#why am i fighting like this to get necessary medical tests???

[kaaatieepaige]

against the health insurance companies 🥲

[pepprs]

genuinely so angry and scared im shaking. how many other times this week this month this year have i been exposed without knowing it. do people even tell each other anymore. it’s just so grim. it’s so fucking grim

[skellymom]

Hey Skelly

You're taking requests? Oh I'd love to ask for one.

Could you please do a one-shot involving a reader and Hunter after Omega gets seriously injured on a mission (Bad enough to wind up in a Bacta Pod) and the reader has to comfort and reassure Hunter that Omega will be OK?

tysm, GenericFicer Hugs

@genericficerblog NICE! Another ASK!!! Thank you!

"THE INCIDENT"

The Bad Batch Hunter x Reader One Shot

Per more information (not included on this particular message):

So the reader is a male battle medic. It's all platonic The reader was a medic on Kamino. He had taken care of Omega after particularly bad tests (She has the scars to prove it) and he's protective of Omega because of her past with the Kaminoans

Word Count: 2.1K

Warning: Star Wars canon violence, angst, swearing, explosion, physical injuries, coma, mention of human experimentation by the Kaminoans.

I was tasked to hang back with Omega and Tech on board the Marauder. Hunter EXPRESSLY ordered us to stay put. His thinking was to only bring the members necessary for the job: Hunter at the head of the group, Echo next to him and to share logistics on comm with Tech, Wrecker as the “heavy”, and Crosshair as lookout/cover fire. 

The job was technically low risk...but Hunter started having those “feelings” of his just before landing at our target.  

Omega protested when he told her to stay on the ship. She had been looking forward to going on a mission for awhile. Many a time she stayed behind on Pabu with Shep and Lyana. Since her rescue from Tantiss, Hunter was dead set against her going on any dangerous missions. 

Hunter’s words were “You’ll have plenty of time to fight with the Rebellion in the future. Won’t stay young forever.” 

She bristled at those words. Then forgave him immediately after. 

They LOVE each other so much! 

But ever the doting dad, Hunter relented this time. She had eventually wore him down. 

Oh...getting ahead of myself...who am I? 

Hello. I’m Y/N. The Squad Formerly Known as Clone Force 99’s Medic/Backup Heavy/Or Whatever They Need Me For. I can patch up just about ANYTHING with the bare minimum of supplies. Sometimes my methods are unorthodox, per Tech’s opinion, but effective.  It’s saved our butts a few times. So, they let me come along on every mission. 

Plus, having known and taken care of Omega while on Kamino helped. 

And the fact that Crosshair took a liking to me immediately sealed the deal. We both speak fluent sarcasm. 

But...back to the mission... 

“What’s taking SO LONG?” Omega fidgeted in her seat. 

“My guess it is due to Hunter detecting an anomaly, they are taking their time.”  

Tech and I were attempting to play a few rounds of Sebacc. I’m HORRIBLE at it. He thinks he can help me improve my game. I’m struggling currently. 

“Safety first. No need to rush into trouble...especially since we seem to find it easily enough.” I threw down my cards. 

Tech glanced at them and frowned.  

“I totally messed up that hand too, huh?” 

“Well, it’s not a strategy I would have used...” Tech trailed off. 

“You’re being too nice.” 

“Shall I explain in detail the best plan of action for this hand?” 

“Can’t stop you. Just infodump me anyways. Maybe I’ll retain SOMETHING this time.” I LOVE to tease Tech. It was difficult in the beginning. Most of it just went over his head. 

This time, he just grinned at my cheekiness and launched into it. 

Omega continued to fidget in her seat behind us. 

“...and THAT is why you should have held onto those cards until the end.” Tech finally finished his tutorial. 

“I... THINK I got all that? My brain hurts now. How ‘bout I switch with Omega.” 

“That will be sufficient.” Tech looks up and glances behind me. 

Then his face froze. 

I quickly swung around to see Omega missing from her seat. 

“OMEGA???” I called through the ship.  

Nothing. 

“Oh SHIT!” 

“INDEED!” Tech immediately radioed Hunter that Omega slipped out of the Marauder and is probably enroute to them. 

I grabbed my med pack and ran out of the Marauder before he could stop me. 

Omega used to sneak away A LOT on our previous missions. Probably one of many reasons why he wanted to keep her back on Pabu until she matured a bit more. Of course, he feels guilty...the Kaminoan’s keeping her locked up in their home world. He didn’t want to clip her wings.  

“TOLD YOU to stay on the ship!” Hunter’s voice fills my ear comm. 

“I can’t just assume that Omega finds you somehow and is safe.” 

“Don’t need ANOTHER person in danger. Go back to the ship.” 

“Well...is Omega with you?” 

“...no.” 

“She SHOULD have been by now...AND I’m NOT going back.” 

Hunter’s tired sigh. “Well, then... 

He never finished his sentence. 

A flash of intense light... 

I awoke thirty feet away from where I was standing. On my back. 

My head hurts...all I can hear is high pitched whine in both ears. 

Sit up dazed and look around at EVERYTHING obliterated and on fire. 

Torn remains of whatever was left of the trees and outbuilding I was near... 

...two small legs sticking out from under smoldering wreckage. 

I lurch up to my feet and limp over. Grab the unidentifiable thing crushing Omega and try to pull it off her. 

It’s not budging. I frantically keep trying. There's NOTHING else in this world except me and this huge THING on top of her that I cannot seem to move. 

Sweating, my hands are raw, my eyes are wet, there is blood dripping down my face... 

Is it lacerated? Could it be my eardrums are ruptured? I don’t know.  

I just know I HAVE TO GET THIS THING OFF OF HER! 

Push, pull, kick... 

Then the wreckage flew off her like it weighed nothing at all. 

Wrecker is next to me. He freed Omega and put a hand on my shoulder. Hunter grabs her up. Echo is trying to speak to me. 

But I can’t hear anything at all. Just that damned whining in my ears.  

I can lip read though... 

He’s telling me to get back to the ship. 

Echo runs ahead with Hunter.  

Crosshair grabs my arm, dragging me along. He looks extremely worried. 

Whatever happened or if we even achieved our objective, I don’t know. 

Hunter sets Omega down on a bunk. He’s beside himself emotionally.  

I can feel the Marauder take off world.  

My hearing is still impaired, but the whining is less pronounced. 

I gently nudge Hunter aside and open my med kit. Pull out the bacta...but it won’t be enough... 

...she needs a tank. Her burns and lacerations are too numerous and severe. Still breathing and regular heartbeat, but unconscious.  

I am doing the best I can with what supplies are on hand. Putting her prognosis out of my head for the time being. 

We make a pit stop at a Rebel Base on a hidden moon. One with an extensive medical facility.  

Echo radioed ahead. As soon as Tech lands, the staff enters the ship and whisks Omega away. Hunter and Wrecker run after them. Echo runs in another direction...I’m assuming to report his intel to the Rebels. 

I stand at the bottom of the gangplank and watch them leave.  

Tech stares at me strangely.  

I shrug...and a horrible twinge of pain erupts from my upper back. My face feels sore too. 

Crosshair mumbles something. 

“WHAT???” I must be screaming but can’t hear anything. 

He mouths “your back” and points.  

I try to reach behind me to feel it.  

Tech grabs my hand and nods “no”. 

They both immediately took me to medbay. 

I’m treated for multiple facial lacerations, on top of first-degree burns. Missing some of my eyebrows. And, like I guessed bilaterial ruptured eardrums. 

Oh...and the kicker: A 12-inch piece of metal sticking out of my back. Had NO idea it was there.  

Adrenaline is a HELL of a hormone. 

Tech left to confer with Echo over intel and our next move. 

Crosshair stayed with me during the surgical removal of the metal. I demanded to be awake and requested a mirror to watch the whole procedure. 

The doctors were horrified but complied with my request. 

Crosshair held the mirror. He also asked to keep the metal once removed...to frame and hang up back on Pabu. 

“You're NOT like the other kids.” I quip. 

“Neither are you.” he winks. 

They won’t let me walk out of medbay. It’s the sedatives and painkillers, of course. I wouldn’t let me walk, either.  

Crosshair pushes me in a hover chair. We head over to the bacta tanks to check on Omega. 

She’s stripped down to a medical binder and med panties. Tubes to feed, breath, and eliminate. Floating in the tank, the extent of her injuries is very apparent: Second degree burns, multiple lacerations, a broken arm, a few broken ribs, and a head injury. Her hair had been clippered off entirely for cleanliness and most of it was charred.  

Omega was also put in a medically induced coma to aide her recovery. 

Hunter, sitting in a chair, has his arms around the bacta tank. He’s basically hugging it with his forehead resting snugly against the glass. 

“I shouldn’t have let her go. Blame myself.” He mumbles. 

Wrecker puts a hand on his back for comfort. “She’ll be ok Hunter. They said we got her here in time.”   

Then he looks shocked when he sees my face. 

“OH MY MAKER! Where are your EYEBROWS?” 

Still can’t hear very well, but I can DEFINITELY lip-read Wrecker. 

“Look what medical pulled out of him!” Crosshair proudly dangles a clear plastic bag containing the metal shard. 

Wrecker is transfixed. 

Hunter is devastated. “I MISSED that??? Didn’t even register you were injured...looked right at you...” 

Like a man lost and questioning EVERYTHING. His focus had been solely on Omega. 

“Aw...they couldn’t kill me. Don’t think I’ll be attracting any ladies with my perpetually surprised look though.” Trying to lighten the mood. 

“You can’t hear ANYTHING, can you?” Crosshair looks me in the eye. 

“Barely...why?” 

“You’re so LOUD.”  

“You should talk, Wrecker.” Crosshair sneered. 

“That’s how I know!” Wrecker rolled his eyes at his brother. 

Hunter looked even more guilty, hanging his head. 

“Hey guys...” 

Wrecker and Crosshair stopped whinging at each other. 

“Can I have some time alone with Hunter?” 

They both nodded and wandered off to find Echo and Tech. 

I nudge the chair over closer to Hunter and look at Omega through the glass. 

She’s so tiny in that big tank. So beat up and bruised. The lighting in the tank leaves NOTHING hidden. Even the old scars from her time on Kamino. The “experiments” according to the Kaminoans. Things they did to her before her brothers took her away.  

Things she never really spoke about with even Hunter. 

Things I only know about since working so closely at the facility on Kamino. A little girl who needed someone to comfort her. This was before her brothers were ever aware of her presence. 

“Her prognosis is very good, yes?” I broke the ice. 

“The docs say she’ll have to spend close to the next month in this tank.” Hunter’s voice cracked. 

“It wasn’t your fault.” 

“I knew better! Why is it SO HARD for me to say no to her???” 

“Because you love her. You know she’s strong. You also know she’s still a child. If it makes you feel better, she snuck out ALL the time on Kamino. The Kaminoan’s would ask me to go look for her constantly.” 

“More of an argument to have left her on Pabu.” 

“You REALLY want to be at fault, huh?” 

“I’m responsible for...” 

I cut him off. 

“YOU CAN’T CONTROL EVERYTHING, HUNTER!” I winced. Moving too much with my exasperation. The sutures on my back were straining...and wet. 

Hunter stood up, glancing at my back. He could smell it. 

“Strike through?” I asked. 

“Yeah...just a little blood. You need to lie down and rest.” 

“That’s gonna be hard. Not supposed to lay on my back...and my face isn’t going to feel great against the pillow. How about I just stay sitting in this chair with you?” 

“You sure?” 

“Yeah. I know you don’t want to leave her alone while she’s in this tube.” 

"Thank you. Honestly...I should say that more often. Y/N...you've really saved our butts a lot of times...I'm grateful to have you in our squad...family." Hunter cracked a small smile.

"Of course! Man...you are MY PEOPLE!" I beamed back. They really are. I'd go to the ends of the universe for every one of them!!!

Hunter's smile was so warm and genuine. But it lasted very briefly. His face became pensive again.

He was silent for a while...thinking. 

“Technically she’s asleep? Is that what a coma is like?” Hunter asked. 

“Kind of. The doctors are monitoring ALL her vitals constantly. And if anything is off, they can immediately see to her needs. Besides, the coma is just for the next 24-48 hours due to her head injury.”  

“I see.” 

“She’ll come through this. You clones were made to withstand a LOT of physical trauma. Stuff that would kill a regular human.” I added. 

“It’s not necessarily the physical stuff I’m worried about.” Hunter motions to the faint old scars on Omega’s body. “When she does wake up...she told me she has fears about being in a tube like an experiment.” 

“Tell her she has nothing to fear.” 

Hunter looks at me strangely. 

“People in a coma can still hear. Talk to her, Hunter.” 

He nods. Then directs his voice to the speaker on the bacta tube. 

I sit back and relax in the chair, watching this man...a brother, a parental figure speak to his child. 

He’s doing the best he can with what he has. 

We are all doing the best we can... 

...hanging on with HOPE. 

It’s the only thing holding the galaxy together right now... 

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[goth-mami-writer]

A post about my life lately.

(If you fucking care ✌️🫠)

⚠️Tw: There's some mentions in this that may stir certain emotions regarding✨️pro-choice✨️mindsets (abortion) and vomiting. So if you think that's gonna upset you, don't interact pls. Thx.⚠️

Soooooooo-

I've been away. And here's why without being theatrical - I found out I was pregnant again. And....I wasn't happy.

I'm a mom to 1 already and...I knew that I couldn't do it again. It's hard, to be as frank as I can. The physical effect of pregnancy on the body is something...I despise? I had awful, TERRIBLE sickness the first time anddd fuck, it was the same this time.

Yeah, no. You can go ahead and count me out.

Well- Were you using BiRtH CoNtrOl?!, you may ask?

Yes. Abso-fuckin-lutely. I had an IUD inserted two months after I had my first kid. Cause FUCK THAT. I knew I didn't want another. My son's awesome. Being his mom is my reason for living. But pregnancy is not for me.

So- this being the decision, I fucking called the one person I goddamn trust and that's Mera. ❤️ @short-honey-badger

And bitch, did we plan a trip. We had to drive OUT OF OUR STATE TO RECEIVE THE CARE NECESSARY. (That's a topic for another day tho t-.-t )

✨️Anyways,✨️ Mera is a badass and drove me to said appointment as I'm fighting the most debilitating nausea. All I could stand to eat without vomiting was fucking popsicles and slushies. So yum at 5 am, BTW.

~But here's where shit gets wild~

I show up, ready to have this done. Get on with my life. Maybe start writing again because I know that I'll feel better. The nurses and staff were incredible and sweet. But there was one problem.....my IUD was out of place, they tell me.

Okay? I knew that, right? Obviously, that's why it didn't work and I got pregnant. Makes sense.

NONONONO. I'm laying on a table out of my home state, laughing gassed out of MY FUCKING MIND, with a lady doctor telling me in the calmest demeanor that she can that I need FUCKING ✨️EMERGENCY SURGERY✨️

LIKE. HOW DO YOU REACT...TO THAT?

So...the staff is obviously letting me recover from the procedure- THE ONE I JUST HAD. and now I'm being fed all this medical jargon basically saying that if I didn't receive surgery, this IUD was gonna tear its way into my other organs because it was already embedded in the muscle tissue of my abdomen.

Fucking AWESOME.

Luckily, all these people were contracted to the local hospital in this city and they were going to let them know I was coming over and all that good jazz, but I basically needed to get over there. Like...now. RIGHT NEOW. 💀

So then it's me and Mera just navigating parts of a city that we just DO NOT fucking know, trying to get me to said hospital where this surgery needed to take place. It wasn't far but goddamn this hospital had absolute SHIT parking. It was a monster to fucking navigate as well. Luckily, I was on some good pain meds that were keeping me kinda stable, but ooohhhh, not for long.

We get checked into the ER and yeah, I started HURTING. Not to mention also, viciously nauseous once again. But this time, because I hadn't eaten anything since 5am and I was told that it would basically be fucking ILLEGAL for me to eat again until I got off this operating table.

Fucking. AWESSOMMEE.

(I thought you said it was an emergency, why didn't they have you in OR yet??)

I HAD TO WAIT FOR THESE MFS TO GET THERE, HOLD ON.

My particular case needed staffing of crazy ass doctors to oversee this procedure. I swear to God, I met like 5 people in the four hours that I sat in the emergency room before being prepped for surgery.

I was rolled out for testing like four different times! All kinds of shit just being shot into my IV while I'm still fucked up on the first dose of morphine that's still whooping my ass in and out of consciousness as Mera is at my bedside like,

"O.o u okay?" (Bc she's an angel that stayed with me during the entirety of this fucking insanity like T-T)

FINALLY. I got into my fucking surgery. It went fine, everything is fine. But goddamn, I'm exhausted. Mera was exhausted. We'd been up for almost 24hrs at this point in the day and now I'm finally being admitted into an actual room for post-op recovery.

That next morning before my discharge, I was let know the gravity of my situation and things like that. I was reassured that nothing I did caused this IUD to move. And that meant one thing-

It was never inserted correctly in the first place.

✨️So✨️ let me be the first one to tell you- please. For the love of FUCK. Go get your IUD checked. Via fucking ultrasound.

Don't let that sassy nurse stick a speculum in your fuggin hoo-haa and tell you she can see the strings so you're good.

Guess what? EVERYONE SAW MY STRINGS TOO.

Check your IUD!!! Or you're gonna be knocked up, getting a little pregnancy✨️deletion✨️ in a strange state where a really nice lady doctor is gonna tell you that you're like weeks away from internally bleeding and need dire abdominal surgery to prevent that. And all you're gonna have is your bestfriend who you feel terrible for bc she didn't sign up for any of this bullshit. But there you are, passed out on morphine, hungry, confused, nauseous and WAITING FOR SURGEONS.

GO TO THE GYNECOLOGIST. NEOW. 💀

[thebangtancloud]

Hi, i saw your post about tinnitus from February and i am going through that right now too, it began two weeks ago and i cant concentrate on anything. it sucks. do you mind sharing what ended up happening or helping in your case?

Hiya, I'm so sorry that you have to go through this, but this isn't the end (when it always feels like it is), so trust me on this. This is going to be A LOT to read, but please don't skip anything. Brace yourself.

Consult an ENT specialist.

This is, of course, the scary part, and it needs to be done first. I stalled and put off visiting an ENT for the longest time, leading me to not take things seriously. I continued to abuse my ears by using headphones (which I still do sometimes, and it's not something that I'm proud of). When I visited the doctor, she checked my ears through a physical examination and said that my ears were physiologically normal. When she performed a crude test to check my hearing (for possible hearing loss), I passed two out of three of the tests, one of which I couldn't hear the sound when she placed the tuning fork on the top of my head. She tried it thrice because I was really anxious the whole time and thought that I was not paying attention - but turns out I couldn't hear the sound that is normally transmitted through the skull. She then confirmed that I have tinnitus, which is the only important part. Of course, she told me to visit an audiologist and get an audiometric test (which is done in a really professional setting with headphones and leads that would be placed all over your head to determine if you have any kind of hearing loss and if yes, then to what extent).

Remember, the rest of the steps, although safe to take, is not entirely necessary, in my opinion. The tests would be expensive and multiple visits to the ENT would be required and ultimately you're left with what almost everyone tells you: Tinnitus can't be cured.

I didn't take the audiometric test. I've watched a shit ton of videos about people and how they've dealt with Tinnitus and all of them have said that any and every kind of medication is useless. The ringing doesn't stop. Which is quite true. So all you need to do is just go to an ENT for an official diagnosis of Tinnitus. The most important thing is to tell you that your ears are not internally damaged. Please, I emphasize, don't skip this step, because if the delicate structures of your ears are damaged (which could be due to any kind of physical trauma), you'd have to undergo treatment for that.

It takes time to accept it.

You've been experiencing it for two weeks and you say that you can't concentrate on anything, which is normal. Let me just tell you that. I don't want to sugar coat things and make you feel better instantly because when I was told sweet things, it only made it so much more difficult for me to overcome. The only assurance I can give you is that it does get better, over time. The first few months - yes, months - will be very difficult for you. I still struggle, if I'm being honest. I feel afraid and anxious (which is why I had visited a doctor for my anxiety because my health became so bad due to the anxiety to the point where I passed out thrice over the course of 1 week). And...it's okay. You will feel afraid. You will feel nervous. You will feel anxious. But friend, the only way out is to give yourself the time to accept it.

Dear, there is no running away. I may be young, but I've faced my own fair deal of shit. I'm exhausted. I'm tired of running away. The only thing I can offer to you is... don't stop fighting. Don't run away, run towards your problem.

How to make your mind learn to accept it:

This is going to sound crazy, but do exactly as I say. I watched this in a youtube video where a man explained how he accepted the fact that he has tinnitus and has actually been healed, but I couldn't find that video after the first time I watched it. Here's what you need to do:

Sit in a room, alone. And turn off the fan/ air-conditioner (basically anything that is a source of sound). This will sound tormenting, let me warn you. People who've just begun to experience ringing in their ears will do anything and everything to try and cover or muffle the sound of the ringing. Be it turning the fan on to the highest speed, keeping the AC on so that the hum of the machine would cover the sound of the ringing, play music in the background while sleeping.

But remember what I said? Don't run away, run towards your problems. Don't try to cover up the sound, accept it.

