shepchasingtail

[shepchasingtail]

I moved my babies over to an indie (viruspuppies) but if anyone wants to keep threads going on this account though I’m down. I’ve just been sick lately — unfortunately.

Like this if you want to keep things going here. If you want to move things indie hit up my discord or IM on my indie.

[shepchasingtail]

Shepherd settled into the armchair with a grunt, the springs groaning beneath his weight as he shifted to ease the pressure off his injured side. His ribs were still bound tight in medical gauze, each breath sharp around the edges, but he didn’t complain. Not out loud, at least. He watched Pixie with a bemused expression, one brow arched as the man’s wings shimmered out of sight, sinking into the skin of his back like living ink. “Finally, huh?” Shep echoed, his voice just barely laced with sarcasm. “You say that like we didn’t almost die...”

He leaned back, long legs sprawling out in front of him, and draped one arm over the side of the chair. The other stayed curled over his chest, fingers absently tracing the bandages. Muscle was a bitch to heal. His eyes followed Pixie as the other man laid before him like he didn’t have a care in the world. 'Lucky bitch.' He thought to himself, biting his lip in thought.

“You're the one who begged for something to do,” Shep continued, a faint smirk ghosting across his lips. “Said you needed to ‘stretch your wings’... like some wannabe angel with burnout.” He let the silence draw out for a second, then glanced sideways again, chuckling at a private thought. “Nailing anymore stuff... you walked into that one. Sorry.” His gaze dropped to Pixie’s arms, then the pistols resting on the weapons bench nearby. “If your hands fall off, I’ll duct tape your sidearms to the stubs and call it ‘adaptive combat strategy.’” He smirked. “Might even get you a commendation for creativity.” Despite the snark, there was a trace of real concern buried in his words. Shep’s eyes lingered on Pixie a moment longer, searching his face. Not just for signs of strain, but the kind of exhaustion you couldn’t stretch out or sleep off. Catching himself staring, he quickly adverted his gaze, flicking through the television.

Pixie   let   out   a   chuckle   as   he   laid   down   on   the   couch,   his   wings   seeming   to   melt   into   a   tattoo   on   his   back   as   he   willed   them   away   for   now.   “Finally!   Some   more   time   to   relax.”   Pixie   says   with   a   grin.   “I   know   we   have   missions   to   do   and   whatever.   But   I   tell   you   bro,   I   would   rather   be   out   there   fighting   for   my   life   then   flying   around   and   nailing   any   more   stuff.   You   know   what   I   mean,   bro?”   Emilio   asked   the   other   man   with   a   chuckle   as   he   folded   his   arms   behind   his   head   and   looked   off   to   the   side   at   the   other   man.   “I   think   my   hands   are   going   to   fall   off.   How   am   I   suppose   to   fire   my   pistols   without   hands?” 

[shepchasingtail]

The touch was too precise. Too practiced. Like Goblin had mapped him without permission. And then he felt it. The shift. The tug. The collar jingled, came loose, fell away from his thick neck. It felt like standing on a cliff edge without armor. He stared straight ahead, even as Goblin stepped back. Even as the collar was set gently down, reverently, like an artifact. As if Goblin knew exactly what it was. In comparison to the seemingly detached human before him, Shep stressed yawned and panted. Loudly. After a letting out a disgruntled groan, he turned a slow, instinctive circle on the sterile floor. Once, twice, three times. He didn’t care that it was habit, or that it looked strange to someone. It was how he settled. Circles helped. His eyes tracked Goblin’s exit with slow precision. His mind wrestled with the urge to get up and follow. But something deeper held him back, like a silent warning buried under layers of instinct and hard-earned caution.

Shep stayed still, the collar absent from his neck but his body taut with quiet focus. Without the familiar neural conduit wrapped around his throat, the usual direct interface was gone. But embedded deep in his brain, the backup chip waited. Silent, dormant, ready. He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing as he activated the chip’s override. Internally, his neurons sparked in rapid-fire bursts, synapses rewiring to reroute data through this secondary system. The bio-cybernetic link hummed beneath his skin, syncing with the lab’s grid on a raw, stripped-down frequency. Instantly, the overhead speakers buzzed to life, emitting a voice. Flat, synthetic, clipped and entirely unlike his usual gravel. "I feel like I should be offended."

“Sexier,” he echoed flatly, voice curling around the word like it tasted off. “You always talk upgrades like they’re damn miracle work, you're like a tech-y Mary Poppins or some shit.” he added, not raising his voice but knowing Goblin could hear him loud and clear throughout the lab. “You want to go poking around my insides, fine. Knock yourself out. But don’t talk to me like I’m two separate parts you can optimize one at a time. I'm just me.” His gaze flicked toward the collar again, still sitting there like a relic stripped from a corpse. It's absence mocked him. The muscles in his jaw worked. He stretched his limbs, rolling his shoulders with a low, frustrated grunt before stalking over to the nearest console. His jaw worked silently, teeth grinding ever so slightly. A brief bark-like sound escaped his throat. A sharp exhale of impatience before he resumed pacing, faster now, the restless energy pulsing through every move like a taut leash pulling tight. “I happen to like my outdated bits thank you very much.” He said, eyes narrowing as he looked over the faint scars riddling his body. “You know... I'm beginning to sense you have a favorite form...”

He paused again, then slouched back against the wall, one leg stretched out, the other bent like a loaded spring. “But hey,” he added, almost offhand. “If you do manage to make me sexier, you're the one explaining the spike in HR complaints.” Shep’s restless pacing faltered, his keen canine senses suddenly alert to the subtle pull of the neural link within his skull. His ears twitched, flicking back as if hearing a faint warning only he could catch. The system was kicking him out. With a low, guttural growl vibrating deep in his throat, he halted abruptly. His muscles tensed, tail flicking sharply as he shifted weight uneasily. “Sweet CarolIIIIIIINNEE...”

Then, with a deliberate tilt of his head, he reached up with a clawed paw to the back of his neck where the implanted chip hummed faintly beneath his fur. His claws curled against the skin, pressing firmly. A soft mechanical whirr echoed inside his mind as he wrenched the connection loose, the neural link snapping free like a leash released. His body shuddered slightly, a shiver rippling through fur and bone alike. Shep exhaled a sharp breath and lowered his head, ears flattening for a moment as the digital noise faded. Freed from the system’s grip, he stretched his limbs wide, tail sweeping the floor, muscles loosening in relief. He shook his massive head once, fur rippling, then gave a quiet, satisfied grunt.

🎃- "I'm pretty sure if you try to modulate, it should use some of the frequencies of the other voices to either lighten it or make the voice huskier. Less of a tech enhancement but more of a reliance on the muscle contraction." Goblin looked down at those intensely deep eyes that said so much without even a word. Some of which; honestly quite a bit, fell on absence of neural pathways. He could recognize the other perceiving him in a way that wasn't just a gloss or empty stare. It felt heavy. Perhaps he'd do his own self-reflection and research later to find a suitable definition for it. Instead, his pivots at the mid thoracic with some aid from his lower back. Enough to suspend his massive head between both arms. Fingers; more curiously, brushed his fur back. His ears swept through the split of fingers as he added a combing motion with the tuck of his finger tips. He'd rake until he reached the start of his lower jaw. One hand slipped back to scratch the band of space between his ears and the other would secure his collar. He was careful not to alert or scare him. The swiftness allowed him to remove the band of material that had its own story. One that left it in a faint memory of it's former glory. Perhaps a testament to Shep's resilience and fight. He pulled back, showing him the collar and set it upon his desk.

