#Cellular Examination

[safination]

Request. For Alastor here it might be a little ooc but oh well. maybe for whatever reason reader has to go somewhere for like a week and foams strange force called me and plot says alastor CANT come with. How would he be. Would he we silently suffering cuz boy doesn’t have a cellular device or would he be okay.

THANK U

Alastor taps on the armrest with the tips of his fingers. Isn’t seven years already enough? Now you have to go out to another city while he’s stuck here in the hotel. It was only a week anyway, and it’s not like Alastor would leave his job just to join you.

He wouldn’t.

 . . . He would.

He would not be doing such a thing.

Alastor would survive seven days without you, it would be like you never left at all.

The first day wasn’t any trouble. There was only this little mishap at the kitchen where he made two cups of coffee instead of one. The steam from your cup rises until it goes cold. So, Alastor is alone in this kitchen, before the others are fully awake, with a coffee mug that’s getting cold. The coffee gets thrown out and washed. Alastor is going to be fine without you.

The third day was the same as the first – absolutely not trouble! Of course . . . there was this tiny, tiny accident where he called out your name. Alastor was looking for one of his bowties and called out to ask if you knew where it was. It was automatic – a habit. He just calls out your name. It confuses him when you don’t answer. Alastor walks around the bedroom, wondering why you weren’t answering when it hits him. So, all in all, a great third day

The seventh day . . . is when Alastor finally thinks that maybe, he isn’t doing fine. Everyone is avoiding him. The moment they spot him, they turn the other way and leave or head to the nearest door to hide. Now, this isn’t an unusual conundrum. It’s quite welcomed, actually. It only gets a bit annoying when he couldn’t complete a full sentence before someone runs off. There hasn’t been anything new at all! Nothing that could impact his mood, at all.

As things do, the week eventually ends, and the door to his bedroom opens. You’re smiling at him, showing off that little knickknack you bought for him. Alastor takes the present, putting it away before fully examining it, and just . . . slowly . . . melts. . . in your arms.

[tinydefector]

quietly whispers (for your consideration)

ratchet x human reader

sex pollen

Pheromones

Ratchet x human reader

Word count: 2k

Warning: smut, thigh fucking, sex pollen/ pheromone spray, #valveplug

Ratchet masterlist

Request and ask open, read pinned post

So what about, Cybertronians react to perfume in the way humans react to Sex pollen hehehe. I love the idea of human perfume mix with skin contact makes an almost intoxicating scent and sends Cybertronians feral when they get a hint of it. They love how it makes humans skin taste, and it over rides their interface systems.

So enjoy.

_____________

The human moves around Ratchet's medical lab looking at different vials and flasks their eyes flickering over the difference Liquids. " Hey ratchet what are all of these different vials?" They call out to the medic. Ratchet looked up from his work when he heard the human call out to him. He put down the datapad he was looking over and walked over to where the human was examining the various vials on the shelves.

"Those are different medical compounds and chemicals I use in treatments and repairs," Ratchet explained. "The colourful ones contain powerful medications and sedatives. The clear ones hold things like bonding agents or nanite solutions. Others are a mix of experimental solutions" 

He pointed to a vial with a swirling pink and purple liquid. "That one is a broad-spectrum energon healing compound I developed. It speeds cellular repair and regeneration, within Cybertronian functions." His optical ridges furrowed as he watched the human carefully look over each vial. 

"You know better than to touch anything in here, less you break something and contaminate yourself with something i can't fix" Ratchet said sternly. "Some of this equipment and chemicals could seriously harm an organic being like yourself." Despite his gruff tone, his words held more care than scolding. Biology was complex, and humans were so small and fragile compared to Cybertronians. He hoped his favourite little patient and helping hand was being careful not to endanger themselves.

"It's just fascinating is all, kinda reminds me of a mediaeval apothecary" they chuckle. "Do you ever just take samples for fun, like when you're out and about on planets?" They ask, they were always curious over what things ratchet tended to keep.

Ratchet huffed a small laugh at the comparison to a mediaeval apothecary. "Fascinating perhaps, but also dangerous if mishandled," he remarked.

He considered the human's question for a moment. While most of his samples were acquired for medical necessity, he couldn't deny a certain curiosity about other life forms and ecosystems. 

"On occasion I have collected specimens from planets we've visited, simply for observational study," Ratchet admitted.  He walked over to retrieve a data pad containing photos and analyses of plant samples from their recent away missions. "Here, let me show you some I recorded on our last stop." Ratchet enlarged the images for the human to easily see. "This radiation-resistant lichen seems to secrete a natural antifreeze. And these fungi act as natural air filters in their toxic environment." The medic's optics glinted with interest as he discussed his findings. Perhaps exploration held some appeal, even for a skeptic like himself.

They stand close to Ratchet looking over different specimens, “some of these plants look like they would make really nice perfumes'' they mumble while flicking through the different photos reading the small information bubbles around them. As the human stood near Ratchet examining the data on his specimens, something about their scent suddenly registered in his olfactory sensors. An overly sweet aroma was emanating strongly from their skin, but it was clearly not the normal scent of an unadulterated human.“perfume?forgive me, I'm not accustomed to what that is?” he asked with a raised optical ridge

Their eyes flicker to Ratchet. “It's like scented alcohol or oil we put on our skin, most times it alters our scent. We humans happen to have a big fascination with them, and have millions of different perfumes.” they explain before tilting their head in slight amusement. “I'm surprised Cybertronians don't have something similar” they reply. 

“once millennia's back cybertron did try making things like that, but due to our metallic body's it doesn't stay on us, or it tented to cause rust spots from the ones they did try and make” Ratchet explained, sensors flared as he analysed the unfamiliar composition, immediately detecting unusual chemical traces that seemed to send strange pulses through his neurocircuitry. The smell was strangely enticing yet worryingly off-kilter at the same time. He tried venting deeply to clear his nasal chamber but the scent only grew stronger. 

"What in the Allspark..." the medic muttered, not meaning for the human to hear. His optics dimmed slightly as redundant calibrations ran, trying to make sense of why the scent was affecting his processor. Ratchet crouched down and focused his sharp gaze on the human in concern. They smile up at him offering for him to examine. 

"By my scanner  it seems as if you've been contaminated with something. Are you positive these ‘perfumes’ are safe? I need to analyse your system for potential toxins." He asked while trying to figure out why the scent was having such an effect on him, it was as if his processor had thrown care to the wind. 

They let out a laugh as his optics try analysing, he moves closer taking another inhale of their scent "haha yes Ratchet, it isn't harmful, humans have been using it for hundreds of years" they state. “Ratchet are you alright?” They ask while cupping his face. 

Ratchet's sensors were in disarray as the potent scent overwhelmed his circuits. He vented heavily again, coolant failing to properly flush the heated energon now racing through his fuel lines. His optics flickered with minor instability as calibration errors cropped up across multiple systems.

Though lacking his usual gruffness. Ratchet leaned in closer, trying to pinpoint the source, but only succeeded in inhaling more of the intoxicating aroma. A rumble rose in his chassis against his better judgement. “ your scent...", he struggled to find words between fragmented logic protocols. "It's affecting my sensor net. Overloading my functions. I need to...run a full examination. Determine why this perfume is making your scent overwhelming..." 

His field pulsed with uncharacteristic confusion and static electricity. Ratchet knew he should contact someone for assistance, but found himself unable to call out in his muddled state. The human's safety was his top concern, yet he feared touching them in this condition. Some natural, impossible chemistry was at play here, and the medic had no control over his compromised systems.

As gently as his shaking grip allowed, Ratchet grasped the human in his large palm to properly scan them from close range. His detailed medical scanners searched every inch, They gasp as Ratchet glossa meets their throat, fingers shootout to grip the side of his faceplate. 

A throttled moan escaped his vocalizer against his will. That light touch from their hands nearly shorted out his already fritzing systems. vents plume in hot exhaust. His interface panel felt too hot and tight , barely clinging to integrity protocols as the pleasure centres of his processor went haywire. 

“your scent...overloading my sensory net...cannot...resist...” Ratchet calls out through groans,his grip unconsciously tightened around the small organic in his hand. His free hand scrambled for purchase on the table, denting the metal. Something primal and powerful part of him was unravelling his mental restraints, and no calibration or forced shutdown seemed able to stop it.

Their eyes go wide. "Ratchet! Are you alright do in need to get a Perceptor or first aid?" They ask as the medic leans down into their shoulder, denta nipping at the skin as his digits try removing their shirt as quickly as he physically can. They yelp as he pulls them back together with him, his lips work along their smaller frame desperate to taste the sweet flavour and scent that had taken to their skin. capturing them against his heaving chassis. His optics blazed with static and uncontrolled charge.

"No...don't leave," Ratchet growled through clenched denta. Every fibre of his being screamed for more. His panel snapping open with an echoing click, massively engorged cables twitching in the open. Coolant and lubricant poured from his interface array, drenching the human involuntarily as he grinding against them, bright glowing pink stains their pants and paints their skin in his transfluid. 

His hands trembled, barely able to restrain their desire to claim the tiny body before him. Rational thought was impossible under the onslaught of chemical signals frying his cognition. Ratchet bucked erratically against them, whole body illuminated by dancing electricity. 

"Need you... interface protocols are in-gauged, can't fight it...please,!" he pants to the human as his spike presses against their back. Blunt node swelled monstrously at its tip.

Their back arches into each grind of Ratchet's spike. “Ratchet!” They whine out. 

Their soft noises egg ratchet on, his servos move quickly, trying to discard the pants sticking to their form, he hisses out in annoyance before finally getting them off their legs, throwing them across the medical room. Twisting them around so he can see thier eyes. 

Ratchet growls eagerly spike swiftly sliding between their thighs and against their stomach. His spike is already dripping with lubricant. As he ruts against them. Each inhale of their scent has him spiralling more. 

"Is this what you want, sweetspark? My spike filling you up?" His voice is rough with lust. Gently spreading their legs wider. Watching the bright pink stick to their legs "Primus... I bet you feel amazing." 

He moves slowly pressing his spike against them, tormenting as he presses into them inch by inch. Needy moans leave their lips, hands clinging to him desperately as they roll their hips. “Ratchet!” They cry out. 

 Their stomach bulges from Ratchet's spike, the bright pink splatter across their skin nearly has ratchet overloading from the mere sensation, not to mention the intoxicating scent of their skin. Ratchet groans deeply at the sight of his spike bulging their abdomen, his engines rumbling with feral satisfaction. One hand strokes almost reverently over the taut swell.

"So stunning like this... stretched wide around me, primus so small and tight”

Slowly he draws his hips back, then thrusts forward, grinding deeply into them. setting a steady pace, rockin into the slick heat enveloping his spike. Ducking his head, he captures their shoulder between his denta, glossa flicking against the sensitive skin as he tries to lap the perfume from their skin.