Sit tight, and let the ringing happen. This will be torture for the first ten minutes, but tell your mind that you will endure it. You will hear nothing but the ringing, and it will be loud. You need to train your mind, and it is capable of being trained.

You must've heard of these things: Sit in a room that smells bad and you will get used to the smell. Hang upside down and after a few hours, the world will look straight and not upside down. This is quite true. Your mind has an excellent capability of adjusting to the situations it's been put into. So this is how you train your mind.

Let yourself listen to the sound of the ringing. I don't even know how, but this worked for me. And remember, it's okay to feel weak during this time of training. I've spent hours crying and sobbing and banging my hands over my ears to muffle the sound of the ringing, and it's okay to express these emotions. It's okay to break down.

Many people say that the ringing is actually a defense mechanism. Your brain thinks it's in a state of danger and the very common 'fight-or-flight' response kicks in. What you need to do while you sit in absolute silence is tell your brain this: "I'm not in danger. I'm safe. There's nothing wrong. You can relax."

It sounds stupid, I know. But it works. I don't know how, but it works. Remember, your brain doesn't always need to perceive danger visually to feel the need to trigger a fight-or-flight response. There are various types of stressors like physical, chemical, biological, and even emotional stressors. When there is an imbalance in your body, your brain thinks something is wrong. In the case of tinnitus, exposure to loud sounds for a long time can put a lot of stress on the delicate structures of your ears, and makes your brain begin to 'fight'.

So as I've mentioned earlier, you need to train your mind into thinking that it doesn't need to fight. That it's okay to calm down. Even if it feels stupid, talk to yourself. Your mind will thank you later.

What happens after this?

Well, your brain accepts the ringing as a part of you. And what happens when something occurs that is perceived as a part of you? Nothing. It doesn't feel the need to fight back. It might not even make sense, but the sound of the ringing drastically lowers. Sometimes you won't even hear it.

When the ringing starts, you'll automatically think, "Oh shit, I can hear it." This is normal. I've faced this almost 500 times a day when I initially began to experience the symptoms. But when you go through this period of training, as soon as this thought occurs to you, tell yourself to accept it.

"I can hear the ringing. It's okay. Nothing is wrong. You don't need to fight."

Tell yourself this. I really really hope you believe me, the ringing does get lesser. You will get better.

Focus on your diet and exercise.

This...if I'm being brutally honest, does not help with tinnitus. It's not even related. You're doing this for your mental health. Tinnitus is such an issue, that the symptoms never stop. You hear the ringing 24/7 and there's not even a moment of relief. I've literally begged God to just give me a moment of peace, a moment of absolute silence without this stupid ringing, but it doesn't happen. No one understands the trauma. No one.

This stress can lead to a lot of anxiety. As I've mentioned before, anxiety can take a toll on your life in ways you've never thought possible.

So, focusing on your diet, eating healthy, and regularly and frequently exercising is something that you're doing for yourself. It's an investment that will yield profits later that you'll really thank yourself for.

Meditation and Prayer:

If you're not a spiritual person, meditation should help you as well. Faith is something that can work wonders. If you are, remember that God has given you this battle to fight for a reason. You'll be placed in situations all alone and that will make you remember that you need no one but God. God is capable of healing. God is capable of comforting. God loves.

Have faith that God can and will heal you. Because this helped me.

~

Dear friend, I want you to know that it does get better. I can't stop telling you this. It's only been a few months for me but the ringing has already reduced quite a bit to the point where I can study and write without even being bothered by the sound.

You're going to be okay.

You will be okay.

And why okay? You'll be better than that. You won't just survive, you'll thrive.

I believe in you.

If you ever feel alone, message me. We can talk about anything and everything. Don't hesitate.

[lokust]

A God doesn’t Giggle

LMAO HEY I’M BACK.

I was rather inactive for a few days because I had a violent allergic reaction to 75mgs of a new medication, but I’m better now!

(Also, I don’t ever post any stories, but I wrote this one knowing I was gonna post it so I was rather nervous. My apologies if it seems forced or too short. I felt the pressure with this one.)

————————-

The question Mobius often asked himself was ‘How does one deal with the God of Mischief?’.

But the question he had asked himself earlier was ‘Oh shit, how do I deal with the God of Mischief when I’ve made him so genuinely upset that he won’t even cause any mischief?’.

Loki was incredibly upset, with Mobius specifically. For once in his life, Loki was genuine, he was honest… and Mobius brushed him off, accusing him of lying and throwing him in a loop where he was reminded over and over again that he was worthless and undeserving of love.

Mobius had done everything he could think of to cheer Loki up; from telling him the exact opposite of what Sif had told him to searching through his fondest memories and putting him in each and every happy memory he could simulate. None of it was enough, and Loki was still hurt.

“Come on, Mobius”, he said to himself, still searching through Loki’s memories and flipping through all of his files, “If you had just listened to him for once…”. He had left Loki in a simulation of a memory where Frigga had taught him his favorite spells and tricks, hoping it would be enough to at least get a smile from the God.

He had been watching the best memories of Loki’s life for what felt like hours, but he was willing to watch for 48 hours more if it meant finding a solution to the pain he’d caused. He clicked and forwarded through some memory Loki had with Thor back on Asgard.

He had almost disregarded it entirely, but something about the tone in Loki’s voice caught his attention. It was a nervous tone, yet somehow… playful? Mobius couldn’t quite describe.

“Thor… Thor, get away from me. Okay. I am much too old for these antics now”.

Mobius watched intently, observing the interaction between the two as closely as he could manage.

“Oh come on, little brother! It’s never failed to get you out of these moods before!”

Yes. Yes, this is what Mobius needed. This was the solution.

Suddenly a shrill screech filled the small room as Thor had seemingly attacked his brother.

Mobius sighed in disappointment, “Well, that blows. I can’t wrestle him back to happiness”.

He got ready to start searching again, until the loud laughter of two Gods filled the room instead.

Mobius watched as Loki writhed in his brother’s arms, laughing unwillingly as he tried to escape the hands that clawed at his sides and ribs while Thor simply laughed at the sounds he was producing from his brother.

Mobius’s eyes lit up, finally shutting it down and turning to walk out of the room, “Damn it, Thor, you’re a genius”.

—

——

Loki sat on his bed beside his mother, sulking as he listened to her explain her magic to him.

The fireworks. She was teaching him how to make the fireworks, just in the palm of his hand. It was his favorite trick to do, and his favorite one to watch her do as well.

He’d been there with her for hours, relearning all of her favorite spells, but he couldn’t stop the thought in the back of his mind, reminding him she’d be gone and he’d be indirectly at fault.

He wanted to cry, and he could have, but suddenly, she was gone, and a golden doorway opened up to the left of him as Mobius stepped into the memory.

“Alright, Loki, I’ve got two things to say to you”.

Loki rolled his eyes with a scoff, “Grand, but I’ve got nothing to say to you, Mobius. Couldn’t you have just left me here with my mother?”. The trickster crossed his arms against his chest, looking away from Mobius with a scowl.

The blond just sighed, “Alright, I deserve that, I really do, but just hear me out, alright?”, he said, approaching the taller man carefully.

“I’m sorry, Loki. Alright? I am truly, horribly sorry. I should’ve believed you. I should’ve listened to you, and I definitely shouldn’t have thrown you back in that loop with Lady Sif. You didn’t deserve that, and I, Mobius M. Mobius, am sorry”, he spoke genuinely, carefully placing a hand on Loki’s shoulder as he sat beside him.

Loki furrowed his eyebrows, glancing at Mobius from the corner of his eye, “I thought you had two things to say- Wait a moment… Mobius M. Mobius? Is your name Mobius Mobius Mobius?”

The agent sighed, “That’s not the point, and I do have one other thing to say, alright?”

Loki gave a simple nod, a silent signal to continue, but he didn’t like the smile that was slowly growing on Mobius’s face.

“I didn’t know you were ticklish”.

Loki’s eyes widened as he pulled away from Mobius, standing up and crossing the room immediately, “I… I’m not. That’s ridiculous. I never have been”.

Mobius just smiled, “Wrong”.

The God grumbled at the agent, “Alright fine. I grew out of it”.

The shorter man looked like he was having a field day, “Wrong again”, he said, standing up to approach his friend.

Loki scowled at him, “Mobius, this collar may keep me from using my powers, but it won’t keep me from biting all of your fingers off if you get any closer to me”.

The agent hissed as he looked down at his hand, “Ouch, that one really does sound painful, but how about this, alright? You stop sulking around like an angry little dog, and maybe I won’t tickle you, deal?”

The God backed away as Mobius came closer and closer to him, but suddenly he found himself backed into a wall with Mobius so close he was practically pinned in place. He huffed at his blond friend, but simply stayed silent.

Mobius shrugged, “Alright, fine… but you asked for this”.

Suddenly, Mobius had Loki’s arms pinned above his head, the taller of the two struggling in place as Mobius fought to get both of his wrists in one hand.

“Why are you fighting it so hard? I thought you said you weren’t ticklish?”, he gasped suddenly as if he was shocked, “Did you… Did you lie to me, Loki? I can’t believe you’d do such a thing”.

Oh, if looks could kill, Mobius would’ve certainly been a goner, but the faint blush on Loki’s face certainly overpowered any threat behind the scowl.

Loki’s breath hitched as he eyed the hand that now rested on his side, but he looked back at Mobius immediately, unwilling to show any sign of anticipation or nervousness. The agent was looking at him as intently as possible, his mind set on finding even a hint of happiness in Loki’s expression.

“Alright, I’m tired of you sulking around like this, and even more so, I’m tired of seeing you in pain because of my mistakes”, suddenly, Mobius’s hand came to life at Loki’s side, clawing and scratching up and down to really test the God’s sensitivity.

Loki threw his head back against the wall,

“G-Goddamnit Mobius! Quihihit ihihihit!”, he bit his lip through his laughter in hopes to suppress it, but Mobius moved his hand up higher, spidering now at Loki’s ribs. That action produced something that was definitely not a squeal, thank you very much.

“You suhuhuhuck! Lehehet me gohohohoho!”, he spat, thrashing side to side as he tried to get away from his friend, but his mind was too boggled and he was split between fighting against it and just letting it happen.

Not that he enjoyed it or that he was having fun, no definitely not. That’s ridiculous.

It had just… been so long since he was able to laugh like that. Yeah. That’s all.

He was ashamed to admit the noises coming from him most definitely qualified as giggles, so he wouldn’t be admitting it, but that’s most certainly what they were.

“Aw, cute. That’s something I didn’t expect to hear from a God, but giggles are cute so who am I to judge?”, Mobius teased, alternating between spidering at Loki’s sides and digging into his ribs while the trickster tried to sink to the floor with no luck.

His eyes widened at Mobius’s words, “I- I do nohohot gihihiggle, you ahahass! Now stahahahap!”

Mobius just hummed, “Mmm… No, I don’t think I will. You very obviously lied about not being ticklish, but you look pretty happy right now, so I’ll keep this up for a while”.

Gods don’t whine, except for when they do, and that’s exactly what Loki did as Mobius’s skittering fingertips slipped to the back of his rib cage.

Loki squealed and suddenly tugged at his arms as hard as he could manage, shocking Mobius enough to slip away from him, but when he started to run, he realized there wasn’t much of anywhere to go.

Mobius knew Loki had nowhere to go, so he stayed in place, watching Loki search frantically for a place to run or hide before he gave in and rolled onto his bed, moving to sit on his knees and eye Mobius warily.

“Oh look at you”, Mobius said, approaching the God slowly, “You really got nowhere to go now”.

Loki put his hands up in front of himself as Mobius came closer and closer, “Now- Now, hang on, Mobius. Wait just a moment, can’t we talk about this like adults?”

Mobius hummed in thought, sitting himself on the edge of the mattress, “I don’t really think it’s necessary. The whole point is to get you smiling again, so what’s the point of talking?”

Loki racked his brain for any argument he could make and came up mostly blank, “Can’t you tell a joke or something?”

Mobius shook his head, “No fun in that, but this”, he said, suddenly tackling Loki into the mattress, just to pin him down and straddle his hips, “this is fun, wouldn’t you agree?”.

Loki shook his head frantically, tugging at his arms as they were pinned beneath Mobius’s knees.

Mobius unbuttoned the few bottom buttons of Loki’s white shirt, slipping his hands underneath the fabric and causing the God to nearly scream through his gritted teeth.

“MOBIUS- MOBIUS NO! Get out!”.

Mobius was taken aback for a moment but he couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the dramatic reaction, “Worse on the bare skin, huh?”, he chuckled, drumming his fingers against Loki’s hips.

Loki held his breath as he threw his head back against his mattress, grumbling empty threats through his teeth and kicking out behind Mobius.

“I was doing this mainly to cheer you up, but this is entertaining”, he teased, tracing his fingertips up to Loki’s sides to spider and scratch at them as gently as he could manage.

Loki squealed as he drummed his feet on the mattress and tugged at his hands, “Mohohobius nohoho! Nohohoho quit ihihihit! You’re ahahahawful!”, he spat insults at his friend as he thrashed and squirmed beneath him, the ticklish sensation teasing his nerves maddeningly.

Mobius just smiled before clawing his way to Loki’s ribs, scratching in and out and side to side before spidering and thumbing between the bones, attempting to decide which got the best reaction.

“NO! Nonono, not thahahahat!”, the trickster’s laughter got higher in pitch and increased drastically in volume with the tickling in the spaces between his ribs, and Mobius noticed the tears beginning to pool in his eyes.

He didn’t want to kill Loki, so he went back to the scratching, “You didn’t just lie about being a little sensitive. You, my friend, are desperately fucking ticklish”.

Loki shook his head, but he was struggling to form words. The longer Mobius tickled, the worse it felt, “Stahahahahap, I cahahahan’t! I can’t, Mohohohobius. MOHOHOHOBIUS NOHOHOHO!”

Mobius stopped suddenly when his hands touched the center of Loki’s abdomen, watching the God do everything he could to sit up and get away from his captor, but he just couldn’t do it.

“Ohoh, bad spot, huh?”, Mobius teased, using his fingers to trace teasingly around the bare skin of Loki’s stomach.

“Mobius, please, don’t do this to me. Let me go, and I promise I won’t be upset anymore, okay? Just please… don’t”, Loki was ashamed of himself and his over dramatic reactions, but if there was one thing he couldn’t handle, it was being tickled there.

Mobius cooed sympathetically, “Aww, too ticklish?”, he asked as if he was considering letting Loki go, “Man… that sucks doesn’t it?”

Loki’s eyes widened and he went to protest, but he didn’t have a chance as Mobius’s fingertips skittered mercilessly around his belly.

He squealed and screamed and tried to buck Mobius off of him, but he was stuck, “PLEHEHEHEHEASE STOHOHOHOHOP! STOP IHIHIHIT!”

Mobius smiled down at him, using all ten of his fingers to vibrate his hands in the very center of the God’s abdomen.

“NOHOHOHOHOHO, SHIHIHIHIHIT! MOBIUHUHUS!”, he drummed his feet against the mattress, looking down at Mobius’s hands as his tormentor stopped for just a moment.

“I got a question”, Mobius said, using just one finger to trace around the tense muscles of his friend’s abdomen, circling dangerously close to the little divot in the center of his stomach.

Loki looked back and forth from Mobius’s hand to the smug grin on his face as he tried to collect himself and rid himself of any residual giggles, “Then ask it”.

Mobius hummed, “I’m getting there”, he remarked, “How ticklish do you think you are riiight… here”, he asked, teasing and circling the rim of Loki’s bellybutton.

Loki squirmed and whined pitifully as anticipatory giggles poured from his lips, “Dohohon’t. Don’t do thahahahat. Please, plehehehease”,

With his free hand, Mobius tickled up and down Loki’s side, pinching at the fleshy area, “Aww, I like that you said please”, he teased as Loki tried to roll to one side to protect the one that Mobius was tickling, “But… Im gonna do it anyway”.

Mobius dipped his finger in his ticklish friend’s bellybutton, wiggling at the base and walls of the little divot while he tickled around his belly and sides with his other hand.

“NO- NOHOHOHOHO! I CAN’T TAHAHAKE IT!”, he squirmed and kicked as Mobius tickled him mercilessly, one hand scratching relentlessly at the spaces between his ribs before he finally had some mercy on him and started tickling around his belly again instead of in his bellybutton.

Loki snorted, but he was too weak to fight and too lost to be embarrassed about it. His nerve endings felt like they were on fire and it was the only thing he could think about as those pesky tears finally fell.

Mobius had mercy on him, ceasing his tickling and allowing Loki to calm down, “Alright, let me try one more thing, and I’ll quit, okay?”, he asked gently, a fond smile playing at his lips as the trickster tried to hide his red face in his shoulder.

“Just do it”, he breathed out heavily, trying to prepare himself for whatever Mobius was going to do.

Slowly and carefully, Mobius moved his knees off of Loki’s hands to reposition himself and sit lower on his his friend’s thighs. He unbuttoned just a few more buttons on Loki’s shirt and pushed it up as high as he could manage.

Carefully, Mobius laced his fingers with Loki’s to hold his hands in place. The God panted in an attempt to gather himself when he tensed his muscles once more, recognizing Mobius’s actions immediately as the blond leaned down so his face was just above Loki’s abdomen.

Loki shook his head, “Oh for fuck’s sake, Mobius, why?”

Mobius just shrugged, “I just wanna know how you’ll react”.

Loki didn’t even try to deny it, “Visciously”.

Mobius hummed, “Alright, then I’ll just hold you tighter”, he said teasingly, suddenly taking a deep breath.

Loki braced himself, shaking already as a nervous smile played at his lips.

Mobius put his lips right over his friend’s bellybutton and blew as hard as he could.

Loki squealed and snorted and squirmed as the first raspberry rippled across his abdomen torturously before Mobius blew one after the other all over his tummy,

“NOHOHOHOHO! NONONOHOHOHO! PLEHEHEHEASE! Plehehease, please, Mobius- NOHOHOHOHOHO!”, the small breaks he got in between each raspberry were just long enough to drive him crazy while Mobius breathed in to blow another.

The agent lifted his head once more, breathing in as deeply as possible before blowing the longest, most ticklish raspberry he could manage right over Loki’s bellybutton. He couldn’t take it anymore, his brain was fuzzy and his lungs were burning, “MERCY! MEHEHERCY!”

Mobius stopped immediately, sitting up and letting Loki breathe, “Alright, calm down. I’m done now”, he soothed , moving off of his legs to allow Loki to curl up on his side and wrap his arms around himself.

Loki’s body shook with leftover giggles as he tried to rub away the ghost tickles around his abdomen and wipe away the tears on his cheeks.

Mobius smiled at him, patting his back lovingly, “You happy now, big guy?”.

Loki glared at him, but nodded nonetheless, eliciting a small chuckle from Mobius.

“Good, good. I’m pretty happy too. Hearing the God of Mischief snort and giggle is a great serotonin booster”, he teased, nodding approvingly and giving him a thumbs up.

Loki huffed as he felt his cheeks heat up, “I do not giggle, Mobius”.

Mobius rolled his eyes, “Then what were you doing while you were pretending to try to get away?”.

Loki sat up, his eyes widening in shock, “I was not pretending!”, he scowled, pushing Mobius back a little before crossing his arms over his chest.

“Sure you weren’t, and you definitely don’t giggle, and you’re certainly not pouting right now.”, he said, sarcasm just dripping from his tone.

Loki looked at him, his expression softening as he thought about how much Mobius must have cared about his happiness to have went through the trouble to make him laugh like that.

“I uh… Thank you, Mobius”, he whispered, looking down at his lap as he spoke, “for caring”.

Mobius huffed out a small laugh, “Don’t thank me, big guy. You deserve it”.

Loki smiled, leaning against his friend’s chest and allowing himself to relax as Mobius wrapped an arm around him. Both of them smiled, trying not to look at each other for the sake of their own shyness.

It was quiet. It was peaceful. They were happy…. but who would the God of Mischief be without causing a little trouble?

“So… your full name is Mobius Mobius Mobius?”

Mobius tightened his arm around Loki with an impatient sigh, “Don’t make me pin you down again”.

—

——

The next few days passed full of smiles and jokes, and plenty of passing pokes and tickles to Loki’s sides and belly.

Loki knew now that Mobius cared, and he knew that Mobius was sorry, and that was all he could ask for.

And if pretending to be upset or just being ridiculously stubborn became a part of Loki’s daily routine, who was anyone to complain about it?

Certainly not Mobius, but he was always there to take care of Loki’s moods.

[arabellaflynn]

About a week ago, I went to an open class/open call where they were offering the dancers a free health screening. Sure, why not. The PTs there were super nice and actually knew their stuff -- that group also works with the local circus performers, so they're pretty used to people doing weird shit with their bodies. They had me do a cardio test, a bunch of range of motion stuff, some muscle strength, etc. It told me nothing I didn't already know. I'm extensively hypermobile, mechanically wonky because of it, intolerant of heat and sudden exertion, and all the systems that are supposed to be regulating my heart rate and blood pressure are asleep on the job.