"I'll research more ways and places to rub to reduce the stress of your canine form when all else fails." Goblin exhaled in a single huff from his nose as he returned to his desk to see a little blinking indicator. He nodded in acknowledgement. "Well." Goblin turned back to face him. "I'm modding you because I'd have to do it in the future, anyways. Why not get a jump on it while my tasks are pretty empty?" A lie. Well, not from his perspective. Most of these tasks he could complete with his eyes closed. And they'd probably see the same risk reduction and managements if he presented his case. Goblin was obviously more interested in this than his own projects. Possibly due to the ability to see the efforts in real-time with someone experiencing it to give him a real comparison. He shook his head. "Besides, it would make the human you sexier. But the dog you would be more resilient, tougher, more reactive. Faster. More limber. Less pain." Goblin would continue, crossing his arms as he watched the timer tick down to zero. "I just need to be privy to your augments and medical file so I can make some executive decisions. Can't say it won't have some discomfort because these are all archaic pieces. But, I can swear that it would be very minimal and you'd have recovery within a day or so. Especially with the new medical enhancements." He stood, careful not to bump or knock into Shep now that he had a visitor in his immediate space.

"Why can't I have both? Madness and genius? Would make me a little interesting. Or...whatever I am experiencing." He smirked. "I'll be right back." Goblin stepped into the other room, briefly.

[shepchasingtail]

Greener Grass

In one universe, he dies on the mission. The infection hits harder than anticipated, the mutated rabies ravaging his system before extraction protocols could kick in. There’s panic in the comms, someone screaming his name, but it’s already too late—Juno, loyal to the very end, doesn’t leave his side even as they both go down. There’s no time to save either of them. Pandora records his death with a classified timestamp, and a folded flag is delivered to no one. No body is recovered. Just a closed casket. Somewhere, a handler drinks themselves into silence. In this world, he dies a man, not a monster, and the story ends before the rewriting ever begins.

In another life, the mission was scrubbed before it began. The data was never pulled, or maybe someone higher up deemed it too risky. Shepherd stayed stateside. He’d been seeing a therapist after Juno’s retirement—a soft-voiced man who never flinched at the things he didn’t know how to say. At first, it was mandatory. Then he started showing up on his own. There was something grounding in the routine, in his presence. In this timeline, he asks him to coffee one day, fumbling through the invitation like it’s a foreign language. To his surprise, he says yes. They date slowly, gently, like people who know how to tread around ghosts. He teaches him how to breathe again. They adopt a mutt from the shelter. He never goes back to the field.

There’s a version of him who leaves it all behind and finds quiet.

Shepherd left the military not with honor, but with exhaustion. The chest wound should’ve killed him—it nearly did. He doesn’t remember the field medic’s face, just the smell of blood-soaked gauze and the thick silence that followed the scream. The surgeries came after. Then the long, unsteady shuffle through rehab centers and sterile rooms. When he was finally cleared, he didn’t go back. No reassignment. No transfer. Just a quiet discharge and a whisper of thanks that didn’t reach him. His body never fully recovered. There’s a tightness in his ribs now, a pressure like something folded wrong inside. He can’t run anymore. Not really. Lifting too much sends warning jolts up his spine. But he walks. He breathes. He’s alive, and most days, that’s enough.

He moved to a town no one writes about. A place stitched between pine forest and rocky coast, where the roads are cracked and overgrown, and the sea’s always just over the next hill. There are no bases nearby, no watchlists, no one asking what he used to be. Here, he’s just a quiet man with old scars and a dog at his side.

He started working at the local shelter—not just cleaning kennels but running behavioral rehab and obedience classes. At first, people didn’t know what to make of him. He rarely spoke, always wore flannel even in the heat, and looked like someone trying not to remember something. But the animals understood. Broken dogs, anxious strays, biters no one else wanted. He had a way with them. No commands, no force. Just patience, presence, and something silent he carried in his chest they seemed to recognize.

Most days, he wears the same boots he came to town in, the soles worn nearly flat from trail walks. He knows every path through the woods, every bend where the moss thickens or the deer pass through. He talks to animals more than people, and that suits him fine. No one asks him about the collar that used to sit on his neck. Or the experiments. Or the way his eyes still glow faintly in the dark.

Because none of that happened.

Before everything, Shepherd used to draw. Quietly, privately. Charcoal sketches of wolves mid-motion, anatomical studies of dogs from memory, surreal forests that felt both real and imagined. He’d stopped for years. But in this new life, he picked it back up. Now, above the town’s only bakery, he rents a small studio as a vacation home that smells of yeast, sugar, and burned toast. The light’s perfect in the mornings.

He teaches sketching to local kids, offers free workshops to veterans who can’t sleep through the night. They don’t talk much—but the room is full of charcoal-stained fingers and soft jazz on vinyl. That’s enough.

His arms are covered in tattoos, black-and-gray sleeves, each one a memory he chose to keep. Names in looping script. Coordinates no one else could decipher. A dog’s ribcage drawn like an x-ray. A forest that only exists in dreams.

He lives with someone now. Someone whose name he once whispered like a prayer before a mission. Or maybe someone he met after, who looked at his limp and his silence and decided to stay anyway. They live in a weathered cottage with a tin roof and an unreliable screen door. The floorboards creak, and the plumbing wheezes in winter, but it’s home. Their mornings are slow. They make breakfast clumsily, bumping elbows, arguing over whether to play jazz or classic rock on the old radio. The dog whines for scraps, tail wagging, eyes cloudy with age.

There’s no need to check the windows. No weapons under the bed. No alarms wired to the doorframe.He wakes early, always has. But now, he brews tea instead of coffee as its easier on his system after the surgeries. He shrugs on a faded hoodie, steps out onto the porch as the mist rolls in off the hills. The old shepherd mix follows, hips stiff, eyes soft. They sit together, watching the birds flit through the trees. A squirrel chatters in the distance. Somewhere behind them, the kettle whistles again.

His body aches, but it’s honest pain earned through hikes, long walks, chopping firewood, painting for hours without rest. His mind still stirs, still flickers with old ghosts, but they don’t scream anymore. And the voice in his head? It’s his again. Not metal. Not code. Just memory. Just breath.

Sometimes, he paints the same forest over and over—a place untouched by violence, where no one ever needed to be saved. Sometimes, he forgets what day it is and spends the morning reading with his partner’s feet in his lap and the dog asleep across both of them. Sometimes, he sits in the shelter after hours, stroking the fur of a dog too broken for anyone else, and lets the silence be enough.

The past didn’t vanish. It still lives in the scar across his ribs and the limp in his step.

But it isn’t chasing him anymore.

And in this life... soft, slow, ordinary...he finally has room to breathe.

Normal and bland. Like oatmeal.

He rises early, always a morning person. He brews tea, not coffee anymore—it’s easier on his stomach. He steps out onto the porch wrapped in a faded hoodie, watching the mist roll over the hills. His dog, an old shepherd mix, leans against his leg as they watch the birds. He reads the paper, checks the mail, chats with a neighbor about their garden. No agents. No alarms. No one’s hunting him down for parts of himself he didn’t ask to become. His body aches a little, but it’s from years of hiking, not war. His mind is quieter. And the voice in his head isn’t artificial. It’s just his, finally at peace.

[shepchasingtail]

Shepherd stepped through the door with a slow, guarded gait, one arm tucked just slightly tighter against his ribs. The fabric of his hoodie pulled taut over his chest where thick gauze was layered beneath, a reminder of the recent impalement he’d survived by sheer brute will and bad luck. The healing wound throbbed beneath the motion, but he still managed a half-smirk as Virgil swooped in with all the warmth of a human golden retriever. “Easy there, Romeo,” he muttered, his voice rough around the edges. “Chest’s still trying to remember how to stay in one piece.” Still, he didn’t step out of the embrace. Just leaned into it with the gentleness of a soldier not used to being handled like something that mattered.

