alarm systems kicking in. It got in, but the airlock already went back in place with a hiss, reminding you that the two strangers have left you all to die in this dying piece of scrap metal with an unknown creature.

—

Ned locks the med bay doors behind him while you and Hobie pause for a second to gawp at the mess of skin and muscle on the operating table.

“What the fuck is that?” Hobie waits for you to answer.

The body is barely recognizable as a human being. Its skeletal structure is all over the place with its seven legs curled to its side in a fetal position, with ten arms embracing its legs. The bones are in deep crimson, as if the shade was painted on. The muscles look like it's melting away from its bones, dripping flesh into the metal table.

“I don't fucking know.” You say while Ned closes the shutters to the windows. “Put Yuri down over there, I'll find where they keep the blood.” Pointing at an empty metal table, you set off to find some blood, or at least a transfusion kit. You remember Ned is an O negative, meaning he can give to Yuri.

Shuffling quickly around the room while Hobie sets Yuri down, you fling numerous cabinets open in hopes to find something, anything to help her instead of just bandages.

Hobie calls for you, his tone soft and sullen. “Love,” he cries out for you again. “Love.”

With one last cabinet to open, you finally find bags upon bags of blood stored inside. “I found it!” You smile, grabbing an armful of blood bags. Turning around, your smile falters when you see Ned sobbing while holding Yuri's hand. Hobie shakes his head, eyes filled with tears. A tear falls down your cheeks, you refuse to let it be. “I found the blood, Hobie, help me with—” you step forward, Hobie quickly embraces you, “she needs them!” muffling your cries as he holds you against his chest while bags of blood fall on your feet.

He cradles you in place as your legs give out from under you. “‘m sorry, love.” Leaning on the cabinets, he lets you hide yourself in his neck, letting your cries reverberate through him as he puts his head atop your shoulder, arms around your body and cradling you back and forth.

—

You've said your goodbyes to Yuri and James, but the shock still hasn't worn off from your bodies. The team, or what's left of you, sit on the cold floors, helmets off for now, backs leaning against the cabinets as the three of you stare off into space wordlessly.

“I'm gonna miss their arguing.” Ned cuts off the heavy silence. “I'm already missing Yuri's coffee, and James' parfait.”

“Or you could just be hungry, mate.” Hobie jokes, hand reaching on top of Ned’s head. Wiggling him gently while Ned smiles softly.

“I'll miss James' hugs, and the way Yuri haggles the prices on the black market.” You smile faintly, avoiding looking at her body covered by a fire blanket. “I remember when she managed to get the price of fuel down to only three hundred credits when it was supposed to be six hundred.”

“Remember when we had to pull her away from a bar fight?” Hobie turns to you, head placed on your shoulder with lips briefly kissing you. He wishes that the suit wasn't there. “While we were tryin’ to not get her arrested, James jumped in to join the fight. We ended up stayin’ a night in jail.” He chuckles, and you soon follow after with your gentle laughter.

Ned joins in, laughing that quickly turns into sniffles. “Yeah, I'll m–miss them.”

You slither your hand behind Hobie to pat Ned’s shoulder. “They were the best.”

“The pods.” Hobie suddenly says, perking up from your shoulder.

“Mate, this is no time to worry about the shit we stole.”

“Not that pod. The escape pods, every ship has ‘em. If we get the power goin' we can get out of ‘ere.”

Ned checks his console for the ship's map. “Says here that there are escape pods left in the ship.” He pinches his fingers, zooming in on the map. “And there's also some sort of executive panic room in case of an uprising inside the ship.” He hisses, “but we both need admin clearance and the power back on to open them.”

“Then let's find someone to open it for us. And open the lights back on.” Hobie thumps his head against the cabinet. “Fuckin' easy, eh?”

You chuckle, nuzzling your face on his bicep, “we need a miracle to pull it off.”

He bumps his head atop yours. “That's quitter talk, lovie.” A gentle smile appears on your lips, eyes glinting under the flashlights. “But I know that look, you've got a plan, don't you?”

“A half of a plan.” You pat his cheek affectionately before standing up. “We're surrounded by medical supplies, and that includes anesthesia. Lots of them.” Walking towards a glass cabinet filled with green vials, you open the door quietly, plucking a single vial from its place. “We may not be able to kill it with what we have, but we can paralyze it to give us enough time to chop off one of its hands.”

Ned's eyes widen in realization. ��To get admin access.” He stands up, joining your side. “I saw its gigantic hand too, there’s dozens of fingers on there, one is bound to be from someone who has the credentials.”

“That plan is bonkers enough that it might work.” Hobie joins in with a groan, stretching his neck from side to side. “We’ll load up the rifle with your concoction, and one of you chops it off.” He glances at you with a look of admiration. “Good on you, love.” His hand cups your elbow, squeezing once before letting go.

“We just need to turn on the power then we'll head off to— wait, the escape pods or the panic room?” Ned asks the two of you, fingers flying to his console, pulling up the ship's map, flicking away an image of the center of the ship where he previously wanted to go before everything happened. You'll never know what lies there. “According to the map, they're near each other.”

“The panic room could give us enough time to wait it out for a ship to come along and rescue us, and maybe wait until the beast starves and dies. From what I've heard of rooms like this…” Hobie points at the dotted line on the screen where the room lays. “They have enough supplies to last the blood sucking executives two years inside the room.”

“And the pods could grant us a quick escape, but ships as old as this one are wonky at best. There's a chance that the built in autopilot won't even work.” You add.

“But a chance that it could.” Ned sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We've got enough time to figure it out later, for now we need to get ready, make sure that we don't fuck up our one chance.” He closes his eyes, breath stuck in his throat. “For them.”

You glance at Yuri's body, Hobie follows your gaze, immediately reaching for your hand, giving you a reassuring squeeze. “For them.”

—

Everything has been set in place, you've mixed at least three magazines worth of ammo with paralyzing agents that could bring down two elephants with one bullet. Or kill an adult human with just a graze from it. Good thing Hobie didn't pinch pennies to buy an old shitty gun but instead he got one that could be loaded with different cartridges. The bright green substance sloshes from side to side as you carefully load it in the remaining rifle and your pistol.

Hobie has armed himself with an ax he took from the fire emergency kit on the wall. He weighs it in his hands, eyes darting towards you and Ned.

“Change of plans, I'll do the cuttin’”

“I thought that was my job?” You ask, chest tightening with worry.

“I don't want either of you gettin' that close to it.” He places it on his belt, securing it with velcro. His suit is now matted with dried blood, you try not to think about it.

You close the distance towards him while Ned wordlessly shakes his head from the corner of your eyes. “At least take this with you, I know that there's no arguing with you, captain.” Handing him your pistol, you don't wait for him to take it, knowing that he will refuse it. Instead you place it on his holster after taking his own pistol to replace the bullets with the paralyzing serum. “This one is for Ned, I'll take the rifle.”

“Love—”

“You can't do everything all at once, Hobie.” You grab his helmet from the counter, placing on his head gently as you turn it until it's secured in place. Tapping the glass, you smile at him sweetly. “Let us help you, okay? We're a team, remember?” You glance at Ned.

“Hey, don't look at me, I'm all in favour of not getting close to it.” He shrugs, chuckling softly.

Hobie grasps your chin carefully with his gloved hand, corner of his lips curling into a tender smile. His eyes hide all his fears, an image of you laying in your pool of blood with Ned's body right next to yours.. “I remember, I just don't want to lose any more of my team.” He should've listened to you and left before everything turned to shit.

“You won't.” You say, palm placed over his heart, wishing the suit wasn't there to feel his heartbeat. “We're not planning on leaving you all alone, Hobie.”

“Hear, hear.” Ned clasps his hands together impatiently. “Can we load up my pistol before you two start snogging right in front of me? We don't have HR remember?”

Hobie chuckles, punching Ned's shoulder lightly. “After this you can send your complains to HR all you want.” He says as he points towards the trash can in the corner.

Your giggles softly echo above their banter while you load Ned's gun. You could only hope everything goes to plan. You don't want to lose either of them. They're what remains of your family and Yuri and James' memory. You want them back but you have to save the ones you still can no matter how much your heart aches for the ones who were lost.