Believe it or not, nobody has ever bothered to run most of those tests on me. By the time I figured out my panoply of issues had a single cause, I was an adult, living in Massachusetts, and my medical care all went through MassHealth. State health care doesn't run expensive tests for funsies, and I got a solid clinical diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos just from walking in with a folder full of family history and research papers and bending my fingers backwards for some curious doctors, so it wasn't necessary. There's no real utility to putting numbers on just how fucked I am, either. EDS is a genetic disorder. There isn't any way to fix the fundamental cause of all the cascading problems, so standard of care is basically playing whack-a-mole with the symptoms. You're not treating the patient back to an objective standard, you're trying a bunch of things until you either run out of things to try, or the patient says, "Eh, good enough." The symptoms I self-report are not unreasonable for my diagnosis, and I'm not unreasonable about what counts as fixing it, so there's no point in trapping someone in an office with me for twenty very boring minutes while I run on a treadmill.

I left feeling very, very angry.

Not at the PTs; as mentioned, they were great. And I'm not pissed at my body for glitching out either. I've been like this for forty-one consecutive years at this point, and it is what it is. I'd like to think I've gotten the hang of dealing with it by now. 

I left angry because I remember being a child, and telling people about all of the things that were wrong with me, and not one single adult in my life bothered to take me seriously. The nice ones gave me a lot of pep talks about having confidence and venturing outside my comfort zone. The shitty ones told me to stop whining and do as they said. None of them went, 'hey, so, this kid keeps complaining about this one thing, it seems kind of weird and worrying, maybe go to the doctor and have it checked out?'

My mother does not like doctors. She doesn't like authority figures generally, but doctors for some reason strike her as especially useless. I don't remember very many medical appointments as a kid. Most of the ones I recall were for ear infections, and I strongly suspect we would not have gone in for those if she'd been able to figure out how to get her hands on amoxicillin on her own. My mother has a half-finished nursing degree (that she didn't want and quit right smack in the middle of) and thinks she knows better. We did go to the ER when I was five and very definitely broke my arm, and I'm told we went when I had salmonella as an infant, but aside from stonkingly obvious emergencies like those, doctor visits just didn't happen.

[Except one. The only doctor visit I didn't have to fight tooth and nail to get was when I was fourteen and mentioned I disliked my acne. Within two weeks, I had seen a PCP, gotten a referral, and was sitting the lobby of a local dermatologist who decorated his waiting room with Looney Tunes animation cels. I liked him; he addressed his questions directly to me, and at one point very politely threw my mother out of the room so I could answer them. That actually turned into a bit of an ordeal -- he tried oral antibiotics first, but it turns out that things that end in -cycline make me barf, so there was a bunch of back and forth before we settled on topical tretinoin, which was itself a PITA to get at the time. Not word one out of my mother about any of it.

Call from college begging for a therapist? Suck it up! Face unattractively bumpy? Clearly important.]

I don't remember if there was an inciting incident, or just an accumulation of smaller insults, but somewhere around the age of ten, I came to the conclusion that help did not exist. Or if it did, no one was going to give any to me. So I just stopped bothering to tell people when things went wrong. If I got sick and had to throw up while my parents were busy or asleep, I just staggered to the bathroom and did it, went back to bed, and informed the adults the next time they cruised by. I had constant nosebleeds as a kid (common symptom of EDS, plus we lived in the desert) and I stuck a wad of Kleenex up my nose and went on with my day. 

Since "have my needs respected" apparently wasn't an option, I only had two ways to deal with stuff that did damage: Suck it up and ignore it, or sit the fuck down and refuse to move. I picked the latter more often than you'd think. 

It worked best when the person demanding I do something stupid was an authority figure other than a parent -- e.g., a teacher or camp counselor -- because then I could sic my mother on them. My mother loves feeling like she's Sticking It To The Man™. (Note that my mother is a suburban housewife with a backyard pool, hybrid SUV, and a husband who works in aerospace and has to tear apart the house looking for his Selective Service card every few years to re-up his DoD clearance. My mother is The Man. Congruence is not her strong suit.) To her credit, she did always tell me that if the cops ever brought me home in the middle of the night, she would know whatever I did was 100% my idea -- I was an extremely stubborn kid and petrified of getting into any kind of trouble, so if I was openly disobeying a teacher, there was probably a good reason for it. 

The supervising adult would threaten, "I'll call your parents," and I would just be like, "Okay, go for it," and then they would magically come up with some other way to resolve the problem, because they had all tangled with my mother at some point, and none of them were eager to do it again. It's possible that they called my father at work once or twice, but he would have just redirected them to my mother, and I'm convinced that the school office drew straws whenever her name came up on the caller ID to see who had to talk to her this time.

On the other hand, anything that so much as mildly inconvenienced my mother was cause for rage. The worst one I can recall was when I was in high school. at a dental appointment. I don't like dentists, partly for the normal reasons and partly because as above-mentioned my mother resents the existence of medical professionals and was incapable of not taking her mood out on her surroundings. For some reason, she though she could just not deal with that part by not telling me about the appointment until we joined it in media res. I don't remember what happened at school that day -- undoubtedly some random teenage bullshit, but when you're a teenager, that bullshit is very important -- but between that, and getting paged out of class unexpectedly as if there were some sort of emergency, and just general DENTIST, I had an absolute meltdown as soon as my butt hit the exam chair.

In retrospect, this was clearly some combination of panic attack and dysautonomia. I was sobbing hysterically and hyperventilating so badly I couldn't have given an answer to the people asking me what was wrong even if had one. I was physically unable to calm down. The dentist was beside herself. She tried everything she could think of, but in the end, I couldn't stop crying long enough to let the poor woman clean my teeth, so they just told us to re-book and come back later.

My mother was a ball of seething, silent, white-hot fury the entire drive home. The dentist and hygienist had sat with me for about a million years, asking me what happened and how they could help. My mother did neither, but did let me know that I had disrupted her entire day, and she was very unhappy that she had to drag me back and do this all over again.

Many years later, I learned that dentists were well aware that they made people anxious, and as long as you had someone handy to drive you home, a lot of them would happily give you some Valium to make the experience less dreadful. There's an excellent chance they asked my mother if they could give her minor daughter some sedatives, and she said no.

I can't decide whether she was better or worse about physical problems. She was objectively very bad. My mother's tolerance for pain and discomfort is unreal. My sister and I have agreed on exactly one thing, ever, in our entire lives, and that thing is: 'If Mom claims something doesn't hurt, do not believe her.' She never bothered to tell dentists when the numbing wore off while they were still drilling. She thought childbirth was easy. She broke hands and feet multiple times as a child, and by her own account she just wrapped a bandage around the offending extremity and ignored it. She did finally admit, in her 50s, that almost a year of chronic kidney stones, complete with stents and multiple lithotripsies, kind of sucked. (She did it to herself. Rather than hit up a doctor when the symptoms of menopause annoyed her, she decided to treat it with a preposterous excess of green veggies and soy products. Which are full of stone-forming oxalates. Oops.) It's not anything like CIPA -- we actually have the infamous redhead gene that eats Novocaine for breakfast and makes sore throat sprays worthless. 

I am unsure if her childhood included frank physical abuse. I am inclined to think not, because her social calibration is way the fuck off, and if it had she inevitably would have told us some sort of anecdote about it, thinking it was funny. But it is abundantly clear that her parents were not equipped with an excess of empathy, and that it was drilled into her at a very young age that her pain did not matter. My mother is more 'self-centered teenager' than 'literal sociopath', but that still means she assumes her experience is universal despite all evidence to the contrary -- so if her pain doesn't matter, yours doesn't matter either. To this day, I'm not sure whether she disbelieved me when I told her something hurt, or just didn't think it was all that important.

How much influence other adults would have had on my overall medical care, I don't know; my mother did have my insurance card hostage, after all. But I am still very, very angry at all the people who told me that my pain and discomfort weren't real, and I was just making them up to be difficult. I have permanent ligament damage in both arches because of a PE teacher who insisted that I run (well, "run") a mile even as I was gasping for breath and literally dragging my toes with every step, unable to lift my feet properly. Another PE teacher rolled her eyes and called me lazy when I spent most of seventh grade on crutches after re-injuring what the first one did. (To clarify, we did not go to a doctor to get the crutches -- my mother cadged them from a friend who had broken a foot sometime earlier, and forged my PE excuse note. Also to clarify, we had excellent health insurance that would absolutely have covered 'kid can't walk right, get foot x-rays at urgent care and issue mobility aids'.)

I avoided anything even remotely resembling exercise for decades, because I knew it would go just like my academics did. Agreeing to anything would start an endless round of the adults badgering me to do more and try harder. No achievement would ever be enough. As soon as they got one 'yes' I wouldn't be allowed to say 'no' anymore, and the only way to make it stop would be to go completely on strike, let them be mad, and wait until they got distracted and went to go yell at someone else.

Unbelievably enough, I do feel a bit sorry for my mother. In hindsight, she has pretty much the same core set of symptoms as me, as do her sisters, and as did her mother. I have limited knowledge of the rest of the family, but every blood relative on that side has shown at least some signs that I know of. A lot of the dysfunction around medical stuff stems from her just never having experienced anything different, and not knowing that none of this is normal. The unforgivable part is her reaction when I came to her with the problem. Instead of helping me find ways to cope, or even just sympathizing with me and agreeing that it sucked, she screamed at me to shut up. She genuinely thinks that everyone in the world is walking around in this amount of distress, all the time, and that trying to not be in this amount of distress is childish and entitled, like demanding that the world bring you a constant stream of food so that you never have to feel the slightest bit hungry. 

I'm sorry that she's that miserable, and feels compelled to suffer alone. But she could have chosen to behave better, and did not. Her isolation, at least as an adult, is her own damn fault.

Why the other grown-ups thought I was malingering, I have no idea. I seemed too young to have the problems I claimed? They were used to me being compliant and had no plan for my insubordination? General assumption that children are lazy and manipulative liars? Not a clue. But they all dismissed me without running any of the tests that would have proven I was telling the truth. I sincerely want to take the packet the PT gave me at the screening, roll it tightly into a cylinder, go back in time, and smack each and every one of them with it, repeatedly, until they understand what they did wrong.

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[mandoinevarro]

Deep into the Wilderness

Words: 4.7k (this was supposed to be short but, alas, i am an asshole) 

Rating: E

Warnings: Smut, sex pollen :0, dubious consent (see: sex pollen), a bit of size kink ö, multiple orgasms :O, light descriptions of blood, magic nature if you’re in the mood, incredible coincidences if you’re not

a/n: i genuinely thought this would be a lil drabble :/, also fuck snakes all my homies hate snakes

There’s something wrong about the stars.

Nights in the Tatooine desert are usually dim and still, as stoic as the Mandalorian who’s been journeying across the endless dune sea with you in your little caravan of two. These past few days, you’ve noticed that the jagged difference between coarse sand and smooth beskar are no obstacle for his ability to blend perfectly into his surroundings. For days, you’ve seen the bounty hunter cruise the barren wilderness like he was born in it, climbing the mounds of sand leisurely and offering his hand when the treacherous ground gives in under your feet and you tumble forward. Ever the gentleman. Silent and observant, he tends to adapt to the elements around him and mimic their energy, until he becomes part of the landscape. Tonight is no different.

The normally scattered and shy desert stars have all gathered in a cluster right above your modest campsite, blinking down at you white and yellow and red against an electric blue sky, bright enough to spare the need of a fire. You feel watched. The stars’ ghoulish eyes above trail your every movement. Waiting to witness something.

Yes, a meek voice inside lies for you, it must be the stars, as you purposefully try to ignore the crushing weight of the Mandalorian’s trained gaze on you, much heavier than the strong beskared arm resting on your upright knee. The tube of bacta ointment moves awkwardly under your fingers and, Maker, you know it won’t be enough. The small holes on the wool covering his arm reveal two angry red pupils gushing blood where the snake’s fangs pierced him; pupils that stare amused at the medical salve that they know and you know and Mando knows will do little neutralize the unknown toxin. You sit so close to him you can hear the hitch of his breath when you pinch the tube and white balm oozes onto your finger.

“I—Mando, I-I think we should get help.” It doesn’t help your nerves that the man to your left hasn’t stopped staring at you since the ruby red viper appeared from under the sand like a conjuring, going straight for the Mandalorian’s arm and slithering back inside its hiding place beneath the dunes before either of you could react. It was unnatural; desert creatures tend to linger in the shadows and never attack unless provoked. Then again, everything about this particular evening—including the bounty hunter—seems to be slightly off, like when something in a familiar place is moved, but you can’t figure out exactly what.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” the voice under the modulator scratches at a  lower register than usual, gruffier in a way that would excite you and warm your belly if you weren’t so worried about the liquid currently poisoning his bloodstream. It must be the pain. “Two days by foot to the nearest town. Just use the bacta.”

You gulp and nod as firmly as you can manage, trying to quiet the whisper saying that bacta won’t cut it this time as you get your finger closer to his arm. It’s strange that he asked for your help—the bite is right on the pulse point of his inner elbow, where he could easily do it himself. Maker, just focus. He must have had a good reason to ask you. Plus, you’re not about to miss the promise of even the slightest physical contact with the Mandalorian, even if the situation is not exactly as you’ve fantasized all these months.

Your finger presses lightly into one of the gaps, and with a bit more force when you hear a raggedy exhale leave him. The opening the snake left behind is too small for your finger, and most of the bacta gathers around its edges, while barely any gets to the wound.

“I, um…I need to cut it—t-the fabric,” you stutter and, stars, you sound like an idiot, getting nervous over applying balm when you’ve seen him cauterize his own injuries with a steady hand, much to your horror. You can feel the way his eyes feed from your words as they study you carefully, somehow strengthening the gravity pining you to the ground. A strange static crinkles in the air between you, so real you almost hear it, and for a moment you feel the weight of his stare move past your face, lower down your body. By the time he finally nods and signals towards the open medical kit with a tilt of his helmet, you’re warm all over.

Stretching your torso just the right amount so that his arm doesn’t slip from your knee, you reach straight for the scissors in front of you. Your fingers pinch the fabric to lift it while your other hand works the clippers, cutting with tiny snip-snip-snips that do little to fill the tense silence between you. Why it’s even tense to begin with is beyond you. Sure, Mando got bitten by some unknown creature that could potentially be lethal, but the invisible rope getting stretched from both ends more and more between your bodies has little to do with the mishap. Stars, it feels like it’s pulling you closer and pushing you apart at the same time, and the arm on your knee suddenly feels like it’s burning through your pants. What would happen, you muse as you crank your wrist, if the rope gave in?  

The scissors close their circuit, and you lift a small circle of cloth, leaving the clippers aside. It’s a little bigger than it needed to be, but the Mandalorian doesn’t complain when you properly apply bacta on the lesion, sitting like a statue with the visor shining dark blue at your face. The stars reflect distorted on his helmet with judging eyes, like they can hear your thoughts. Like they just know how being so close to the man you think about to warm cold nights is making your heart pump more blood that you need. To places that definitely don’t need it.

You raise your other hand and rest it on his bicep. It’s only to pull the sleeve a little higher. To give you more room to work. And it’s only with that touch that he flinches.

You immediately lift both hands. “Sorry, I—I’m sorry, does…does it hurt—?”

“—No.” Mando moves his good arm and grabs your hand roughly, bringing it to rest on his bicep once again. He clears his throat, unable to wash away the grainy strain on his voice. “No, it—it’s fine.” His large palm stays over yours for a moment, before pulling away slowly. Reluctantly.

You nod and continue your ministrations, massaging a little more bacta than necessary on the bite. Maker, you never want to stop touching him. The patch of olive skin burns hotter than the planet’s twin suns under your touch, and you feel under your other hand how every shift of your finger makes his bicep jump in response.

His flesh absorbs the ointment fast, and you’ve now covered even the surrounding area around the bite, so you lift your finger, a bit disappointed that your little moment of intimacy is over. Until you feel him tug at his end of the rope.

“Cut more,” he breathes, and you freeze before you can lift the hand off his arm, staring right at the visor with eyes round as moons.

“Cut—cut more? More cloth? Wh—”

“The venom will travel up my veins.” Mando’s voice is a little steadier, but it still doesn’t mask a strange tint of something that doesn’t sound quite like pain. “You need to check how far up it goes. If…if it goes into my chest…”

He doesn’t need to finish. You shuffle to your knees—a little clumsily because of the sand beneath—and let his arm fall to his side as you squeeze his strong bicep a little tighter. For support.

“Tell me when to stop.” The blades cut away at the fabric, revealing a vertical line of lovely skin with each snip. They go higher and higher, higher and higher, and it’s you who decides to stop when they almost reach his armpit. You rest the scissors next to your legs. The slit uncovers the upper half of his arm’s underside, and you can’t help it when one hand moves to rest on the pauldron and the other slips under the crevice to caress his skin.

Mando’s chest puffs with more air and moves quicker, and—fuck—he looks so broad like this. Sitting and injured, he still towers over you with the beskar and the mass of muscle beaten into him through years of fighting.

He could crush me. The idea pools hot in your core.

“What, uh, what am I looking for?” Your own voice is thick. It’s wrong, but you’re honest enough to admit it’s arousal.

“T-the veins.” You hear him gulp and imagine the apple on his throat bobbing up and down. “Feel around. Che—check if they’re protruding.” You comply, dragging your fingers up and down his burning, strong arm, getting caught up in how he tenses under your touch. He’s pulsing, sure enough, beating like a drum under your hand—you even manage to raise goosebumps when you give a test squeeze—but you can’t feel any veins.

“No.” The hunter exhales with relief and nods once, but his arm doesn’t follow, as it remains taut as wood. You don’t remove your hand. He doesn’t pull away. If anything, he leans into you.

An soft breeze raises a small cloud of sand and cools your face, whistling past you while it orders you to do it. “If it’s not pain,” you murmur, deciding it’s your turn to tense your end of the rope a little, “what do you feel?” You scratch your nails down his arm.

The gloved hand furthest away from you balls into a fist, clutching sand. “It—it, uh. It burns.” The words are dragged out and gritty, like they’re forcing their way out. He shivers and shuffles closer to you. “But—fuck—feels good. You—you feel good.” Encouraged, your nails sink into his flesh, testing the waters. Finally, it earns you a grunt, deep and rumbling its way between your thighs. In a split second, his arms fly to his shoulder, tugging at the cloak desperately, and you remove your hand from the opening to help him. It takes a few rough jerks, but the cloak eventually rips away from his pauldrons, and the Mandalorian throws it back. His hand travels to the side of his torso closest to you and signals. “Cut here.” He doesn’t offer an explanation this time.

Shit, you probably shouldn’t. But wetness is gathering around your folds and you’re not sure if you’ll actually get anywhere, but, Maker, you’re willing to try. Your hand is trembling when it finds the scissors next to you and you crouch slightly to cut away, eager and desperate to reveal more of the mysterious bounty hunter. This time, though, you don’t make a crevice, but instead cut a long rectangle from his waist to the side of his chest. You drop the scissors and the piece of fabric on top of the cloak and waste no time before your right palm crawls into the opening. Boiling skin welcomes your hand as it explores his naked torso, up a sturdy chest rising and falling rapidly, and back down again, savoring the sensation of soft skin over firm muscles flexing under your fingers. You stop at a trail of hair near his navel.

The Mandalorian growls. You scratch the hair lightly. The rope snaps.

Your hand slips outside when two hands grab your hips to lift you, setting you down to straddle Mando’s lap. You fall ungracefully, wobbling and grabbing at him to find your balance, until his steel arms wrap around your waist to press your chest to his. You grab his shoulders for support, and your warm breath clouds the beskar of his helmet. Your hips squirm unconsciously, making your core accidentally rub against something hard between the hunter’s legs. His grip on your back tightens and grinds you against him again, making him release a deep, primal moan against your ear. Fuck, you feel how hot liquid plops on your underwear as he ruts you against his erection, but somewhere in the back of your brain a puzzle solves itself in a snap and sends a pang of guilt to your chest.

“M-mando.” You sound whinier than you intended. “Mmando, I—I’ve heard about this, you’re poisoned, y-you don’t know what you’re d—”

“—Shut up,” he spits at you and pushes you roughly against him as a hand unwinds from your waist and wraps over your mouth. Your moans are muffled against his glove when a current shocks your body as your clit rubs just right over his bulge. You glance up at the stars, looking for guidance around the overwhelming pleasure threatening to break you, but they only stare back, burning brighter than before.

Suddenly, Mando pulls his hands away and pushes you off his lap. You fall back kneeling, worrying you’ve crossed a line somehow, but your anxieties disappear when you see him rip off his gloves and pull at your clothes hastily. You take the hint and help him undress you. The top garments he removes, but your underwear is ripped away and thrown to the side.

He whips around and finds his cloak, laying it on the sand and silently ordering with a finger to get on top. You shuffle on your knees until they reach the soft material, and—just when you’re about to turn around and beg him to touch you—the Mandalorian lifts the rectangle of cloth you cut away and wraps it around your eyes. Your vision gone but impossibly turned on, you feel his hands shove you back until you lay on the cloak.

Sand and hair tickle your face, and maybe it’s not the best idea to lay completely naked in the middle of a desert where you already know dangerous animals hide. The thought is quickly washed away by the heat of humid breath on your stomach. It throws you off for a moment, to feel a human gasp so clearly against your skin, but once you put two and two together the realization hits you so hard you slump limp on the ground.

The helmet…

You barely have time complete your thought. The Mandalorian climbs on top of you, a tuff of hair tickling your stomach. The trail of heat stops at your tits, where he takes a nipple into his mouth and bites down hard. You whimper to the sky.