His eyes scanned the room taking in the blankets, pillows, warmth, his body slowly settling into something approximating peace. After the chaos of the attack, it felt surreal. Almost cruel in its softness. Almost… needed. “You weren’t kidding about the pillows,” he muttered as Virgil guided him forward. “You planning to smother us all into recovery?” He caught the nudge and gave a muted snort, one hand ghosting over the spot just under his ribs where it still hurt to breathe too deep. “Also, that was French. Not Russian. But I’ll give you points for confidence. You could sell it to someone concussed.” He smirked ruefully. By the time they reached the kitchenette, Shepherd was starting to look a little more at ease. At least in that feral-dog-in-a-shelter way he’d perfected over the years. “You made these?” He eyed the s’mores with suspicion, like they might detonate.

“Unfortunately, I can’t eat chocolate,” he said simply, voice lower now. “Appreciate it, though. Real human of you.” There was a quiet resignation in his tone, like someone who’d long accepted the odd list of things his body couldn’t tolerate anymore. Still, the gesture clearly landed. His hand hovered near the plate, like he was considering taking one anyway just to hold. Then Virgil brought up spin the bottle. He let the silence hang just long enough to be dangerous, then rasped, “We could always spin a cup or a knife?” His weight settled more heavily against the counter, careful not to let his shoulders slump too far and tug at the wound. “You know... I've never been to one of these things.” His eyes flicked to Virgil with something innocent beneath them.

open starter 👉👈 location: apartments

"So glad you could make it! Here let me get that for you!" Virgil beams ecstatically as he welcomed his fellow agent into the cozy apartment. He hadn't expected many to come, things were meant to be casual of course. A comfortable and snug evening for the agents that wanted to come and distract themselves from the attack they had just undergone. Bringing an excited, yet tender, arm around the agent as Virgil gave a run down on the room's amenities.

"As the local expert in sleep and sleep adjacent activities, I made sure to bring as many pillows as I could find. There's also plenty of blankets and bedrolls. All clean, triple checked by moi. You like that? Picked up a little bit of Russian after so much time squabbling at them." He nudges them playfully as he leads them both to the apartments kitchenette, "Also made a few s'mores, as per custom. Also got a few drinks for us. Even some wine coolers, but I'm think those belong to my roommie."

"Could have sworn I had a wine bottle around here too… Whatever shall we spin for spin the bottle now?"

[shepchasingtail]

Shep lingered in the doorway, half-shadowed, the smell of blood and bandages still clinging faintly to his clothes. His eyes tracked the glow of Glyph’s scribing with that same guarded curiosity, head tilted just slightly like a dog catching a sound too high for human ears. The glyphs pulsed in his ears. Steady, warm, almost comforting but they made something tighten behind his eyes.

He took a step forward, then paused, a sharp wince flickering across his features. His hand moved instinctively towards his injured side, pressing lightly over the spot where the hole had been blown clean through his chest. The skin there was raw and tight, scabbed by forced regeneration, but the shock to his system had slowed it—muscle didn’t knit the same way flesh did. Not for him.

“Could’ve been worse,” Shepherd muttered, voice sandpaper-dry. “Not like I was the one carving magic into parchment all day.”

He forced another step, rolling his shoulder like he could work the pain loose from under the skin. His gaze drifted over the scrolls again, lingering longer than necessary. Curiosity flickering in his gaze. “You always light up the room like that,” he said at last, tone low, faintly amused. “Or is it just 'cause I walked in?” He exhaled, half a chuckle, half a sigh. “Do you hide out in weapons storage often?”

Glyph's   hands   worked   systematically.   The   scroll   quickly   being   filled   with   glowing   glyphs   as   his   fingers   traced   them   onto   the   paper.   Already   trying   to   think   of   what   items   he   could   store   in   them.   Glyph   had   used   them   to   help   with   the   reconstruction   of   quite   a   bit   of   Atlantis.   Making   it   easier   to   carry   around   large   amounts   of   supplies   when   he   can   just   store   them   in   the   glyphs   in   his   scrolls.   And   after   taking   a   day   or   two   to   recover?   Glyph   was   ready   to   relax   a   little   bit.   Power   fatigue   was   not   a   great   feeling.   Although   he   was   happy   to   be   of   help,   using   his   glyphs   to   store   so   many   big   and   small   things   definitely   had   him   feeling   fatigued   the   following   day.   But   now?   He   was   ready   to   rejoin   the   little   society   that   they   had   built. 

Well…If   one   would   consider   tracing   glyphs   onto   his   scrolls   in   the   weapons   storage   room.   And   it   appears   he   wasn't   the   only   one   who   was   trying   to   get   into   this   little   secluded   area.   “Hello.”   Glyph   nodded   at   the   other   man.   Not   really   sure   knowing   what   to   say   after   that.   “…I   hope   the   rebuilding   wasn't   to   taxing   for   you?”   He   decided   to   go   with   something   simple. 

[shepchasingtail]

[shepchasingtail]

"You looked so peaceful while you were sleeping. I couldn’t bring myself to wake you."

Shep eased into the room, the soft hum of Atlantis’ systems filling the quiet space. Repairs were still underway in many of the living quarters, so the floor had become his reluctant bed for the past few nights. But tonight, he’d offered his own bed to Moonstalker—a small courtesy in a place where comfort felt like a luxury.

He moved slowly, careful not to disturb the other agent. Moonstalker’s chest rose and fell in steady rhythm, the tension usually wrapped tight around him momentarily dissolved in sleep. Shep settled down on the mattress beside him, the springs creaking faintly under his weight.

“You can keep the bed for now,” Shep said, voice low and rough but sincere. “I’m fine on the floor. Figured you could use it more than me.”

He glanced over, studying the quiet lines of Moonstalker’s face in the dim light. “Feels… different, sleeping near someone who isn’t just shadows and noise.” The words came softer now, almost a confession in the stillness of the room. "I don't usually let people stay in here..."

@leschevalier - moonstalker

[shepchasingtail]

Send 🗣  for me to make you a starter with a line of dialogue from this generator.

[shepchasingtail]

I don't know what you did to me But show me you meant it I only want it obsessive 'Cause I wonder Would you hold me down if they locked me up?

PART ONE

The Skelton home sat in the diplomatic quarter of Copenhagen—a minimalist fortress of steel, glass, and hushed brilliance. It was always quiet there, not out of serenity, but sterility. Sound had no purpose unless it was data. Conversation was transactional. Emotion? Inefficient.

His father, Dr. Henrik Skelton, believed emotional regulation was a matter of genetic refinement. His mother, Dr. Annelise Sørensen-Skelton, thought love was a hormonal distraction. They were geniuses—clinical, controlled, and unreachable. The kind of people who looked at their son as if he were both an experiment and a debt owed to legacy.

Israel didn’t speak much. He wasn’t encouraged to. Language came late—not because he couldn’t form words, but because no one cared to hear them. Most days, he watched from corners: the shimmer of lab coats passing through the sterile light of morning, the hum of machines his father built to sort chromosomes by flaw. His education came not from childhood curiosity but from algorithmic homeschooling, structured around logic circuits, microbiology, and neurodevelopmental theory before he turned ten.

No other children visited the house. His only company were au pairs—imported kindness on six-month visas. They were warm, for a while, until they left. They always left. He learned to stop forming attachments. He didn’t say goodbye. He just watched.

But one presence stayed: a dog. Torben.

A half-broken German Shepherd his mother brought home from a vivisection lab under the guise of “temporary rehabilitation.” The dog was too old for utility, too wounded for resale, and too costly to discard publicly. Israel, eight at the time, was told not to touch him.

He didn’t listen.