Ratchet growls deeply, thrusting harder at the way they clench around his spike. The table creaks and trembles under the force of his movements but he can't bring himself to slow down. 

"Yes, just like that," he rasps. "Keep that sweet valve squeezing me. Feels so good..."

captures their cries in a heated kiss. "Want you to overload for me," Ratchet purrs. "Let me feel you come undone around my spike, sweetspark..."

His engines are roaring furiously now, spike swelling and throbbing powerfully inside their smaller body. Ratchet groans deeply as they clench around him again, the feeling of that slick heat clenching and rippling around his spike is incredible. 

"That's it love, overload for me... you feel exquisite. So good" 

The sensations quickly become too much for his own systems to bear,the feeling, scent and the pure primal heat running through his system hits hard. With a staticky shout of Julian's name, he buries himself to the hilt and overloads powerfully. His transfluid gushes hot and thick, pumping deep into their smaller form. 

His engines vent heavily as he leans over them, face pressed into their shoulder, a deep guttural moan leaves him, Shuddering with aftershocks. When he finally leans stack to take in their exhaust and truly used form their lungs desperately inhale and exhale drawing in air as if it was their life line. 

Bright pink transfluid pudding around them as Ratchet's systems finally subsided. His optics flicker on them. “ Are you alright?” he asked softly, his human companion replied with a soft whine and nod. “ Remind me not to wear my perfume out in public” the call out in shuttered words. It makes ratchet chuckle as he leans back down to them. “a wise decision” 

[randomfoggytiger]

do you have any gossamer specific fanfic recs?

Collector's Edition: A Gust of Gossamers

I do, indeed! :DDD

Decided to pick authors who have crossover with each other, be it collaborations or dedicated mentions.

**Note**: There will be typos-- will edit them out later.

Loose chronological order below~

msk's

Home by Another Way

Neither of his parents had offered to come, so she'd stayed in North Carolina though it meant a run in with Blevens.

"You should have been with your family. Not hanging around my hospital room."

Truth be told, part of her hadn't wanted to come home and face the sadness.

Post Beyond the Sea Mulder and Scully bond over their fathers.

Final Arrangements

He'd insisted on bringing her home from the hospital, even though her mother had offered. Scully had sensed that it was important to him and had suggested her mother spend some time with Bill before he had to return to California.

Post Redux II Mulder finds Scully's pre-Gethsemane funeral plans.

The Brixton Witch by Kel & msk 

She paused for a moment, one hand on the car door and waited for the lightheadedness to fade. Her hesitation wasn't lost on Mulder, who shot a concerned glance in her direction....

It wasn't as if she could order her body to hustle that cellular repair because she was tired of feeling cold all the time. If it wasn't for her silk-blend long underwear, she'd be shivering in the late October breeze.

She firmly shut the car door, and strode toward the shop. Mulder overtook her, reaching around to push the door open.

Post Redux II Scully and Mulder investigate a haunted bakery.

And So It Goes

I sat up, heart pounding, gasping for breath as Mulder stumbled into the room. His hair was sticking up in the back like a rooster's comb, and if I wasn't having a breakdown, I would have laughed. "A bad one?" he asked.

"I give it a nine." I ran a shaky hand through my hair as Mulder brought me a glass of water from the bathroom.

"Yeah, but I bet you can't dance to it," he quipped as he handed me the glass and sat next to me on the bed. I took a long drink and wondered why people bring you water when you're upset. He rubbed my back as I took deep breaths and felt my heart try to escape my chest. "Which one was it? The one on the examining table?"

I bitterly regretted telling him about that particular horror show.

Post One Son Scully and Mulder investigate another abductee case.

Mezzo Luna

"I think Carmela's emotions were carried through the food she cooked to the people who ate it. She was angry when she made the ravioli, and the people who ate it became enraged." He sat back and folded his arms, as if daring her to take her best shot.

Scully took a sip of her club soda and fought a smile.

Mulder and Scully investigate a town embroiled with heightened emotions (and confront a few of their own.)

"The Freedom Squad Birthday by Kel & msk 

"He wants a Freedom Squad Battle Fortress."

"I'm sure he'll like that mitt just fine."

Mulder was grinding the ball into the glove, forming the pocket. Which really wasn't necessary, but still, that's what a guy does with a new glove.

"I went to World O' Toys and Big Box Toys in Alexandria. I called a couple of stores in Arlington. I didn't get very far."

"He didn't give you much notice," Doggett said. As in, maybe if you talked to him more than once a month, you would have known earlier.

AU-- Post Existence Mulder is unstable, flaky, and constantly in and out of Scully and William's life.

mimic117's

Supermarket Sweep

Why don't they include this in the training? Especially for guys. It's gonna come up at some point. It's inevitable. You get comfortable with each other. You trust each other. You'd even die for each other. So why shouldn't you do this one little thing, too? Easy, right?

Wrong.

There's too many choices.

S1 Mulder is sent on a period shopping expedition.

One Another's Best

"I miss her, Mulder."

He places his hand on her sleeve.

"I know."

Post Paper Clip Mulder understands why Scully is snappy at work.

War Stories

How do you burn a ring inside a shirt cuff? He just smirked when I asked about that one.

He does that a lot. Never really explains anything, just shrugs or smirks.

Post Bad Blood Mulder's dry cleaner is used to regular damage.

Imperfect Penance

It's a dangerous assignment, I won't kid you about that. I knew what I was getting into from the start, although I wasn't happy about going in without backup. Still, Skinner was right. I couldn't risk the operation just because I feel naked without her next to me. But she found out anyway. Wish I could have seen her worming the details out of Skinner.

Pine Bluff Variant Mulder is glad to have Scully on the "in."

Getting By

It took a moment to achieve upright and stable, but once she did, Scully found she could shuffle with the best of the octogenarians. She'd made it around the bed, on a steady course to reach the door in under twenty minutes, when she remembered two things. One, there was someone in her apartment. Chances were really good that it was just her mother, who'd called the previous night and used her maternal radar to deduce her child's state of health. But two, she couldn't be sure of that and her gun was safely locked away in her end table. She turned and looked. Way back there. On the other side of the bed.

She swiveled slowly toward the door again and caught sight of the baseball bat standing in the corner.

S6 (or S7) Scully is very sick... and very loopy.

Jersey-deviled

"So *anyway*.... I'd just gotten close to the door when it opened again. The woman standing there yelled, 'Hey! Come on in!' and hauled me into the room."

"Did you get her description?"

"I already told you I didn't. It happened too fast, and once I was inside the room, I was mobbed."

"Right. I forgot."

Mulder and Scully, on the road with concussion stories.

Jaded

"Well, you're not upsetting me, Miss, uh..."

Ms. Cool Cucumber doesn't like it when Hotshot has to remind her of my *real* last name. Wish I could see the look she gave him. She's the one in control here and she seems to think I'm hiding something.

First Person Shooter's Jade Afterglow has thoughts after Scully and Mulder's interrogation.

Coming up Roses

"Look on the bright side, Mulder."

"Is there a bright side?"

"Of course there is. This time you weren't hurt enough to need drugs, so I won't have to listen to your snoring at night."

"Sez you. And I do not snore."

"Yes you do."

"No I don't."

Mulder is scratched up by rose bushes.

Chip Off the Old Block, Chip Off The Old Block 02 - Serendipity, Chip Off The Old Block 03 - Veracity, and Chip Off The Old Block 04 - Duplicity

Trading glances with Mulder, Charlie took on the task of deflecting his sister's annoyance. "We were almost mugged coming out of the gym, Sis. No big deal. We just didn't want to worry you."

"Yeah." Mulder dove through the loophole he'd been handed. "It was just some hop-head trying to score a little cash. We got the bad guy, the cops took him away, and we're both fine. End of story."

Glaring from one man to the other, Scully crossed her arms and lowered her brows. "Why do I get the feeling there's something else you're not telling me?"

AU-- Post Existence Mulder, Scully, and William are awash in Charlie Scully misadventures. (Turns out, William's little powers are genetic.)

Emily Sim's

Aeviternal

He closed the door and scooped up his jacket and a sweater he'd left on the couch. They joined other discarded parts of his wardrobe on his bed. Good to know the bed was good for something.

Post Fire Mulder ruminates on the word 'love'.

Softly

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. It thrums through his body with every beat of his heart, with every step that he takes towards her hospital room. How many times over the years has he done this? He’s only been gone a few minutes to grab some food for himself, but he can’t shake eight years’ worth of hospital visit paranoia from his shoulders.

Existence Mulder keeps watch over Scully and their son in the hospital.

Satchie's

Dancing with Mephistopheles

"You've sustained an injury to your left anterior cerebral artery, which has caused some hemorrhaging into your brain. That's why you're having speech difficulties and the weakness on your right side. We're going to repair the damaged artery and evacuate the clot."

Brain surgery? You've really outdone yourself this time, Mulder.

Post Demons Mulder realizes that it was Scully's blood, not her tears, on his shirt.

Renaissance de Mal 

Scully glanced back at the abandoned vehicle. "Don't move. I'll bring the car over here and get you situated. Then we'll go to the emergency room."

Mulder gingerly flexed his limb. "Nah. I think it's okay. I just need to work out the kinks. Probably twisted it funny or something."

"Uh huh. It's the 'or something' that worries me.

S5 Mulder adds another injury to his list while chasing after a demon dog.

Claimed

Scully frequently volunteered to handle this unpleasant task, but his misplaced guilt prevented him from accepting her gracious offer this time. For crying out loud, he nearly died simply because he went to an out-of-town basketball game. It was so senseless and humiliating. No, he would fight this battle alone.

Mulder's insurance company has no mercy.

In Extremis

The worst part of my decline is having to face my trials alone. So many times I've debated whether or not to tell Scully about my illness, but I can't seem to arrive at a decision. For crying out loud, she's a doctor. Sooner or later she's bound to notice the subtle clues of my deterioration. Do I honestly believe I can keep this from her until the bitter end? No matter how I check out, she's going to be heartbroken.

AU-- Pre-Requiem Mulder is too afraid to tell Scully about his brain disease.

Jenna's

IOU

We spend the next few hours reliving the past 22 years through my eyes. I tell her everything, but mostly about my time spent with Scully and all that has happened to us over the last two years. She finally has gained the nerve to ask "the" question.

"This Scully, is she is a "partner?" Or is she is a "partner, partner?"

AU-- Mulder and Samantha root around in their parent's attic.

Amy's

Where are You, China Blue?

"Listen to me."

He looked off, annoyed.

"You're not listening."

"Yes, I am."

"Then stop it, Daddy. Just hear me out. I don't care anymore. I don't care. It used to be fun. It used to be this great game. 'Don't get caught, Sammy', you'd say. It was great. My whole life was great. Until last week, I thought it was going to be that way forever."

AU-- Post Redux II Samantha is sick and tired of the games.