—

The three of you walk silently through the halls, passing by dismembered bodies, coagulated blood sticking to the floors, and the beast's waste laying amongst the dead. You didn't know them, but you no one deserves such a fate.

The hallways are still drenched in darkness, this time it's filled with bodies with limbs all over. You try not to move your flashlight towards the dead in respect for them. Your heart thrums in your ears as Ned leads the way this time towards the power supply room. Hobie walks behind you, ax at the ready, eyes trained to watch out for any sudden movements.

You inhale sharply, trying to even out your staggered breathing which Hobie immediately notices. With a warm hand, he rubs his palm on your back, silently easing you.

Without a word, you reach for his hand atop your shoulder, patting it a few times and placing it over your helmet in a ‘kiss’. Hobie squeezes back before returning his hand to the heavy ax.

You finally make it to the front of the supply room. Its large double steel doors loom over you, the warning signs plastered right next to it take your attention. Highlighting all of your nerves even more.

Ned opens the door, using the same access codes he nicked from the droid just a few hours ago. To think that in a little over three hours your team was still complete, the crimson spider still had its crew and you still had your entire family with you. You should've fought harder to get back on the ship after taking the cryo pods. If you held your ground, told them about your gut instinct telling you to leave. Hell even threw a tantrum just for them to agree with you, the entire team would've been on the ship on your way back home to buy the life you've always wanted. Not stalking the halls of a dead space ship with a killer alien out for your blood.

At least Hobie and Ned are with you. You think you wouldn't have survived this long without them.

With a mechanical hiss, the doors open ever so slowly. The first thing you see under your flashlight is the water inside that sloshes with every creak and groan of the ship.

“What the fuck?” Hobie beats you to it, shining his torch all over the flooded room. The water laps gently at the small staircase further leading down to the room, as far as you can see, the entire place is filled with dark near stagnant water. It rises to the half of the iron coils connected together, good thing the power's off or else it could electrocute you.

Ned raises his light towards the ceiling, seeing a huge hole from it with water leaking down. “Fuck, that's coming from the quarters.”

“That's toilet water.” You grimace, glad that you have your helmet on so you can't smell the nasty water.

Hobie roams his light towards the middle, finding the large console with a lever that was similar to an older ship's power supply that you and Hobie were flying in before you two upgraded to the crimson spider. The bright blue fuel inside the cannisters shimmers in the light, still full as if someone just refueled the ship. The power core looks to be unscathed, James would've been thrilled.

“There.” Hobie sighs, “we need to trudge the water.” He curses under his breath, “I remember this type of supply has the initial surge of power before levelin’ out. We need a rope to tie it around the lever and pull once we're out of the water. Or we'll turn into fish and chips.”

“I fucking hate this, god.” Ned groans but is already coming down the slippery stairs. “Watch your step.”

Hobie lets you go first, ax in hand and takes one last look around before following you. The doors close behind him as the heavy water parts before you. It's cold over your suit, a kind of biting cold that shivers through your spine. Not even the thermal lining in your suit keeps it out.

Hobie sees your uncomfortable posture as you go further into the water until it reaches up to your waist. “Just a few minutes, love, this is nothin' compared to winters back home.”

“Y–yeah,” you shiver. “but this time there's no hot cocoa waiting at the end.”

“We get out of here and I'll drown you in hot cocoa.” Ned tinkers with his console. “Damn it, my screen’s wet.”

“Not a good way to say that you'll drown me while we're wading through waist deep water, Ned—”

The sound of an audio recording suddenly cackles to life, and Harry's voice echoes around the quiet room. “Log 15, I've figured out what attracts it.” He huffs in the recording, and there's some shuffling in the background. But you feel a sudden tugging at your leg, looking down and shining your light on it, you find that one of the metal coils has snagged into your suit. With every pull, it rips into the suit even more. Hobie helps you with his hand pulling at your leg to the opposite side, but with your impatience and nerves, you pull too hard, causing the sharp metal to scratch your skin, leaving a rip on your leg as you bleed into the water.

“Fuck.” You clench your teeth, holding onto Hobie for support from the sudden rush of cold water entering your suit and the ache from the wound.

“We just need to get you out of the water—”

“Blood.” Harry from the recording continues, “fresh ones. I don't know why but it seems to like it. Maybe because it's warm, but I'm no scientist. So if you're bleeding, put a cork in it immediately, if not, run for your life.”

Your breath gets stuck in your throat, meeting your eyes with Hobie's wide ones. “Hobie—!”

The sudden trilling sound filters through the hallway outside, and its guttural shriek sends shivers down your spine. “Fuck! Go!” He gestures for you and Ned to run in the water, there's no going back where you came from since you're already a quarter away from the lever. You just need to push through.

The water makes waves as you move as fast as you can. Ned gets to the lever first, leaving you and Hobie to wade through it.

Ned points at another exit just to the side of the room with another staircase leading up to it. “Go! I'll tie the rope!”

“Ned, we ain't leavin’ you!” Hobie gets to his side, hands shaking at his oldest friend's shoulder.

“Go! The thing is following Y/N, not me!”

“But—!” You start.

“Just fucking go, captain!” His sad eyes flick over to you. “I can manage myself.”

The doors where you came from bursts open, metal shutters flying down into the freezing water with a splash. “Water!” It roars in its many voices.

“Fuck!” Ned pushes you and Hobie towards the other exit, body shimmying behind the console, hiding himself from view while the creature trudges the waters.

Hobie grabs you by the armpits, half carrying you towards the door while the water splashes all around you.

Body drenched, you two make it towards the door, opening it manually with a strong push. You step out onto the dry floor with Hobie right next to you. Once you turn around to face the being, you take your rifle from your back to aim directly at it. Hobie's hands grip the ax tight as he sees it ignore Ned and heading right towards your form with its large gangly form of stolen limbs.

“Now, love!” He yells as you don't waste time by shooting at it. The rifle didn't take a second to power up completely, once the gun beeps, your ammo hits its chest.

The sound of gunfire reverberates around you, muzzle flash painting the whole room in flashing light.

It staggers forwards, groaning and warbling but it still continues to grasp at you desperately. Hobie readies his ax, raising it above his head while you reload another round of the paralyzing serum. Ned sees a long arm snaking towards your foot, and as you see it headed for you, you snap your eyes towards Ned, who's smiling kindly at you. Mouthing words that you can't quite decipher while his hand is placed around the lever before pulling it down.

“No!” The sudden bright sparks burns your eyes, staggering you backwards as it blinds you for a moment. The beast wails, but you can't hear Ned anymore. Then you see it, the same rainbow of light flitting across your vision. It floats into a circle until it speeds up, as fast as it came, it flickers into a steady circle of light. Blinking it away with tears trapped in your eyes, you find Hobie clutching his eyes right next to you, one hand trying to find you. Meeting him halfway, you squeeze his hand and he falls limp. “I'm okay, Hobie. Are you—?”

“Ned!” He cries out, legs tucked underneath him as he slouches on the floor in a fetal position. “Fuck!” Banging on the floor, he inches his hands towards the fallen ax above him.

“Hobie.” You cry for him, hands tugging at his suit as he stands up. You refuse to look at Ned's floating body in the water. “I'll do it, please sit back down.” You're still trying to blink away the light.

He clenches his jaw, eyes brimming with fire. “no, I'll do it.” Walking towards the long arm that was reaching out to you, it has stopped right at the top of the stairs where it's dry. Looking at Ned as he raises the weapon, he chops it off with a furious yell.

Blood gushes out of it like a fountain of gore, splashing Hobie in streaks of rubies. The hand cuts without much resistance. He drags the large hand that is the size of your torso, the skin is burnt and almost charred as welts pop on its skin, he drops it to the side as he falls on his knees, catching him before he gets hurt. You gather him on your lap for a moment, fingers digging to your side but not for a second longer as the creature seizes up, slowly waking up.

Hobie moves away, eyes turned towards the hand. “We need to move.” You stand up first, reaching out for a helping hand. He looks up at you with tears clinging onto his lashes. “Love?” He asks as he takes your hand.

“Y–yeah?” You sniff away the tears.

“We should've left.”