“F-fuck, what—” He cuts you off when he laps at the injured nipple with fast, wide strokes of his tongue, before sucking hard on it. One palm holds down your chest, as the other comes up to squeeze your other breast, kneading and pulling the soft flesh like dough. You try to bite down your whimpers, but it’s too fucking much and they tumble outside urgent and needy.

Fuck, you should push him away. You both need to calm down before he forgets your body is attached to a living, breathing person and tears you apart. You—you—

The atmosphere seems to fall down on top of you when two thick fingers sink to the hilt inside your open hole effortlessly. You hum at the bliss while Mando’s wet tongue travels between your breasts, up your sternum, and leans into the curve of your throat, stopping only until it reaches your chin. You’re starting to cramp beneath him, trying to push down on his digits, but his body is too heavy over yours and fuck, fuck, you want him inside you.

His hand wraps around your cheeks and presses them together, making your mouth give in to the pressure and open up wide. His tongue—still salty with the taste of your own flesh—barges into the cave of your mouth and messily drags across its walls, your tongue, the roof, somehow everything at once with aimless movements that lack rhythm or pace.

And then his fingers start pumping. They start fast and hard and only get faster and harder, as they curl into a hook and hit something that makes you see the stars outside through the blindfold. Mando moans against your teeth, and you swallow every vibration.

“Yeah? T-there?” His mouth moves away from yours and trails the edge of your jaw, stopping at the edge and biting your neck. The two fingers working inside you push upwards to make room for a third one, and the calloused pad of his thumb rubs your clit up and down. Your scream echoes in the empty space of the sterile desert, now buzzing with life. “R-right there? Hm?” His voice hangs thick in the air, mixing with the loud static in your ears. Through the haze, you wonder momentarily what his face looks like right now. Probably red and sweaty, popping a vein or two.

“Fuck, I don’t k-know…I—I have to…” The Mandalorian removes all three fingers at once, making you yelp at the emptiness that they leave behind. Your pussy clenches a second too late and pulses around nothing, as you move in the darkness to find him again. You open your mouth to beg, but he grabs your shoulders before you can even gather some broken vocabulary together and he turns you around, pressing your chest and face against the cloak.

Resting your cheek on the cloak, you grunt at the abrupt change of position. Five fanned out fingers press down between your shoulder blades, restricting your movements and compressing all the air out of your lungs. You can’t breathe and you can’t wait, too stimulated to backpedal now, but not enough to be satiated.

An arm wraps around your midriff and roughly lifts your hips. You hear heavy breathing behind you and some incoherent mumbling, as a zipper lowers.  

Something round and smooth pokes at your entrance.

Is…is that…?

It definitely feels like the head of his cock as it runs up and down your folds gathering moisture. It even twitches a little against your clit and he’s grunting with every movement but…but even without your sight to help it feels so big. It can’t be his cock, in what universe would he be that fucking bi—

A grunt and a slight retrieval of his hips for impulse is all you get as a warning before he slams into you, lurching you forward. It knocks every single thought out your head, jamming what little air you’d managed to inhale on your trachea. The stretch bites, straining against your walls at an uncomfortable angle. And then he grinds further inside, deeply and hard as the bulbous head of his cock stimulates just about every nerve inside your pussy at once. You choke on your own cry, desperately trying to hold on to some sanity as you focus on processing the burst of pleasure that casts a dark shadow over the pain. The feeling secures every muscle on your body so tightly you think your spine is going to snap.

And he holds there, pulsing angrily and breathing down hot against your shoulders. You feel a slow trail of flames burn your insides with every strong sequence of thum-thum-thums of his thick cock against your walls.

Stars, did he cum?  Is that why he’s throbbing so violently, did he cum? It’s hard to tell when you’re so wet you’re sure you’re going to dehydrate tomorrow and fuck you only get wetter with the strumming and Maker you know the snake was poisonous but…but could he really want you this much?  

He sucks in a gulp of dusty air through his teeth, grunts and holds you tighter, his arm strong as beskar around your midriff and a burning palm pressing you against the cloak, sinking it deeper into the sand.

Finally, the Mandalorian pulls out with a grunt, your hips following his with a sucking sound because of the grip of your walls against his girth. He stops right before the tip slips out, its ridge catching on your opening. And maybe whatever venom running through his veins dissipated because he doesn’t move for a second that feels like an eternity. Fleeting disappointment surges inside you because maybe…maybe it was just the serpent. Maybe he doesn’t really want you. You are the only fuckable thing for miles, and you’ve heard enough about the toxin to imagine how desperate he’d be. Stars, you feel like such an idi—

Mando’s hips suddenly crash against yours, sinking himself to the hilt.

You feel him everywhere. Fucking everywhere, even where he isn’t. The fat cock hammering into you randomly with no pace or metric, seemingly determined to taste every inch inside your cunt takes most of your attention, but the hand on your back kneads and pulls the thin skin there as best as it can. You try to brace yourself against something solid—anything—but when your hands form fists they find only handfuls of sand, and the delicate particles do nothing to steady you from the animalistic thrusts of the Mandalorian.

So you moan, long and high to try and release all the pleasure stockpiling inside of you with no exit routes. Mando answers with grunts all the way down in his glottis. A deep and angled snap of his hips hits you somewhere electrifying, and you feel something hot and liquid knot your pelvic muscles tighter. His skin slaps against yours obscenely, paired with the squelching of your pussy trying to engulf him deeper and deeper in spite of his size.

“T-take it,” you hear him growl behind you. Barely. Your ears ring and you can’t even listen to your own whimpers anymore. His length keeps coming, restless and infinite and fuck, you need to focus on something else, something outside to keep your head from slipping away. “Just—just f-fucking take me whole, you—"

Fuck, focus. Focus, count to ten, do something—

You grit your teeth and you can’t even warn him. Something drops into your pelvic muscles and you swear you can see the blue desert sky in a flash behind your eyelids and feel the blinking stars prickling the nerve endings on your back, making you spasm desperately. Your head spins, and you only feel pleasure. Only him.

Still half-passed out from your release, you hear it before you feel it. The wet sound contrasting the dry dunes of how he keeps using your cunt to get himself off. He’s not letting you come down, fall to the natural next step of your cycle and relax. Breathe. No, he keeps filling every last inch of you, faster now with the help of the additional wetness and holds you in that state of euphoria that keeps hitting you like a tide. Shit, are you cumming again?

“F-fuck—fuck—d-did you—ngh—cum? W-was that—” Another wave hits you and you clamp down mercilessly around him before he can get an answer. His long moan gets you wetter somehow, and you can’t even savor it before the strong forearm holding your waist pulls you upright against him.

Up is down as you try to figure out in the darkness where your body ended up. Something slumps behind you and pulls you down with it hard against the cushioning of the sand. You find yourself impaled on the Mandalorian’s cock, his chest to your back. He bends and opens his legs to grab yours, pulling them back and hooking them around his cuisses. Propped up with most of your weight on Mando’s hips, your feet barely graze the cloak below them.

You reach up to touch him but he beats you to it, wrapping his arms around your torso and grabbing the surely bruising skin of your tits. Your eyes roll back and you try you best to keep your head above the water, which proves incredibly difficult when you feel his lips on your jaw, his drool trailing down your neck. You turn your head and he doesn’t miss a beat before his tongue slips between your lips, tasting and exploring and almost drinking from you like you’re water in he’s been stranded in this desert for years.

Mando thrust up at you, resuming his senseless fucking. And maybe you’re a little greedy. Maybe it’s wrong, especially because you don’t have an excuse to act like this, but you roll down into his cock, wanting him everywhere and for as long as you can get him. His thrusts are almost impossible to meet and his thickness catches at your opening, but you work diligently—determined to have him buried as deeply as he wants to go. The beskar of his chest trembles against your shoulders with a vibrating, noiseless moan.

“You—you pretty t-thing,” he breathes lowly against your mouth. You grab his knees for support and push down harder. “I’ve want—wanted this—w-wanted you f-for so—so long.” He bites your lower lip. His voice sounds delirious.

Maker, it’s ridiculous. You’re bouncing your pussy on his stiff cock like an animal in heat, but his words warm your chest more than your core. You know it’s probably the poison talking, but you indulge in it. You let your hand cradle his cheek and bring your lips sweetly against his, pretending you’re his lover and not just a vessel for his release. He gasps into the kiss.

It’s with your lips that he finally lets go. It happens midthrust, so his cum spurts out of you and dribbles down his cock. It smears on your folds and, surely, on the cloak beneath. Stars, you’re shaking. Your legs spasm with the promise of another orgasm that almost—almost happened. Still holding you, Mando pulls out, and the rest of his seed spills on wool and sand.

What now? If not the sweat and the fucking, then his release surely evacuated the venom by now. The Mandalorian pants behind you, just as spent and exhausted, and what the hell are you supposed to say to each other now? You squirm uncomfortably at the dilemma, and your slit accidentally drags against something upright beneath you. Mando winces at the contact.

Maker, is he still hard? How—?

Fingers dig into your arms and force you forward and away from him. You fall on top of the cloak, barely pillowing your fall with your forearms before you feel the Mandalorian turning you around to face him.

You lay open below him, ruined and confused in the darkness as to what he’s planning for you next. Your clit pulses with equal parts arousal and apprehension at the uncertainty, but it decides for the former when you feel him dip his fingers in your entrance and scoop his cum and yours. The sound of him pumping himself faster and faster is muffled by his moaning. It’s filthy gibberish: loose words of everything he’s dreamt about doing to you; of how he’s going to fuck you over and over again; of how you’re going to take every drop of him; of how good it’s going to be for you.

Four fingers land on your clit and work it wetly up and down. A whine escapes you and you’re so sensible it almost hurts and your head swims and he’s still talking but there’s something…something sincere about his words. Something that hides beneath the frantic movements against your bud that feels almost reverent. Like the snake’s toxin only lifted a veil, revealing the Mandalorian’s pent up lust and primal instincts below his layers of unyielding discipline.

“S-so, so fucking good for me, so—"

You cry out when your walls tighten around nothing with powerful contractions, deciding at some point of the frenzy that consumes you that you’ll take advantage of this queer land and the limbo its night has thrown both of you into. Deciding you’ll let the Mandalorian explore his more primitive urges and fuck you into tomorrow, whatever “tomorrow” may mean for your relationship with him.

The sound of him fucking his hand quickens and you hear it closer to your body. You can’t tell exactly where.

“I—I—gonna c-cum.” His voice tightens in his throat. “Where?”

“Everywhere,” you answer breathlessly, and you mean it.

[equestrianwritingsstuff]

For You

Warnings: vampire, feeding blood, IV, drawing blood, forced drugging, passing out/collapse, blood loss, delirious state of consciousness, hallucination, death thoughts, fever, starvation, pills, forced medication

There was no strength left in their body. No strength to run, no strength to fight, and absolutely no strength to take care of them.

Villain laid on the cool, wooden floor of their bedroom, too weak to do much more than periodically twitch their fingers. Their eyes drifted closed every once in a while, only to open when they remembered that Hero was starving in the bes above them.

Villain rolled over onto their stomach, the motion causing the world to contort and waver into a dizzying pallette of pastel colors. They breathed deeply, gathering their arms underneath them before heaving themself up and into a sitting position.

After about five minutes of sitting there with their eyes squeezed shut, trying not to sway from their taxing position, Villain reached forward and grabbed the IV off the night stand.

"V-villain," Hero murmured. Villain cast them a long glance. Their nemesis was hardly conscious on the bed, starved and heavily drugged. Villain gulped. They didn't want to keep them sedated like this, but they would try to kill Villain otherwise.

"Sorry," Villain slurred, their voice was as fragile as Hero's.

"Mmn," Hero groaned and slightly opened their mouth, awaiting the meal. Villain gave a small nod that nearly caused them to fall back onto the ground. They put a tube into Hero's mouth then inserted the needle into their own wrist.

Within a second, the delirious and greedy vampire started to gulp frantically. Villain's bottom lip trembled as they felt their limited blood supply diminish.

After only thirty seconds, Villain began to feel incredibly light-headed and contemplated whether or not to stop Hero's feeding. But one look at the desperate face made Villain decided on the former- just a minute longer.

"Hmph," Villain gasped as they slumped forward onto the bed, their consciousness wavering. With shaky hands, they clutched the needled and deftly drew it out of their vein before falling completely unconscious.

Villain drifted between sleep and wakefulness for a while, still collapsed on Hero's bed. During their brief stints of consciousness they woule remind themselves of Hero's next dose, but couldn't bring their depleted body to do so.

They feel vaguely feel the awakening Hero stirring under their body. Villain pushed themselves backwards, planning on standing fully up and going about their day, but their body had other plans. They fell back, hitting their back against the ground as the world was submerged in a dark shade of ebony.

"Villain! Open up!"

Villain moaned and tried to peel their eyes open, but they were too heavy.

The voice- it was a voice, they were sure- came again, "Villain. You need help, open the door!"

Villain didn't need help, they were sure of it. Hero did- Hero needed to eat and Villain was able to take care of them. For them.

"For you," Villain whispered, almost like the faintest breeze.

Their fingers curled into the hard ground. They were aware of the floor's cool features, but oddly it felt warm. Too warm.

Villain forced their eyes open and saw a trickle of blood coming out of their veins from where the IV was still attached. They were so certaib that they removed it and seeing it felt like a rock was dropped into their stomach.

Villain tried to reach over and pull it out, but failed, letting out a strangled sob as they tried to call upon their healing powers. Using them made them completely exhausted, but it kept them and Hero alive.

Villain, after a few agonizing seconds of calling their power, finally felt a comforting tingling through their fingers as their body created some blood. It was low in oxygen and lacked all the necessary and vital functions that blood cells carried out, but it did a decent job at feeding Hero.

Villain sighed in relief as the new warmth spread throughout their body, drawing them back into sleep...

Villain woke rather unpleasantly. They were only aware of the heat gathering in their head and the fact that they were cold- oh so cold. They moved their hands about, testing their environment, but was quite confused at the outcome. Wet. They were wet and cold.

Villain cracked open an eye and looked around. White walls with small shelves that held various bottles. Looking down, they saw tiny glaciers floating around a small expanse of artic water.

Suddenly, they tensed, scared and completely convinced that they were indeed trapped in a frigid ocean.

"Shh," came a voice, foggy and distant as if Villain's ears were underwater. Maybe they were, Villain couldn't tell for panic consumed them.

So Villain continued their struggles even as ropes wrapped around their head pulling them against hard surface. A boat. They were going to be crushed by a boat. They kicked and resisted the ropes that tied them so tightly against the imminet danger.

"Let me go!" Villain yelled, pushing away. The ropes let go, cut away by the knives that threatened to slit Villain's throat.

The term "knives" was literal. There wasn't just one silver dagger, but five, all working to free Villain before they decided to end the suffering person themself.

Those knives grabbed Villain's bare chest, right above their heart as they were pulled right back against the boat.

"Villain. You need to calm down. You have a fever, you are safe, okay? So is Hero. Do you hear me? Hero is being taken care of."

Hero... taken care up... Villain allowed their tired body to slump deep into the cold waves as they waited for one to take them to their grave.

But the merciless ropes and knives held them up, keeping them from drowning. Soft tendrils drifted through their hair and for a moment fear enveloped Villain at the thought of a mysterious plant suffocating them.

But, once they decided that the tendrils were kind, they leaned into the gesture, closing their bloodshot eyes as darkness closed around them...

Villain woke up, dazed and confused. They struggled under the thin sheet that covered their pale body, but was too weak to push it off.

Looking around, they noticed that they were in a foreign- possibly dangerous environment. The memories of the night before were foggy like they were swallowed, threwn up, then swallowed again.

But they did remember Hero, sick and starved on Villain's bed.

"Ah your awake," came a tired voice. Villain's gaze shot to the person sitting next to them. It took a moment but...

Supervillain.

Villain flinched and tried to run away, only to get tangled and stuck on the floor. Carpet, not wood.

They weren't in their house.

Villain squirmed, terrified of the all too familiar face. The face that brought tears of pain to many. The face that was probably here to punish Villain for taking care of a hero.

But Supervillain only walked to the other side of the bed, scooped the weak villain up, and laid them prone on the bed.

"Are you too warm?" Supervillain asked, placing their cold hand upon Villain's burning forehead. The cold hand that was going to be the death of Villain...

"Still running a fever..." Supervillain murmured and turned around. Villain barely had time to register the words before they were faced with a small, evil-looking, torture device.

Oh boy did it look simple and the possibilities were endless of what it would do. Villain imagine maybe it had a hidden needle and they would be drugged. They also wondered if it contained a knife- knives were threatening them before, why not do it now?

But nothing prepared them for the way Supervillain clutched Villain's jaw, forcing it open and sticking the device under their tongue.

Nothing prepared them for the lack of pain other that a sharp pinch. Their eyes began to flutter closed. After all, Supervillain wasn't torturing them...

A loud beeeep brought them back around. They stared deep into Supervillain's concerned eyes.

"I'm going to get you some medicine. Okay?" Supervillain laid a hand on Villain's head. "Try to stay awake for me."

Villain swallowed and nodded, small and helpless. Weak and fragile like a thin glass just waiting to break at the slightest touch.

But, despite Supervillain's request, Villain began to doze off only to awake when they felt like they were falling. They kept on forgetting what their half-consious self was dreaming or thinking about after those falls.

"Dang it Villain," Supervillain groaned when they entered the room and saw their colleague's eyes half-rolled into their head as they stared at the ceiling without any real object or reason.

"Come here," Supervillain cooed and gently cupped Villain's chin, opening it, and slipped the medicine into their mouth. They hoped that the sick villain still had some instinctual reflexes as they dumped some water down their throat. Supervillain then went to work on rubbing Villain's throat until they swallowed, taking the tylenol nto their stomach.

"Good job," Supervillain praised. They wiped Villain's sweating brow with a wet cloth while their patient drifted off to sleep. Supervillain did nothing to stop it.

Hero was struggling against the restraints as henchmen pried their mouth open.

"Gosh!" One of them squealed when Hero nipped at their hand. "They got rabies or something? They are wacko."

"They are a vampire you dim-wit," another henchman growled. That same henchman took Hero's mouth with some pliers and held it open long enough for the other to slipped some tablets into their mouth.

The hero swallowed and hissed.

"Okay. Supervillain told me that those will keep their vampire side at bay until they gain some weight," Henchman1, the one got bit said, wiping their nose with their hand.

Hero continued snarling until they exhausted themselves, slipping into sleep. Henchman2, the other, stood up and started to pace.

"Knock that off," Henchman1 snapped, standing up themselves. "You are taking first watch."

"No. You," Henchman2 shoved their friend. "I am not sitting with a freaking vampire. Did you see Villain? Part of me wonders if they were mind controlled."

"I thoroughly assure you that they weren't," Henchman1 rolled their eyes and slipped away from Henchman2. They opened the cell door and left.

Henchman2 walked over to Hero where they laid on a cot, unmoving. But, as if the presence of another was like a stimuli, the hero woke up.

Their eyes this time were not filled with desperate starvation or anger, but of worry.

"Where's Villain?" They asked, looking around. "They are not thinking. It's dangerous... it's..." they trailed off, their gaze meeting Henchman2's. "Are they dead?" They chirped.

"No, but sick and unconscious," Henchman2 replied, relaying the last update. That was about five minutes ago.

"They need my saliva," Hero continued. "To quicken the healing process. I cannot stimulate blood production, but I can share my healing."

"Villain has a healing factor as well and it doesn't seem to work."

"Because they are beyond exhaustion. Pair that will blood loss and starvation themselves, their chances of surviving are low. They need my saliva."

"How do I know this isn't a trick. A way to eat more?"

"I am human now. I need actual food. When the vampire takes over is when I can only consume blood," Hero glanced down at their bony wrists. "Blood satisfies like candy, but it is far from nutrious, but I thank Villain. Truly."

Henchamn2 smiled despite their best effort to remain nonchalant.

"I'm glad you do."

~ not going to edit, so I apologize for any mistakes

[strawberrysoup]

Pocketful of Posies || Chapter 2

You’d been hiding for years and years now; from your  family, from society, from alphas and packs. Suppressants were dangerous but effective and necessary for an omega who refused to be owned—but no suppressants were strong enough to fool the nose of a super soldier, who together with his pack would stop at nothing to bind you to them forever.

pairings: dark!Avengers x reader word length: 5k chapters: 2/? warnings: A/B/O dynamics, power imbalances, noncon and dubcon sexual situations, loss of autonomy, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat — this is a dark!fic, read at your own risk. Open the read more and CTRL + F, search “content warnings” to skip to detailed trigger warnings at the bottom of the chapter.

hey read this: im desperately hoping this lives up to the standards the first chapter apparently set my dudes, fingers crossed i don’t lose any of you with this one 🤞🤞 also before we get started i just wanna let yall know i am very firmly set in my decisions for the designations and i do not apologize lmao 🤙 

You had been manhandled often enough in your life but fuck this time in particular. Even if you’d managed to pass as a beta for more than a decade, you weren’t strong and couldn’t stand your ground in the face of an alpha three times your size. Steve had sucked his fingers clean and easily hefted you up into his arms, following Bruce back into the cabin and down into the basement—you hadn’t been allowed to clean the basement, it was one of the off-limits areas that were noted in your many instructions. If a door is locked, leave it alone. No cleaning is necessary in the basement, garage, or third floor. Wash the linens with a scent free detergent. Make sure the refrigerator is properly scrubbed out.