Through the Mist

You approach my body. I expect to find shock, horror and sadness etched within every line of the face I know better than my own. Instead you are smiling, you approach me as you have every other day of our friendship, your eyes take in my body with reverence, a small smile is dancing on your lips. Your arms are held behind your back and as you approach the bed I can see the little game you have intended to play. A date. The remembrance of the word is almost unbearable. Your smile grows as you present my corporeal self with the bouquet from behind your back. I can hear you lightly mocking me, laughing at the fact that I had said that fortunes would come between us and normality. You are out to prove me wrong, not out of vengeance or spite, but because that is how you and I grow and move forward.

AU-- Scully's spirit watches a broken Mulder take her body home.

The Sybarite Collective's Jabberwocky

Mulder's eyes moved from Sybil to Scully. "Fro--Melvin said you had information. What's up?" he asked, the lack of expression in his voice expressing the utmost suspicion.

Sybil leaned forward, and the lazy drawl was nearly gone from her voice. "I think the company I work for is running insurance scams with the undead."

Post Bad Blood Scully and Mulder find themselves-- courtesy of the Lone Gunmen-- investigating another suspicious Texan town.

Tesla's (Site)

Get Up, Mulder

He rolled onto his side. He still had his gun. What was the problem? He felt blood trickling from his scalp. Someone must have sapped him. He was such an idiot. He wiggled his fingers, tried to send a message to his feet. They moved. Good. Houston, we have movement.

"Scully?" he said, tentatively. He was in a parking deck. Something about a suspicious sale of fertilizer. Great. Wonderful. He knew Kersh wanted to kill him, but he had thought it would be death by boredom.

FTF and S6 Mulder's many "passing out" adventures.

After the Ship

"When a man has to start all over again----when a profiler, who sees evil everywhere, has to start over again- ---how do you rejoin the world?"

Black's eyebrows twitched once. "Ah," he said. "But I have a connection to the world. I have my daughter."

Mulder grimaced.

Black reached in his pocket for a couple of dollars. "Yes, Agent Mulder, I'm luckier than you. You have to find your way back without a lifeline."

Post Three Words Mulder remains disconnected, dully wondering if he's a clone.

Kel's No Longer at Ease Here

He looked over at me, nodded, and turned back to look out the window.

"If that's true, you have my deepest sympathy," he said.

If that's true. Like I'm a liar.

"Squamash, Pennsylvania. Sound familiar?" I asked him.

That got his attention.

Vienen Doggett tells Mulder about his own experience with death.

Kmom's How I Want The X-Files To End

"Scully? You awake?"

"Sure, Mulder, I'm awake." The voice is deadpan. "I'm always awake at... uh... 3:35 am."

"Well, I was wondering... "

"What else is new? Make it quick."

"Do you think it's possible for dinosaurs to still be walking the earth somewhere?"

Post Existence Mulder and Scully have an early morning conversation about reinstatement.

bcfan's

Party Line

At Mulder's hurt look, Scully swallowed and closed her eyes. Get a grip, she scolded herself. You usually love his brilliance and energy. Thinking back to yesterday's discussion - childhood report card comments - Scully remembered she'd shared "plays well with others." Mulder had countered with "has a low tolerance for repetition."

That's the key, Scully decided. I have to find a way to pull us both out of this miasma of snarkiness. I have to give Mulder something new and different to think about.

Post Firewalker quarantine slumber party.

Wired

"I'm enlisting your help on a field assignment, but it's going to be undercover. Can you get away unofficially for a few days?"

"Well, I have some back vacation time coming. Agent Scully, might I ask-"

"No. I'm on an unsecured line. Drop off whatever paperwork you need to fill out and meet me in your own car - not a Bureau car, Agent Pendrell - at the food court of the Key Mall in Frederick. It's about 40 miles from D.C. Do you know where it is?"

"I'm sure I can find it. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Scully nodded. She still had one friend in the FBI.

Wetwired Scully is on the run, calling up Pendrell for help and fleeing to her mother's.

Bon Voyage with an Open Book

"No, I'm thinking about early humans. It must have been confusing for the first people to dream - to go somewhere without going."

"I never thought of that before."

Mulder throws his arm over his eyes and murmurs. "I don't want to go somewhere anymore, Scully. It's too hard."

"Mulder, I'm coming over."

Post Paper Hearts Scully drops by with a present.

Hanukkah

Scully spotted it on a dusty shelf at a gas station QuikiMart, propped next to boxes of tinsel and faded red and green ornaments. A quick decision later, the miniature menorah was tucked into her plastic bag with sunflower seeds and a lottery ticket promising 38 million dollars.

Mulder looked surprised as he examined her offering.

"For good luck," she murmured.

Post Kaddish Scully buys Mulder a menorah.

Twin Paradox, A New Interpretation

"Perfect timing, Mulder. No haircut, but I just got rid of three days worth of beard. How are you feeling?" Scully again held the water to Mulder's lips as she spoke.

"Better," he quietly replied, then gestured weakly with his hand. "Roses?"

"From my mother. Don't worry, she signed my middle name on the card. I knew they were for you, though."

Mulder smiled, and Scully's heart turned over.

"I've been dreaming. Good dreams. You're in them, Scully."

Amor Fati Mulder recovers in an old folks' home.

The Breakfast Club

"I'm cooking this morning, Mulder. Do you have a toaster?"

"Of course. This place has all the accoutrements of civilized dining."

Scully stepped into the kitchen. "Where is it?"

Mulder squeezed around her and crouched low, fishing with long arms in the back of a bottom cabinet. "Ta da." He held up an avocado clunker from the 1970s, covered in grime.

Post Amor Fati Scully keeps Mulder well-fed during his recovery; and he begins to return the favor.

Pine-scented

The funny little Charlie Brown Christmas tree looked almost lovely if he squinted and turned his head sideways. Lights sparkled in the windows and soft music caressed the room. It was beginning to look a lot like happiness realized.

Will climbed on Mulder's lap as he sat cross-legged on the floor, taping wires to the branches so the baby couldn't pull on them. Will drooled on his shirt and grabbed his nose. "Gah."

Post Existence Christmas, with poop and romance.

Obfusc8er's

Mandates from Heaven by Obfusc8er & Xtreme Unction 

Mulder leaned against one of the columns, casually crossing one ankle over the other, and squinted. He was trying to make out the textual message in the shimmering, as he is wont to do every time he visits the Lincoln Memorial. As usual, the epistle hidden in the water eluded him. He and Samantha used to play this game as children, making up imaginary Pentateuchal directives during every visit to the national mall. He smiled at the memory of some of the more ridiculous mandates from heaven they pretended to see.

AU-- Pre-S1 Mulder sees a "happily ever after" doppelganger.

Spending Time

I close my eyes briefly, trying to blink away the encroaching fog. I bite my lip until it bleeds. Even as I fade, I want her badly. She winds her hands together and shoves rhymically on my chest in a futile attempt at resuscitation. How lucky I am that my doctor is the pathologist who never says die.

Post Dod Kalm Mulder and Scully swap music requests after a night of nightmares.

True Reflections

Over here! Don't forget me! Mulder shouts silently.

"Okay. If I'm leaving anything behind, I'll just come by tomorrow to pick it up. I'll leave you alone now." She turns to leave.

He cannot take seeing her walk away right now, and he swallows hard.

"I don't want to be alone."

Post Grotesque Scully stands by her shaken partner.

Russian Roulette by Obfusc8er & bcfan 

The next time he awakens, Mulder bites his lip hard to keep silent, but he can't prevent the shakes.

Terma Mulder's stint in the Russian gulog.

Kiss and Makeup

"I got here as soon as I could. You sounded...lonely."

He lowered his eyes before saying the last word, unable to meet her gaze. She nodded at him, noting that he was no longer making an effort to pretend that his visit was anything but personal. She backed away a couple of steps, leaving the door wide open. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He stood fidgeting with the cuff of his trench coat, waiting for a cue, for a hint of what she needed from him. He was willing to do anything for her.

She wanted to let him hold her, but a lump was growing in her throat. She was busy trying desperately not to cry in front of him.

Pre-Gethsemane Scully and Mulder have a frank conversation about her health.

Reverto Ad Noctum

I can smell your fear.

Detour-- the Mothman's perspectives.

Convergence

Everything is running smoothly, and it all results in a living being, itself interacting with other beings in much the same way the wandering atoms within it do. The organism moves, communicates with, and manipulates members of its own and other kinds to become a part of an always-jostling, writhing whole conglomeration clinging precariously to a tilted, rolling rock. The system is humming along nicely, taking care of itself quite well.

And then something goes terribly wrong. The steady fluid pressure inside the organism's network of blood vessels rises slightly, the heart pumping frantically. The adrenal glands release endocrine and adrenaline into the bloodstream, causing the blood to become a much more efficient oxygen carrier. The protein hasn't made it back to the lungs yet. The combination of speeding heartbeat and frantically pumping lungs makes the entire system shake and vibrate with anticipation.

Monday, and one of the many days Scully lived through.

Deus ex Machina

Her partner was staring at the low tree stump upon which Legere had been splitting wood. She walked toward him, stopping when she saw the subject of his inspection. The face of the stump was sawed off with a smooth surface. The gray weathered grains were stained black and brown in a starburst pattern. Scully leaned closer and squinted. The stain was more recent and thinned around the edges, revealing its true pigment. It was red.

"It's blood," she stated, mostly to herself.

S6 Scully (and Mulder) come face-to-face with a demon on one of Kersh's patrols.

Papercut

"Don't move, Mulder. I'm not yelling. You have a concussion...among other things."

He winced as he felt fat raindrops falling on him with stinging force. Everything before him was a blur. He waited, and Scully's form slowly took shape.

"How many fingers am I holding up?"

He looked at her, but his thoughts were clouded by pain in his head.

"Yeah. Fingers."

Scully finds her partner after he narrowly escapes a tornado.

One Man's Journey

I sense a wave of trembling pass through her frame as I marvel at the implausibility of our circumstances. Her head rests against my chest, against the very place where someone, or something, split me open and tried to remove my faith in her. When they realized they could not have that, they took everything else?

Post Three Words Mulder is desperate to keep Scully around while (temporarily) helpless to re-situate back to "normal."

Waddles52 and Little Bullit 89's Spectacular Lights and Chili Nights

"The injection should make you sleepy. I'm going to talk to the manager and find out where the closest medical facilities are. You need to be seen by a doctor."

"You're a doctor," he said sleepily. The phenergan was beginning to take effect.

"That's true, but in case you haven't noticed, the vast majority of my patients are dead.

AU-- Mulder and Scully, emergency appendicitis, and an important "I need you."

bellefleur's

Kiss of an Angel's Wings

Every time he closes his eyes, he sees her face. It's been like this for months now, maybe years, but never like tonight. Never like this. The memory of those baby blues riveted to him is seared into his soul.