“We can leave now, Hobie.” Lifting him up, you place your helmet upon his own. Closing your eyes for a second before pulling away. “C’mon, let's go home.”

—

You two make your way out wordlessly. The rifle in your hands weighs heavier, the wound on your leg has stopped bleeding, but the ache persists. Hobie walks next to you with the bloody ax swinging on his hip. The large hand he's carrying makes him smaller under the now whirring lights of the ship.

Ned did it, he opened the power back on the entire ship. You can now open the previous restricted doors. Add that with the hand, there's probably at least one finger in there that has the admin clearance to open either the escape pods or the panic room.

“Love.” Hobie's boots squeak as he stops. You follow his line of sight with your tired eyes. “Where to?”

You have found yourself at a crossroads, a fork in the road with two converging hallways leading to different outcomes. Which one will it be? Your choice determines your fate and Hobie's.

The creature roars behind you. Calling you by your name.

The Escape Pods.

The Panic Room.

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A/N: please consider reblogging if you liked this! ❤️❤️❤️

[auspicioustidings]

The Ghost

Blue Blood Part 6

Summary: The conclusion to Blue Blood, you are finally hunted by the Ghost.

Words: 1.8k

CW: Most of this chapter is smut!

“It’s too much, it’s too much!” 

You thought you might die. The marble altar you were on was cool beneath your skin but you were on fire. An hour of fragrant ritual oil being massaged into every inch of you had already gotten you unbearably wound up, but now Johnny had three fingers massaging inside you and Kyle was right by your ear giving you delicious little praises that made you squeeze involuntarily at the fingers and John was standing just looking with such an intensity in his eyes that it was difficult to look away.

“You can take it Duchess” the Duke said firmly.

“I can’t! Please I-” you begged, a moan cutting your words off when you tried to move your hand to touch yourself where you needed only for the Prince to grab your wrists to stop you. Johnny pressed his thumb hard to your clit, not moving, just pressing almost painfully.

This must be some form of torture, not letting you cum. You felt so dazed, like you were starting to float outside of your own body. You tried to move your hips so that Johnny’s thumb would change from an uncomfortable pressure to getting you to the high you wanted, but he pressed a hand to your stomach and held you in place. You think you may have been babbling incoherent curses at them, threatening them with anything you could think of to just touch you properly. There wasn’t even a burn from the stretch anymore, the drooling from between your legs was encouraging the fingers pumping in and out if anything. You think you screamed when they left you.

Desperation was not something you understood before now. You needed more, there was nothing outside of that need anymore. Emptiness and want was all that there was, the need to be full and touched. Without their hands on you, you felt untethered, not even aware of what you were saying or doing.

“Fuuuck ye beg so pretty don’t ye?”

You were vaguely aware then that you were reaching out to Johnny, begging him to come back to you. Begging him to use you how he wanted, satisfy himself with your body if that meant he would let you cum. The Duke grabbed onto his hair and yanked him back sharply, stopping him from getting his hands back on you. Stopping him from putting more than his fingers inside you. You all but squirmed off of the altar, finding your knees weak and legs shaking at trying to even hold up your weight. Johnny looked near feral, the Duke now having to put in some effort to hold him back.

“Kyle!”

At Price’s shout the Prince moved to back Johnny against the wall. The Duke came to stand in front of you then, blocking your view of Kyle going to his knees. What a sight you made, the oil on your skin making it shine in the moonlight pouring in through the skylight of the little ritual chamber, your eyes wet and shining from unshed tears of frustration. You looked up at him so wide-eyed and trusting that if Duke John Price were a weaker man he would have taken you right there and then.

“You’ve already done so well little bird, just a little more. It’s time for you to run” he said, hand coming to caress your cheek. “It’s going to be scary but you need to trust he would never do anything that would permanently hurt you. You’ll not be able to see me, but I promise I will be right there if you need me.”

With a hard squeeze to your hip you were all at once outside.

–

You are running. The earth beneath your bare feet is soft and damp. The moon is high and bright, light filtering down through the trees and turning the woods into some otherworldly realm. Time isn’t linear here, you think you may have been running for hours, yet only seconds ago you had been married. You are scared of being caught and yet your body craves it. Every glimpse of the figure stalking you heightens your nerves until you lose the ability to hear anything but the blood rushing through your veins and throbbing needily between your legs. 

You are caught.

–

The Ghost panted above you, his cock throbbing even through the layer of fabric at your ass. You wanted to turn and see him, but you were pinned down into the dirt, face barely able to turn so you could breathe. He was growling lowly, shifting so that you could feel his hot breaths right on the shell of your ear.

“Thought you could run from me? Stupid thing, there is nowhere you could go that I would not hunt you down.”

There was the tear of gossamer as he ripped at your gown. If either of you had any sense then it would just have been rucked up, the thing was designed for easy access, but you were both so far gone that it didn’t register. You writhed under him, scrambling to get away or get closer with no sense of certainty on which. He wrenched one of your arms to pin it painfully to your back and you howled out in protest as your other hand clawed at the dirt to try and drag you forward and away from him.

“Quit fucking squirming. Think I can’t see how needy that cunt is little girl? Fucking gagging for it.”

He was mean and your hips pressed back against him in response. You had turned into something mean too. 

“Throwing stones at glass houses, you feel plenty needy.”

He barked a laugh and used his free hand to pull his cock out of his clothes, stroking it only once before running the head through your soaked folds. When you felt the heat of it against your clit you fought as hard as you could against his hold to try and rub against him. 

“Want it pretty girl? Want my cock inside you?”

You whined and kept trying to move back against him in answer which only caused him another mean laugh and a sharp smack against the flesh of your ass which you screeched at.

“You were so happy to talk back, what happened? Use your fucking words. Beg for me.”

It didn’t matter that his cock had already caught on your hole, that he was already starting to push into you. You were getting what you wanted but you were so gone, so desperate to get everything he could give, that you choked out an answer anyway.

“Please please, need you inside me! Take me, I’m yours. Ah! I’m yours! Please I- ah!” you screamed as you felt the heat of him sink into you inch by inch. “Full, m’too full.”

“You can take it Duchess.”

Him repeating the words that Price had said had you choking on your own saliva with the possibility that the Duke had given him advice on how best to handle you. When you thought there could not possibly be more inside of you he let go of your arm to put his hands on your hips and pull them up, your chest still pressed into the dirt with your ass now high. He sunk impossibly more into you and you whined long and low. It felt like he was in your fucking stomach. 

“Fuck you’re tight,” Ghost groaned as he gave a few slow thrusts, making it deeper each time until he bottomed out.

When one of his hands came to press low on your stomach, when you both realised at the same time that he could feel himself there, you felt your walls flutter and pulse around him and came very close to cumming from his moan alone. His hand on your hip tightened until it was bruisingly tight. He was fighting himself.

“I can take it.”

That snapped any self control Ghost had and he started fucking you with a fury. The air was punched out of your lungs with every hard and deep thrust of him inside you and you were light headed from the lack of oxygen. It was intense, it was too intense. The hand on your stomach moved back so he could ram you back onto his cock again and again, using your body for his own pleasure. It was intense and pain and pleasure and if you did not cum you would die. You couldn’t verbalise it, the only noises you could make were sobs and moans as he ruined you. 

“Perfect cunt, all wet and squeezing at me. Want you to cum on my cock, try fucking strangle it.”

His fingers only had to touch you for moments before you were screaming your throat raw, the orgasm making you see white. Your pussy choked on his dick the way your throat had on Price’s, body overwhelmed and trying to force him out. 

“Fuck, take it!”

He fucked you hard through your orgasm and gave one last push, spilling himself deep inside of you. You went completely boneless, head totally empty and body exhausted. It meant you didn’t notice how despite him being in the same situation, he still made sure to catch himself on his forearms as he collapsed on top of you to protect you from his weight. 

You were barely conscious by the time he pulled out and rolled off of you, dragging you with him so he could hold you close there on the earth and Simon Riley could mutter soft praises into your hair, telling you how sorry he was for hurting you and how proud he was of how well you had done. He told you he loved you. 

As the darkness of sleep took you, you couldn’t help but think that despite how little you knew the man holding you, you loved him too.