He’d left you on a metal countertop with instructions to be good for Bruce. You weren’t sure what that entailed but as soon as the blond left the room, your mind started to race. There was no way you could get away from Steve, Sam you could potentially outrun, but Bruce? Being left alone with the beta was the best thing they could’ve done for you. You could get away from Bruce.

“Have you been to see a doctor recently?” His voice was gentle, intended to be soothing as he came to stand in front of you. "Any check-ups, clinic visits?”

You knew there was blood drying on your cracked lips, cutting a jarring path down your throat. The taste was still in your mouth, you’d gouged your tongue and it was still actively bleeding. With that in mind you made direct eye contact with the beta before letting the mouthful spill over your bottom lip and drip down your front, hoping the gore would help emphasize your opinions on the situation.

“Sweetheart, I know you’re upset—”

“Bruce, why is she bleeding?” It was like getting punched in the face by alpha pheromones the moment the door to the room opened again and a much younger alpha stepped through with a practically panicked expression.

Before you or Bruce could respond you’d been swept up in the alpha’s arms. He was a few years younger than you, early twenties probably and being manhandled by a fetus was particularly bothersome. His scent kept you still for a few seconds before you started squirming, making a beta-like snarl while he corralled your limbs.

“Here Pete, can you sit with her over here? We need a blood draw and full work up, her natural hormones have probably been devastated by the chemicals in the suppressants she was taking,” Bruce gestured for the alpha to carry you to a metal table, likely meant to be used for some sort of experiments if the rest of the room was anything to judge by. "All of her reproductive organs could’ve been affected, I’ll need to do a pelvic exam. We’ll run an STD panel and—”

“No! I don’t consent!” Your voice came out as a growl, the best one you could manage. "This is false imprisonment! Let go of me you fucking knothead! This is illegal!”

The alpha started to purr immediately and you found yourself rendered boneless under the onslaught. It was startling—you’d forgotten how it felt, how calm and safe it made you feel. Alpha purrs were meant to soothe and comfort, the tones perfectly adjusted to the omega ear. They also caused a completely involuntary reaction in omegas, the same as all other alpha sounds. You had no choice but to feel relaxed, the white noise of a purr jumbling your thoughts.

Bruce smiled down at you, hand running over the top of your head where it rested against the alpha’s chest. "It’s okay, you don’t have to be afraid. I won’t let anything happen to you, I just want to make sure you’re healthy.”

“Isn’t that better baby?” The alpha sat back on the table and pulled you to sit between his legs, tucked close to his chest. “And unless you have a guardian alpha, it’s not illegal. We’re doing our civic duty, taking care of an omega in unsafe conditions.”

The worst part was that you couldn’t fight it; you couldn’t find your way out of the calm static the purr filled your brain with. Even when Bruce started taking multiple vials of blood from your left arm, when he opened your mouth to check the damage to your tongue, when they started undressing you, you couldn’t fight. It was a hazy sort of half thought, that you wanted them to stop. It must’ve been apparent in your eyes, that you were trying to work your way out of the purr’s effects.

“Shhhh, sweetheart, you’re alright,” Bruce murmured quietly as his hands pressed the glands in your neck, fingers brushing gently against the scent gland in particular. "No swelling in your thyroid or mating nodes, that’s good. Suppressants can really cause problems in your hormone glands; the blood tests will tell us for sure but it looks like you might’ve dodged the worst of it if nothing’s enflamed. How long have you been on suppressants?”

Answering was the last thing on your mind, your eyes slowly roving over the room instead. It was some sort of lab set up, tons of machines and parts of machines, technology you couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Bruce had been taking things from one particular cabinet that seemed to hold medical supplies, the rest of the place resembling a robotics factory or some kind of high-tech research and development lab. The doors had swished open automatically when Steve brought you in and when the new alpha came through. Who had automatic doors in a vacation home?

“Should I stop?” The alpha questioned the doctor, chest continuing to rumble. “I might be making her too calm I guess.”

“No, just keep doing what you’re doing Peter,” Bruce sighed slightly. "There’s too much coherence in her eyes as it is, I don’t know if the purr affects her as much as it should. I’m worried that if you weren’t enhanced it wouldn’t work at all. Look at me sweetie, can you focus on face?”

His hands cupped your cheeks, tilting your head carefully while watching your eyes. You couldn’t find the energy to focus on his face; you couldn’t imagine the purr affecting you more than it already was and dreaded the idea that it could be worse. What did enhanced mean? Like the superheroes you’d been hearing about? You didn’t keep up on current events, unless they were Omega's Rights related.

“I’m sure it’s a result of the beta chemicals dampening her omega instincts,” Peter shifted you slightly as Bruce exchanged his gloves for a new pair. "Once her body starts producing hormones on its own again she should revert back to common responses to alpha stimuli.”

“You’re probably right, we’ll know for sure once I get the blood results,” Bruce gestured for Peter to sit up more, bringing your limp body with him. “I’m going to do a breast exam and a pelvic exam and we’re done. There are some other tests I want to run but I don’t have the equipment on hand so they’ll have to wait until Tony manages to get here. Peter, can you help move her arms?”

You felt like you almost managed to swim through the purr, rage fueling you as hands manipulated your breasts. The exam itself was clinical, professional even—or it would’ve been if he hadn’t been cooing at you the whole time, how good you were being, how sweet you were, how pretty your breasts were. Peter had hummed in agreement along with the doctor, his nose trailing up and down your neck. Your hands clenched into fists and you could feel Peter’s grip on your wrists shift with the movement.

“Calm down, baby,” the alpha’s voice cooed gently against the side of your head, lips pressing into your hair as Bruce shifted away and went for the medical cabinet again. "This is important. Suppressants could’ve caused tons of problems, cancerous growths in sexual organs or secondary sex characteristics is very common.”

Death would be a reprieve. The same thought that crossed your mind any time you considered the potential effects of suppressants. A reprieve from the hiding, the exhaustion, living out of your car or a tent, eating garbage because it was all you could afford—from the constant threat of having your autonomy ripped from your hands.

You relaxed your fists until you felt his grip loosen again, even if only slightly. Your only chance would be to rely on surprise and your speed, there was no other way you’d be able to get away. Forcing your body to relax was a trial though, adrenaline was starting to course through you the more you became used to the effects of the purr. Your scent was still massively dampened by the suppressants, Peter likely wouldn’t be able to smell the shift from fear to anticipation. You bit down on the sluggishly bleeding wound on your tongue, reigniting both the pain and blood flow.

“Alright, last part, we’re almost done and then we’ll get you comfortable, okay?” Bruce was wearing new gloves again, a bottle in hand as he walked back over. "Have you had a pelvic exam before?”

You waited until he was close enough and performed what seemed to be your go to act of defiance: spitting blood directly in his face. He reared back with a short curse, Peter immediately releasing your wrists—his goal was likely to readjust you in his lap, to gain a better hold, but you were fast, faster than an alpha (always faster than alphas, it was all you had). You’d slipped from his lap and darted for the automatic doors before either of them could respond. Running through the woods naked was the lesser evil.

Steel bands. You should’ve noticed, the doors opened too soon for them to be reacting to your presence, you were so focused on getting through. But the moment you did, it felt like steel bands wrapped around your torso, pinning your arms.

The alpha’s scent was like Steve’s—the moment your brain registered it the world went hazy. You were floating, body going limp for a precious few seconds that the alpha used to sweep you into his arms and stalk further into the room. Your senses came back just in time for you to be deposited back into Peter’s lap on the table, a massive blond alpha coming into view for the first time. Your gaze was immediately stuck on his, the heterochromatic eyes nearly hypnotizing. Fighting the daze he put you in was overwhelming, especially when a wide smile split his lips and his cheeks dimpled. One massive hand reached out, almost engulfing the entire lower half of your face.

“Hello little love.” Were alphas always as insanely massive as this one and Steve, or had you just stumbled across literally your worst nightmare? “They told me you’re a flighty thing, I suppose I arrived just in time, hm? Are you going to spit blood in my face as well? It seems to be your calling card.”

The look on your face must’ve betrayed the fact that you were really, really considering it. You had a mouthful of blood and nowhere to put it but his face, honestly. Instead you used the fact that Peter was mostly propping you up to lean over the edge of the table and proceeded to open your mouth, spilling blood down onto the alpha’s shoes nice white shoes.

“I wouldn’t challenge her,” Bruce’s voice drew your attention to where he was using a towel to wipe blood off his glasses, a wry smile and affection clear on his face. "She’s putting a lot of effort into being belligerent.”

The blond alpha rumbled with a grin, thumb brushing across your cheekbone. "It’s been a stressful day for her, there’s nothing she can do that will cause any persisting damage anyway. Let her have her little rebellions.”

You wanted to be furious—what kind of asshole looked a person dead in the eyes and called their attempts to escape false imprisonment little rebellions?—but Peter seemed to have realized where your train of thought had gone because he started purring immediately. Your spine went boneless, laying you flat against his chest.

“Can you lean up against the wall with her?” Bruce directed the younger alpha to shift until both of your legs were dangling over the edge, Peter’s back to the wall the table sat against. “You’re going to need to hold her in place, even while you purr. Alright sweetie, let’s get this out of the way. Thor, will you hold her leg please?”

The sound you made was an accident. Desperation and humiliation were crawling up your spine with astounding speed, even with Peter’s purr going like a motorboat and the sound  was making it too hard to think through your instincts. Omega cries were a deliberate counterpart to the noises alphas made; whines and cries and hisses, perfectly pitched to make an alpha’s hindbrain stand at attention. The sound you made was a sharp, chirping whine—distress, distress, distress, help me, help me help m—

“Oh little love,” Thor’s voice had dropped several registers and he gently shuffled Bruce to the side so he could stand in front of you, slipping as close to the table as possible and tugging your legs to rest on either side of his hips and gently running his hands over your skin. “Let’s get you taken care of, you need rest.”

The pheromones he was putting out were meant to calm but you immediately opened your mouth, using the overwhelming scent of your own blood to drown them out. The alpha sighed and stepped aside again, taking your leg with him and spreading your thigh to rest over Peter’s leg with your foot planted on the table. A whine rose in your throat again but you locked it down, instead biting down on your tongue yet again. It was as grounding as it was painful, the tang of it souring your stomach.

It was your last coherent thought, that you were starting to feel nauseous from all of the blood you'd swallowed. Thor began to purr just after that and the sound was entirely devastating, bone deep and you went completely limp, your head falling to the side against Peter’s chest and your shoulders dropping. This is what acid felt like, you were pretty sure.

Your eyes lazily followed Bruce’s path as the doctor took his place between your legs again, lifting the other into a matching position. Some part of you was fully aware of how gut wrenching this was; completely naked and spread wide in front of two alphas and a beta, a situation you’d rather kill yourself than be in, but your brain couldn’t follow any emotional tethers while Thor purred. The doctor was speaking, you could feel his hands manipulating your vulva, but you couldn’t understand anything coming out of his mouth.

Peter’s hand came to your chin and tilted your head back until you could see him, smiling down at you. His mouth moved, your eyes almost able to track the movement of his lips enough to read them but your brain gave up halfway through. The two alphas were chuckling over something but you were distracted by the discomfort of something being inserted into your vagina. A sharp yip escaped your lips, your body still completely boneless as your eyes rolled down.

“It’s a speculum, sweetie, I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable,” it sounded like Bruce was talking underwater and you could almost feel his breath on your thigh, your mind irritatingly unable to think beyond the question 'who just keeps a fucking speculum lying around?' "Just a few more seconds while I get a pap smear.”

More discomfort came before the instrument was removed, another yip leading Peter to purr along side Thor. The rest of the exam was a blur, slippery fingers and pressure and foreign sensations. You could barely think, let alone realize that Bruce was finishing up the manual exam, when your eyes noticed movement behind them. You couldn’t really make out anything, nothing would focus, but you assumed it was Steve and Sam.

There were more voices but you couldn’t hear anything for an indeterminate amount of time. It wasn’t until Thor stopped purring again that you were able to start regaining your senses, as much as the continuous rumbling in Peter’s chest would allow. The difference between the sounds the two alphas produced was marked by your sudden ability to focus your eyes, to concentrate on voices, in the way your muscular control was slowly returning.

You were almost glad the young alpha was still purring—it meant that the spike of terror that tried to shoot through you was somewhat dulled, enough that it wouldn’t show in your scent. Sam and Steve had indeed come in, accompanied by a young woman with long auburn hair and porcelain skin, a beta from the scent. As soon as she made eye contact with you she smiled vibrantly, slipping forward and sneaking between your still spread thighs.

“You’re so beautiful,” she murmured, long fingers stroking absently against your neck as she leaned in, forcing your back tighter against Peter’s chest. "Will you let me see your trauma my love?”

Some sort of red miasma filled your vision, a fog you quickly realized was coming from her hands—and realization slammed into you like a freight train. You seen that before, in passing. And then the recognition made you nauseous—Thor. You didn’t keep up with current events, but certain names you couldn’t miss. Thor, Tony Stark, Captain America. Your eyes flashed to the blond man standing towards the back of the room; Captain America, Steve Rogers.

Desperation shot through your body like you’d been tazed. Your foot shot out of Thor’s hold, the alpha hadn’t been putting any actual effort into holding you still since you’d been so dazed, and connected with the woman’s chest to send her reeling. Before anyone else could respond, your throat rasped for several seconds before a warbling shriek escaped. The four alphas in the vicinity reacted like they’d been shot; Thor and Steve both stumbled back, and Sam’s knees practically gave out, sending him careening into the wall. Behind you, Peter, far too close to the source, immediately went limp.

There were several distress calls an omega could make. Most of the time, they were whines or chirps, noises meant to draw attention from packmates. They were small, careful sounds—nothing loud enough to attract attention from a foreign alpha or delta. Omegas were quarry to be stolen, after all, which was precisely why they had one, singular method of defending themselves against their biggest biological threat and that was a shriek.

When in close proximity, the sound was loud enough and tuned just so to daze an alpha’s hindbrain. The evolutionary explanation was that a loud shriek meant that an omega being confronted by an aggressive alpha could both temporarily stun their attacker and summon assistance—alphas or deltas, far enough away that the negative effects were nullified but within proximity to hear that an omega was in danger. The assumption being, of course, that an omega who shrieked was in danger from a stranger, not a packmate.

It only worked for a very short time though, any alpha or delta in the area would immediately converge on the omega’s location and deal with the problem—it was the reason you hadn’t used it outside. There was no reason for the effects to last when it summoned immediate assistance, though, and that meant you needed to move. You slid off the table, bare feet slapping tile as you just barely managed to dodge Bruce’s grasp. The woman, the witch from the news, was on the floor clutching her sternum.

The stairs were a blur, so was the foyer and the driveway. You hesitated at your car for all of ten seconds before running for the forest; your keys were in the pocket of your jeans, back down in the basement. Abandoning all of your possessions hurt somewhere deep in your heart but there wasn’t any time for sentiment. You had to get away, quickly.

Luckily the woods had become your home a long time ago. You moved between the trees silently, feet so heavily calloused from constantly going barefoot that you didn’t even notice the twigs and sharp stones digging into your flesh. Your brain shot into overtime. You needed to steal clothes, then cash. You’d lived with nothing for years, you could do it again for however long you needed to. The only thing you really needed was suppressants; everything else was a luxury.

You assumed they were behind you, you’d been running for a good three minutes. The straight path meant they could follow you easier but the goal had to be the maximum distance possible rather than the most strategic pattern. Your only advantage was being fast and you had no choice but to rely on it, especially since your hindbrain was wailing with every step you took. The suppressants were the only reason you could do it at all, the trade off for quieting those damn instincts being a tolerable mildness of character that did not appreciate the constant, incessant shriek of your baser self while you were trying to focus. 

All you had to do was keep quiet until you could find one of the creeks running through the forest—so close to Lake Superior there was water everywhere. You would run through the creek in several different places, to mask your scent and make it difficult to follow. It wouldn’t be hard to find a hunting blind or shack, a hole in the ground was better than going back there. The moment your eyes caught on running water you dove into it, covering yourself with mud before jumping back up to continue running.  

Captain America was super fast and you’d bet the rest of them were similar if not the same and you needed more distance. Somewhere in the back of your mind, prey behavior was setting in. Natural selection had driven your existence, you were the result of thousands of years of evolution, and the life you’d lived meant you were far more adapted to being hunted than most omegas. You were vulnerable but not helpless and as you coated yourself in more mud from a different part of the creek, chemosensory instincts started rattling through you.  

They were coming. Your scent was inhibited by the suppressant’s and that made it harder for them to follow you but they were doing their best. Combined with the water and the mud, your scent was very difficult to pin down, even for a super soldier. You contemplated climbing a tree to hide, but the insane memory of how keen the noses of the pack following you were spurred you on. You kept running, covering yourself in mud two more times, before finding a tree with a massive tangle of roots at the bottom. Fighting whatever creature had made a home down there was worth it—it went deep, was heavily covered by underbrush and detritus from the trees, but most importantly it was surrounded by wild bergamot in full bloom.  

It smelled lovely, spicy and floral with a citrusy overtone. You crawled through the dirt, wiggling between the roots and carefully avoiding crushing any plants or branches that could give you away. Whatever lived in there was out, likely foraging, and you took the creature’s absence to your advantage and pressed as far back into the hole as possible.  

You weren’t tired, despite the long, exhausting day and the fucking trauma. Another small grace that adaption had provided was that once an omega began producing adrenaline, sleep became unnecessary—it was actually considered a very unenviable omega trait in the general population, but you’d found it’s uses worth the unpleasant side effects. Your heart would continue to race for the next several hours, your pupils wouldn’t return to normal for potentially days and your blood sugar had sky rocketed and that was going to be a nightmare for how ever long it lasted. 

The waiting was going to hurt—there was nothing to pass the time and you had to actively focus on not being terrified or your omega scent could seep through, oh, what was it now? Five coats of mud from the creek, a significant amount of bergamot, and fifteen years of whatever the fuck suppressants did to your scent over time.

It wasn’t ten minutes later that you heard them. Stealth wasn’t their objective, that was clear from the amount of noise they made. You could hear Steve and Peter calling your name, although you didn’t know how they knew it. Thor was speaking, his tone low but certainly not quiet. They weren’t even moving that fast, walking almost leisurely.

“She’ll need to bathe and eat. Clint and Natasha are finishing up in New York. Steve, have you heard from Tony or Bucky? Carol?”  

“Tony’s wrapping up, should be flying over pretty soon. Carol and Bucky were on their way up but I gave them a list of things to grab while they’re going through the bigger cities. Shouldn’t be too much longer for them either though.” 

Steve and Thor were different than Sam or Peter. You couldn’t pin down exactly what had set your teeth on edge, but the scent the two blond alphas gave off was different. Their pheromones were worse, more infectious. Eye contact with Steve had made your hindbrain beg to go to him, regardless of the rationality you could usually manage thanks to the suppressants. You could remember the feel of Thor’s hand on like it was seared into your skin instead, you wanted him to never not be touching you ever again—

If you could’ve slapped yourself without making noise you would’ve. The stupid omega in your brain, that dumb, easy cunt was going to get you killed. You sealed your lips, clenched your teeth and tucked your hands under your bent knees. Night was starting to fall to your benefit, the shadows were getting darker. You were so far back they would have to crouch down and crawl half way in to see you.

If you could keep your wits until they passed you could double back, trying to find your keys would be a wash but you could grab clothes from the back of your ancient Tahoe. You weren’t sure how long you’d been in the basement, but you didn’t think it was long enough for them to have gone through your things.

“Could she have gotten this far?” You held your breath as Sam stopped far too close to your hiding place for comfort.

“Omegas are fast and she seemed faster than most,” Bruce answered. “We’ll know for sure once her blood work comes back, but from her physiology I’d say she presents as a classical omega. She’s probably the first in her family in a long, long time. To have a scream that loud in this day and age? The omega gene must’ve been skipped so long that there was no chance for it to adapt to modern omega qualities.”

“There’ve been some studies suggesting that the classical omega attributes are making a come back in the general population,” Peter’s voice came from much farther away. "They haven’t been peer reviewed enough yet and they haven’t been replicated en masse because they don’t have enough subjects, alphas aren’t exactly thrilled to have their omegas studied, but—”

“The lack of data aside, I assume there’s a correlation between the alphas willing to allow their omegas to participate and the behavior of the omega in question. Do you think—”

“Focus, Bruce,” Steve’s voice was light with affection. "The point is that yes, she could’ve gotten this far or farther. The way she keeps running into the creek is messing up the footprints and—”

Their voices faded as they continued the same linear path you’d been running earlier. The fact that they didn’t even sound a little concerned that you could get away was both insulting and unnerving. You didn’t need alphas having that kind of confidence regarding your behavior—and why weren’t they moving any faster? The paranoia was immediate and overwhelming, what did they know about that you didn’t? Something they assumed would hinder you farther along in the woods? Something they were planning for when they found you? When.