Post Tempus Fugit Pendrell's last, besotted thoughts.

Iced

After the fact, it was hard for Scully to describe just what had occurred since it all happened so quickly. Ernie had just finished a rousing rendition of "Rubber Ducky," and as the music changed, the other characters emerged from the curtain, one by one, for the final number. Her focus, of course, had been on Big Bird, hoping for his sake that the show could end without incident. But as she watched him glide gracefully along behind Elmo in the long line of figures circling the ice, suddenly he broke formation and made a beeline for Oscar. With a dive at the garbage can, he and the Grouch slid toward the center of the rink, in a mangled pile of feathers and fur.

Post Detour Mulder and Scully are sent on an FBI undercover mission... as Sesame Street characters on ice.

When Cows Fly

Scully froze. She stopped breathing altogether, hoping that complete lack of motion would prevent him from waking further so that she could surreptitiously pull herself away. Slowly resuming her breathing, she began to plot another run at the alarm clock when a nearby rumbling startled her.

"If you wanted to cuddle you could've just asked."

Rain King Scully is flustered by Mulder's oblivious consumption of her space.

42 Flavors

Scully turned at Mulder's voice to see him pull up alongside her, and then she followed him out the door. One of the tables they had passed on the way in was now vacant, so they took their places in the wrought iron chairs flanking the matching round table.

"So, was it a good birthday, Scully?"

"Best one I've had in six months."

Post The Unnatural Mulder whisks Scully away to get gelato.

Combustion

She and her partner had faced this situation too many times, with one possibly losing the other permanently. Had this become almost mundane for them? To someone who had never faced this trauma before, the occasion magnified lost moments and things left unsaid. But for Scully, such thoughts had not even occurred to her, until now. Was it possible that she may never see Mulder again and never have the chance to express how she truly felt about him?

Mulder survives a bomb blast cave-in; and reunites with a relieved Scully, ready to take the next step.

In Heels

You'd think by now I'd be used to getting ditched, but with Mulder, it was never about gender. Sure, he was trying to protect me from taking the same stupid risks he was, but not because he thought I was a liability. That doesn't mean it didn't piss me off, but this--this one was a personal insult. And I don't like being insulted.

Mulder's swollen ankle prevents him from joining Scully and a misogynistic detective on the field.

Mother Love

Scully had invited him to join her and her mom for brunch that Sunday, but he politely declined and explained simply, "There's something I have to do." She accepted his excuse without question, perhaps understanding, or simply respecting his need to open up to her in his own time.

Post Sein und Zeit Mulder visits Tena Mulder's grave for Valentine's Day.

Triple Returns

"The Son."

Scully and Hughes both turned to look at Mulder who had now moved into the living room and was standing over the tape outlining where the body had fallen.

"Pardon me?" Hughes inquired.

"The Son. Daniels was the only son in his family, just like the second victim of each trio before. The original killers saw themselves as an unholy trinity, and they killed along the same pattern."

AU-- S7 Mulder and Kristen Kilar meet again.

Visceral

Your focus turns back to the steel pan containing the most poetic of my earthly remains. You place it inside the frame of the scale then write down the weight. You set my heart on the cutting board and pick up a long knife, your actions practiced and controlled, almost mechanical. The blade presses against the mottled epicardium, expressing thick, clotted blood from the vessels. But you pause, held back by something invisible and unspoken, your masterful hands trembling. Turning, you look at my opened body, my innermost self exposed. A few clear drops run from beneath your mask, dripping onto the front of your gown, mingling there with a smear of red.

Post All Things Daniel Waterston selfishly watches Scully autopsy his dead body.

Then Comes Marriage

"C'mon, Scully, it'll be fun. The lights, the magic. There's no other place like it on earth."

AU-- Mulder and Scully accidentally get married in Vegas.

Arms Wide Open

It hits me again: We did it. We made a life. I can't believe it.

And once more I laugh to myself in disbelief and start crying. This seems to be an automatic response for me.

AU-- Requiem Mulder wasn't abducted; and bolts from room after being told the surprise news.

Easter Vigil

All she knows for sure is that he was dead. She held his lifeless body. She touched his decaying flesh. She stood watch as they sealed him in the casket and then lowered him into the ground.

He was dead. And then he wasn't.

He is risen.

Deadalive Scully thinks of her waxing and waning faith in miracles.

Simple Man

The moment was interrupted as Will emerged from his room and rejoined them. It was Mulder who first noticed him, and Scully followed his gaze. Their son was now wearing jeans, a Yankees shirt, a ballcap, and his baseball mitt--the way he usually dressed when his father took him to the park to play catch.

AU-- Post Existence Mulder and Scully discuss his childhood while William changes his Halloween costume.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Mulder was standing on his desk, holding something above his head, apparently installing...

"Ceiling tiles? Mulder, what are you doing?"

He almost fell off the desk, startled by her presence, but she quickly reached out to steady him. He smiled sheepishly and climbed off the desk.

AU-- IWTB Mulder keeps putting off his doctorate.

truthwebothknow1's

Natiruvaaq

He tried to cut through the fog that left his mind in a painful vice.

Mulder, caught in the fog.

Echoes

Her aunt had been bugging her for months about coming over to spend a few days and finally meet her.

S6 (or S7) Scully vacations in Ireland, where she not only finds her own X-File but runs into her partner.

Enchanted Shores

The soft crunch of feet through wet sand broke her out of her reverie as her partner approached her, grinning like a little boy bringing her a natural sea treasure.

The man with the child in his eyes.

S6 (or S7) Mulder and Scully take a lovely dovey trip to Maine.  

Home Alone

He stood at the lip of the stairs swaying and was feeling quite disorientated when the downstairs phone ringing tore a path through the cotton in his head. His good foot shifted inadvertently onto the first step but his toes could not dig into the carpet enough to stop his forward momentum. A final sway and his crutches slipped from his grasp with a clatter and he pitched forward, too shocked and slacked jawed to cry out. The hall flooring came up to collide with his nose at an alarming speed just as the answering machine kicked in.

Mulder gets into progressively worse scrapes on Valentine's Day, resulting in Maggie's arrival, Scully and Skinner's panic, and a reporter's opportunistic attempt to snap a photo.

My December

And then they found him.

Mainly because the puddle of red stood out in stark contrast to the endless white. Fortunately, they'd spotted his limp body wedged upside-down against a snow-covered rock before the last gimlet slither of light vanished over the next mountain. Only Mulder could render himself trussed up like some macabre raspberry ripple snowball....

AU-- S7 Mulder is wrapped up in barbed wire after a disastrous car accident. With no other recourse, Skinner and Scully prepare to pull it out themselves.

If I Close My Eyes Forever and Vortex

He was so excited at the thought of revisiting his old haunts and he hadn't really come down since. He called it his Oxford beat. Scully had nearly fallen out of the boat, laughing as he said it. They nearly both ended up in the river. Good memories, he was going to need them, they both were.

A sudden slither of melancholy caught her in the ribs. His hand tugging gently at hers brought her out of her reverie.

AU-- Mulder wakes from a dreamworld, nearly debilitated with serious injuries. Scully takes him to England to help him move on from the FBI; and the two-- of course-- stumble across an x-file.

Si la vie est un cadeau

I'm not the Close Encounter hero, but I'm close to something...terrible. I'm Fox William Mulder... the most colossal looser of all time. I am both found and at the same time irrevocably lost to you...to this. And I want...no need to think that I didn't have a choice, ...like Sam, that all this was inevitable for some universal goodness concept, which somehow got lost or derailed along the way. I made the choice Scully, but was it mine to begin with? Was this not ordained long ago by happenstance of my birthright? When I think of what I've cost you...

Maybe I deserve all this; perhaps everything was leading to this, in some divine plan that was kept secret from us. Though I'm sure you would be the first to tell me that, God doesn't use power tools against helpless living flesh.

S8 Mulder recounts the temporary bouts of reprieve he'd feel amidst the trauma of his torture.

BONUS

I can't bounce from this list in good conscience without mentioning Vickie Moseley and Donna and Sheryl Martin and RocketMan and Cecily Sasserbaum and prufrock's love, authors I've put a lot of hours into. However, since Tumblr has limits on links per post, I'll merely suggest you search their names (e.g. #Vickie Moseley) on this blog; and limit this rec to a fic I became reacquainted with today.

prufrock’s love/plenilune’s (Ao3, Gossamer, WBM, colonizationhq)  

Malebolge 

"I'm not eating a bat, Mulder. We don't have any food, no drinkable water, and you've got to be freezing. Better start climbing, partner."

"I wanted to wait until you were awake - to make sure you were okay before I left you." He's on his knees, facing me, very close. I can feel the heat radiating off him in the darkness like an aura and a warm hand touches my good shoulder. "You know I care about you, don't you, Scully?"

Something was very wrong if Mulder was saying this while kneeling on my wet trench coat, half-dressed, in a cave. Maybe he hit his head - that usually precedes declarations of his love.

"I know you do, Mulder. Just go."

"Do you love me?" He'd found my hand, holding it tightly in his.

Bad wrong.

"You know I do. What's wrong, Mulder?"

AU-- Mulder and Scully (and a tour guide) become trapped in an underground cave-in, and slowly realize they're not getting out.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[kawa-goat]

"Children who suffer trauma from abuse or violence early in life show biological signs of aging faster than children who have never experienced adversity, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. The study examined three different signs of biological aging—early puberty, cellular aging and changes in brain structure—and found that trauma exposure was associated with all three."

Oh, hey . . .

"He’s tall—in fact, at first I thought maybe he was older than me. He’s my age, though, and he acts like he’s fifty. It’s like the Giant Alien Overlords sucked all the childhood out of him and left behind a twelve-year-old adult." [Missing Pieces, Chapter 3, Page 21.]

My baby . . .

(I'm not dead yet guys, swear!)

[downtofragglerock]

Thinking about how kind of insane Romana's journey is

Ok so imagine that you're a recent college grad, did very well, high honors, stem major with a polysci minor or something like that

And then, like very shortly after you graduate, a literal god kidnaps you and puts you on a fetch quest where the continued existence of the spacetime continuum is on the line.

This is not as big of a deal for you compared to someone else, as you come from a society that deals with time stuff on the regs. Granted, the stakes at play are pretty damn dire, but again, you majored in the sciences of your society, which have advanced to the point of being viewed as borderline sorcery to most other civilizations

You're assigned a partner for this, another member of your society. This makes sense, while you're up for the task, having another person equally qualified will probably make the whole thing easier.

Only the guy the literal god gets for your partner is the biggest weirdo your society has ever produced. He barely graduated every school he was in and currently lives out of an old busted up van that he stole literal lifetimes ago and also barely works.

But you go along anyway and start the fetch quest. On the final leg, you end up encountering a woman that you just become enraptured with, though you'll never externalize this at the time, nor examine why you, a woman, may be feeling the things you're feeling about this other woman.