–

“I like rainbow butterflies so much!”

“Aye? Is that right wee yin?”

“I pick red, your turn!”

You hide your laugh in Ghost’s shoulder, but he does very little to hide how funny he finds the sight of the scary Blood Druid once again hanging on every word of nonsense your toddling daughter says. The War Duke is happily sat right next to the two of them, following orders and picking out a gemstone which earns a delighted laugh and an exclamation of “blue!”. 

The Wild King is holding your sleeping newborn, gazing down at the baby with soft adoration. It had caused quite the scandal when your second child had been so clearly not your husband’s, but behind closed doors the only tension had been Kyle endlessly teasing the others that they would simply need to try harder next time if they didn’t want every other child you had to have the same soft brown skin as him. 

“Are you happy, my gentle little Duchess?” your husband asks.

“Blissfully.”

[mykuup]

Of bone and bloom - Cryptid!Eddie Munson AU Epilogue

Moodboard + summary + Serie Masterlist

My masterlist

Prologue | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Epilogue

Summary : What you call something you're dreaming of, appearing in front of you in the middle of the day. Magic? Hallucination? Insanity? Yeah.. it's definelty insaity right?

wc : 1,067 words

Warnings : fix-it end // back to 1986 bc it's his year baby // fluff // kinda soulmate ending? // monster romance // MDNI // size gap // no mention of y/n // afab reader (but no description)

A/n : I will never say thank you enough. You guys are incredible! Thank you for all the love you gave to this story. Every like, every comment, every reblog went straight to my heart. Your reactions were priceless and I LOVED reading y'all.

I'm not a huge blog, I'm not a very good writer but I don't mind because of all the kindness you sent me during this serie. I'll always be grateful 💜

@saphirmoraitie I love you beyond stars. Thank you for being in my life

Taglist : @jasminelafleur @maedesculpaeusoubi @sassidykassidy @arabellagreenleaf @babybatlover @littlexdeaths (aka @thefreaksrecs )

This year is my year. I can feel it!

Eddie had always been a little different. His friends, his band, his age and his obsession with Dungeons & Dragons—it all made him stand out in ways he wasn’t always sure he liked. But there was something else, too. Something he couldn't quite explain, even to himself. It wasn’t just the dreams he’d had for as long as he could remember. Or the way the woods that bordered his town seemed to call to him like a familiar song. It was something deeper, a pull he couldn’t shake.

For years, he had played it off. After all, who would understand if he said he felt like part of him belonged to another world? But it was more than that—it was as if his soul had been searching for something. Or someone.

That was why she had appeared in his campaigns. The creature. An NPC (non-playable character) he’d created from scratch—though, if he was honest, he wasn’t sure where the idea for her had even come from. She was a beautiful, mysterious guardian of the forest: powerful yet kind to the players. He named her “Wildflower,” avoiding a human name to keep her untethered to his world. Every time the Hellfire played, Eddie found himself giving the monster—the cryptid he would say to Gareth for the millionth time— more depth, more of a backstory, more of his attention. She was his favorite character, a quiet obsession that gnawed at him in ways he didn’t quite understand. 

His friends teased him about it sometimes.

“What’s with you and this forest spirit chick?” Jeff would joke, and Eddie would shrug, laughing it off. “Just a muse, ‘kay?” he’d say, though even he knew it was more than that.

Still, he never imagined he would actually meet her.

It was a late afternoon in the fall, the crisp air clinging to the last vestiges of summer warmth. Eddie, as usual, had slipped away to wander the woods. The high school behind him felt stifling, too loud, too full of people who didn’t get him and Mrs. Clark’s class had nearly driven him up the wall. He needed space to breathe, a chance to be alone, to smoke and unwind.

Out here, at his usual picnic table deep in the woods, there was a quiet that settled his mind. The rustling leaves, the scent of pine, the earth solid beneath his boots—it was where he felt most at home.

But today felt… different. There was a hum in the air, a subtle vibration, like something was stirring just beyond his senses. Drawn by that feeling, he wandered deeper into the trees, his feet carrying him farther from school, away from the noise and chaos of the world. The pull grew stronger, guiding him until he found himself in a small clearing.

And then Eddie saw something. Someone.

At first, he thought he was dreaming. The thing was standing beside a tree. A form that looked like a girl was standing there, her antlers entwined with vines and blossoms, her eyes glowing softly in the fading light, looking exactly like the cryptid he created.

She was there. His Wildflower.

The one he had drawn over and over during class, sketched in his notebooks, described in vivid detail to Dustin, Jeff, Gareth, and all the members of Hellfire Club. The character he’d built at the gaming table and saw in his dreams. She was real. You were real, and you were standing right in front of him.

His breath caught in his throat as your eyes met. You froze, your ethereal form tensing as if unsure whether to run or stay. But Eddie... he couldn’t move. He could only stare, his mind whirling with thoughts that refused to make sense. How could this be real? How could you be real?

But then, something clicked. Deep in his chest, a recognition stirred. It was like a lock turning, a door opening to a memory he didn’t know he had. His heart raced, but at the same time, he felt... calm. Like this was meant to happen.

He took a slow step forward, dry leaves crunching beneath his boots, breaking the spell of stillness between you.

“Wildflower, you’re here!” he said, his voice soft but filled with the weight of years he couldn’t explain. As soon as the words left his lips, he knew them to be true. He had been searching for you his whole life, even if he hadn’t realized it.

You blinked, and for a fleeting moment, your expression softened. Recognition bloomed in your eyes, and Eddie’s heart skipped a beat. Did you know him, too? Could you feel the pull between you, the connection that seemed to stretch across lifetimes?

You took a step toward him, each movement as graceful as if the earth itself were guiding you. Slowly, you reached out, your hand hesitant, and Eddie met you halfway. His fingers brushed against yours, and a spark shot through him—not painful, but electric, like the entire forest was alive between you.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” you whispered, your voice soft as the wind but heavy with meaning. Eddie’s chest tightened. He had no idea how or why, but he understood your words. It seems like he also thought he would never see you—his whole life. The dreams, the stories, the inexplicable draw to the woods—it had all been leading him here, to you.

“I feel like I’ve waited for you all my life,” he murmured, stepping closer. His heart raced, but he felt no fear, only certainty. “And now you’re here, and I remember you.” Finally, Eddie understood—this was where he was meant to be. With you.

The world around you seemed to blur as he took you in—your radiant beauty, the shimmer of the air around you, and the sense of belonging that settled over him like warmth on a winter’s night. He had always felt out of place in the world he was born into. But here, with you, he felt whole.

“I’m here now,” you whispered, your voice trembling slightly with emotion. “And I won’t leave you again.”

Eddie smiled, his heart swelling with a mix of relief and joy. He knew this was only the beginning. Somehow, across time and lifetimes, your souls had found each other again. He had no idea what the future held, but he didn’t care.

Because he was finally home.

[strangelittlestories]

Let me tell you about the Truthspeaker.

It is well known that most fae are tricksters. They are creatures who do not lie per se, but who make truth light as chaos or heavy as a contract.

They distract you with the truth and while you are looking at it, they steal the ground from beneath your feet, the name from the craw of your soul, and the

They are like shitty close-up magicians, but the coin they produce from behind your ear is everything you ever valued. And the rabbit they vanish into their hat is reality itself.

They leave you untethered, unmoored, floating free in the summerlands while the path home unravels like a knot of handkerchiefs.

It is well known that fae do this. However, you should realise that 'it is well known' is also a clever illusion.

For while you *should* fear the fair folk, they are multi-faceted and manifold. There are some among them that you may still wish to seek out - for while they will *wreck you* quite thoroughly, sometimes a person must shipwreck themselves to reach their destination.

So let me tell you about the Truthspeaker.

I first heard rumours of them when on my quest year. It's become something of a tradition among aspiring urban esotericists to take a year out to gain practical magical experience. Druids venture into the fragmented urban wilds beneath their city. Mages seek out spells and traditions in rare local dialects and folklores. Seers get very high and follow whatever visions they may have to their inevitable horrible conclusions.