He didn't pet Torben—not at first. He mirrored him, crawling beside him, observing his tics, cataloging every whimper and flinch like it was scripture. He began writing journals—tiny notebooks stuffed under his mattress, filled with diagrams, behavioral sketches, notes on sleep cycles and eye dilation. One journal ended with:

“He dreams. Even when he's afraid, he still dreams.” His mother skimmed one once and said it was “impressively clinical.” That was her highest form of praise. Israel wasn’t trying to be clinical. He was trying to understand pain. Torben was the only being in the house who seemed to feel it.

By age nine, Israel had memorized canine posture mechanics, vocalization ranges, and the difference between fear-biting and challenge-barking. He was fluent in a language no one else spoke.

He didn’t know it then, but this was survival. Observation was not curiosity—it was armor. If he could predict fear, track pain, anticipate aggression, he could stay safe in a world of unspoken threats and unyielding control.

His childhood ended not with a scream, but with a whimper: Torben’s. The dog died during a neurological study. His father called it "necessary." His mother said nothing. Israel didn’t cry.

He just stopped speaking for six weeks.

When he finally did, his first words were to a different dog—on a walk with a new au pair who never asked why he flinched at fluorescent lights or flinched at the smell of bleach.

He whispered: “Don’t let them make you something else.”

That sentence wouldn’t mean anything to her. But it would echo in his mind for the rest of his life.

PART TWO

By sixteen, Israel had outgrown Denmark—and childhood.

He didn’t leave for Yale with pride. He left with precision, like a well-scheduled flight. No goodbye at the airport. Just a one-line message from his father:

“Don’t waste the investment.”

Yale didn’t quite know what to do with him. He wasn’t young enough to be a sensation, and not old enough to be invisible. He occupied a strange space: brilliant, clinical, unsettling. The other students sensed it. Professors learned to respect it. No one ever touched him.

He carried himself like a quiet contagion—controlled, unreadable, always watching.

His schedule was brutal by design: double course loads in neuroscience and behavioral psychology, a minor in genetics, and multiple research assistant roles in labs where postgrads feared the equipment more than the experiments. Israel didn’t fear any of it. If he feared anything, it was the absence of structure—the moment after the work was done, when silence returned and nothing was expected of him. Those were the moments he hated most.

His room was kept at a clinically consistent 18°C. Bed stripped. Desk arranged symmetrically. Food pre-portioned. He lived like a subject in his own study. Rituals kept the chaos at bay.

He worked late, long past approved hours. He documented trauma retention in former combat dogs—patterns of learned helplessness, displaced aggression, scent-triggered seizures. Others found the data depressing. He found it honest.

One case study, an 8-year-old Dutch Shepherd named Mara, had been looped through three NATO deployments. Blind in one eye. Still twitched at the sound of clinking metal. Most researchers logged her reactions clinically.

Israel sat with her for three hours straight, not speaking. Just watching.

At the end of the session, he recorded:

“She knew I wasn’t a threat. But she also knew I wasn’t kind. That’s a deeper kind of intelligence.”

No one asked what he meant.

And beneath all of it, he was always listening.

His first major paper—"Affective Suppression in Conditioned Canines: A Study in Neurological Repression and Reward Pathways"—was considered groundbreaking. But there was something wrong with it. Not the data. The tone. It didn’t read like a scientific paper. It read like a map for emotional control. One professor remarked, off record:

“You don’t study trauma, Mr. Skelton. You excavate it like a man looking for a home inside a grave.”

Israel didn’t respond. The professor requested a sabbatical the next term.

Those words were harsh but admittedly true. He didn’t write like a student. He wrote like someone building blueprints for psychological architecture. His research on empathy decay in performance-bonded K9s caught the attention of a NATO adjunct. Another paper—on neural loop failure in emotionally neglected youth—was quietly flagged by a military psych division.

By the time he turned 22, Israel had a B.S. in Neurology, an M.S. in Psychology, and a minor in Genetics. He would later go on to get a Doctorate in Neurology online. He had contributed to three classified behavioral frameworks now used in military canine units across NATO. But he had no friends. No partners. No mentors who asked what he wanted.

Because he didn’t want anything. Wanting is what breaks you.

Instead, he became very good at mimicking humanity in controlled doses. He learned when to nod, when to maintain eye contact, when to offer a carefully measured pause that simulated empathy. Not because he cared, but because fitting in was a survival protocol. A way to remain unexamined. A ghost in the hallways of prestige.

“Today I saw a dog stare into its own reflection for thirteen minutes. I wonder what it saw. I wonder if it thought: is that still me?” (Personal log, 4:16 AM, 2nd floor animal behavior lab, Building D)

He left Yale quietly. No ceremony. No fanfare. Just a final email to his father with one word in the subject line: "Finished." There was no reply.

But he didn’t need one.

He didn’t feel accomplished. He felt calibrated.

PART THREE

The next step wasn’t a choice. It was inevitability. He had learned how the mind bends. Now, he would learn how it breaks.

Israel no longer saw the world in terms of success or failure, morality or ambition. He saw it as a layered system of biological drives, trauma feedback loops, and conditioned compliance. And he knew how to move within it.

He didn't join the military for country. Or honor. Or service.

He joined for silence.

After Yale, Israel was recruited—gently, quietly—by a NATO psychological operations task force. His file had been flagged long before graduation. Not because of his scores. Because of the way he wrote about suffering.

They didn’t see a risk. They saw someone who understood pain not as tragedy, but as a tool.

He passed the selection without speaking more than two dozen words. The instructors found him unnerving but efficient. He didn’t brag. Didn’t break. Didn’t bond. The psychological screening team cleared him but added an internal note:

"Lacks identity markers. Will bond to role, not people. Treat with protocol."

They assigned him to BLACKLIST OPERATIONS: a tier-zero, off-ledger reconnaissance program composed of specialists trained for deniable missions. No insignia. No callsigns. No accountability. Their targets weren’t just enemy combatants. They were pre-hostile anomalies—labs running hot with illegal synthetic pathogens, arms dealers testing animal neuralware, villages where entire populations forgot their own names.

Most operatives broke within the first year. Israel lasted longer.

His assigned K9 was a Belgian Malinois named Juno. Three years old. Lean, alert, surgically obedient—but something in her eyes suggested more than training. She didn’t wag. She assessed.

They told him she’d been flagged for potential decommissioning—too perceptive, too reactive. “Unreliable under fire.” She didn’t listen. He didn’t either.

The bond formed fast.

They didn’t just train together—they mirrored. He taught her new signals without speaking. She would scan a room before he entered, tail stiff, posture low, gaze darting in unspoken communication. It wasn’t loyalty. It was recognition.

Together, they were used in exfiltration blackouts, bio-warfare recovery ops, non-verbal interrogations. Juno could detect chemical emotion shifts in suspects before torture even began. Israel didn’t need her to bite. He needed her to know when to look away.

One mission had them embedded for 72 hours beneath a humanitarian cover unit in coastal Syria. The target was a virologist hiding plague-seed cultures in refugee aid caches. Israel posed as an aid worker. Juno posed as a rescue dog.

They recovered the samples. Silently. Efficiently.

Afterward, Israel recorded in his mission log:

“She looked at him like she knew what he’d done. Then she waited for me to confirm it. There is no such thing as innocence. Not in the field. Not in us.”

They placed him in deep-veil operations: zero-insignia deployments to destabilize rising threats before they were officially threats. He wasn’t trained for war. He was trained for erasure—to ghost in, extract samples, sabotage progress, and disappear before anyone noticed anything but the smell of bleach and fear.

His only constant was Juno. They weren’t handler and dog. They were two ends of a nerve. She responded to tone, breath, eye movement. Some handlers gave commands. Israel gave intent—and Juno understood.

Together they ghosted through warzones:

They did not kill unless necessary. They simply made sure certain things never reached the light.