The fetch quest is over and time is saved and all that, but you're still traveling in the busted up van with this absolute freak, although his charm has grown on you. You're still fixated on that woman though, to the point where you self induce complete cellular remixing to become an exact body double of that woman. You don't examine why exactly you did this.

You keep traveling with the weirdo, and you're really starting to like his shtick, so much that you resolve to start aping it, only better (certainly with better dress sense at the very least), and hey, maybe you don't wanna go home, at least for a bit.

Eventually you two get trapped in a parallel dimension, you accidentally pick up an annoying teenage boy, but you don't have to deal with him for very long, as when your weirdo friend finally figures out how to get out of there, you stay behind to help some furries or something. You'll get back on your own time. Also you took the robot dog with you (he had a robot dog this entire time).

Some time passes and you eventually not only make it back to your own reality, but also your home. You end up meeting another woman who your weirdo friend hung out with before you met him, and she also triggers those feeling you had that last time made you commit the ultimate form of identity fraud.

But no time to ruminate on any of those unexplored things, you run for president, and win. Congratulations, you are now in charge of your entire society after what timescale-wise basically amounted to taking a slightly longer than normal gap year after graduating from college.

That is the tale of Romanadvoratrelundar, aka Romana, aka Fred

[grumpyeagleandfriends]

Vigil - Chapter 1

Summary: Using the genetic material extracted from Yusuf al-Kaysani and Nicolò di Genova, Dr. Metak Kozak initiates Project Eos as an attempt to artificially replicate immortality through forced human trials. Nine embryos are created, implanted, and birthed under controlled conditions. The experiments she conducts represent a grotesque evolution of Steven Merrick’s work.

When Copley first uncovers the program, Kozak’s records declare total failure: "Group Gamma yielded no viable candidates. All subjects compromised beyond analytical utility." But six weeks later, an anonymous lab technician leaks damning footage—a single surviving child, a three year-old male designated "IL-9" with confirmed cellular regeneration and disease resistance.

The team must address the danger this discovery represents. Nicky and Joe are confronted with a child created from their stolen blood.

A/N: A post-cannon story imagining the concept of a lab-generated immortal and how it affects the Guard. Could also be seen as an examination of parenthood. Mostly that, actually. Medical torture. Dr. Kozak is her own warning tbh. Child Abuse. Nicky is a doctor. Death. Immortal Parents. Hurt/Comfort. Illness. Blood. Angst.

11:00 AM. 30 Jan. 2025, Sheldwich, Kent County, United Kingdom.

Copley’s study smelled of eighteen year Macallan and citrus wood polish. It was a space of crisp angles and warm walnut paneling, where afternoon light slanted through floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the English countryside. Every detail was curated, devoid of personal clutter save for a single silver-framed photograph facedown on the desk. The hidden image of Copley’s late wife was the only concession to sentimentality in a room so meticulously tailored it might have been lifted from the lair of a Bond villain.

They sat in mid-century leather armchairs, tension coiled in the air. Gathering them like this was a liability. Intel could be shared remotely; discussions didn’t require proximity. Yet here they were.

Andy knew before Copley even spoke. There was something in the way he surveyed them, like the weight of an inconvenient truth was pressing down. He stood before his Scandinavian desk, crisp in a navy cashmere sweater, fingers resting on a dossier thicker than a Bible. Not with hesitation, but ceremony.

It was clear for everyone that serious news was about to be delivered, but she knew that this went deeper. They had been gathered to sit in a war room.

Booker denied the quiet itch in his hand to reach for his flask. The fact that everyone agreed to show up despite his presence and ties to Copley’s new intel had been nothing short of miraculous. The conditions of his exile had been clear, but the current circumstances demanded an annulment of sorts, a truce. He registered the heel of Nile’s boot thunking against the floor. She was the only one who agreed to sit near him. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t necessary, that the others were right to keep their distance. But the meaning behind the gesture lodged somewhere in his throat, there was a sharp feeling of gratitude.

For now, he alone knew why they’d been summoned. He wondered if she would stay so close once the truth hit.

Across the coffee table, Joe and Nicky occupied a leather loveseat. Joe’s hand masked his mouth, fingers pressed to his jaw as he leaned against the armrest, eyes unreadable. He hadn’t wanted to come. He’d argued with Nicky the entire drive, listing every reason why they owed Booker and Copley nothing of their time.

Nicky had listened then, patient, prepared. He knew Joe only needed to voice his hurt, to let it dissipate before it festered. Andy and Nile’s presence alone had been more than reason enough to go.

Now, Nicky sat perfectly still, his breaths measured, glacial.

"I've been tracking Kozak since Merrick," Copley finally began, thumb clicking the presentation remote.

The monitor sitting behind him on the glass top desk bloomed to life with a classified document header. The title "Project Eos" was written in stark black and white. 

"Over six years now," he continued, "I've followed money trails through seventeen shell corporations across three continents. Dead drops in Geneva. Burner labs in Minsk."

A click. The monitor flickered, they each absorbed the blue-tinted security footage of a woman in a white coat. 

Nicky could only stare. That same face had hovered over him while pieces of his flesh were carved away and dropped into plastic sample containers. 

"This is in Cardiff." Copley narrated. "In a private genetics facility fronting under the guise of pediatric regenerative medicine." 

Andy cut in, voice firm but tired. "Skip the build up, James. Just get to what's she's done." Get to why we're here.

Copley didn’t flinch. But when his gaze landed on Joe and Nicky, the mask slipped—just for a second. A swallow. A flicker of remorse.

“Kozak’s Project Eos attempts to artificially replicate immortality through forced human trials.” He paused. “She’s created, implanted, and birthed nine embryos under controlled conditions.”

His voice was too calm, the way surgeons would begin to present a case to a patient’s family before announcing complications. 

“This was done using genetic material from you both. The nine candidates, labeled “Subject Group Gamma” were all listed as 'non-viable'.”

Genetic material.

Nicky could remember when Kozak extracted samples from a more intimate area of his body, particularly the special technique she used to procure what she wanted. When it was done to him, the act was undoubtedly degrading, but he was able to process the moment as a temporary humiliation. When she turned to do the same to Joe's unconscious form, Nicky's calm abruptly dissolved. He bucked against his restraints, unable to tolerate the sudden onset of searing anger under his own ribs.

Copley continued on, pulling him from his thoughts.

"But a whistleblower has since come forward, a lab technician recently moved from a Merrick facility in Geneva. They revealed that our previous intel was inaccurate. A false flag."

A new slide flicked across the monitor. The first horror. Autopsy reports.

"We gained the autopsy reports of the first eight subjects," Copley said quietly. "All infants. Seven died before reaching one year of age, but then there was a breakthrough. The eighth child lived to 18 months." 

The details of the autopsy reports were clinical, detached. Causes of death: organ failure, hemorrhaging, neural degradation. There were only serial numbers instead of names. Nicky’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the edge of the armrest. His eyes dialed in on the information, scanning the details as quickly as he could.

Joe didn't look. He couldn't look.  

"The ninth child, named Subject IL-9, is still alive." Copley continued. "A three year-old male who demonstrates consistent accelerated healing, though they haven’t yet tested mortality."

A single photograph came next. A boy, small and pale with a shaved head, curled on a metal cot. His face was partially obscured by a black censorship bar, but what little of him was visible was unmistakable. He had Joe's nose and mouth. The child looked sickly, too young to be three. Too thin.  

"What is being done to him?" Nicky demanded, voice impossibly level. He rested a hand briefly on Joe's thigh, to ground himself, to check in, but withdrew the moment he felt the muscle beneath twitch like a live wire. The act had been too soon. Some wounds needed pressure. Others needed air.

Joe bent forward, elbows on knees, face buried in his hands. His fingers dragged through his beard, rough and unsteady. The room tilted. He needed air. Needed to put his fist through something, or maybe feel someone else's fist collide with his cheek. He didn’t look at anyone. He couldn’t. His gaze fixed on the floor, on the wood grain under his sneakers, on the two birds chasing each other just outside the window, on anything but the screen where the deaths of eight children were dissected in unforgivingly clinical language.

He could only force himself to breathe. There was no other way forward, no other way to process what he was feeling from this violation—this mix of revulsion and hurt.

"The testing on the child has been...systematic." Copley's voice was measured, face souring as he carefully chose his words. The white plastic casing of the remote softly cracked under the force of his grip.

"Phase one consisted of pathogen exposure to common strains of measles, influenza, and tuberculosis. Each infection was meticulously timed to measure recovery rates." A click. Graphs of fever spikes, white blood cell counts. "They noted his immune response was 'anomalously efficient', with recovery achieved by day four of each trial."

Nicky’s jaw shifted, but his voice never changed. Always calm, always even. "How much information did you recover on his medical history?"

"It’s incomplete,” Copley began. “But the whistleblower provided us with daily vital logs, trauma and healing reports, neurological assessments, weight charts—"

"Give separate copies to me. Everything you have." Nicky interjected. He squinted as he read the numbers of a growth chart fixed on the screen. The last entry was from nearly two months ago, the child was recorded as 84 centimeters tall and weighing 10 kilograms.

"Phase two tested his resilience to environmental extremes." Copley’s mouth thinned. "Four hours in 2°C water. Five hours in a climatic chamber at 42°C. Timed oxygen deprivation just before the threshold of brain damage. Fourteen days of gradually reduced calorie and fluid intake.”

Joe rose abruptly from the love seat, his knee roughly bumping the coffee table as he stood. He crossed to the window in large strides, his back rigid, one hand braced against the window frame. The tendons in his forearms stood out like cables.

Copley continued, quieter now. "Phase three moved to physical trauma. Compound fractures—" A slide of an X-ray, a tiny femur snapped clean through. "—lacerations, burns. Healing averaged one to two hours for deep tissue, three hours for bone."

The cap of Nile’s pen snapped in her grip, but she continued to listen attentively. Those rates of healing were longer than what it took for them. Her eyes flicked over to the faces of the others, but there was no way to discern if their thoughts were following the same paths. Everyone looked ill.

For a moment, Copley showed signs of fatigue. He let the hand holding the remote fall to his side. He glanced at his desk before finishing.

“Phase four has not yet begun, but the whistleblower warned that this is when they intend to test his mortality.” 

Andy’s voice cut through. "We don’t wait on this one." She stood, approaching the desk to seize the dossier prepared by Copley and Booker. "We go in and extract the boy. Steal every byte of intel, then scrub the place." Her gaze swept the room. "It has to be full sanitization. We leave no witnesses."

Copley nodded, clicking to the blueprints. "All intel indicates that he is held here, in a third floor isolation unit." He pointed the red dot of a laser at the west wing. 

Booker leaned forward, tracing demolition points on the schematic. "C4 in the parking garage and ground floor support columns. Thermite cocktail here—" He tapped the server room. "—enough to melt their research into slag."