Meanwhile, I started out seeking a simple remedy for mild dimensional bifurcation. One of the alchemists I spoke to mentioned they sometimes sourced ingredients from the fae - in particular, they had a connect for ice cold truths that they thought may help me.

Sadly, I was hot on the trail of the Reality-phage by that point. And that whole situation … escalated.

When I emerged from that densely-woven five-year headfuck with a master's degree in Divine Linguistics and a fully fractured sense of self, I went panning for gold through my memories … and I recalled the Truthspeaker.

The path to faerie is an easy one to find, but a hard one to walk. Especially if you want anything that resembles yourself to emerge on the other side.

I had little enough of my self left, so I took precautions.

I conjured a worm out of earth and lichen. I took one of my memories - one I could not afford to lose - and I fed it to the imaginary creature. It was fat and wriggling, as if ready to burst with dreams.

I wrote my own personal rune on the worm's skin in white marker. The worm wrote *its* rune on me in slime.

I took it to a dried up canal behind a main road. I walked onto the footbridge that crossed it. I speared the worm on a hook, tried it to a silver thread and I dangled it from a fishing pole.

From the canal bed beneath, hungry mouths began to warp out of the concrete. I snagged the biggest and reeled it in. Arms aching with the effort, finally it breached the guardrail with a squeal of metal. Its grey teeth gnashed towards me.

I dived in.

After a small unknowable bubble of time, in which the concrete hydra and I argued over semantics, we finally reached an accord.

I rode in its mouth into the Summerlands.

Apologies, I was supposed to be telling you about the Truthspeaker.

Reaching them was complex, even with my fearsome new ride. (Honestly, riding in that thing's maw made me feel I was in that book about the sandworms, but a bit more 'Vore.)

I won't repeat the trials I had to go through, the spirits I had to beg, bribe or bludgeon ... if you ever seek them yourself, you will need to pay your own way.

But eventually I reached their grove.

It was a strange place. It had a mushroom arch, like many fae groves, but if you looked close you could see spots of rust growing on the caps of them. I peered closer and saw: there was an iron frame beneath the fungi.

I've heard it said that fungus make death into the stuff of life. Even given some faeries' affinity for mushrooms, I think it takes a very special fae to take that which is inimical to you and make of it your sustenance. (And to be quite so cottagecore about it.)

I passed beneath the arch and felt my magical protections torn away by long intangible fingers clawed in ferrous decay.

Inside, the grove sat beneath ... what is the opposite of a 'verdant' canopy? A dying canopy? A putrefying canopy?

No, it was canopy of tomorrows. A vast and dense web of mycelial strands that ate dank darkness and shunned the sun. The interlaced fungal strings shone with strands of copper and arced with electricity.

At the centre of this dwelling with something akin to a cottage, but vast and ballooning with bulbous growths. Cosy and grand. Homely but haunting.

From within its cavernous doorway emerged the Truthspeaker.

My eyes were drawn first to the crown that burst from beneath the skin of their head. Filigreed wires wove in and out of their temples, burning where they met flesh. From that burning emerged green shoots and flowering fungus in all the colours of autumn killings.

They were dressed in stars and pale cotton. Their eyes were caverns. Their lips were lined with morning frost, which crunched softly as they spoke.

"You have travelled a long road." their sweet, soft voice was echoed deeply by the creatures that squirmed in the earth around their feet.

"I have, honoured one." My voice shook.

"There is no honour here, child."

"Nonetheless, I come to honour you."

"You come to ask of me."

Inside myself, I felt my heart shrivel and rot away and a new heart build itself again from the mess.

"From where I stand, to ask favour is to show my throat. This is honour."

"You are a sophist." they snorted and a cloud of spores filled the air, glittering.

"That is the source of my power, honoured one." The spores settled on my robe and began to form a sparkling crystal city.

"You bear the blessing of the Once God."

"I, uh..." I found myself reaching for my phone to take a scrying selfie and resisted. "I had honestly forgotten it was there."

"As had the blessing. Such is the way of things with the God That Was But Was Not."

"There is much I have lost."

"You are not special in this regard."

"Are there ... any ways in which I *am* special?"

"I don't especially care to name them if there are."

"I..." I licked my lips and they tasted of earthy spices. "I would ask you to tell me one true thing, Truthspeaker."

"I have already told you several."

"I can offer fair exchange. I can serve you. I had knowledge and skill once, I am sure I can find them again."

"No. You never shall."

I blanched.

"Never?"

"They are mulch. New talents will grow. Or you will die. Such is the way of things." they looked me up and down with their hollow, everything eyes, "Tell me what truth you would have. I will find something to do with you after."

My mouth was dry. My lungs filled with thick honey-like dreck. My skin shone translucent. The crystal city on my robe spread and grew, went through two cataclysms, rebuilt itself, then began to spread across my back.

I forget the truth I had planned to ask for.

Instead I said:

"Do you like me?"

"I do not know yet." The Truthspeaker said. "But I am willing to find out."

That is how I met the Truthspeaker. Our first meeting, but not our last. But that is all the detail I will give you for now. If you want more then you will have to seek me out and ask me or win it from me or remind me of it.

But what was it that I wanted to tell you about the Truthspeaker? What did I learn? What might you learn from them?

Surely, I have already told you that?

No, I will say one thing more:

Sometimes the truth does not set you free. Sometimes it anchors you.

Because sometimes you don't need a trickster fae to untie you from reality. Sometimes you are already doing a perfectly adequate job of that yourself.

And when that happens, a truth you can rely on is like cold iron for the soul.

---

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[lauriegraham01]

haunting

pairings: will graham x reader, gn!reader,

summary: will's been going down a dark path and feels like he's losing everything, from control, his sense of self, to reality. he fears he'll lose you too.

tw: nightmares, blood, mutilation, angst, hurt/comfort

wc: 1,348

a/n: based off a nightmare i had a while back that to this day i still think about all the time because it felt too real. only difference is that will was the victim of violence displayed in dream sequence.

Will was shutting himself out.

It wasn't the first time that he had done this but something about this time around felt different, felt more dangerous.

You had seen the way Jack Crawford had been pushing him, and you were afraid it was only a matter of time before Will reached the point of no return. You carried a bit of guilt with you, since you had been the one to bring Will under Jacks radar. You knew about his gifts, his profound sense of empathy, and you thought by joining Jacks team he could make a real difference. While proven to be true, Jack saw a machine that he could constantly use without ever thinking about the rust that he would cause from exhaustion.

The light in his eyes had been slowly going out and you felt helpless as you felt the man you loved drift away from you. Countless nights you'd reach for him only to be met with cold sheets. Only then you would find him outside shivering, untethered from reality as the horrors from the murders he saw daily plagued his mind. Other nights you'd wake up to his shivers as he jerked from nightmares drenched in sweat.

"Will." Your voice comes out groggy as you turn to face the movement you felt within your shared bed. What you see strikes fear in your heart as you see Will shaking, trembling, drenched in sweat as ragged breaths escaped his lips.

"Will, honey wake up," you say tapping his face gently. When you see no response you begin to lightly shake him by his arm, not wanting him to wake up even more scared.

"Please," you whisper, pleading desperately as you give him a rather harder shake.

When his eyes shoot open, his breathing becomes even more rapid as he's brought back to reality.

"Hey, hey, shhh it's alright," you say softly as you let out an air of relief. Finding the tiniest comfort that he was able to come back.

As you push away the damped locks clinging to his forehead, he seems to relax underneath your touch. Wrapping a hand around your wrist suddenly, you're scared that the touch was unwelcomed, that the act of affection had been too much for him in such a vulnerable state. Yet when he moved his hand to place it on top of yours you knew that the opposite was true, that he found solace in your gentle touch.

"I'm here. I'm right here," you whisper before planting a kiss on his temple. He shuddered at the act as he felt overwhelmed by a sea of emotions. After a couple of minutes minutes his breathing evened out and you manage to coax him to sit upright in the bed.

As he hid his face in his hands trying to fully come back down to earth, you rubbed circles across his back hoping that it would help the process.

"I don't think I can do this much longer." His voice comes out muffled as he still had his face hid.

"Will, honey we don't have to talk about it." You tilt your head sideways at him sympathetically, not wanting to push him further into his pain.