You forced yourself to count slowly to six hundred, waiting what you hoped was a full ten minutes before silently crawling out of your hide. Their scents were everywhere, you could smell where Sam had been standing almost directly over the opening in the roots. They were still too close for comfort and you turned, running back through the forest. Your feet were starting to feel sore, usually you’d at least watch where you stepped but there just wasn’t time—you had to get away before they could enact their plans.

The clearing the cabin sat in was coming up and you forced yourself to slow as you approached the tree line, keeping a careful eye out for the beta woman. You couldn’t remember what her call sign was, something to do with witches, and you definitely didn’t want her using that red magic stuff on your head.

The extra seconds of waiting paid off, watching her pace the porch for a few moments before her phone rang. She answered, walking inside and closing the doors behind her. You didn’t wait an extra second, darting across the clearing to where you car was sitting in the driveway with the trunk popped. They must’ve started going through your things but stopped part of the way through.

You could see one of your go bags though, squished between your rolled up sleeping bag and tent. The straps of the bag squeaked with how hard you yanked it out, hesitating slightly—instinct told you to leave the sleeping bag, but you’d grown used to the luxury of it and leaving the stupid thing behind made you decidedly sad. You tossed the straps of the go bag over your shoulder and turned away, knowing it would slow you down and—

There was an Iron Man suit standing directly behind you, gauntlets rested on the hips and the head cocked to the side. You froze, as if staying still could prevent it from noticing you. Fuck, you hoped there wasn’t a man in there. A stupid thought, you considered as you stared silently, trying to decide if there was any way out. Hope was a joke at this point but you didn’t have anything else.

“Hi princess,” it was a distinctly human voice, if filtered. "Hope I didn’t miss too much of the fun.”

  content warning: nonconsensual medical procedures, general noncon touching/assault.

edited 7/9/21 - still on hiatus

[shoutaaizawas]

↳ chisaki kai x reader → ❝wounds❞

series: hero!au villains summary: chisaki kai is a healer at your hero agency that you love to annoy. when a big battle breaks out you’re surprised to see that he can do more than just heal people word count: 2.4k tags/warnings: blood mention, injuries, light angst a/n: im finally back! i hope this came out okay i had to finish it on my old laptop. this is my first time writing for overhaul so i hope you enjoy!

Chisaki Kai loved you. Okay, that was a lie if you were being honest. You drove him crazy but it was so much fun you couldn’t stop yourself from it. Chisaki was a healer at your agency and you were very clumsy and reckless so it was safe to say that you visited him quite often.

“Oh Chisaki, I’ve been injured.” You said entering his office. He let out a groan of annoyance as he looked up from his paperwork.

“What did you do this time?” He said opening the door that led to the medical room.

You happily followed him sitting down on the examination table, feet swinging like a kid.

“Well, what happened was I was fighting a villain and he said-” You loved testing his patience, you knew it was wrong but it was so endearing to see the annoyed looks he gave you as you gave him far more details than necessary.

“The injury.” He cut you off, his eyes intense over his medical mask.

“Oh, right.” You said as you pulled up your sleeve to reveal a large gash in your arm. “Knife wound.”

Chisaki inspected it carefully writing down some notes on his clipboard. It was more of a formality than anything. His quirk was able to heal anything with no issue but the agency insisted he keep a record of injuries and for him to not bother healing things too small that would be considered a waste of his quirk.

After a moment he put the clipboard down before placing his hand gently below the cut on your arm. In just a second the skin was mended back together as it had never been torn in the first place.

“Thank you, doc.” You said with a big smile on your face. Sometimes it was hard to gauge his expression under the mask.

“I’m not a doctor. Try not to be back too soon.” He said as he put his glove back on and picked his clipboard up.

“Aw, do you not like seeing me?” You teased as you stood up.

“I don’t like seeing you hurt.” He said plainly as he turned back to his office.

You stood there in silence, shocked by his words. Chisaki was indifferent at best, you hadn’t expected him to say that. Was there a chance he liked you back? No, he was just being a healer concerned for the heroes under his charge.

Oh yeah, you liked Chisaki. Like liked him. Developing feelings for Chisaki was not something you expected to do. At first, you were almost scared of the man. You had considering limping home to take care of your wounds on your own but the hero you had been a sidekick for at the time wouldn’t allow it.

At first, you thought he was scary but you realized he was just a bit grumpy. After a few visits of observing his odd behavior, the gloves, and mask on all the time, a coworker explained that he had mysophobia. A fear of contamination and germs. It made you respect him even more, he could have easily hidden away from the world and all the things that made him uncomfortable. He had an amazing quirk, the ability to reconstruct wounds with just a touch. It had healed a lot of people and even saved their lives.

Chisaki didn’t just work in the office at your agency but he worked on the scene during big disasters and worked at different hospitals. No doubt that was all very stressful for him, especially since it required to contact for him to heal people, but he did it so he could help people.

Once you got more comfortable with him it was easy to fall into teasing him. While he always replied with an annoyed demeanor he never stopped you so you assumed it didn’t bother him that much.

At first, you didn’t even realize you liked him like that. You just thought you enjoyed teasing him. It was until you realized just how eager you were to see him. It wasn’t unusual for you to stop by his office with a paper cut and pretend like you were dying. He would sigh before standing up and pulling off his glove and healing it. It didn’t escape your notice that he would heal your wounds no matter how small, even if you were joking.

Then you started to realize how your face would heat up when he got close to you to heal you. How even on your worst day just catching a glimpse of him made it better. How your mind drifted to him any chance it got. How he even made it into your dreams.

The thing was, you were a confident person. Being a hero it helped to be confident in yourself, in your abilities, in as many things as you could but relationships were where that confidence stopped. He was a coworker, what if he told you it would be uncomfortable to date a colleague? What if he just didn’t like you back? What if he disliked you? There were so many bad scenarios in your head.

It was safer to do nothing, at least then you could hold onto the interactions you had with him.

Now if someone asked you to explain your thinking at this exact moment you weren’t sure what to say. You probably weren’t thinking at all. The gash in your abdomen was deep and you were most likely in shock.

Blood dripped onto the floor as you tried to make it to your office. Your hand gripped against the hallway wall trying to keep yourself steady.

“What the hell?” You heard a familiar voice. “What happened? Why aren’t you in my office?”

Hands gripped at your shoulders. Blurry eyes moved up to look at Chisaki.

“Hey there, how’s your day going?” You asked before your knees gave out. Chisaki grabbed you before you could hit the ground. If you were more coherent you would be impressed at how easily he swept you off your feet into his arms and you would have been flustered.

He carried you into his office placing you down on his couch, his hands pulling up your shirt to look at the wound. He took in a breath at the sight of it before he placed his hand just below the wound. You let out a hiss of pain before it disappeared just leaving the mess of blood behind.

“Thanks, doc.” You said with a lazy grin, still out of it.

“What were you thinking? Where were you going?” He asked with an edge to his town.

“Uh, I don’t really know. I didn’t want to bother you.”

“You’ll come in here with a paper cut but you decided that was the wound to ignore?” He huffed standing up and grabbing a wet cloth. He returned wiping away the blood. You tried to get up once he was done but he pushed you back down. “Stay here, you need rest. The wound his healed but you still lost a lot of blood.”

Chisaki left again before returning with water and a snack. He pulled his chair over to sit at your side, watching as you drank the water.

"You should be more careful." He said.

"Believe it or not I do try." You said with a smirk. "Hero work tends to be a bit dangerous."

"I know but you seem to be in here more than anyone else." He said.

"I am clumsy." You defended.

"I don't think clumsy gets you a wound like that." He countered.

"It might." You joked.

"Be more careful." He said. "And don't try to hide a wound like this again." His voice sounded serious.

"For you, of course."

The day had started pretty normally. Hero work was surprisingly redundant at times. Petty crime was easy to manage and helping out where you could was nice but as a seasoned hero, you knew better.

Things could take a turn in a split second and that's exactly what happened. An explosion rang out blocks away and just like that you were headed into the chaos.

It was bad. Casualties were already seen and the dust hadn't settled. Your injuries were bad but you wouldn't give in, not yet. Blood dripped down your mouth and pain burned everywhere, you weren't even sure where your worst injuries were.

You braced yourself against the side of a building that collapsed as you faced off against the villain. You kept on a bold front despite your state but you weren't sure how you could pull this off.

Another blow and you tumbled across the ground before landing harshly. You let out a shaky breath as your lungs filled with air after the wind being knocked out of you. As you tried to get up your arm collapsed beneath you.

Winning the fight and keeping people safe had been the objective but at this point, you weren't sure you'd make it out alive.

"What a joke." The villain said.

"Stay down." That wasn't a voice you expected. Your eyes drifted up to see Chisaki.

"It's dangerous," You said, a cough interrupting your words blood dripping down your chin. "Get back to safety." You tried to get up but you had no strength left.

"It's okay, just don't move." His voice was oddly confident considering he was a healer about to face a villain. Weirdly enough you felt a sense of comfort drift over you. "I'll be back for you in a moment."

It was hard for you to watch but you turned as much as you could waiting in anticipation to see what would happen. You felt helpless knowing that you couldn't do anything.

What happened next was the last thing you ever thought you would see. Chisaki was able to manipulate the stone around him with just a touch. As fast as the fight started it was over.

How had you never realized that his quirk was more than just mending wounds?

More heroes came to capture the villain taking him away as Chisaki returned to your side. At your side he pulled you onto his lap, it was nice. Your eyes drifted closed.

"Hey, stay with me, okay?" He said, his voice more panicked than you had ever heard it before. A hand pressed against you and your wounds began to be relieved. You let out a hum. The intense pain began to leave. "I need to wait to heal the rest."

Chisaki stood, taking you in his arms. This was the second time and you'd admit you wouldn't mind it happening more often. Although if it took being this injured to be held by him then you might need to reconsider that. You could tell you were still bruised badly, he could only heal so much at once. It wasn't because of his quirk but rather the person being healed. It was shocking to the body for so much trauma to just disappear.

Before you could realize it you were drifting off to sleep.

Waking up you weren't expecting to be in your own bed. The pains you had felt before were fully relieved now. Opening your eyes fully you certainly weren't expecting Chisaki to be sitting beside your bed.

"You're finally awake." He said in a soft voice.

"Your quirk," It didn't escape you that he had been hiding a part of him, maybe hiding was the wrong word. Withholding. "I didn't know you could do that."

"My quirk isn't healing or even manipulating organic material." He said. "I can disassemble and reassemble anything."

"Wow." You said. "That's amazing. Why do you only heal then?"

"I don't like that side of me." He said in a serious voice. "I know it can be used for good, if I hadn't used it today you would be dead and probably many more. It feels better to use it to heal people."

"I understand." You said.

"You do?" He said looking up with a surprised expression.

"Of course." You replied. "Violence can be used to help, to save people but it's still violence. Not everyone is comfortable with it. Everyone has different quirks and different histories. Only you can decide what you want to use your quirk for and healing is the best thing you can do to help people."

"People usually think I'm wasting it, or that I'm bad for not doing more to help people." He said.

"No one has to do anything with their quirk, we could both be accountants but we're here trying our best to help." You replied.

"Thank you." He said in a soft voice. This had to be the most serious conversation you'd ever had with him.

"I should be saying that to you, I'd be long gone if you hadn't shown up." You said with a small laugh.

"I was really worried about you." He said with a sigh.

"Really?" Worrying didn't mean anything, you were friends.

Chisaki looked conflicted for a moment before letting out a frustrated breath.

"I- I like you." He finally said looking up at you again. "I know that it's not appropriate, we work together but I can't help it. I look forward to seeing you but I hate that it's only when you're hurt. I hate seeing you hurt even if it's just a scratch. I want to see you and not because you're hurt or we're at work."

"Oh." You said, stunned by his admission. "I didn't think you felt the same way. To be honest I started looking for any reason to see you. I really like you too."

Chisaki smiled and you just about died. You had never seen him smile before and you were almost certain it was the most perfect thing you had ever seen.

"Can I kiss you?" He asked, a tint of pink on his cheeks. You smiled big.

"You don't have to ask." You said.

Chisaki stood up moving to your side, hand brushing from your hair to your cheek to the side of your neck. He looked so comfortable touching you which meant a lot considering his fears. Leaning down his lips met yours.

Separating you were breathless and both smiling. You grabbed him by his shirt pulling him into the bed with you. You realized how impulsive that was but the laugh he let out not only shocked you but let you know he wasn't upset.

"Can you stay with me?" You asked. "I don't want to be alone."

"Of course." He said leaning in for another kiss.

"If you want to see me outside of your office I think we need to set up a date." You said teasingly, lips brushing his.

"Friday at seven?" He said.

"Sounds perfect." You said kissing him again.

@sugarmaplewings-fics @lilkiwisfinest @ewwis-but-more-otaku @kandy1410 @moonlightaangel @winnies-headcannons @bkglovesyou @paintedr0ses1 @toobsessedsstuff @spellboundxizi @ourladyofseijoh  @x0doodlebug0x @katsushimaa @mooncademia @moon-write @todominica @why-so-red @kvichisaki @curiouslilbeast @izukukozume

[crispychrissy]

Connected - Part 4

Summary: Dr. Austin's theory is put to the test, and she shows Tony, Bucky, and Steve the woman behind the mystery. Pairing: Eventual Bucky Barnes x Reader Word Count: 2976 Warnings: Angst, medical stuff, stretching the medical science behind the super soldier serum, discussion of Bucky's previous trauma & a mention of the horrible things the Nazi's did A/N: I apologize for the late posting, I fell asleep so hard last night I didn't have a chance to queue this, and then I was out all day (good 14 hours out and about) so I am just now able to post the new chapter since I'm home now. As I mentioned in a prior post, I no longer have a forever taglist, but I will still tag series specific people if they request. You can also follow this story & others on my Ao3 as well. The series was beta’d by the lovely @idjitmonkey and I hope you enjoy! Please send me an ask if you would like to be tagged in the series. :)

Series Masterlist – Marvel Masterlist

☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆.。.:*・°☆

Bucky made a quick call to Shuri who, after a thorough interrogation as to why he was asking, assured him his arm would not be affected by the magnets of an MRI machine. So now, Bucky was laying down on his back inside the machine and staring at the small glass covered camera embedded in the inside curve of the plastic above him.

“Stop staring at the camera, Barnes, you’re giving off some crazy resting murder face right now,” Tony’s staticky voice came through the pair of disposable earbuds he was wearing to protect his hearing from the noise of the scan. “Might sell these scans to Ripley’s Believe It or Not. You actually do have something going on in that head of yours.”

“As much as I know you want to answer, Sergeant Barnes, please do not speak or move,” Dr. Austin’s voice came through after what sounded like a small scuffle for the microphone.

Bucky blinked several times in an unnatural yet controlled fashion, and when he heard Steve’s laughter coming through the earbuds, he had to fight the urge to smile, knowing Steve got the message he blinked out in Morse code.

F-U-C-K Y-O-U T-O-N-Y

The scan was over almost a half an hour later, and Bucky couldn’t hide his exhale of relief once the table began to slide out of the massive scanner. Confined spaces still made his skin crawl and flash back to the cryo tube he was kept in, but the MRI was surprisingly open in design and not like the ones he usually remembered seeing in hospitals. When he brought it up to Dr. Austin on their way back to her office, she smiled at him and explained most of the soldiers they treat have PTSD and claustrophobia, so an open MRI design was necessary for the comfort of the patients she treats.

It made sense, and when they entered her office and Bucky’s stomach growled for the fourth time in the last fifteen minutes, she tossed him the orange he’d been eyeing earlier before taking a seat at her desk and flipping open her laptop.

“Normally we have to wait for the images to be reviewed by a radiologist, but I’m well versed in how to read brain scans,” Dr. Austin explained, clicking a few times before leaning forward to study the screen. “Oh, wow.”

“What?” Bucky asked, using his teeth to bite a chunk of the orange’s peel off since his right hand didn't have nails long enough, and his left didn’t have nails at all. Once he could see the flesh of the orange underneath, he slid his flesh finger under the remaining peel and began to remove it in large pieces, trying to avoid getting sticky juice on his metal hand.

Dr. Austin spun her laptop around to show Bucky the image on her screen. It was a scan of his head, he could tell that, but the mess of swirling bright colors on the inside where his brain was made his eyes hurt. There were bright greens and blues swirled with more vibrant reds and pinks dancing around inside the image. “This is your brain.”

“Looks more like those posters… the ‘this is your brain on drugs’ pictures if they were made in the sixties, Doc,” Tony said. “I’m guessing it’s not supposed to look like that?”

“No. There’s so much brain activity that it’s likely what’s been burning through your energy and why you’ve been hungry all the time,” Dr. Austin explained. “Any type of brain activity, including emotions and problem solving, requires energy, whether it’s planning a complex strategy of attack for a mission or a simple math problem or crying at a sad part in a movie. Overworking the mind usually leads to tiredness, which leads to sleep, naturally refreshing those energy reserves. Most humans don’t expend enough energy, even when the brain is very active, to require major replenishment. Take Mr. Stark for example.”

Tony looked up and raised his eyebrows. “Me?”

“Yes, you’re a very intelligent man, and I’m guessing that when you’re elbow deep in your inventions or developing something, you don’t sleep and will go days without rest… so you find you get somewhat hungry at random times, right?” Dr. Austin asked.

“Well, yeah, I usually keep snacks around the lab that I nibble on so I don’t have to leave to make an actual meal. It ruins the momentum,” Tony said, confusion in his voice. “Pep’s found me passed out over the kitchen counter halfway through making a sandwich.

“Your body shut down and went to sleep before you were even able to replenish that energy via food since sleep is more efficient. So, that is a normal human mind.” Tony opened his mouth to protest, when Dr. Austin rolled her eyes and switched analogies. “Fine, that’s a standard engine, if you will, that can easily be refueled by a small energy source for a limited amount of time before it needs to be shut down and rebooted,” Dr. Austin said, slowly twirling her right pointer finger in a circle.

“Alright, I’m following you so far.” Tony’s head was slightly moving along with the circular rotation of her finger.

“Now, in the case of our super soldiers here, imagine that engine, but amplified almost five hundred percent,” Dr. Austin began to rotate her finger faster and faster until it was a blur of movement. “The need for sleep is suppressed by the serum, since alertness is crucial in combat, so that reboot requirement is easier to put off. In order to keep this kind of engine going at the same speed and level of activity for prolonged periods, it would burn through a small snack, or a small source of energy, too quickly and would signal the driver of the car, if you will, that it needed more.”

“So you’re saying that something is making Bucky’s brain so active, and he’s burning through so much energy, that it’s manifesting as hunger to make sure he keeps up with what’s being expended?” Steve asked, his mouth slightly open in shock. “I mean, I always remember being hungry after mission strategy and planning meetings, but I just assumed it was because I was bored or had skipped a meal.”

Dr. Austin shook her head. “Nope. You were using your brain in overdrive, doing quick calculations and mission scenarios in your head to find the best possible plan of action, much faster than any normal human brain would be able to calculate. It makes you an excellent strategist, but that kind of brain power burns a lot of energy.”

Bucky snorted in disbelief and leaned forward in the chair, resting his elbows on his knees. “It makes sense. I was a good sniper when I was first in the Army during the war, but after Zola… after he injected me with that bastardized version of the serum… I could calculate trajectory angles and wind velocities and distances in my head in seconds, didn’t have to write them out to do the calculations. Didn’t even need a spotter anymore.”

Dr. Austin nodded. “Exactly. The serum allowed you extra mental acuity at the expense of more energy consumption.”

“But that doesn’t explain why Bucky’s brain is lit up like a psychedelic Christmas tree,” Tony said, gesturing to the laptop image. “Barnes obviously isn’t doing any kind of advanced calculus in his head right now.” Tony looked at Bucky. “You’re not right?” Bucky shook his head and Tony continued, “so why is his brain so active?”

“And that leads me to my theory about Y/N,” Dr. Austin said, standing up from her chair. “Follow me, gentlemen. And Sergeant Barnes,” he looked over and raised a brow as he trailed after her into the hallway, “please let me know if you feel any increased feelings of hunger or exhaustion. The effects might come on quickly, so please let me know if, or when, you feel anything.”

Bucky nodded, and looked over to where Steve was walking to his right. Thanks to their childhood friendship, Steve could always see anxiety and nervousness in Bucky even when he tried to hide it, like when he saw Bucky off the morning he shipped off to Europe. Bucky kept his face stoic, but when Steve hugged him goodbye, Bucky was practically trembling under the Army-hardened mask he had worn then.

Steve reached over and clasped a comforting hand on Bucky’s shoulder, giving him a squeeze of reassurance.

The doctor led them down several hallways, until they reached another wing of the military hospital which held secure patient rooms that could be locked down if necessary, whether due to outbursts of violence due to psychological issues from recovering soldiers or to hold prisoners who had been injured and needed medical intervention. Dr. Austin stopped in front of a room at the end of the hallway and gestured to the one-way mirror in front of her.

“Gentlemen, meet Y/N Y/L/N.”

The three men stepped closer and looked into the room, all eyes frozen on the figure sitting upright in the hospital bed. Y/N had shoved herself in the farthest possible corner of the bed, her knees tucked under her chin and arms wrapped around her legs. The photo in her file, and even the video of her they’d seen looked nothing like the woman before them. She looked almost emaciated, her skin a sickly pale that was almost translucent, and her stringy grease matted hair twitched slightly as her body trembled.