He had memorized every inch of the building: entrances, exits, corridors, stairwells, and ventilation shafts. There was no escape route not pre-mapped out in his mind, no corner to hide in that he didn't know. The rotations of security and staff, the layout of the below ground parking garage, the brand of bleach the janitors used—over the last month, Booker had funneled all of his remorse into learning every detail about this facility. 

He cleared his throat before focusing tentatively on Andy, finding her unreadable mask to be steadying in some way. This was only soul he knew to report to, who he knew to follow without question.

"The largest shift change happens just before 0200. That's the time to hit. Two nurses. One resident. Guards cut to skeleton crew."

Nile’s fingers drummed a marching rhythm against the armrest. "Andy and I can breach through security. Disable cameras, clear a path." Her eyes flicked to Joe’s motionless form by the window. "Nicky and Joe take point on extraction."

Nile, who sat stiff-backed, her dark eyes flickering between the screen and her family, so unflinching in the face of a reality that they all viscerally rejected. She never had a choice in the matter. Being an immortal of the modern era, she would never know the luxury the others once did—of lifetimes spent hiding in the shadows, of drifting untraced. Her immortality was always going to be a game of cat and mouse, and now, before she could even adjust, she was being asked to protect another life that would never know peace. 

Silence settled after her proposal, seemingly as acceptance. Then—

"No survivors, then." Joe spoke, still facing the glass. His reflection was blurred, his words like a serrated blade, something not meant to cut clean. "What about Kozak?"

Copley was quick to answer. "Bern. She’s presenting at a private symposium tomorrow."

Andy sat back in her seat, legs outstretched. The lines around her eyes deepened as she stared at something at midline only she could see.

"We hit the lab first. Then we end this." It landed like stones—final, immovable. 

"News from the lab will hit her immediately," Nile countered. "Doesn't that give her time to disappear?"

Andy didn't move, her eyes remained steady. She spoke with the weariness of someone who had seen more bodies buried than the ground could contain. "Let her run," she spoke so quietly that it might have been to herself. Then louder, with the full weight behind it: "I've hunted smarter prey. This stops now."

Copley cleared his throat. "For what it’s worth, we’ve had eyes on her financial trails for over three years. Every alias, every shell account. She hasn’t taken a step without us knowing since 2021." He looked to Nicky, then to Joe's back. "If you go for her first, we risk the boy being moved. The lab’s servers need to be melted before they can scrub the data."

Joe turned from the window, his face eerily blank, the kind of calm that came before a surge. This wasn't the absence of fury, but the absolute clarity that rage could provide when put to good use. Everyone expected him to walk out after Copley’s presentation. He had every right to. Every reason to slam the door, to vanish, to let the complex storm of shock and fear burning under his flesh fuel him through the English countryside until his legs gave out.

But he didn’t.

Surprising everyone but Nicky.

His attention locked onto Booker first.

Not Andy, not Nile, not Copley. Booker.

Because Joe knew Booker was the one who prepared this work. Because despite the betrayal, despite the fractured trust that still ached between them, Booker was the one who had always been best at this: the slow, methodical gathering of intel, the obsessive mapping of every variable. And now, he was here with them, trying to atone in the only way he knew how—by providing a way to fix this.

Joe crossed the room and dropped himself into the armchair Andy had abandoned. 

"Walk me through your plan." He quietly demanded. His voice was hollowed out, the kind of tone that made the air in the room feel thin.

Joe and Booker sat and discussed for hours. Their gear was already sourced—untraceable weapons, ammunition, a van with plates that would burn clean after extraction. It was an hour's drive to Bristol, where a private plane would be waiting to take them quickly back to East London, then a second van to bring them back to Copley's house in Sheldwich. From there, they would work out where everyone would go next. Copley would monitor the situation and work through covering their tracks. 

Nile and Andy joined in. The four of them hashed out the plan all afternoon, then well into the evening. Timing. Division of roles, who would be covering who. Contingency plans in the event the child was too weak at any point to be moved. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

01:17 AM. 31 Jan. 2025, Sheldwich, Kent County, United Kingdom.

The moment the intel presentation ended, Nicky didn’t join where the others were clustered around the coffee table, debating extraction plans and arguing timelines. He cornered Copley near his large desk, demanding the boy’s medical files.

To his credit, Copley didn’t hesitate. A laptop and two USB drives were deposited into Nicky’s hands without question. It was impossible to miss the flicker of guilt in the man’s gaze during the exchange. He understood what horrors he was silently delivering, he knew the pain that awaited.

For the next twelve hours, Nicky locked himself in the guest bedroom, the glow of the laptop screen painting shadows under his eyes. He operated with the urgency of someone who believed he could already be too late, racing against time to undo what might already be irreversible. 

He cross-referenced every procedure, every notation, every spike or drop in vitals. His fingers worked tirelessly over the keyboard, constructing a meticulous chart—weight fluctuations, heart rate anomalies, the jagged decline of a body pushed beyond its limits. The reports were inconsistent. Sometimes his injuries closed unnaturally fast, other times his fever raged for days unchecked. Nicky knew how stress at these levels could inhibit healing. Even if the boy’s body could repair at a similar rate to them, the constant strain he was under would greatly disrupt his abilities. If Kozak’s team was truly nearing phase four, the boy would be in no state to recover quickly. His body would be eating itself alive to keep up with the pace of forced regeneration.

With this information, Nicky knew he had to work under the guiding principle that the boy was mortal. He would plan for the worst, and then hope for the best—against evidence, against the gnawing dread in his chest. 

He made an exhaustive list of the medical supplies they would need, things Copley could source quickly from his connections. Pediatric IV kits, bags of standard saline as well as lactated Ringer’s solution, nasal cannulas, oxygen tanks, a portable blood analyzer, a glucose monitor, pain killers, broad spectrum antibiotics, a child-sized pulse oximeter and blood pressure cuff...

Nicky also made a separate list of practical items and things for comfort: clothing, toiletries, toys, books. The reports had been clinical in their omissions. There was no mention of play time, of going outside, or of any schooling. Nicky had doubts about how much interaction this child received. Did someone come consistently whenever he cried? Did the staff take the time to talk to him, to teach him words? The sparse references to toys were particularly bleak. They were used only as bribes during cognitive and neurological tests, brief rewards taken away the moment the boy’s cooperation was ensured.

The grandfather clock in the hall hummed past midnight when the others finally dispersed. Footsteps retreated in different directions down the corridor, doors softly shut one by one. 

Joe padded quietly into their borrowed bedroom, his face a mask when he found Nicky still sitting on the bed, laptop open on his legs. 

The door slid closed behind him with a click, sealing them away from the outside world.

Neither spoke.

There was a certain weight in the way Joe moved that was all wrong. His limbs operated too cautiously, not with the calm before battle, but with the quiet of someone trying hard to control his breath, as if an undetonated bomb shared this space with them.

The silence stretched in the room, tight as a piano wire. There was only the faint crackle of dying embers in the Malm fireplace, their glow creating warped shadows across the floor. 

"You should sleep." Nicky murmured, voice hardly above a whisper.

Joe let out a rushed exhale, not quite a laugh. "You first."

Nicky’s gaze flickered over him in the dim light, reading the lines of his body like a map. It was as if he could see right through his skin. The hurt was still there, simmering beneath buffering layers of calm. But even deeper under that façade, Nicky knew there was something wounded, something terrified.  

Joe settled down onto one of the winged armchairs next to the vintage fireplace. They were given the largest of the bedrooms. Nicky imagined that it had at one point been used by Copley and his wife, but he would never ask. Joe's elbows rested on his knees while he began rifling through their shared suitcase, searching out his desired clothes for sleepwear. The thermal henley came off in one rough tug, the fabric catching briefly on the curve of his shoulders before he wrenched it free. His jeans followed, discarded in a heap beside the chair. He dressed for bed with the same efficiency he might use to strip a rifle—methodical, detached. He opted to wear one of their stretched out sleep shirts and a pair of joggers, glancing down at his feet and internally debating for a moment before deciding to keep his socks.

Wordlessly, he plucked his toiletry sack from the side compartment and slipped into the ensuite. His face remained distant, checked out.

Nicky waited until he returned from brushing his teeth, watching the way he traipsed over to the bed. Joe sat down on the edge, but didn't turn, didn't move to settle himself back against the headboard. His dark eyes gazed through the floor to ceiling windows that comprised the entirety of one wall in the bedroom, watching the unrelenting rain continue to fall outside. 

"Talk to me." 

Joe’s arms loosely crossed, his fingers gripping his elbows, his jaw taut.

"What is there to say?” He demanded softly. “Tomorrow we go in and we get him out. We burn the rest."  

Nicky’s attention didn’t waver from his husband's back. "And after?"  

The question hung between them, heavy with everything they could not say, sagging under the weight of all that they didn't have time to discuss.

Joe’s fingertips skimmed over the skin of his arms, a motion meant to self-soothe. 

"After, we make sure no one else comes. We rip the weeds out by the roots, then salt the earth."  

"That’s not what I meant—" 

"I know." 

"Do you?" Nicky wondered in what was barely above a whisper. "This isn’t a mission, Joe. This isn’t extraction and extraction alone. If he is—" He stopped, the words stuck in his chest, too difficult to give form.  

Again, Joe had the encroaching feeling that he couldn’t breathe. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, raked his fingers through his beard. 

They submitted once more to the awful quiet. The wind outside caused the windows to rattle. 

Joe's arms uncrossed, hands now resting down at his sides, his fingers unclenched only to curl again into the fabric of his sweat pants. His head bowed forward, the words scraping out like gravel underfoot.

"I can’t stop thinking about how we didn’t know."

The silence that followed was leaden. 

Nicky watched the strain build through Joe's body—the rigid line of his shoulders, the way his breath stuttered before he forced it to steady. In that moment he ached to reach for him, to press his palms against the tension and work it loose with his fingers, his mouth, his whispered reassurances. But Nicky knew that it wasn't the right time, that whatever he would say would only fall flat. 

"We felt Nile. We felt Booker." Joe's voice dropped lower, rougher. "How could we not feel any of this?" 

This.

A child's suffering. The silent agony of the ones before him. The way their own blood had been turned against them, used to create and destroy in equal measure. Centuries of war, of loss, of resurrection. He struggled to think of a prior experience that could have prepared them for this particular feeling of helplessness

"We can't be sure how it works." Nicky said carefully. "Maybe because he wasn’t born. He was made."

Made. The implications of the word curdled between them. 

Joe's lashes fluttered as his eyes slipped shut. His jaw clicked as it shifted minutely to one side. 

"Or maybe because we weren’t paying attention."

Nicky didn’t have a response. The guilt was there, in both of them—a silent, aching feeling that they had fallen short.

He found himself wishing so deeply that they had the time to help each other ease into this. It was a cruel stroke of irony: that immortals who inherently had only an abundance of time, suddenly found themselves with none. There would be no slow unraveling of this pain, no gentle easing into the horror. 