"It was real. It was so real y/n." As he turns his head to meet your gaze you can see the pain hidden behind those eyes that carried so many beasts of burden.

"I can't save you, y/n."

Will extended a hand as he wiped the steam from his shower away from the mirror. He had a difficult time staring back at what was in the mirror. Somehow his reflection felt something so familiar yet so foreign. Familiar in the sense that he recognized these features as his own- his mothers eyes, his father hair, only his curls had now grown longer. Yet foreign in the way that he couldn't connect these features to himself, they didn't match the mental reflection of himself in his mind.

Closing his eyes for a second, he shakes his head as he pushes those thoughts aside, not wanting to spiral down a rabbit hole. Reaching for the towel he used earlier, he wrapped it around himself, tucking it lowly on his hips. As he opened the door and into your shared bedroom he was caught off guard by the darkness that consumed the room. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, scanning the room he saw your figure standing at the foot of the bed with your back facing him.

Calling out your name he reached closer to you, as an eeriness settled within his stomach. Extending a hand out as he reached for you and grabbed your shoulder, the sight he saw as you turned around made his blood run cold and his stomach drop.

"Will," you croaked out. Blood soaked through your clothes as a grappling hook had been pushed through your abdomen, flesh tearing and bone exposed and broken as it had clawed it ways through you.

"I'm sorry," was all that you could choke out as blood began to seep its way through the corners of your mouth.

Will took you into his arms as you both sank to the floor, clinging onto you tightly as he felt the world crumble beneath him.

"No, no, no, no. Y/n, stay with me," he pleaded as he took in the sight of your corrupted body. His mind couldn't even form a thought as he saw the way the hook had mutilated you completely from the inside out, hollowing you from the inside.

"Do you hear me? Y/n? You have to stay with me?"

His immediate thought was to call Jack. As he looked around the room frantically racking his brain as to where he left his cell phone, he freezes when he sees as familiar face lurking in the shadows. A face that's followed him everywhere and is there even when he closes his eyes. Garret Jacob Hobbs stands in the corner, face pale and just as lifeless as the last time Will saw him.

His breath hitches in his throat and he feels the room close in on him as he locks eyes with GJH cold lifeless gaze.

"See?" The ghost smiles sinisterly as he breaks eye contact to look down at his work. At the mutilated and dying corpse of the one thing Will loved most in this world.

"Will," you call out softly, "look at me."

If he heard you, he made no effort to obey you as he continued staring straight ahead.

"Will, please. Come back, look at me love."

Will slowly turned his head until he locked eyes with you and he felt the lump in his throat grow bigger and fear climbed it's way up threatening to suffocate him.

You moved cautiously so as not to spook him, you reached over to take one of his hands that gripped the sheets and placed it flat on your chest.

"Do you feel that?"

Will only looked sadly at your sandwiched hands, not knowing whether to trust what was in front of him.

"Will, i'm here and i'm alive." It was only then that Will could feel the faint beat of your heart beneath his hand. Steady and alive.

"I promise you, he can't hurt me."

When Will met your eyes again, his had glossed over and it was only then that he could finally feel relief. Feel secure in your touch and that you being alive was the truth. He buried his head into your chest as he began to sob, feeling his tears fall on your clothes.

Will was fragile. This you knew. His mind was a maze that even he couldn't fully understand. You'd never know if you would truly understand the terrors Will faced but you knew that you would be there to grant him ease of mind. To bring light to the darkness that is his mind because to Will that's what you were. A lighthouse shinning at sea, guiding him back ashore.

"I'm here Will, i'm always here."

[seat-safety-switch]

Ha ha ha. Mister Shitpants was my dad. You can call me Doctor Shitpants. Are things not-so-fresh down there? Does it take you a long time to get off the john when you go to poop? Do you start dropping the kids off at the pool, only to gradually forget why you were there during the passage of time, becoming a new person in the process, untethered from personal responsibility as a result of your harrowing journey?

There is news, and that news is good. Friends, I have been called to a purpose higher than any on Earth. That purpose is to have a good, high-speed shit. Before I go into my sales spiel, I just want to give you a couple of facts to sit with. Fact number one: fully one-twelfth of a human being's lifetime is spent taking a dump. That's absolutely true. And fact number two: we got better things to be doing with our time than pooping.

Have you ever wondered why, in this time of automation and high technology, where robots do our menial tasks such as writing poetry and drawing grotesque pornography, we still have to strain so hard to use the toilet? That's where the Shitpants 9000 fecal vacuum comes in. It's patented, so don't go sniffing around under those covers, boys. I know you're really here from Toto's espionage department.

Don't worry: this isn't like the old fecal vacuums, like the McDonnell-Douglas nightmare of the 1960s that turned all those senior citizens inside out. Microcontrollers and adaptive suction engines are used to ensure that the pressure is gentle, even, but insistent. You'll be done your business in less than half the time you used to spend, which means more time for what's really important: using your phone on the john in order to avoid going back to work.

[sibylsleaves]

all at once you are the one i have been waiting for

7k | rated T | read on ao3

Days after the lightning strike, showing up at Eddie’s door, falling asleep on his couch. Buck had come to him. And Eddie had thought, maybe. Had thought, it’s almost time. And so he’d gotten him all dressed up and taken him out and they’d had fun and they’d laughed and maybe even flirted and Eddie had been so goddamn happy, so excited for what the future held. They were right at the threshold, he’d thought. No more doubts, no more fears, nothing holding them back, just the two of them stepping forward together. And now this.

He doesn’t understand how he could have gotten it so wrong.

or, Buck and Eddie are finally on the same page--until they're not. (A coda for 6x13 and a sort-of spec fic for 6x14/6x15)

When Eddie walks into the kitchen, Buck is pacing, phone clutched to his ear, stuttering and stammering his way through what sounds like the most awkward phone call anyone has ever experienced.

“No, it’s not a dare,” Buck says into the phone. “No, I just—I wanted to know because—statistically speaking—”

His face scrunches in a way that’s definitely not adorable (who would ever think that?) and then he lowers the phone from his face just as he turns and finds Eddie leaning against the kitchen counter.

“She hung up,” Buck explains needlessly, dropping his phone onto the counter.

“Imagine that,” Eddie replies dryly. “Have you been calling women all afternoon?”

They got off shift hours ago, and Eddie took Buck back to the Diaz house where they both crashed out for a well-deserved nap after a busy twenty-four. It’s early evening now, and Eddie just woke up. From the looks of it, Buck’s been awake a lot longer.

“Uh,” Buck says. “You want a beer?”

He pulls two out of the fridge, pops off the tops and comes around the table to hand one to Eddie. He leans up against the counter next to him, so close their shoulders brush. Eddie hides a fond smile by taking a sip.

“Can I ask you something?” Eddie asks after a minute. Buck looks at him, eyebrows raised in anticipation. “What the hell are you doing?”

Buck freezes for a second, looking caught-out, and then he ducks his head. “It’s stupid, I know. But you heard that guy…eighty per cent of—”

“Yeah, I heard him,” Eddie agrees. “But how exactly does that lead to you calling up every woman you slept with years ago to see if they had a good time?”

Buck ducks his head again, blushing. “Doesn’t every guy want to know that he satisfied his partner?”

“Sure,” Eddie agrees. “But Buck—”

“I know it’s stupid,” Buck admits, looking down at his beer instead of at Eddie. “But I just…I hate the idea that I didn’t…that I wasn’t…” He swallows. “Good.”

All the amusement and confusion leaves Eddie like an exhale. Because this isn’t about sex, or those women, not really. This is classic Evan Buckley self-worth issues, rearing their head just when it seems like Buck is finally moving past them.

Eddie sets his beer down on the counter behind him and turns so he’s facing Buck completely. “Let me ask you something.”

Buck angles toward him.

“How did you feel about those encounters?”

Buck blinks at him slowly, as if this question has never crossed his mind before. “Well, I…it was fun, you know? It was a release. Got me out of my head.” He takes another sip of beer and then continues, “Looking back, I guess it seems shallow. But at the time…I don’t know. I was so lonely. I wanted…something. Attention. Affection, maybe? I just wanted to feel wanted, for once. Maybe it’s sounds stupid, but even if they were just one-night stands or hookups or whatever, it felt like…a connection. Like I wasn’t completely untethered to the world.”