PART FOUR

The mission that broke him was meant to be routine: A covert recon sweep through the Caucasus Blackline Zone, where satellite imagery showed bio-contamination fields pulsing out from an abandoned Soviet observatory. Recon went dark 12 hours in. Israel and Juno were deployed. Just recon. In and out.

They moved like shadows through the skeletal hallways, the silence so thick it felt alive. But the deeper they went, the more wrong it felt. Equipment still running. Bodies—some half-eaten, some still twitching.

He remembers the floor—slippery, not with blood, but with residue. The kind of shine old infections leave behind. The kind of smell that has no name in any language.

The enemy didn’t speak. It didn’t shoot first. It studied him.

Then came the growl. Low, unnatural. Not an animal. Not human. Something in between.

Juno was first to engage, instincts faster than any order. The creature was fast, twitching like it was glitching between worlds—foaming at the mouth, eyes filmed over with something chemical. He backed her up, put it down with three rounds, but not before it bit Juno.

The thing carried a modified strain of rabies, designed to weaponize rage. No incubation. No mercy. It didn’t just infect—it rewired.

It didn’t burn—it settled. A compound, clear as glass, engineered for neurological overwrite. A virus designed for precision decay—not of the body, but of the self.

He tried to stabilize Juno. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Then she lunged. Fast. Too fast. She caught his shoulder before he could blink, tore clean through gear and flesh.

He didn’t blame her. She didn’t want to. The moment she bit him, she recoiled, whined, tail low—recognition. That was the worst part. She still knew him, even as the virus pulled her apart from the inside.

He was missing for twenty-four days.

Sensory overload, neural overstimulation. It whispered words behind his eyes in languages he didn’t know. Showed him images—some real, some not. Sometimes he could hear Juno barking. Sometimes he could feel her claws scrabbling under the door. But the door never opened.

By the third week, he stopped hearing his own heartbeat.

That’s when they came.

They didn’t storm the facility. They unwound it.

Satellite data showed the site go black—no explosion, no exfil, just disappearance. Four hours later, Pandora operatives walked into NATO command with a containment crate and a biometric tag:

ISRAEL SKELTON – STABLE, NOT CLEAN.

They didn’t rescue Israel Skelton. They recovered what was left.

He emerged from the tree line twenty-four days after disappearing in the chaos of his original intended mission—barefoot, shirtless, frostbitten in places, pupils blown wide like he'd seen too much light or none at all. The Caucasus air bit down to -20°C. He didn’t flinch. His mouth was red from biting through his own tongue.

No winter gear. No weapons. No external wounds beyond a bite scar beneath the clavicle and scratch marks from a struggle. His vitals were low but stable. His eyes tracked movement, but slowly, as if blinking through someone else’s dream. He had a look in his eyes that said he’d forgotten how to be touched. He didn’t respond to his name. Not at first. But when one of the med techs mentioned Juno, his entire body twitched. Like a switch had been flipped somewhere deep in the spine. And he collapsed.

The virus should’ve killed him.

PART FIVE

It wasn’t a theoretical agent or black-budget rumor—it was real, engineered in a deep-cut lab nested beneath a former Soviet weather station in the Caucasus. It was a neuro-adaptive pathogen designed to hijack the central nervous system and reroute higher cognition into instinctual, compliant behavior. It killed 92% of test subjects within 48 hours. The rest degraded into paralysis, then organ shutdown. Israel lasted twenty-four days. It didn’t kill him. It wanted to see what would happen when a mind like his—a fractured, high-functioning ghost of a man—was infected and hollowed out.

His body was shutting down when agents got to him. Nerve damage. Fever-induced hallucinations. Skin begins to calcify at the pressure points. The virus had embedded deep, rewriting neural command chains. He wasn’t a man anymore—he was a mind inside a collapsing scaffold. And still, something in him held on.

Israel didn’t survive the infection. He was preserved in failure—kept breathing not out of mercy, but necessity. When the lyssavirus tore through the ghost of a facility, it should have killed him within 72 hours. Instead, it lingered, eating through his cortex while he screamed through clenched teeth, locked in a seizure that wouldn’t end. Juno, his partner, went feral first. He held her down until the tranq hit. They told him she was sedated. Taken away. They said it was over. But he saw her collar in the burn pit two days later. Her nameplate, half-melted. And no one looked him in the eyes after that.

P.A.N.D.O.R.A. didn’t treat the infection. They framed it. They dropped his core temperature to 29°C and threaded nanofilters into his carotid arteries to scrape viral debris before it reached the brainstem. They built something inside him called the Basilisk Lattice—a constant, agonizing balance of inhibition, chemical torture, and slow cellular degradation. The virus wasn’t gone. It was watching. Waiting. For two years, he existed on the edge of rabid oblivion—trapped in a state of cold, lucid rot. Awake in the dark. Listening to his own blood whisper back.

And in those two years, they didn’t leave him alone. They stripped him like carrion. They shattered his sleep cycles. Played looped recordings of his own voice until he stopped flinching. Until he stopped screaming. Until all that remained was the silence they could shape. They didn’t need a man. They needed a housing. A cage that could bite on command.

When the time came, they shut off the lattice. Let the infection rise. And then they dosed him with the serum—a viral override designed not to cure, but to conscript. It didn’t kill the rabies. It taught it loyalty. It fused with the virus like a parasite devouring another parasite—and together, they wrote something new from Israel's last remaining memories.

His mind doesn't remember those two years.

But his body does.

He changed fast. Vocal cords thickened. Musculature rewired itself. He began scent-marking his sleep space. Reflexive aggression emerged during feeding. He lost the word “please.” Gained a growl that split his throat on instinct. And always, always, the same trigger: when someone whispered “Juno,” his head would snap up like it belonged to someone else. “She didn’t make it, did she?” The words came out dead. Flat. A ghost of mourning. They told him what they always told him. That it was out of his hands. That she didn’t suffer. He nodded. And filed the lie away in his chest like a glass shard under the sternum—sharp, silent, and forever present.

The transformation—the first one—happened under fluorescent light and a two-way mirror. They didn’t restrain him. They didn’t need to. He didn’t scream when it started. He folded. Bent at the joints. Skin restructured itself like clay dipped in fire. His teeth grew first. Then his spine. When it was over, a Belgian Malinois stared at the glass, breathing slowly, posture perfect. It didn’t blink. It didn’t bark. It just watched it. And waited.

Five hours later, he was human again. Barely. He said, “Don’t sedate me. I came back on my own.” Then: “It’s in me now. But it’s listening.”

It made him a Malinois. Just like her. Same breed. Same black-mask face. Same stance. Same mournful silence behind the eyes. He doesn’t know if it was science or cruelty. If the virus did it to anchor him—or to mock him. But every time he shifts, every time the fur crawls across his skin and his nails harden into claws, it feels like he’s crawling into her corpse. Like he’s wearing her death as a uniform. There are nights he stares at his reflection mid-shift and wonders if this is what she would’ve seen—if she’d lived long enough to see what they turned him into.

He doesn’t remember who he used to be. Not clearly. Only shapes. Smells. The taste of blood after a fight. The sound of her tags jangling at his side. The man he was is gone. The thing that remains is reflex wrapped in skin. He didn’t survive the virus. He just got overwritten by something more useful.

PART SIX

Now, he obeys. Sometimes he sleeps on the floor, curled against the wall. Sometimes he wakes up in transition—jaw half-shifted, spine twitching. Once, they found him pacing the perimeter of the residential floor at 4:12 a.m., tail visible, body naked and unashamed, eyes tracking the doors like they owed him blood. He doesn’t bark often. But when he does, he apologizes afterward. Quietly. Every time.

He no longer grieves. He no longer trusts memory. When asked what the change feels like, he doesn’t say transformation. He says compliance. He says obedience. He says: “I don’t need the leash anymore. I’ve swallowed it.”