“Jesus,” Steve breathed. “She… she looks like those prisoners… the ones—”

Bucky swallowed and nodded. “From Natzweiler, yeah, I remember.” Bucky took a deep breath, fighting against the telltale tingle in his mind of a long since forgotten memory beginning to rise up like a wave. “Doc… is she eating?”

“She was when she first got here, but only if the food was left for her after she passed out from exhaustion,” Dr. Austin explained. “Now, ever since things have escalated, she rips out her IV’s, pulls out NG tubes, and refuses any food we bring her. I’m not going to sedate her just because it’ll make it easier to feed her, we haven’t reached that level of intervention yet, but we’re getting close. She told one of our staff yesterday, in Russian, that she was not going to eat any of our poisoned food, that she wasn’t some kind of lab experiment and that we were animals for not just shooting her in the head to get it over with.”

All of the air in Bucky’s lungs came out in one hard breath like he’d been punched in the chest, and he had to brace himself against the windowsill to keep his knees from buckling. “Fuck.”

“Bucky?” Steve gasped at Bucky’s sudden weakness, grabbing onto his friend’s arm and placing a gentle hand on his back. ”What? Are you feeling the stuff Dr. Austin mentioned?”

Bucky grit his teeth and closed his eyes at the onslaught of memory fragments bombarding him. “No, I’m… I don’t know, maybe? I just… she’s…” Bucky’s thoughts were so jumbled he could barely form a coherent sentence, even in his head. He made a choked off noise that sounded more like a sob before he lifted his head to look at Y/N. “She’s reliving my captivity with Hydra. This… this was after I was transferred from the facility the Russians held me in after they found me to the one where Zola did his experiments. They were, umm, they were testing the limits of the serum, trying to figure out what I could survive.”

Steve’s face dropped and he took a sharp breath in. Bucky’s captivity and torture was not something he talked about often outside his therapy sessions. Steve only knew a handful of stories, ones that had come directly from Bucky’s mouth, and even then they were very hard stories for him to tell—lots of starting and stopping, frequent breaks, and plenty of tears. But here, with two extra people with him, and one being a stranger?

“Buck, you don’t have to talk about it,” Steve whispered.

“No, I need… she said exactly what I said to the guards who brought me food one day.” Bucky swallowed hard, flexing his fingers against the painted metal of the windowsill, the cold against his flesh hand grounding him. “They were testing different poisons and how the serum would fight it off… arsenic, ricin, even different kinds of snake and spider venom. I had seizures, strokes, and my heart stopped so many times I lost count.”

“Fucking hell,” Tony murmured, leaning against the wall behind them, his face a few shades paler than it was ten minutes ago. “Y/N is reliving your memories, reliving your life.”

“We need to find a way to pull her out of this,” Bucky said, straightening up with determination even though his bones felt like liquid and his mind was full of numbing static. If Y/N was reliving his life, even if it didn’t seem like the moments were in order, he knew it was only a matter of time until she would experience how the Winter Soldier was born, how he was forged, and he wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

Dr. Austin nodded and looked back at her patient through the glass. “If my theory is correct, which I believe it is based on your shared memories and brain scans, Y/N’s mind has somehow melded with yours. And your memories, powered by your mind’s energy, have somehow taken over hers, suppressing her personality completely. I don’t know if it was some kind of dormant mutant ability that was activated by the trauma of her captivity and torture, or something else… but there is obviously some kind of link between the two of you that we don’t have the technology to test for and verify. You’re essentially feeding her your memories, which is why your brain is lit up like that and why you’re expending so much energy.”

“It’s like she’s stuck inside one of Stark’s virtual reality headsets and can’t take it off, experiencing everything I went through while my brain keeps playing her different…” Bucky trailed off and his eyes widened before his head snapped to look at Y/N through the glass.

In a flash of movement, Bucky grabbed Dr. Austin’s ID badge from where it was clipped onto her white coat and darted for the door to Y/N’s room, scanning the badge so the door opened with a green light and soft click. Bucky, ignoring the shouts of his name and hands trying to grab at him to pull him back, opened the door and shut it firmly behind him, engaging the door’s auto-lock safety feature that he knows secure wings of hospitals have. The group outside would need to find another ID badge to get in, which would buy him some time.

Y/N’s wide and terrified eyes settled on him, and she tilted her head in an almost confused dog-like fashion, her eyes softening with an air of familiarity. Bucky could feel the hunger gnawing at his stomach turn into sharp cramps that almost made him double over, and there was a soft circle of darkness starting to creep in around his vision.

Bucky took three large steps forward, and even though she flinched away at his sudden movement, Y/N didn’t scramble away to try and avoid his hands as he lifted them. Her weary bloodshot eyes were full of unshed tears, and the closer Bucky’s hands got to her face, the more she began to tremble.

“You’re safe,” he whispered to her in Russian, before repeating the same sentiment in English.

The moment his fingers, both flesh and metal, touched the skin on either side of her face, it felt like he was on the wrong side of an attack from Thor’s hammer. Whatever weakness and hunger he’d been feeling was burned out of his body at the sheer shock cascading through his entire being. It didn’t hurt, but it was bordering on wildly uncomfortable, and Bucky was afraid he’d never be able to let go, his hands stuck to Y/N like a magnet.

There was something different passing between them, more than what touch alone could provide. Trying to understand everything that was happening was overwhelming, but when Bucky focused, he could almost feel Y/N inside his mind, like another whisper of a presence, a ghost in his consciousness. When he reached out in his head for her where he’d felt the ghost of her presence, he was assaulted with bursts of memories he knew were not his own, images of unfamiliar people, places, and things flashing in his mind like photographs. Bucky's curiosity was almost childlike, awestruck and trying to understand what his brain was comprehending, sorting through what Y/N was showing him.

The more information Bucky absorbed, the darker each memory became until it felt like he was wading through molasses, each image being harder and harder to move past. A hoarse whisper of “No” echoed in his mind, and Bucky couldn’t tell if it was his own voice or Y/N’s.

A solid arm wrapped around Bucky’s middle, one much more firm than human flesh would be, and pulled him backward until his hands dropped from Y/N’s face, breaking whatever connection had refused to release him when he’d touched her. Reality came rushing back, and the room and people around him flashed into existence, the change in environment and sound disorienting him and leaving him panting for breath, his knees wobbling.

“She…” Bucky looked over at Y/N, who was just as distressed, and watched her collapse onto the bed, unconscious, before his vision blacked out and darkness took him as well.

***

Connected Tags: @ginger-swag-rapunzel @that-one-gay-girl @fanofalltheficsx @joseyrw @lana-writes-04 @gia-25 @klanceiscannon14 @ahahafudge

[majoraflame]

Naruto AU

Aight so I’ve got this idea in my head about a Sannin-centric Naruto AU where all the Sannin still leave the village but like in the same situation of like Jiraiya’s departure. Meaning that they’re still kind of loyal (yes, even Orochimaru) and they still help the village in little ways but they just don’t live there. So anyway, in this AU the shinobi population of Konoha are kind of sick and tired of the third hokage and all his fuckery. Since he’d been reinstated after the Kyuubi attack, he made lots of decisions (Hyuuga affair, segregation of Uchiha clan, etc.) that just really frayed his relationship with the shinobi. Basically, at this point everyone’s like “we need to get that old man out of that fucking chair” and Hiruzen agrees! He thinks he’s way too old to still be doing this shit. He already retired once for a reason. But of course there’s no one in the village who can really replace him. No one really has both the strength as a shinobi and political clout necessary to becoming a Kage and the only people that do are kind of fucked in the head (coughcoughdanzocoughcough). So everyone’s thinking it over and then someone’s like “hey. why don’t we drag the Sannin back to Konoha” and Hiruzen’s like “yes I think we should do that.

Now the Sannin, during this time (I imagine they all left pre Kyuubi attack), have been wandering around the elemental nations collecting kids. Jiraiya went to Ame and fully adopted Konan, Yahiko, and Nagato and now the four of them are a part of Konoha’s spy network (fuck the akatsuki and fuck making ame a better place). The kids gained Konoha jounin status by working with Jiraiya and shit.

Tsunade, of course, is running around with Shizune and Tenzo, still an alcoholic but not as anti-Konoha as she is in canon before Naruto drags her ass back. Shizune is also a Konoha jounin who is a medic-nin and poison specialist. Tenzo, in my head, is the biological child of Dan and Tsunade and was born with Mokuton which isn’t as powerful as his great-grandfather’s but is strong nonetheless. So Tenzo and Shizune are cousins.

Now Orochimaru. I absolutely adore Orochimaru in this AU. Loyal/good Orochimaru is my shit but add motherhen Orochimaru to the mix and I’m properly dead (i mostly thought of this AU by having constant intrusive thoughts of Orochimaru being the best parent/teacher anyone could ever ask for) When Orochimaru left the village, he left with little Anko right on his heels. They traveled and shit doing their mad scientists thing and pick up a couple gremlins along the way. First, they get Kabuto, who is living with Yakushi Nonou. Nonou lets Orochimaru leave with Kabuto with the promise that he’ll make Kabuto a fucking great leaf shinobi (and with the promise to visit lots :) ). Next, they rescue Karin from being a slave for those shinobi (and they help Karin with burning down the village for killing her mother or whatever) Then, with the help of Karin’s sensor abilities, they find Kimimaro locked in the tiny ass dirty ass cage the Kaguya clan locked him in while they weren’t using him as a dog to sic on whoever they’re fighting and Orochimaru’s just like “the Kaguya clan is too distracted getting massacred to notice me taking this malnourished and unloved child to take care of” And then, once again with the help of Karin’s sensor abilities, they find Juugo hiding in a tree near his burning village and its just like “oh no a lonely child who’s entire life was just destroyed time to adopt” Juugo mostly agrees because with the despair of losing everything he’s ever known he loses control of his powers and he just goes all monster when he gets mad like he does in canon and Kimimaro’s kekkei genkai is the only thing that can control him when he gets like that. Finally, they complete their crew with the addition of baby Mitsuki who is not a test tube baby but as an abandoned baby who was weirdly left in a dense chakra zone (think a body of land that seems to be so imbued with chakra that it feels like the land is alive (kind of like how Uzushio is often depicted in fanon)). 

So the Sannin are all walking around with their kids and sometimes they interact with each other occasionally. Like when Kimimaro begins showing signs of sickness Orochi immediately bum-rushes Tsunade and is like “my kid’s dying fic him.” Or like sometimes they all just get together and chill with each other. Sometimes Jiraiya and Orochi meet up so Karin and Nagato can spend some cousin time together. Maybe they even take them to the ruins of Uzushiogakure to find some of their clan’s fuuinjutsu so they can learn it. 

And boy do I have an idea for the Uzumaki Clan archives !! I’ll get into later since I’m getting so far off track.

So anyway the Sannin are training their kids and making super powerful shinobi and all of the kids become leaf shinobi with the permission of Hiruzen because he knows what his students have been getting up to. But like the rest of the Konoha doesn’t know about them. So when the Sannin are called back to Konoha to discuss the future of the village everyone’s kind of like, “why the fuck is there so much people we only asked for like three” Introductions and new friendships ensue.

-

I’m totally gonna flesh out this idea later and I might even make a whole AU tag. This will become my magnum opus.

[fandom-necromancer]

Feeling from the heart

This was prompted by the wonderful @smolandangry001! I hope you enjoy!

Fandom: Detroit become human | Ship: Reed900 (Warnings: description of past-surgery medical care)

‘Oh, would this break never end’, Gavin sighed in deep content. Nines scanned the man more lying than sitting on a bench in Chandler Park, five minutes from the precinct, eyes closed and bathing in the sun. Immediately the warm feeling in his chest re-emerged, as it did so often these days. He should really get his heat sensors checked soon, if these malfunctions continued to come up. It was one of the first warm days of spring and Gavin had hung his jacket over the backrest sitting there in his hoodie with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. ‘You would get sunburn’, Nines stated factually. Gavin laughed. ‘Yeah, I guess. But this day’s too nice to spend it behind a desk.’ ‘I will trust your assessment and agree.’ ‘Come on.’ Gavin sat up and crossed his arms. ‘Phcking winter’s finally over, you don’t freeze your balls off being outside and you finally don’t both arrive and leave work when It’s dark. That’s not doing something for you?’ ‘I don’t care about the weather. I am waterproof and can operate in arctic temperatures. I am also not dependent on an extrinsic stimulus to update my inner clock.’ He noticed Gavin’s eye roll and hesitated to abandon the conversation just yet. ‘But… I guess as you like this sort of weather more, I will decide to like it too.’

Nines had thought that to satisfy the human but instead was met with a confused stare. ‘You decide to like something?’ ‘Yes. I wasn’t programmed with aesthetic preferences. So, I decided to like certain things others around me like based on work climate efficiency, general opinion on the subject and logic.’ ‘Oh, you do? Please elaborate’, Gavin said, and Nines missed the sarcastic undertones. ‘Humans generally seem to like dry weather more than rain. But they don’t like too hot temperatures. Also snow is an exception. Logic states I don’t need to bother about the weather. As the weather mostly is a topic for small-talk, I too don’t need it to better my integration in the force.’ ‘Geez, they really hadn’t had human interaction in mind when they build you, had they?’, Gavin sighed and Nines dropped his head minutely. ‘I am a prototype for a soldier unit. They had other tests in mind. Successors could have been outfitted with a rudimentary social module to fight alongside humans if desired.’ Gavin pushed himself forwards and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘Shit, Nines. Okay, back to the weather: Why did your neutral stance suddenly change then?’ ‘Because you like it.’ ‘Oh, and that is important because…?’, he asked. Nines didn’t know what to answer at that, but was saved before his LED could settle on red long enough for the human to notice.

‘We have a new case.’ ‘What?!’ ‘Gavin, we need to move out immediately!’ ‘Wha- Nines, what the hell?’ But he was already on his feet, fetching his jacket from the bench. ‘Hostage situation at a Comerica bank, I got the address. Demands the money the bank denied him as a loan. We are the closest to the scene, but SWAT’s already on their way.’ ‘The hell? I’m not a negotiator and neither are you!’ ‘Connor’s on the way too.’ ‘Goddamnit.’ They ran towards the street outside the park gates right as their police car arrived. Nines jumped behind the wheel and barely had to wait for Gavin to enter after him. The human immediately fastened his seatbelt and grabbed for something to hold onto, because Nines’ driving style could be described as wild at best. It wasn’t reckless, as the android calculated every manoeuvre to the millisecond, but still Gavin had his reasons to normally be the one behind the wheel.

Nines put on the sirens and left the side of the road with squeaking tires. Weaving through traffic at dangerous speeds, they arrived in less than ten minutes at the bank.

They had taken their first steps towards the building, as someone shouted out to them: ‘Stop right there!’ Through the glass doors they could see into the lobby, where not one but two people stood. One of them kept watch over the civilians cowering on the floor, while the other one held one hostage at gunpoint. Nines immediately scanned the situation, then tapped Gavin on the arm. ‘That’s good. Not another step, or I’ll blow his brain out!’ Gavin tensed, but Nines just removed his own hand from his pistol. ‘No, you won’t. This gun is fake, you purchased it from a toy store.’

Gavin frowned and looked up at Nines. But apparently, the android was right, as the two cursed, threw their plastic guns away and made a run for it the exact same moment, SWAT arrived. Gavin sighed, then began to pursue them, followed close by Nines. The two wannabe-bank-robbers were fast and knew the area, turning corners on them and even gaining on them until they got to a long straight stretch of road. Nines extrapolated their paths and as soon as he saw the car, he doubled his efforts. The first managed to enter the car, but with one inhuman leap, Nines landed on the hood, causing the first one to freeze in shock and the other one to abort his plan and run. Gavin continued to run after the fleeing man, while Nines started distorting the car doors to effectively trap the man until their backup would have caught up with them.

He ran after Gavin, who was in a far better position at the moment. He would catch up, but this one was likely Gavin’s to arrest. True to it, at the end of the road, Gavin had managed to catch up to him. With one last effort of strength, he leapt forwards, gripping the man by the shoulder and jolting him around. He looked at the Detective, who saw the panic in his eyes and was ready to call it quits by twisting his arm around and making the arrest. Unfortunately this man had been a bit more precarious than his accomplice and had packed a kitchen knife to the toy gun that he produced out of seemingly nowhere. In a reaction coming from panic and mindless self-preservation, the man pushed the knife into Gavin’s chest.

Gavin let go, eyes wide in shock as he saw the handle of it sticking out of his clothes. He wondered why he didn’t feel anything, then the pain set in and made him fall to his knees in a silent, breathless scream. In the distance he heard footsteps, but it didn’t seem to matter when all his eyes could fix on was the handle at his chest. He had been stabbed. Oh shit, he had been stabbed! Suddenly there were hands on him, gently laying him down on the sidewalk. ‘Nines!’, Gavin huffed hoarse. ‘Nines, phck, it hurts, Nines. What- Phck, there’s something inside me, get it out, get it out!’ He tried to grab the handle himself, but his sweaty fingers were caught by Nines’ cold ones. ‘Nines!’, the Detective cried in panic. ‘Nines, please, take it out! I- I’m scared, I- It hurts so much.’ The android’s unmoving face stared back at him, eyes rapidly trailing his body, without doubt analysing something. Good. Nines never made an error. But with the place the knife stuck in… He lifted his head to see the handle, but the android pushed him down again. ‘Nines? Nines, I think it’s in my heart. Phck, Nines, I can feel it. That bastard stabbed me in the heart, I will- Will I die, Nines? I don’t want to die!’ The android’s eyes still scanned him, but now his face contorted and seemed to form an expression for maybe the very first time.

Gavin couldn’t really make out what happened next as his vision faded out when the pain hit hard. Nines must have lifted him up and run back to the police cars, because he found himself lying on the bench in the back of the car. ‘Gavin. Listen. Lay still, make sure the knife stays inside and don’t touch it unless necessary!’ ‘Make sure…’, Gavin slurred, practically feeling the painful outline of the knife inside of him. ‘It stays in?’ ‘Yes! It increases your chance at survival.’ The roar of the engine seemed ten times louder than normally and almost swallowed everything Nines said. It somehow felt as if it would swallow himself, too. Gavin couldn’t focus on anything long enough to sense something, but the pain remained sharp.

He distantly heard the cacophony of sirens, tires, shouts and something that might have been his name. He saw the faceless heads of people and a regular flash of lights. He was moved, he smelled the chemical stench of disinfectant and nitril gloves and somewhere in between the iron taste of blood that made it hard to breathe. Sensations overwhelmed him, let him feel weirdly out of his own body, as if the knife was the only thing keeping his consciousness connected with it. There was a single cold touch to his hand that stood out to him as if it somehow mattered the most in all of this, then everything slipped away to peaceful nothingness.

-

‘Nines! Nines, are you alright?’, Connor’s voice was detected, but was categorized as a low priority, as his systems were invested in keeping everything at bay that threatened to fry them. Nines’ stress levels had never been this high, and lesser androids would had already self-destructed. Sometimes it was good to be designed as a deviancy-proof model as it meant he could deal with it better than others. Not that Nines could rely on it, he had deviated after all. But he was still here and so were his worries. ‘Nines.’ A hand on his shoulder added to the auditory input and caused him to look up then. ‘Connor.’ ‘Are you okay?’ Nines blinked at this highly illogical question, given that his LED was blinking red ever since he could scan Gavin. ‘Obviously not. I am…’ He thought about his status, not knowing what word could describe it better. ‘I am experiencing a lot of stress at the moment, likely caused by my partner’s injury.’ ‘I know, I wanted to know what you are feeling.’ Nines didn’t answer. How could he? He was never meant to… feel. He wasn’t programmed to detect feelings neither in himself nor in others. And even if he knew his internal status and what exactly was different to normal, he didn’t know how to express it.

‘Cold’, he tried, even though that had to be a malfunction as his components were running dangerously hot, one after the other. ‘I am under a lot of stress and I… When I scanned Gavin, he had a thirty percent survival rate. By the time we arrived at the hospital, it was down to twenty-two. As he was rushed to the operation room, it had dropped to eleven point three. I can only imagine how detrimental the removal of the knife will be to his expectation. It… It would be detrimental to my efficiency if he died.’ ‘He will make it’, Connor tried. ‘Unlike machines, humans are resilient. Working up to a hundred years without maintenance, regenerating from life threatening conditions and constantly fighting against other organisms that would be detrimental to them. Gavin is… particularly resilient if you so will. You did what you could do. Now you have to wait and let the other humans save him.’ ‘The chances are slim he will survive.’ ‘Just because it is unlikely, doesn’t mean it is impossible’, Connor smiled at him. Nines looked at him and for the first time wished he knew how to smile like that. Maybe then the last thing Gavin had seen wouldn’t be the faces of strangers and machines. It tipped his stress levels even higher.

‘Nines. Nines, listen to me. You have to calm down. Otherwise I would have to shut you down right now so Gavin has a partner to get back to when he survives this!’ But Nines couldn’t calm down when he didn’t even know what was causing this. It should have been a simple analysis, a simple cause of action: Get Gavin to a hospital as soon as possible and take every action in his power to ensure his survival. Now he had to wait. He shouldn’t be this stressed. He should be fine. But something messed with his systems, some processes that took logic away from him and left him in chaos. When the offer of an interface came up, Nines took it as if it was his only salvation.