Eddie has to fight down the feeling that rises in him at Buck’s words, at the vulnerable expression on his face. An ache threatens to swallow his chest, thinking of Buck the way he was then, before Eddie even knew him, just a lost, lonely kid who felt like there was no place on earth he belonged. Eddie’s seen glimpses of that Buck—the one who squared up to him when Eddie first joined the 118 because he felt like his place there was threatened. The one that withdrew into himself and tried to sue his way back into a job that he felt like he was nothing without. 

The one that looked Eddie in the eye in a hospital room and said, I think it might’ve been better for him if I was the one who got shot.

“It doesn’t sound stupid, Buck,” Eddie says softly. “I get it, actually. You know, when things really broke down between Shannon and me, sex was the one thing that still made me feel connected to her. Even if I was hurt and couldn’t trust her, it was the one way I felt like I could hold on to her. So I do get it.”

“That’s different,” Buck says, gaze dropping back to the ground. “I mean, she was your wife. I thought I was finding connection with those women but it was only when I was with someone I really cared about that I realized how different it was. When the connection was real.”

“With Abby, you mean,” Eddie says, and he can’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice completely.

Buck just nods. “Yeah. And after her, I knew that any hook-up would only make me feel lonelier. And that was also when I finally…felt connected to the world. To people. Our team. Maddie.” His gaze slides over to Eddie. “To you and Chris.”

Eddie takes a careful breath, holding Buck’s gaze.

“So it felt like I didn’t…need it, the same way. But I guess I do miss it, you know? Not—not sex, exactly. But feeling completely and totally connected to someone in that way.” He drops Eddie’s gaze again. “But part of me also wonders if I’ve ever really had it at all. I felt a connection with Abby. I did. And Ali. And Taylor.”

Eddie seals his lips together to stop himself from making a noise, or a face, that will give him away completely.

“But there was always some part of them…or part of me, that stopped us from having that complete, total connection. Where there are just…no walls, nothing holding you back from each other. Where it’s just total trust, and safety, and…” He stops, like he’s biting back the words he wants to say, and then shakes his head. “So I just wonder, sometimes. What that would be like. Especially now.”

“Now?” Eddie asks, his voice coming out rough.

Buck looks back up at him. Holds his gaze. “Now that I’m finally ready for it.”

(keep reading on ao3)

[ineffableaddiction]

Expanded thoughts & a theory

(Initially one of my blog posts on another account)

What if Aziraphale and Crowley can only feel the other’s love while they’re on Earth, but Crowley doesn’t realize it’s love?

That’s why Crowley couldn’t feel the love that Aziraphale was describing in Tadfield. It was emanating FROM Crowley.

And Crowley believed he wasn’t able to feel love or be loved. The Fall had made him unforgivable, unlovable, untethered.

When Aziraphale discorporated and went to heaven, Crowley KNEW he was gone. Aziraphale would NEVER let his bookshop burn, and Crowley couldn’t FEEL him any more. He realized the intensity of Aziraphale’s feelings when they were no longer present.

Too late. It’s always too late.

Aziraphale had been on Earth since the beginning. Crowley was always there. They both experienced the rise of civilizations, the human population growing to unimaginable numbers (they did, after all, multiply like humans). Aziraphale believed the love that he felt growing all that time was due to population increase - more humans, more love in the world. The more love surrounding him, right?

They both had a fear of what being a them meant, and the danger that truly being together might pose from heaven and from hell. Crowley always spoke of running off together because he knows the danger of remaining on Earth and being what they are to each other all the time, in the open, without fear.

You can’t leave this bookshop.

You can’t leave me.

Maybe they could be an us, on Earth.

In the end (for now), after the attempted verbal expression of his feelings, Crowley did something that had taken eternity (so far) to break through. Something they had learned from humanity, a way to express themselves as what they were to each other in an Earthly way.

But it’s too late. It’s always too late.

Aziraphale had known that he been drawn Crowley for a long time, but it took more time to realize just how strong their connection was. He knew they couldn’t be together. An angel and a demon are on opposite sides, and neither of their head offices would allow for anything more.

They were hereditary enemies.

Did he understand what had happened in the last few years? Some of it, but other parts… well...

But he had to leave. To protect Crowley. The protect them.

When Aziraphale took the elevator to heaven, he wasn’t able to FEEL Crowley any more. It was the first time he had felt that absence. He’d been discorporated and found Crowley. His prior brief visits to heaven were not goodbyes. He knew he’d be back. Now… he doesn’t know when he’ll return to Earth, to Crowley, and the absence envelops him.

But it won’t last forever… will it?

[watercolorfreckles]

The Girl Called Sparrow

This is a tad different from my usual style--I did my best to make this snippet sound like a fable! I spent like 3.5 hours just writing it so the editing I did was pretty light. Pardon any mistakes or sloppiness! :)

When she was born, her mother gave her no name.

There is power in a name, her mother had always said. The fae collected names like plucked flowers. They wielded them like weapons; the humans under their sway, like branded cattle.

Thus, throughout her life, she had been called many things. Little One. Child. Rascal. She preferred it when her mother called her things like Free Spirit, or Smile, or My Heart.

The words were always warm on her mother's lips. She did not mind not having a name when her mother called on her so kindly. To be given a great many names, though really not one at all, made her feel as though she could be anything and still be her.

Others were not always so kind. Village children gave her names that would scar. Adults who did not understand her would christen her Odd. Strange. Some called her Girl--as if that was all she was.

After her mother passed, she knew she was no one to anyone. Without a name, her soul felt untethered. Peeled from her back and kept at an arm's length like the shadow at her heels.

Who could she be if not Daughter? She did not want to be No One. She did not want to be Alone.

She had felt the fae's eyes on her her whole life. She knew they could sense what she was lacking. Every breeze that swirled the leaves around her, every tinkering of bells or heady scent of wine, reminded her that they were always close by.

Perhaps they were drawn to her, the girl whose name they could not steal. She liked to hope that maybe they followed her because she made them feel something less than monstrous with a possessive need to control.

Though her mother had taught her to fear the fae, the daughter revered them. She began to leave them fresh berries and jars of honey between the sprawling roots of the great oak tree. It was the oldest thing around, so she felt it was an appropriate place to dedicate to an immortal being. She told them softly of her day and tied ribbons on the tree's branches.

The leaves danced, rustling with a gentle melody that filled her insides like warm tea. It wasn’t long until she was overwhelmed with an unmistakable instinct: A fae was there, listening. Watching.

She lowered herself to her knees, bowing against the moss. "Hello," she said, banishing any quiver from her voice. The fae hated weakness. "I am terribly lonely. Perhaps we may share in one another's company." Her fingers curled against the spongy earth. "I know it is unwise to make dealings with the fae. But perhaps, we may come to an...arrangement. I know that your kind follow me. Fae are curious creatures. I will continue to bring you gifts if you indulge me by staying here with me for a time."

She waited.

The tree began to creak and groan.

Hesitantly, the girl lifted her gaze.

A section of the tree parted from the rest, wood splitting and shifting like the rattling of unsettled floorboards. The faerie's glamor melted away. He stepped out from the deep scar of the trunk as if it were a portal to another world.

The sight of him stole her breath. His russet brown skin, deep as the tree he emerged from, reminded her of how that very tree looked beneath a bleeding sun. Fissures and cracks sculpted the skin beneath his chest--bark, she realized--in an intricate pattern.

Her gaze traveled upward, to the wavy foliage of his hair. Leaves wove between the strands and down the slim line of his arms. His lips were dark as tilled soil, eyes bottle-green.

When he spoke, it was the rush of a summer breeze. "You come to me and speak of your pain. I am bound to this tree, I cannot leave its shadow. Yet you are free as the sparrows that nest in my branches. You are bound to none, not even a name."

The human closed her eyes. "What use is freedom with no home to come back to? No one to share it with? Please. I have spent my life as a million pieces, but never one whole. Give me a true name and you may use it however you wish."

She could feel the fae's attention on her face. It seemed to fill the very cracks of her skin.