P.A.N.D.O.R.A. still calls the serum experimental. The mortality rate is high. But Israel lived. They call him a success. A miracle. But inside, he knows the truth:

He was the control group.

The thing they broke to see what would happen.

The weapon that remembers how to beg.

And when the kill order comes, he doesn’t hesitate.

He listens. And he obeys.

[shepchasingtail]

i'm gonna give u head(aches)

[shepchasingtail]

Shep sat still, too still, the kind of still that only came from wrestling instinct. His ears pivoted when Goblin said “no choking for you,” and Shep’s tail gave a slow, deliberate thump against the floor. Amusement. Goblin’s touch skimmed along his snout—light, careful, almost affectionate. It made something in Shep’s chest twist, a reflex half-buried under scar tissue and sharp teeth. He didn’t lean in, but he didn’t pull away either, his body suspended somewhere between tolerance and reluctant craving. “You rub me like that again,” he muttered, the distortion in his voice softening as the modulator continued its calibration, “and I’m gonna start coming down here more often.” The grin that followed was full of teeth, feral and amused. He gave his collar a shake, as if that might jostle the programming loose.

Amber eyes tracked the movement of Goblin’s fingers across the panels, the faint static flicker of augmented overlays reflecting off his pupils. The low growl that buzzed from deep in his chest wasn’t hostile—just reactive. The touch on his face earned a faint twitch, a canine instinct halfway between distrust and a reluctant lean-in. The contact was careful, soft in a way he wasn’t used to. Foreign. His breath stirred against Goblin’s wrist, low and humid, but he stayed still, eyes flicking upward under the heavy curve of his brow.

Shep’s jaw flexed slightly under Goblin’s hand, the pat too gentle to be threatening, too intimate not to register. His eyes didn’t leave him—watching the squint of concentration, the fine-tuned muscle memory of fingers working across augmented displays. The hum of the collar’s diagnostics stirred something primal in him, a subtle vibration under his skin that made his ears twitch and the fur along his spine bristle. He felt the shift in pitch before he heard it—before it sank into the core of him like a key finally turning.

Then came the override.

It slipped into his system quiet as a scalpel—no pain, just the hush of something taking hold. The familiar fuzz at the edges of his hearing fizzled out. The background interference, the fractured loops of his own voice echoing wrong inside his skull—gone. A foreign silence settled in its place.

And when he spoke again, it was like hearing himself in real-time for the first time in months.

“…Huh.” Low and fuzzy with digital interference, but it was stabilizing. Less broken. The modulators were syncing.

The deeper frequency hit.

Then his voice came. Not the garbled snarl of damaged hardware, not the half-barked glitches he’d gotten used to. This was smoother. Deeper. Something closer to him. “Damn,” he said slowly, voice curling low in his throat. There was a lag of breath—more reflex than need—before he answered again. This time, the voice came cleaner. Warmer. Human, mostly. The predator was tucked behind the vowels, crouched in the cadence. “You really are good with your hands.” He didn’t bother hiding the grin that followed—feral, cocky, teeth catching the light as his tags gave a soft clink against the floor.

“I'm curious...” Shepherd drawled, rising just a little, eyes locked on Goblin’s. “You modding me to function better, or just to sound sexier when I threaten someone?” He lifted his head slightly, inspecting Goblin with a glint of sharp-toothed smirk beneath the curve of his jaw. “That was sexy. If I didn't know any better... you did this just to hear me say your name in Dolby.”

When the water was set down, Shep didn’t move toward it immediately. He stayed where he was—grounded in the moment. Listening. Goblin’s last few words drifted over like static through the synapses, and Shep’s pupils narrowed—not in judgment, but in attention. That kind of honesty cut through cleaner than code. No binary there. “Good,” Shep muttered, licking his teeth. “Black-and-white thinking gets people killed.” He hiked a leg to scratch a pesky itch. His tags gave a quiet clink as he stopped and adjusted his weight, nosing the water once but not drinking. “You want things messy?” A flash of a grin, unrepentant. “You’re talking to the wrong dog for clean lines. I’ve been a walking grey area since birth.”

"Consider that noted." He smiled again, and this time there was something wolfish beneath it—some heat that simmered just under the playfulness. He watched Goblin work—head down, focused, pushing past exhaustion like it wasn’t chewing him alive. “You know,” Shep said, softer this time, “you should give yourself more credit.” He let that hang, voice even, honest. No grin. No bite. “This collar? This whole damn setup? You’re doing what people twice your rank and ten times your budget couldn’t manage. And you're doing it for me." He gave a rough snort of disbelief. "That’s either genius or madness.”

🎃- "Fortunately, I am surrounded by very proficient tools at my disposal. No choking for you. But I would be very upset." Goblin continued to work at sending the lines of commands to the workstation in the other room. Even as quiet as they'd manage to get it, the hum could be observed from his desk. Layer by later, the augmented reality space showed the progression of his collar being produced. He didn't want to think too heavily upon the circumstances of sexual encounters with Shep being in his fully altered state. There was a mention of a rocket and clearing airspace but he wasn't exactly following. He'd have to return to that topic here in a moment. Goblin looked down at Shep, from the space created between his hinged arm, his side, and his hips. Though he wasn't exactly intentional in his approach, he slowly rubbed the agent's snout. He'd gently caress the muzzle in a manner that was considerate. Soft displays of compassion.

"Give me thirty seconds." He placed his hand by Shep's lower mandible. He'd give a soft pat, rubbing the space. He was trying to find the placement for the synthesizer to save space. He started to type again, flicking the screen and touching several panels, opening and transfiguring different gradients. He squinted, trying to debate which of the wavelengths would be most accurate to the impression of what he might've sounded like. He settled on a pitch that was lower than the initial. Once the coding was scanned for errors, he looked down at Shep again. "Scan." The device ran its diagnostics in a fraction of a second as it was quite an engineering feat for the size a BIC lighter. "Now? I'm too invested to let you stay this way. We are going to give you a v2.0. experience." Every biometric statistic; outside of blood or neurological status, was populated. He input a series of coding. Once he leaned down again, he placed it near the approximate location of the modulator. It's base function was overridden. Through absent electric pulses, it began to encode the chipset.

"Give it ten seconds and you should hear what I'd assume is a natural overlap with your human form." Goblin stroked the display, returning the screen back to the visual representation of the collar's progress. He cleared his throat. "Don't confuse me for someone or something else. I don't always want or like things to be clean." He found his water canteen and a wide mouth cup. He put the half-full container upon the ground for Shep to drink, freely. "I can handle many situations and circumstance. Things can be complicated yet simple, at the same time. Things don't have to be black or white, for me. I just like to explore and to be stimulated."

[shepchasingtail]

Shep didn’t stop walking but his pace shifted just enough to acknowledge Toni trailing behind. Like a shepherd tolerating a particularly mouthy goat. “Is that right?” he drawled, voice low and worn at the edges, like the throat it came from hadn’t been built for chatter. “Didn’t realize I was being graded on my Italian.” His hands were stuffed in his jacket pockets, shoulders tucked in slightly, gait loose in that way that made it impossible to tell if he was relaxed or just perpetually on the edge of something feral. "Enough to be well-rounded. Danish, English, French, and German are my primary languages." His gaze narrowed in a way that said you’ve just stepped into something, whether you meant to or not. "Mi ankaŭ parolas la Esperanton lingvon..."

Shep stopped, turned, and this time—moved. It wasn’t a warning or a threat. It was fluid, fast, and with just enough force behind it to catch Toni by the collar and steer him hard into the nearest wall. Not violent, but unmistakably deliberate. His forearm pressed just under Toni’s collarbone, holding him there—not enough to hurt, but enough to get his point across. That lazy grin was gone. Whatever breath Toni was about to draw next got caught in his throat, because the look in Israel’s eyes wasn’t just annoyed.