Joe let out a breath, his head turning to glance over his shoulder. "What are we supposed to do after we get out of there tomorrow?" The question was hushed and lost. "Because, Nicky, if he lives, if he’s ours to—" 

He stopped himself, rocking slightly as he failed to continue that line of thought. Because what he was really asking was too callus to be voiced outright. How do they help a child who was never meant to be a child? How do they teach trust to someone who has only known pain? How were they to care for something born from theft and defilement?

Nicky leaned forward, his knuckles skating over the small of Joe's back. "We do what we have always done." he murmured. "We adapt."  

Joe closed his eyes. "And if he dies in that lab before we reach him?"  

"Then we make sure no one else suffers like him again." 

An ember cracked in the fireplace, spitting crimson sparks into the darkness. Nicky blinked against the dry ache in his eyes—he'd been staring at screens and reports for over twelve hours. The medical jargon blurred at the edges, but the numbers were still stark imprints in his mind. 

He closed the laptop, letting it click shut with finality.

"You haven’t read any of it, have you?" 

Joe turned to properly look at him then, his head twisting in gentle disbelief. 

"Why would I need to?" His voice frayed at the edges. "I know what they do in places like that. I remember."  

Nicky's fingers slid down the laptop's edge before he set the device aside. He chose his next words carefully. "They infected him with tuberculosis back in November. He recovered in three days." A deliberate pause. "They broke his femur to test the rate of regeneration. Twice."  

Joe flinched as if struck. "Nicolò—"  

"As far as I know, they never gave him a name." The words were meant to be informative, but his tone was like broken glass, brittle and fragmented. "In the reports, he’s just IL-9."  

The air left Joe's lungs in a wounded rush. He surged to his feet, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes, as if trying to erase the images flooding his mind. "Stop."  

He took three stumbling steps towards the bathroom before he whirled, his composure shattered.

“How can you?" The words tore from him, accusatory, unable to hide his own disgust any longer. "How can you spend hours looking at that? It's torture. Every fucking line.”  

Nicky didn’t flinch at what he was saying, even if a small part of him did feel incredulous towards the man across the room from him. His gaze held Joe's with a terrible sort of patience, aching with something too vast to name. 

What was he to say? That he feared turning away from what was done somehow made him complicit? That bearing witness was the only absolution left to them? Even for someone like him, it was too self-righteous a thing to say out loud. He knew that the reality was much simpler, much uglier. 

Truthfully, Nicky thought that if he focused on the broken bones, the fevers, however much blood was drawn, he wouldn't have to consider the greater violation—that this child only existed because someone had stolen pieces of them both. If he let his mind wander beyond the boy’s physical wounds, he would have to face the enormity of what had been done. Not just to this child’s body, but to himself, to Joe.

Instead of saying any of this, Nicky only blinked. And now, his own throat burned as he struggled to speak normally. 

“Someone must.”  

The truth sat between them like a third presence.

Because it’s a child, a child made from your blood and mine.

One that we may have failed before we even learned of his existence, before he ever received a name.

Nicky rose from the bed, his eyes never straying from Joe. His hands hovered between them as an offering—a rope cast out amongst the waves they treaded. He didn’t come close enough to touch, but enough to feel the heat radiating from his husband’s rigid shoulders. 

"Maybe," he began, voice roughened from spending hours in silence, "if I know what they did, I can learn how to undo it." The words were frail sounding, the intention of hope behind them so unstable. "So when we bring him home, I can meet him where he is."

Joe’s lips compressed together into a tight line, the skin around his eyes folded. The look he leveled at Nicky wasn’t just sadness, it was the quiet devastation of someone watching their beloved grasp at threads.

"There may be no 'after' for him." 

The gentleness in his tone made it worse. This careful doling out of mercy, as if Nicky hadn't already dissected every horrific possibility in the twelve hours he'd spent with those files. As if the image of a small body wrapped in sheets wasn't already seared behind his eyelids.

Nicky didn’t argue. He studied the tremor in Joe’s clenched hands, the way his husband's gaze darted to every exit but never once to the laptop on the nightstand.

"No, perhaps not." he agreed softly while stepping into Joe's space. His palms mapped the familiar terrain of Joe's arms, sliding down to pry open his stiff fingers. "But we still must plan as if there will be."

With an unsteady exhale, Joe surrendered to Nicky’s touch, letting him manipulate his wrists and hands however he wanted. Even in anguish, he was taking the time to consider his love's words, much like he always did. Though his emotions were known to burn bright, he was a man capable of immense reflection, always able to land at the core of things. Here, Nicky could see him trying to measure their needs, much like a merchant pouring over the figures in his books—what surplus still remained, what could they salvage? All of his calculations looked to be coming up short. This pain was too thick to quantify, stuffed away for survival’s sake yet hanging over their heads with mocking laughter.

Nicky guided Joe’s palms to his own ribcage, pressing them flat against the rise and fall of his breath. His large hands settled over them, anchoring them both there.

"We learn what he is—” He murmured, the bass of his voice the only steady thing in the dark.  “—we learn what they made him. Then we try to become what he needs."

Joe swallowed before nodding. His eyes closed tightly for a beat, then a soft curse slipped from his lips.

Their bodies folded together. 

Nicky’s chin tilted in wordless invitation, allowing Joe to press his face into the familiar hollow of his neck. They inhaled each other, finding the very scent of home—a place they had been able to carry with them for centuries because they understood that it could never be tied to a single location or physical dwelling, but rather to this life they carved out together. Nicky hummed as his husband’s hands fanned over his shoulder blades, each of them finding solace in the other's frame. They remained like this for an uncertain amount of time, listening to the sounds of their own breathing, the wet click of their throats swallowing, their syncopated heartbeats. 

The silence between them had always been its own language. It was Joe who eventually chose to break it. 

"It wasn't just him." He said, voice thick and trembling. He tried to steady his hands by finding Nicky's waist. "Eight others. Brought into this world and snuffed out. And we never had the faintest clue." 

Nicky had avoided this, because he could not afford thinking about the others. Perhaps years from now, when enough time and distance sat between them and this revelation, he would step into a quiet church and light eight individual candles. He would recite familiar prayers, not for forgiveness, but for the grief he’d been forced to bury away. But this would be a ritual for far into the future—for a time when he and Joe had steadier ground beneath their feet, for when their family was no longer in such immediate danger. Now, they could only focus on what they still held the power to change.

“Yes.” His agreement was quiet. “But now he is all that matters.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

02:21 AM. 01 Feb. 2025, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.

Joe sat cross legged on the floor of the van, his back pressed against the metal wall. 

The weather report had promised a dry night, but Cardiff exhaled a bitter, icy mist all the same. The fine drizzle floated through the air, the small droplets clinging to hair and clothes alike, needling through layers until it penetrated the bones. 

The operation had been clean, until it wasn’t.

Disabling the cameras took Nile ninety seconds. Andy dispatched the entrance guards and those posted inside with barely a pause—they fell one by one as she and Nile pushed deeper, silenced by blade before their shouts could form. With each fallen guard, Andy and Nile called out their kills through the comms system. Joe and Nicky flowed a few paces behind them in perfect sync, sealing exits and watching angles. Only Booker broke rhythm from the group, vanishing into a side stairwell to descend to the lower levels, his bag filled with enough C4 to demolish a building twice as tall.

Locating the boy on the third floor cost them the most time, a dangerous amount of time. They had to force access code information from the two nurses on duty, the type of work that is never pretty.

Andy bent fingers backward one by one until one of them sobbed out a series of entry numbers.

Three minutes. A result that was nowhere near her personal best.

Nicky and Joe went in alone to collect the boy.

Fifteen minutes total.

That's all it took to breach the facility and extract what should never have been taken.

Now, the mangled security gate screamed under the van’s tires as Andy drove them away. 

Joe hadn’t been able to touch him back in that sterile room. They found the boy lying in an elevated metal crib, it's barred walls looming over him more like a cage than a bed. His small body was tethered by electrodes and wires. Velcro straps pinned his arms outstretched on either side. Even as he slept, they felt the need to keep a sickly three year-old restrained.

In the van’s rattling dark, Nicky cradled the boy against his chest, swaying slightly on his knees. His gaze flickered over their gear, pausing on the thin padded mat they’d brought for the child. It had seemed practical back in planning. Now, with the boy’s shallow breaths warming his collarbone, his body too weak to properly lift his head, it felt unforgivably stark.

Something in Joe awoke. Without hesitation, he wrenched over the nearest duffel, rummaging past weapons and wire until his fingers caught on familiar fabric—a shared sweatshirt that belonged to them, soft and threadbare from years of use, still carrying traces of Aleppo soap and sandalwood. He undid the zipper and spread it across his lap, creating a buffer against the cold damp of his tactical gear. Shifting forward, he quickly lifted his vest up and over his head, tossing it aside. 

"Set him down." Joe swallowed to make his voice cooperate. "It's—it's okay." 

Nicky bent downward, murmuring, “Fai piano, tienigli la testa…” (Easy, support his head...)

Joe’s hands rose on instinct to help settle the boy's delicate weight. His palm pressed to where the back of the child’s neck met the base of his skull, fingers splaying to support his head. The contact was like a hot spark landing in dry tender—real, real, suddenly too real. A child, a living thing made from him, taken from his body without permission, now lay cradled across his lap. Not quite his, but certainly of him.

His mind stuttered when he looked down at the boy’s face, so undeniably close to his own—from the slope of his nose, to the arch of his brows, Joe could see his own features mirrored back at him in miniature. Distinct echoes of Nicky were threaded throughout: in the stubborn set of his chin, the unique shape of his small ears. It made something sick and heavy coil in his gut. This was no miracle. It was violation given form, a life wrenched into existence without thought of mercy or consent. And yet—

The boy stirred weakly, his cracked lips parting around a soundless gasp. His fingers twitched against Joe’s thigh, the movement barely there.

Before he could think, he shushed him, the back of his fingers smoothed over his brow. The motion came without his explicit permission, pulled from some deep, unguarded place. 

His eyes snapped up, meeting Nicky’s over the boy’s trembling body.

“Help me get this off him." He jerked his chin down towards the off-white lab blanket. The stench of bleach and something sour, like sweat gone stale, clung to the rough fabric. He couldn’t stomach the thought of the child being wrapped in anything from that place for a second longer. Not when they were meant to be taking him somewhere far away and safe. 

Nicky didn’t argue, able to plainly hear the plea beneath the words. With careful hands, he helped peel the blanket off and tossed it aside. Together, they worked to swaddle him in the material of the old sweatshirt, the garment dwarfing his emaciated frame. 

Around them, the others kept up their careful pretense of focus—Andy’s hands steady on the wheel, Booker’s tense silence in the passenger's seat. Nile was positioned just behind them, her head stuck between the two while she watched the road. 