A tear slipped free.

The girl's eyes jolted open at the rough brush of bark beneath her chin. The fae was close. She hadn't even heard him move.

Fingers calloused with the skin of an oak tree, he brushed the tear away. "You do not know what you are offering me. It is of my nature to take advantage of you. To secure a deal with you and squish you beneath it." His voice was gentle. Like a rock skipping across a pond. "Go from this place. Only ask me when you are certain this is what you wish. To be bound to a fae with no freedom is to clip your own wings."

She did as the fae had asked, though she continued to return every day, offering him gifts and reading books aloud with her back against the oak tree's trunk. He did not show himself, though she knew he was listening in the way that the forest held its breath when the story became tense, or the way the leaves shifted to shield her face when the sun scorched too harshly.

Summer bled into autumn. Gold and red flooded the great oak's leaves a little more each day. She wondered whether the fae's hair changed to match it.

She met a man in the village. He called her Mine.

She liked the way the title sounded on the swell of his lips. It was a name none had given her yet. A new thrill to greet the changing season.

Never before had she caught the eye of a bachelor. Giving pieces of herself to him felt only natural.

When his grip on her turned bruising, it filled her with regret. The day he finally hit her, his names for her turned ugly.

She ran to the oak tree and wept. The wood creaked. Though she could not see him, the fae's hand warmed her back.

The more days she spent there, the more she realized she much preferred the world beneath the oak tree to the one beyond it, with cruel men and a community heavy with judgment.

It was an unseasonably cool day when the human fell asleep beneath the oak tree, only waking to the kiss of leaves against her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open, a smile spreading her face. A bed of moss and leaves draped over her like a blanket.

Sitting up, she yawned, gazing up at the tree. Tall, Tall, Tall. Her cheeks warmed at the thought of the fae collecting materials within his tree's shadows, gently spreading them over her sleeping form.

"Kind Oak? May I see you again? I am ready to make our deal."

With the groan of shifting wood once more, the faerie soon appeared. His hair, now, was a deep scarlet, just as she had suspected.

"Are you certain?" His voice was the crackle of dry leaves, a gentle sound that settled in her bones.

The human didn't shy away from reaching out to touch him, this time. "I should rather belong to you than any other. Please. Give me my name. I will be devoted to you for the rest of my days. I just want my own name."

The Oak Faerie's hands brushed the tawny-brown hair back from her face. He studied her face with rapt interest before meeting her gaze. "Your name is Sparrow. For your free nature. For your willingness to perch among my branches and to depart when it pleases you. I will not clip your wings, Fair One. You shall belong to me only for as long as you wish to."

Sparrow.

The name rolled over her, coating every inch. It was as though she were hearing the word for the very first time. Something shifted within her, like a final puzzle piece clicking into place.

She had a name. A true name. It belonged to her and she to it.

Sparrow didn't realize she was crying until the fae cupped her cheeks once more. His brows furrowed at the sudden display of human emotion. Something that often perplexed creatures such as he.

"Sparrow? What is wrong?"

She surged forward and her lips were on his. The fae tasted like autumn air and the earth and a dizzying sweetness that swooped her stomach.

The fae paused, still as a tree, before his hands slid down to her waist and his mouth moved--gently, never greedily--against hers.

The moon was high in the sky when the faerie finally returned to his tree. Sparrow's eyes drooped with tiredness and she returned to her mother's cottage for the night.

When she returned the next day, the sight froze her step. The great oak tree–her fae's home and cag–had been chopped down.

Sparrow dropped to her knees like a stone. Her sobs and screams filled the air. Her despair was a living thing.

Footsteps crunched behind her, drawing her attention.

Her former courtier stood with a posse of other men, axes in their hands. "It is not the place of humans to fall in love with faeries."

"You-" Sparrow croaked, "You followed me?"

The look on his face was sure with quiet fury. "I assumed you left me for another. I had not anticipated... this development. No matter now. It is for the best. You will learn, now, that your place is with me. You are Mine."

"No!" She screamed, standing. "I am Me! I am... I am Sparrow."

Dissolving into sobs, Sparrow sunk to her knees again.

"Come home when you're finished. I'll be waiting."

She listened to the men's footsteps retreat.

When she had no tears left, she rose unsteadily to her feet again. She took a step. Something rolled beneath her foot.

Glancing down, she spotted an acorn—an acorn from Oak's great tree.

Sparrow smiled, and laughed.

She would run away. Plant the seed. She would have her fae again. Sparrow would have her love. And her love would have her.

Part 2

Thank you @thepenultimateword and @valiantlytransparentwhispers for proofreading and giving feedback <3 Lemme know if the tags work, they're being kiinda sus

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[hypothermic-dream]

11/5/2024

In the desolate expanse of the dreamscape, where the shifting sands whispered secrets of forgotten epochs, I stumbled, a lone wanderer adrift in the void. Amidst the barren terrain, an apparition materialized, an ancient sage cloaked in robes as white as the bones of the earth, his beard a cascade of untold wisdom.

Though my desperate pleas for guidance reverberated through the void, the sage remained aloof, his gaze fixed upon a distant horizon where shadows danced with the specters of lost dreams. Ignoring the howling winds that tore at my soul, I trailed his phantom form as it glided effortlessly towards a palace of unimaginable splendor.

Its gilded walls, adorned with grotesque carvings of forgotten gods and fallen empires, shimmered like a mirage in the sun's merciless gaze. As the sage vanished into its hallowed halls, leaving me to confront the imposing facade alone, I felt the weight of impending doom settle upon my shoulders like a shroud of lead.

With trembling hands, I reached out to grasp the ornate door handle, its surface cool to the touch despite the blistering heat that surrounded me. To my astonishment, the doors swung open of their own accord, revealing a labyrinth of enigmatic beauty and unsettling dread that stretched out before me like a yawning abyss.

Undeterred by the palpable sense of unease that permeated the air, I ventured deeper into the bowels of the palace, my footsteps echoing through the desolate corridors like the tolling of funeral bells. Shadows danced and whispered secrets of forgotten sins as I navigated the twisting passages, my heart pounding in rhythm with the drumbeat of impending doom.

Suddenly, I stumbled upon a solitary chamber, its entrance obscured by the veil of darkness that hung like a pall over the dreamscape. With each step closer, the air grew thick with the suffocating weight of fear and dread, clawing at my throat and twisting my stomach into knots of apprehension.

In a moment of reckless abandon, I stepped forward, unaware of the abyss that lay hidden beneath the surface of the chamber's murky depths. With a cry of terror, I plummeted into the void, my descent into oblivion a testament to the fragility of mortal existence.

As I fell, the fear and dread that had once gripped me tightened their icy grip, suffusing every fiber of my being with a paralyzing sense of despair. The darkness swallowed me whole, engulfing me in its cold embrace as I tumbled ever deeper into the abyss.

I plummeted, a soul untethered, consumed by the chilling embrace of the hidden lake's depths. Dread and terror intertwined, weaving a suffocating shroud around me as I sank deeper into the murky oblivion.

Surrendering to the siren call of death, I embraced the icy tendrils of the abyss, yearning to dissolve into the void and escape the relentless grip of fear and loss. Yet, in the darkness, a strange tranquility washed over me, the sensation of drowning a paradoxical caress, promising liberation from the burdens of mortal existence.

Despite my fervent desire for oblivion, my corporeal form rebelled against the abyss and my body betrayed me, propelling me upwards towards the realm of the living. Gasping for breath, I emerged from the depths, reborn in the crucible of my own despair, a phoenix rising from the ashes of longing and despair.

Guided by an unseen hand, I stumbled upon a secluded chamber where I cast aside my earthly trappings and donned the white garb of the ancient sage. The razor's blade whispered against my scalp, shedding a lifetime's worth of illusion with each stroke.

In the reflection of the mirror, I beheld a stranger, his visage drenched in the remnants of the hidden lake's embrace. His countenance, once etched with the burdens of mortal toil, now shimmered with the purity of innocence, a transient soul stripped bare by the baptism of water and fire.

His eyes, twin beacons of divine wisdom, blazed with an otherworldly light, piercing through the veil of illusion to reveal the boundless expanse of cosmic truth.