It was focused.

Intent made flesh.

“You talk a lot, Toni,” Shep murmured, his voice a slow, low scratch of gravel, lips a breath away from brushing the curve of the thief’s cheek. His eyes, too sharp and too tired to lie, scanned Toni’s face like he was reading a map only he could decode. He leaned in closer—not quite touching, but crowding all the same. That kind of proximity you don’t earn, you survive. “You want intention?” Shepherd breathed. “This is me, being pretty goddamn intentional.” He grabbed the front of Toni’s shirt—more to anchor than to restrain—and kissed him.

Hard. Certain. Like punctuation at the end of an argument no one else had been invited to. There was nothing delicate about it. No gentle testing of boundaries, no slow lean-in to ask permission. It was the kind of kiss that knocked the breath sideways, all grit and fire and reckless precision. A collision that said, you wanted intention? Here. Take it. The metal tags on his collar swung forward with the motion, clinking softly as they brushed Toni’s chest. One of those subtle, animal reminders that Shep was something trained once, maybe, but never truly tamed.

It was violent in its honesty. No preamble, no grace. Just lips and teeth and breath crashing into Toni like a wave breaking over stone. He bit down, not enough to bleed but enough to warn, like he was tasting the defiance he’d just pinned to the wall. His tags clinked again, louder this time, as his body pressed closer, metal catching the heat between them. When he pulled back, it wasn’t by much. His mouth hovered there, just shy of Toni’s, breath brushing skin like a whisper of threat or promise. Perhaps both.

“Intentional enough for you?” The agent asked quietly, voice rough and close. He let go of the other with a short, sharp tug, smoothing the fabric with a rough drag of his knuckles. An almost thoughtful motion.

Then he turned, already walking away.

No smirk. No parting quip. Just the echo of that kiss, and the faint scent of adrenaline he left behind as he departed for the lift. He stood rigid in front of the lift, jaw clenched, eyes locked on the seam between the doors like he could will them open faster. One scarred finger jabbed the button again. Click. Sharp and impatient, even though the backlit arrow was already glowing. The hum of machinery rumbled in the shaft. Slow. Too slow. "Un-fucking-believable."

"I don't always steal for fun," Antonio counters. "I also steal for profit. Or at least, I used to, before coming here. But poking... that is for fun, mi bambino. We've got to find our kicks around here somehow. Or else, we would get so, so very bored..."

His eyebrows quirk. "Oh, si? How many? Do you know Esperanto? That's a very rare one, not many can speak it—"

When it seems Shep is done with his shit, Toni knows he can't just leave it there. Not with him not having the last word.

"Ciao usually means hello, you know," he muses, catching up with the slighter man. "You can use it to say goodbye, but it's so informal... arrivederci is more declarative. Intentional. You must not be the sort of fellow who lacks intention."

[shepchasingtail]

Shep sat there, breathing through clenched teeth, jaw squared so hard it made his temple throb. He didn’t respond, not immediately. Just watched Flux, that irritating mix of gentleness and brutality, like he didn’t know which side he’d lean into more. He probably didn’t. None of them did. The words hung in the air like smoke — you signed your life away. It struck something deeper than Shep wanted to admit. He let the words sit and marinate. At least it was your choice right? Some people didn't get that. He breathed out a bitter laugh that didn’t sound like anything close to amusement. “You think I signed up for this?” he muttered, jaw tight. “That I walked in with a pen and a dream?” His eyes cut to Flux, sharp despite the haze of pain in them. He laughed. The sound a broken chuckle. "Wasn't exactly lining up to drink the Kool-Aid," he muttered, gaze fixed on some distant memory. "They came to me more than once, back when I still had some say in the matter. Offered their pitch, gave me their golden ticket. I told them to fuck off... politely, at first. Then not so much." He scoffed, almost a laugh, but there was no humor in it. His tail lashed violently under the sheets at the thought as it flooded back into him.

"I wanted them out of my face. And I sure as hell didn’t want to be part of another leash-and-muzzle outfit with a savior complex. But here I am. Funny how things go sideways when you’re bleeding out, dying of Rabies, mind breaking apart. I didn’t sign a contract. I didn’t shake hands. I begged. I begged someone... anyone... to stop it. I didn’t care how. Just didn’t wanna die alone with nothing left of me but drool and static. That isn’t a choice. That’s not a contract... that’s a fucking hit job with paperwork.” He coughed, grimaced, then pushed through the burn in his chest. He clenched his jaw so tight his teeth ached. He shifted in the bed, muscles twitching like they still hadn’t gotten the message that he wasn’t in a fight anymore. His voice lowered, rougher. “They saw a dying man and carved me into what they wanted. I was just too far gone to argue with them...”

The silence that followed was ugly and thick.

“I never I wanted to be this thing.” He had the shell-shocked stare of someone who had been brushed by death too many times. The dog in him felt everything too loud, too deep. Even grief didn’t come quiet anymore. “You think I don’t get it? I’ve held more dead weight in my arms than I care to remember. Watched blood soak through uniforms that still smelled like laundry soap. I’ve seen people smile one second and be a corpse the next. You think that shit doesn’t brand itself into your skull?” His eyes roamed like a wary animal in a kennel. “I used to count, you know. Names. Faces. Kept track of the ones we lost. And then one day I woke up and couldn’t remember the last one’s name. Just a blur of screaming and gunfire and silence after.” He winced, he could still smell the blood on the walls and in the floors of Atlantis.

“I know people die. This job... this place... it eats people. Chews them up and forgets what they tasted like. The thing is… I used to not care. Numb was easy. Simple. You grieve by moving on.” He paused. Fingers tapping restlessly against the fabric of the blanket. “But then they changed me. And now I feel it. All of it. Can’t shut it off. Every loss feels like someone’s digging claws into my gut and twisting. And I don’t know if that’s the dog in me or just whatever the hell they woke up when they saved me.” His throat bobbed on the memory, and his gaze dropped. “So don’t mistake this for innocence. I know the cost.”

Shep looked away then, chewing on the inside of his cheek, dog-ears twitching at every shift in the room. He bit his lip lightly, tongue running over the back of his teeth. Flux’s hand touched his head, and Shep’s body flinched instinctively, a twitch in his lip like he was ready to snap but it didn’t go further. Shep didn’t pull away, didn’t growl. Didn’t have the strength or maybe didn’t want to. Just sat there, staring past him, heat flushing his ears. “Fucking dog brain,” he muttered. “One pat and I go all soft. Disgusting.” But his voice lost its bite. It was frayed around the edges, more tired than angry. He swallowed down the next breath like it burned. “You’re not wrong. People die. They always do. Hell, I probably should’ve by now. I’ve been on death’s leash more times than I can count. And every time, I thought I was getting used to it. That it’d stop meaning something.”

His voice cracked just slightly. “But it still means something.” He exhaled slowly, the rage in him cooling into something duller. “I’m not dying here. I made that clear the second I sat my ass upright. If I have to claw my way out of this place, I will.” He let Flux clean the blood off without protest, tension bleeding out of him with every swipe of the cloth. The words that followed: You're a good boy should’ve pissed him off. Should’ve made him bristle like hell. But it didn’t. Instead, he just blinked slowly, staring into Max's eyes, the fight starting to drain out of him. “If I ever flatline… don’t let them make me into something worse. Don’t let them reuse me. But if they do... I don't want to remember any of my life.” Shep let out a breathy, weary little chuckle. “…And don't threaten to drug me unless you’re gonna cuddle me after, jackass.”