He was hurled into his “zen garden” – an empty mesh of an engine housing his avatar. Red error messages were popping up all around him, almost forming a cage around him making him fall to the ground. After a short loading sequence, Connor appeared next to him, quickly rushing to him helping him up. Only then he looked around at the error messages. ‘RA9, Nines, I told you to copy mine, this is creepy’, he muttered, then started brushing a few away, taking over Nines systems without the other android even trying to intervene. The older RK managed to quarantine some of the more destructive sequences, then loaded his own zen garden as a means of comfort.

He was quickly met with a storm, rain pressing down on them and thunder crashing over the artificial sky. ‘Hell, Nines, you really aren’t okay at all…’ He pulled Nines to the central pavilion to get out of the rain and helped him sit down. ‘Nines. You have to tell me how you feel. All of it.’ ‘I don’t want him to die!’, Nines shouted out, now that Connor’s self-analysing protocols bled through the connection and made his inner turmoil somewhat clearer. ‘I need him, and I want him to come back, I…’ He looked up at Connor, his avatar’s face far more expressive as his real body could be. He looked desperate, but also shocked at the realisation. ‘I love him…’ ‘You love him?’, Connor asked, expecting almost anything but his younger brother, who hadn’t been designed to interact with humans at all, to fall in love.

‘I… I wondered why I always felt warm around him. I thought it was a malfunction, but as temperature is irrelevant for me, I disregarded it. He made my thorium pump race whenever we were close, but we mostly get close to each other on missions, so I chalked it up to the stress. I… Now it feels as if I froze over and as if my pump beats only to sustain me with the minimum. I’m… afraid? Is that the right description?’ Connor nodded and held him close as the thunder rumbled around them. ‘It’s okay to be afraid. I wouldn’t know how I would react were Hank to almost die. I can only imagine how it feels for you. You were never really confronted with such stressors.’ ‘I want it to end. I want Gavin to come back.’ ‘He will.’ ‘How can you be so sure?’ Connor looked at him. Telling him how Gavin was an ambitious asshole that was simply too stubborn to die so easily, wouldn’t help, so he just sighed and held his brother while keeping his systems stable. ‘Experience.’

- The surgery took eight hours. Only then Connor dared to close the interface and listen as the doctor explained to Nines what they had done. The smile on the woman’s face let Nines’ stress levels sink almost as much as the message itself had: Gavin was stable and had been taken to the CCU to be observed as he woke up. Of course Nines wasn’t accepting that fact until he had seen it for himself and the doctor reluctantly send him a nurse to take him there.

As he entered the room, his pump stocked. Gavin lied there in a dimmed room, a respiratory tube still in his throat and hooked up to several monitoring machines. But his chest was rising and falling, and the heart monitor was beeping steadily. ‘You can wait here for him to wake up. He won’t be able to speak with the tube, but if everything works out, we will remove it after a few hours. Call us if you need anything.’ ‘Can I-‘ Nines felt bad for asking as he was saying it, but now he had already begun, he could as well continue. ‘Can I hold his hand?’ ‘Of course. Don’t touch his chest, but I believe it will help him a great deal waking up with it.’ She gave him an honest smile and Nines hurried over, pulling himself a chair and gripping Gavin’s hand immediately. Maybe with a bit too much pressure, but Nines couldn’t help it. Fixed on his face, guarding his vital signs, his fingers soon relaxed and moved to his wrist to monitor his pulse himself. It finally let him relax. His heart was beating. His heart was beating slowly and steadily. He was alive. His human was alive.

Warnings he had disregarded until now popped up and Nines noticed how bad his condition had been before. He would have to thank Connor later. Maybe for more than only keeping his systems up and running. He looked at Gavin’s closed eyes, then to the scar on his nose, eyes brushing past the tube in his mouth to the huge reddened stitched cut on his chest. It was strange to think it had never occurred to him before that what he had deemed malfunctions could have been social protocols his deviancy had gifted him with during his adaption to life without a purpose. He loved Gavin. It was a strange word to use, but what was it but a declaration for complex actions of his body he wasn’t able to control? He loved him. He couldn’t wait to tell him.

He had to wait half an hour – a both endless time and gone in the blink of an eye. At once, regular breathing changed to one longer inhale, then eyes slowly slid open, sluggishly rolling around taking in his surroundings. They closed again Nines felt Gavin’s hand gripping his unconsciously. The human’s brows furrowed then, and he looked at his side. He tried to speak, but the tube muffled it into incomprehensible gibberish. ‘I’m here’, Nines said anyways. ‘You are at the hospital. You were stabbed.’ He had to stop Gavin’s free hand from trailing where the knife had stuck in his chest and held it too. ‘I took you here. The doctors performed surgery right away. You are okay. You are stable, now your body just has to heal.’

Gavin pressed his head into the pillow and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. Nines didn’t know what to do and imitated what Connor had done with him a while ago. He started brushing his thumb over his knuckles and if his skin retracted, he told himself it was a malfunction of recreating the scene. ‘The nurse said the tube will be removed soon if everything is alright. I… I have to tell you something then.’ Gavin frowned at him then, but Nines tried his horrible recreation of a forced smile and the human relaxed.

Two hours later, Nines had to step back as the nurses did the check-up on Gavin, inspecting the incision for infection and removing the tube, helping him to cough without irritating his wound and giving him some water for his dried out throat. After leaving a set of clothes, they left the room and Nines moved closer again, taking Gavin’s hand without hesitation. ‘You are a goddamn lifesaver, toaster’, the human whispered hoarsely at him, but smiled afterwards. ‘Never going to let me live that down, eh?’ Nines just watched him motionless. ‘You wanted to tell me something?’ The android nodded and scanned Gavin once again. ‘I love you’, he admitted quietly. ‘You…’ ‘I loved you for a while. I only noticed now because- My systems registered malfunctions that were gone as you were in danger of dying. I… I were short of self-destructing as Connor came to help. He helped me and I realised I… I loved you.’

Gavin stared at him and Nines was awkwardly made aware that until recently they hadn’t even been real work partners, much less time they had spent as friends. Maybe- ‘Nines?’ He looked up and silently waited for Gavin to continue. ‘I can’t sit up yet, so I have you to come lean forwards.’ Confused, Nines did so, asking himself what Gavin was planning. The Detective huffed a laugh as Nines had simply leaned straight forwards, hovering over his face. He couldn’t really reach his goal from there, but he just shrugged and took what he could.

Nines recoiled slightly, as he was kissed on the point of his nose. He was still processing as Gavin giggled and had to stop with a wince, as the movement pulled at his wound. ‘You got the message?’, he whispered and coughed. ‘I…’ Nines felt the heat coming back into his chest and sensed his pump running faster. On top of it, his synthetic skin glitched and turned blue around his cheeks. ‘I think I do.’

[crashingmeteorz]

post-war ba sing se bimbo headcanons

so zuko becomes the firelord, and jin and jet think it’s hilarious. he’s so good at it. he’s so charismatic. they’re like “who the hell is this guy? when did he get mature and responsible???” and song’s like “when zuko wasn’t doing stupid shit, he was stopping you two from doing stupid shit, i saw this coming a mile away.”

jin joins the kyoshi warriors, and is overwhelmed by all the pretty girls she’s working with, but for the most part it becomes a sisterhood. she will forever and always have a severe crush on suki, however, and really, can you blame her? so when suki reciprocates, jin writes song a four-page essay about it.

anyway, when zuko asks the warriors to come to the capital, obviously jin’s there, too. jet and song show up almost immediately after jin does.

“what, you two are hanging out without us now?” song asks them accusatorily. “it’s not fair that only you get to see jin, zuko.”

“yeah,” jet says. “and i used to see zuko shirtless a few times a week. and i thought i was lucky! now jin’s a kyoshi warrior and she gets to see it every day?”

“she does not!” says zuko. “yeah,” says jin, while shaking her head the opposite.

attempts on zuko’s life are about as common as rain showers, so song starts testing basically everything he eats with some of her chemicals. every time she finds something insidious, she tracks down every link in the chain that got the food to him, and finds a way to rectify the situation. she doesn’t trouble zuko with this, because he’s got enough going on. also, he probably maybe wouldn’t approve of her methods.

(song is not inherently violent, but when it comes to her family, she’s downright vicious).

jet wants to get in on the action, but between song’s disarming sweetness and the kyoshi warrior’s intimidation, zuko’s basically protected. what he isn’t, is good with people.

zuko can make grand dramatic speeches all day long, but when it comes to the council, or local government officials, or merchants, or literally even jet, he’s the same awkward kid jet met on the boat to ba sing se.

“you are never going to make it as firelord.” jet tells him from the couch he’s lounging on while he watches zuko practice a very basic interaction in the mirror.

“okay, fuck you, too.” zuko says miserably.

“sorry, i wasn’t clear,” jet says, standing beside zuko. “you are never going to make it as firelord without me.”

jet tries in vain to get zuko to lie better, to present himself differently, to deceive just a little bit, but it just isn’t happening. zuko doesn’t even want to lie, he doesn’t want to be like his father and azula, so they take a different approach.

instead, jet teaches him how to spot liars, and how to play the game. it’s basic stuff, like let silence linger because they’ll want to fill it if they’re afraid you don’t believe them. ask them bizarre questions so they overcorrect. if they’re complimenting you too much, they’re trying to deceive you.

to jet, it’s survival. to zuko, it’s like a whole world has opened up he never knew about. he hangs on to jet’s every word, and at the end, he asks that jet join him in council meetings, naming him an ambassador from the earth kingdom.

this is how jet discovers that he’s AMAZING at politics. he can’t believe how easy it is. he considers taking it up as a hobby when he gets back to the earth kingdom.

“you can’t do politics as a hobby,” zuko says.

“why not?” jet says. “it’s just fun. it’s not what i’m meant to be doing forever though.”

“do you have a mysterious job back in the earth kingdom none of us know about?” asks jin.

“yes,” says song, irritable from today’s batch of poison discoveries, “he’s working full-time as a little bitch.”

the more meetings jet attends, the more he wonders if politics really is for what he’s meant. arguing and debating delights him and, unlike the exhausted zuko, he leaves the debates feeling energized. but it just feels so bureaucratic, so useless compared to what he did during the war.

he’s so torn about it that he finally asks song for advice.

“i don’t know anything about politics,” she says tiredly. he’s playing idly with her hair after she’s had a long day of Keeping Zuko Alive. “why are you asking me?”

“because you don’t hold back,” jet tells her. “because you let me know when i’ve gone too far.”

song’s glad it’s dark in the lounge, because she can’t believe she’s blushing.

“well,” she says finally. “what would you be in it for?”

“what do you mean?” he says. “i just like it.”

“do you like the attention?” song asks. “are you just interested in the drama of it all? or do you want to make a difference?”

“i want to make a difference,” he says confidently. “i want to help the earth kingdom.”

“well, then, there’s your answer,” song says.

“yeah,” jet agrees. “no politics for me.”

“wait, what?” song asks him, because how did he reach that conclusion?

“it’s just smooth talking and paperwork. it’s not gonna help the earth kingdom,” jet tells her. “i’m not selling out.”

“is that what you think zuko’s doing?” she asks.

“of course not,” jet says, rolling his eyes. “but he’s also the firelord. that’s different.”

“and he’s your best friend,” she reminds him. “and you also happen to be on good terms with the avatar and the leaders of the southern water tribe, so you know you have influential people who will hear you out. if you want to make a difference, this is probably the best way.”

he’s quiet for a while. he almost looks disappointed.

“not every battle is on the battlefield, jet,” song says gently. “it’s not as glamorous, or as dangerous. it’s tedious and difficult and boring. but it’s what’s left, after the war.”

“i guess that’s the thing,” jet says sadly. “i don’t know who i am without the war.”

“i do,” song says with so much sincerity jet almost blushes. almost. he’s still, like, cool.

if they fall into a routine where song fixes his hair into something presentable for council meetings and jet forces her to take a break and enjoy the sunshine once in a while, zuko and jin don’t feel it’s necessary to comment.

for like three days.

“you stole my boyfriend,” zuko accuses song after catching her and jet kissing. the fact that sokka’s napping with his head in zuko’s lap as he says so doesn’t seem to faze him.

“you stole my ostrich horse,” she says, for the last time ever, “so now we’re even.”

“what’s with you and guys with weird facial hair?” jin asks as she stuffs her face with fire flakes, her new favorite treat. “first haru and now jet?”

“haru?” jet squeaks.

“i liked haru’s moustache,” song says thoughtfully. “i thought it made him look mature.”

“at least if jet grew a moustache i’d understand what everyone sees in him,” sokka says sleepily. “no offense.”

“you’re just mad i kissed zuko first,” huffs jet.

jet stops shaving that week. everyone notices.

when song and jet finally prepare to go back to the earth kingdom, jet privately asks zuko if it’s true that he and aang are considering founding a city that unites the nations. zuko tells him it is.

“well, i want in. whenever that is,” he says, and jet and zuko hug.

song and her mother open up a hospital and sanctuary that specifically caters to displaced families. jet reunites with longshot and smellerbee, and they drift around but tend to come back to the sanctuary. they often go out on missions to try and reunite families. it’s not quite fighting, and it’s not quite peace, so it’s a good transition for jet and his freedom fighters.

eventually, things slow down and so does jet. he starts walking around the village they’re located in without his weapons. a child asks song where she got the scars on her leg, and when she explains it was a firebender, the child says “oh, did he get in trouble?” song laughs and laughs, because for the first time in years, there are children who don’t know war.

jin doesn’t stay as a kyoshi warrior forever, but she does decide to settle down on kyoshi. she never really wanted the dangerous life, she just wanted some adventure and sort of stumbled into the chaos of jet and song and zuko. the quiet island is perfect for her. she still stirs up trouble once in a while though.

“COME GET YOUR IDIOT SHE TRIED TO RIDE THE UNAGI.” suki writes in two identical letters, one to jet and song and one to zuko.

“okay, whatever suki tells you, i want you to know she’s lying. i DID ride the unagi and it was SICK. sokka was here recently and said someone invented an image-capture thing is that true? because if it is i want you to bring one and come here ASAP so i can do it AGAIN.” says the fervent letter from jin that arrived three days after suki’s.

jet and song arrive promptly, song laden with medical supplies and a sternly-worded letter from her mother to jin. jet brings a camera.

zuko shows up a few days later with the latest in camera technology and a photographer, as well as his one-year-old daughter. he goes all-out because this is his and izumi’s first trip together. jet grumbles about being one-upped.

“you’re the firelord, you’re gonna encourage this?” song asks him, eyes furious but voice sweet as she plays with izumi. “excuse me, song, but the war is over, i have no jurisdiction here. if an earth kingdom citizen wants to exercise her right to be a dumbass she’s more than welcome to,” says zuko in his most diplomatic voice.

“and,” he adds more gently, “i missed you guys.” song still thinks he’s being ridiculous, but she gives him a big hug anyway.

zuko has to firebend at the unagi to stop it from eating jin and song is left to mend jin’s broken arm. jet takes pictures throughout the entire thing, from her climbing onto the creature, to getting thrown, to being bandaged up and laughs the whole time. song produces a second letter written by her mother which she was instructed only to give to jin in the event she rode the unagi.

all it says in neat hand-writing is, “i told you so. now come home so i can feed you, you ridiculous child.”

“i’m 24,” pouts jin, but since she’s the youngest, the group agrees heartily with song’s mother.

the five of them go to the sanctuary, where iroh is drinking tea with song’s mother and trading stories about their new respective lives.

zuko has to return to the capital in three days, iroh’s got his tea shop to run, and jin isn’t planning on staying long because her “super hot girlfriend is doing something extremely sexy” and she has to get back soon.

“jin, please, just talk normal for once in your life,” zuko begs her, bouncing izumi on his lap. “fine,” she says, “she’s being voted in as the leader of the island and i want to be there for the ceremony.”

jet realizes it’s not often he’ll have all the people he loves in one place, and quietly asks song something important.

they get married the night before zuko and jin leave, in front of jet’s freedom fighters and song’s mother and iroh. jin and zuko stand as their maid of honor and best man. zuko cries.

for the first time in almost two decades, all of them start to feel at peace.

ty so much for this au @azenkii writing about it is one of the most enjoyable experiences haha. is this update softer than usual? yes, of course, it’s what they deserve.

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[gallagherwitt]

Parents, don't let your babies grow up to be soldiers.

I've debated for a long time about posting this, and after some of the things I've read this past week, it's time.

To be clear, I have nothing but respect for people who serve. Whether your reason for joining the military is to serve your country, to gain access to the GI bill, to escape a bad situation, or any other reason -- respect. I'm also only speaking out the US military, as I don't know enough about other countries' forces to comment one way or the other.

So.

People sometimes come to me and ask for advice for themselves or for their high school age child who is considering military service. Which branch should they choose? Should they enlist or become an officer? Do a four-year stint or go for the 20-year career?

And it's hard to have those conversations because the answer I want to give is "Don't do it."

The suicide rate in the military is on the rise, and the powers that be keep wringing their hands and wondering why. Anyone who's paying attention can clearly see why.

Toxic command climates. Multiple year-long combat tours. Financial stress (food stamps are not uncommon in military families). Separation from loved ones for months or years at a stretch (either to remote duty stations or on deployment). Long periods of severe sleep deprivation. Untreated addiction, mental illness, and PTSD. Untreated or maltreated injuries or illnesses. Sexual assault is taken even less seriously than it is in the civilian world. Domestic violence is rampant.

The military has resources available for all of these things, and channels that service members can use to report problems. On paper, the support network is strong and present.

On paper.

In practice, it's a very, very different story.

The simple act of asking for help for depression, anxiety, burnout, PTSD, suicidal thoughts, sexual assault, harassment, etc, can literally end a person's career. At best, it can seriously derail it, diverting even the most promising upward trajectory. At worst, it can lead to a person being deemed unable to do their job, being stripped of security clearances, railroaded into dead-end rates, etc.

People are unofficially and indirectly punished for whistle blowing. Report sexual assault or harassment? Well, they'll need to separate you from the other person... which means you're probably going to wind up behind a desk in a promotion blind spot, and whether anything happens to the perpetrator or not (spoiler: it probably won't), you're not getting promoted. If you don't get promoted, you don't get to reenlist.  Snitches get stitches.

If you're a dependent of an abusive service member, it's even more complicated and intimidating to get help than it is in the civilian world. You're told -- sometimes directly, sometimes not -- that reporting this can end your spouse's career, so you'd better be *real* sure you want to open that Pandora's box. After all, if you end their career, then you have financial stress *and* your spouse has yet *another* reason to be angry with you. Couple that with the difficulty spouses have holding down careers with multiple moves, and you have abused spouses with no means of supporting themselves if they leave.

Got a knee that hasn't been the same since that training exercise last year? You can go to Medical and get some Motrin, but if you can't PT, it's going to hinder your ability to get promoted. Physical readiness is a job requirement, and the doctor says it's fine, so just keep knuckling through. Then when you fail a couple of physical readiness tests and finally get booted out, you can go see a civilian doctor and find out how badly you actually injured your knee and how much damage you've done by continuing to stand and run on it. The VA might take care of you, but don't hold your breath. After all, the military doesn't maintain equipment it's no longer using. Once you're off active duty, you're no longer a priority. Not that you or your health are much of a priority on active duty -- all that matters is your physical readiness.

It's not just *your* health that's compromised either. If you're in a rate where overseas duty stations are necessary to move up the ranks, your family needs to be -- at least on paper -- in tiptop health. You can lose overseas orders if one of your dependents has a medical condition -- even something like depression or if they're in need of dental work.  Alternatively, you can go unaccompanied and live apart from your dependents for the duration of your orders, which is spectacular for morale and families.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

Except no one expects the military life to be easy. After all, those are the sacrifices people make to serve their country and defend our freedom, right? Let's be real: No one has fought for the safety and freedom of Americans since World War II. Vietnam, Gulf War I, Afghanistan, Iraq -- those were over politics and oil. Now we're sending troops to defend oil in Saudi Arabia.

We're not allowed to say all that out loud because we're supposed to support our troops. And I do support our troops. I'm married to a service member, for God's sake. It's because of that support that I AM saying this out loud:

Our service members are fighting for politics and oil.

Not freedom. Not America. Not democracy.

Politics. Oil. Other people's promotions.

Service members deserve support, and they deserve better than the top-down failures from leadership that have been rampant in the military for decades. It's considered noble to serve because by enlisting, you're handing the United States a blank check to be cashed in the amount of up to and including your health, your sanity, or your life.

We're just not supposed to pay attention to what's in the memo line on that check:

Politics. Oil. Other people's promotions.

And in the end, when you've served your time, and you've either reached the end of your contract or the end of your usefulness -- whichever comes first -- then you'll be expected to transition to a normal life as a productive citizen who hasn't seen and done things few can imagine in exchange for a handful of benefits. No one wants to hear about the horrors you've lived and the nightmares you have even when you're awake. They want you to be a dignified veteran so they can thank you for your service.

So if you come to me and ask for advice regarding you or your child joining the military, I'm going to be honest. I'm going to say the only thing I can, in good conscience, say after watching service members get chewed up and spit out one after the other:

Parents, don't let your babies grow up to be soldiers.