Oh poor Shep he was going to be one of these kinds of agents. The ones who took every single thing that happened there so deeply. He wouldn't last like that, he'd emotionally burn himself out and be dust int he wind before they all knew it. Not that Max didn't sympathize as much as he could, he remembered the first time he realized faces were missing in the line up. A warm hand patting his head was gone, one of the older agents who would ask how training was going. Worse yet- the ones his own age til he was left one of the youngest. "Grow the fuck up Shep. Someone is always dead. People always die. You signed your life away- but at least it was your choice right? Some people didn't get that." his words were harsh but his expression was soft and pitying as he watched the other. He liked Shepherd. They were friends. If he had died he would be one of the ones Max didn't crack jokes about. Max was a morbid boy. His mother said it all the time.

Max sighed and just sat back watching the other struggle, if he broke free well- he could be restrained there was no shortage of metal to fold around him to keep him still. Cocoon him till there was nothing he could do to himself. Instead it seem his own fatigue restrained him. "We're all going to fucking die here Shepherd. I'm going to die here. You're going to die here." he said taking a warm washcloth and cleaning up blood and bile where he could. Careful not to get himself bit or mauled. He was if nothing else nimble.

"It really is ok Shep. You're ok. You're safe with me. I didn't mean nothing is wrong, I just meant you aren't in danger right now and even if you were. I'd protect you. You're a good boy." he said gently patting the other on the head affectionately. "So chill before I drug you. You are only hurting yourself."

[shepchasingtail]

What?

[shepchasingtail]

Shepherd laid rigidly next to Valentine, jaw tight, nostrils flaring like a warning. The moment Valentine started leaking that incense parade from his skin, Shepherd’s mood soured like milk. The sterile stink of disinfectant was bad enough. Now it was layered with sandalwood, cypress, and something else that curled in his throat like rot. Myrrh. Whatever the fuck that was. His lips pressed into a line. He didn’t look at Valentine right away. No, just stared at the wall like he was trying not to lose his shit on the other agent. He picked at the bandages clinging to the parts of him that still bled like they belonged to someone human. His foot tapped. Not from nerves, but restraint. His nose twitched once. “The hell is this?” he muttered, squinting at Valentine like he’d just started juggling crystals and chanting moon phases. “You trying to heal me or summon a fucking forest god?”

His lips curled slightly, but not in a smile.

“You smell like a goddamn temple,” he muttered, nose wrinkling as he turned his face half away. His voice was low, rough around the edges. “Like someone stuffed a spa menu in a crematorium and set it on fire.” His pupils pinched, a growl feathering the edges of his throat as if his body was undecided whether it wanted to bite or bolt. The scents were sharp and sticky on his palate—unnatural, overwhelming. His hackles, metaphorical or not, were all the way up. He sniffed, winced, then leaned forward with a dry exhale through his teeth. “Look, I get that you're trying to help. And I’m sure this voodoo fragrance bath does wonders for most people. But my nose isn't most people’s.”

His gaze flicked toward Valentine, then lower—to the shimmer on his skin, the bare chest, the whole ethereal picture of him trying to be comforting. The heat from Val's skin shimmered in the air, carrying scent after scent like a fucking parade of wellness. Shepherd grimaced as the wave hit again, sharp and saccharine, nothing subtle about it. “I don’t know what tree you crawled out of or which glittery bastard told you this was helpful, but it’s not. Not to me.” His gaze was sharp now, cutting. “I’ve got scent receptors that could track a corpse through a hurricane. You think this is calming? It’s a sensory ambush. This is cruel and unusual punishment... PETA is going to break through the goddamn doors and put bullet in my forehead just to put me out of my misery...” He shifted in his seat, one leg bouncing now, twitchy with discomfort he wasn’t bothering to mask. “Sandalwood smells like varnish. Cypress is worse. And that last one?” He scoffed, the sound short and bitter. “Smells like a funeral that got rained out.”

He looked Val over once more—bare-chested, glowing, giving his all.

“…If you wanna help,” Shepherd muttered, nose twitching, “Maybe try not smelling like a haunted candle store.”

A long, tense pause.

He waved a hand through the haze, face twisted in clear, canine annoyance. “If you’re hellbent on playing oil diffuser,” he grumbled, “Eh... try something I can actually stomach. Lavender. Chamomile. Valerian. Vanilla, maybe. Coconut, if you’ve got it.” He growled, feeling anything but calm. The air still reeked like incense and funeral home. He muttered under his breath, low and venom-dry, “Not whatever this temple-of-the-damned bullshit is.”

"At this rate... just pour embalming fluid on me and call it a day. No offense, Val..."

valentine hart was not a doctor. not a nurse. hell, not even an acedia agent trained in medicine. but he volunteered to help out in the medbay anyway⸻ which was certainly better than just being idle or construction work. though, valentine didn't really expect to be used this way : his shirt off, skin chilled by the sterile air, sitting on the bedside. and he couldn't really refuse the faith agent that suggested this method, especially when he knew it would work. especially when he could make someone feel better. always the people - pleaser, really. so val looked at the injured agent and shrugged with a smile, the whole aromatherapy might seem like some quack doctor bullshit⸻ but he supposed it was a little different when it was an alien - given power. and he closed his eyes. inhale. exhale. a shimmering heat enveloped val's body, aromas drifting from his skin and slowly permeating in the air. the scent of sandalwood was the first to be noticeable, deep and warm like sunlight, its astringent and antiseptic properties jumpstarting cellular healing. then, cypress. sharp and clean, meant to induce mental clarity and lessen stress. then myrrh, to reduce pain. and a low moan unconsciously escaped val as he continued to produce these scents from his own body, alleviating even his own fatigue, before opening one eye to look at shepherd. " is there a particular scent you want to smell ? anything at all that could help ? "

[shepchasingtail]

The soft whir of wheels broke the quiet hum of the common room as Shep rolled in, posture loose but eyes sharp. He didn’t stop right away, instead he made a lazy circle near the couch, like a dog scoping out where to settle. When Veil finally spoke, eyes still closed, Shep let out a low chuckle and pulled to a stop. “Didn’t realize I needed a reason to breathe the same stale air as you,” he said, tone dry as old bone. “But hey... if we’re guessing motives based on vibes, you sure you’re not just bored and hoping I’d give you something to look at?”

He stretched his arms across the top of the chair, fingers flexing slowly like he was shaking off tension that ran too deep to be touched by meds. “As for my 'pent-up pheromones'… could be that, sure. Or maybe you're just smelling a guy who hasn't had decent coffee, a shower without supervision, or ten minutes without someone poking him with a needle.” He chuckled quietly. “Real seductive.”

A pause, longer this time. Something flickered behind his eyes. Not invitation, not exactly. Just heat looking for somewhere to go.

“Unless you're volunteering to help with any of the above.…” He gestured vaguely toward the door. “You might wanna stop sniffing around like you’re curious. I bite when I’m bored.” A glint of something more curious behind the humor. His tone dropped just a touch, wry and edged. "But if you're offering to help me burn some of the restlessness off… well. I do have wheels now."

Shep’s wheelchair rattled as he edged closer to the couch, his gaze flicking to Veil’s legs stretched out like a barrier. The stubborn dog inside him wasn’t having it—he wanted in, wanted to be close, no matter how awkward or clumsy it felt. With a rough grunt, he reached forward, grabbing the edge of the cushion, and without bothering with finesse, he threw himself onto the couch. His body hit the seat with a heavy thud, one leg dangling off the side, the other curled up beneath him. The wounded muscle screamed, Shep moaned into the cushions. "I'm fine. Thanks for asking."

@shepchasingtail

"I assume you have a good reason for approaching me?" the Lust agent spoke as he continued to lounge against the couch in the common room, arm behind his head and eyes closed as he spoke. Even as he greeted the other, he made no move to get up or even look at them, eyes still closed as if he was just simply unbothered. "Though considering what I can feel from your pent-up pheromones, I can make an educated guess."