“What’s the time on detonation?” She demanded, directions provided by Copley pulled up on her phone. 

“Don’t worry about it.” Booker dismissed her question as Andy turned onto a side street. “I gave us enough of a window.” 

None of them for a single second doubted Booker’s calculations, in the same way they still trusted his ability to forge their identification papers and to iron out the logistics for the next mission. Nile's question was more about filling the silence, about not disturbing the intimacy of the moment Nicky and Joe were sharing behind her. They were giving them this, at least: the illusion of privacy in the cramped, rattling space.

The gentle clunk and swish of the windshield wipers continued against the rain. Still only a few blocks away from the lab, the aftermath of Booker’s work would come soon enough. The Tesco across the street from Kozak's facility would rattle with the force of the explosion, glass windows would shatter out into fragments against the pavement.

The lab would be left as a hollowed shell.

Nicky was already pulling supplies from his med kit, his movements fluid despite the van's jolting rhythm. A stethoscope draped over the back of his neck, he shifted to kneel before them, steady even as the vehicle lurched, his large hands hovered at the sweatshirt's zipper.

"Joe.”

His name sounded different as it left Nicky's mouth, not a summons but a tether, spoken so it wouldn't travel any further than centimeters of space between them.

Joe blinked, like surfacing from deep water, the sounds of the present drawing him back from where his thoughts had spiraled. His dark eyes slowly sharpened, the weight of his gaze shifting from shock to awareness. He didn't realize how tightly he had been clutching the sweatshirt, his fingers felt nearly fused to the cotton fabric. 

"I need to check him." Nicky’s voice was firm but not unkind. "So I can see how to help him."

The words passed easily. Joe managed a stiff nod, his throat dry with a sort of helplessness they had been unable to shake ever since they were gathered in Copley's study. His hands fell away from the small body stretched across his lap.

Slowly, Nicky worked down the zipper of the jacket. He unfastened the shoulder snaps of the boy's grey medical gown, pulling back the thin fabric to reveal his bare torso. The signs of malnourishment jumped out at them, his body was all sharp angles and prominent bones. Each breath he drew pulled the skin taut over his ribs. 

The boy's eyes, a lighter shade of brown than Joe's, watched as Nicky warmed the diaphragm of his stethoscope between his palms. There was no reaction when the metal made contact with his chest, his half-lidded gaze continued to travel warily between the two men hovering over him. 

The child’s breath sounds were guarded and shallow. When Nicky shifted the chest piece lower, he could only frown as he listened to the ragged pull of air through his lungs. He gently felt for the pulse at the boy’s carotid, finding it slightly elevated, the rhythm fluttery against his fingertips. The lymph nodes along the column of his throat were normal, though his skin still held a feverish heat.

Carefully, slowly, Nicky's hands skimmed over his narrow extremities, feeling each bone with light pressure. There were no obvious fractures, no bruises or abrasions, but the joints were too prominent, the wrists too fragile. Despite the gentleness of his touch, Nicky still detected the flash of a grimace across the boy's face. He managed to free one of his small hands from the folds of the jacket. When applying pressure to the nail beds, he noted how the color drained and returned slowly—poor perfusion. 

He reached for the penlight set out amongst his tools, clicking it on with his thumb. 

The moment the beam touched the boy’s pupils, he jerked back with a sharp gasp—the first real reaction he’d shown since they’d taken him. His face screwed up, turning away from the light like it burned.

Joe caught him before he could retreat too far, one broad hand cradling the back of his head, the other bracing his cheek. "Shh, almost done." he murmured, his thumb smoothing a circle across the boy’s temple.

Nicky worked quickly to check his pupillary response. The reaction to light was slow, but equally present. Finally, he brandished a thermometer. There was a quiet beep in the boy's ear before the digital readout confirmed what he already knew.

Low-grade fever. Dehydration. Aches. The beginnings of an infection simmering.

He began to clear away the unnecessary supplies back into his med kit, leaving out only what was needed for an IV. "He needs fluids," he said quietly. "And likely antibiotics."

Joe considered the information, his gaze trained down towards the boy. His palm lightly brushed over the crown of his shaved scalp, noting the angry red patches of irritation—a sort of allergic reaction to the electrodes' adhesive.

"He breathes like he's in pain." 

The child weakly tried to turn his head from Joe's careful touch, his hands flinching at his sides. 

"Tranquillo, piccolo. Fammi vedere questa mano, sì?"  Nicky spoke gently to him as he settled his small arm across his knee. His fingers nimbly fastened an elastic band around his skinny bicep before he turned his palm upward. (Easy, little one. Let me see this hand, yes?)

The Italian was deliberate. Not just for comfort, but as a boundary against past memories. Nicky wanted his voice and words to be nothing like the sterile English used in the lab. He knew that the boy wouldn't fully understand, but he hoped that the tone of what he said would still register. It felt important to create a distinction from the doctors he had known before, so he would eventually learn that his and Joe's hands would never seek to harm him.  Nicky knew that the severe dehydration would make finding a suitable vein more difficult, and the moving conditions of the van were not ideal for steady hands, but there was no choice. He took a moment to center himself, slipping into the focused calm he'd learned to hone over centuries. These were the same measured breaths he took when perched on a rooftop with his rifle, in moments where there was no room for error. He glanced upwards to Joe, silent understanding passed between them.  Joe had the boy's head resting now in the crook of his elbow. Carefully, he turned his face towards him, shielding his view from the needle.  A slight tremor ran through his small body as the needle pierced skin. There was the subtle feeling of resistance when the IV catheter met vein, then a small amount of blood filled the chamber, signalling success. The boy's breathing caught, but he didn't cry out. Nicky suspected that he was too weak to even whimper.  "Tutto fatto." He whispered, as much to himself as to the child. He taped the line in place, his thumb brushing the inside of his elbow in silent apology. (All done.)   Joe began fixing the jacket around the boy's body once more, assuring he was well covered. He sat back and watched as Nicky busied himself with hanging the bag of Ringer's solution on a makeshift hook. His husband made the necessary calculations in his head before drawing a syringe of pain medication, administering the dose directly through the IV bag's port.  Nicky's silence could often be more telling than any outburst. There was something unsettled in the calm way his eyes scanned over the child, a sort of anger kept well guarded under the water's surface. It could never be lost on Joe that the person lying across his lap was just as much of Nicky's flesh as of his own, and so this violation felt all the more heavier. What wounded Nicolò only wounded him doubly.

"He needs a name..." Joe whispered, the words raw. There hadn't been time to comb through all of the records Copley and Booker amassed before the raid, but that crucial piece of information was listed nowhere. The boy had a number, but no other identifier tied to him. 

As the child fought against the pull of sleep, the message of what needed to be done was silently understood. What Joe was proposing was a tentative step towards trying, towards undoing. It was their attempt to stand between this child and a world that sought to exploit him.

It came together organically. A discussion they never once held before, but in that moment they found themselves inexplicably equipped with the answers.

"Ilyas." Nicky breathed, only loud enough to be heard between them.

Joe nodded as he exhaled, his thumb smoothing over the boy's cheekbone. The prophet Ilyas was known to have been ever faithful, resurrected before bringing down fire from the sky. He was someone taken and then returned. Neither he nor Nicky were particularly religious anymore, but symbols were never lost on them. This was a name that fit the person receiving it, and that fact alone brought a small modicum of comfort. What remained of life if our words and names no longer carried meaning? 

"Ilyas Nicolò." Joe finished, his gaze still trained downward. 

Nicky’s head tilted, just slightly, but his fingers curled around Joe’s wrist in agreement. No paperwork, no witnesses, they only had this. It was a tentative claim voiced within the shuddering dark of an unmarked van.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Christina Buttons

Published: Apr 4, 2024

[ Figure 2: Representative images of Hematoxylin and Eosin-stained sections of testicular tissue biopsied from the testis from GD patients (A) with and (B) without PB exposure. ]

In a groundbreaking study from the Mayo Clinic, a globally recognized leader in medical research and patient care, researchers examined the effects of puberty blockers on testicular development in gender dysphoric male children. Their investigation revealed evidence of mild to severe atrophy in the sex glands of these children, leading the authors to express doubt in the claims of “reversibility” often made about puberty blockers.

The authors assert, “We provide unprecedented histological evidence revealing detrimental pediatric testicular sex gland responses to [puberty blockers].”

This preprint study, not yet peer-reviewed, presents evidence that puberty blockers induce significant cellular changes, impacting testicular development and sperm production in ways that are not fully reversible, with potentially permanent effects on testicular function and fertility. It challenges the longstanding view of puberty blockers as a reversible "pause button" on puberty.

As noted by the researchers of this study, no long-term studies exist for the use of puberty blockers in the context of stopping puberty for gender dysphoric children, and many potential health consequences remain unknown. In particular, the long-term impact on reproductive health is uncertain, making this study critical for filling this knowledge gap.

To address these unknowns, the Mayo Clinic has established the largest collection of testicular samples for patients aged 0-17 years, including those with gender dysphoria who have and have not yet received puberty blocker treatment, creating a database of over 130,000 individual cells for analysis.

Using a novel approach, the research team meticulously analyzed testicular tissue samples from youths undergoing puberty blocker treatment, with those not on puberty blocker treatment serving as controls. This comparison provides important insights into the potential cellular and molecular changes induced by these drugs.

Key Findings

The study utilized the Mayo Clinic's Pediatric Testicular Biobank for Fertility Preservation, which has been recruiting patients primarily from pediatric urology departments since 2015. Researchers analyzed testicular specimens from 87 young individuals (ages 0-17) undergoing fertility preservation surgery for various health reasons. Among these, 16 were gender dysphoric boys between the ages of 10 and 16, all of whom began identifying as transgender girls between the ages of 2 and 15. At the time of surgery, 9 patients (56%) were already on puberty blockers, with exposure ranging from 3 to 52 months. The authors noted that 100% of the 16 children would eventually go on to take them, highlighting “the widespread nature of PB intervention in this demographic.”

Among nine patients treated with puberty blockers, two exhibited unusual features in their testicles upon physical examination. One patient had abnormalities in both testicles, including incomplete development of the tunica albuginea, which is a protective covering around the testicles. The other patient had a right testicle that was difficult to detect.

In one part of the tissue-level analysis, over 400 testicular biopsy samples were analyzed and stained to examine the differences between those treated with puberty blockers and those who were not. Comparisons showed that testicular development in those treated with puberty blockers was abnormal compared to non-treated individuals. There was variability in how individuals responded to puberty blockers, leading to different outcomes in testicular development, including the degeneration of testicular tissues.

The study authors presented a case of a 12-year-old patient who underwent treatment with puberty blockers for 14 months. In this individual, 59% of the sex glands showed complete atrophy, along with the presence of microlithiasis—a condition where small clusters of calcium form in the testicles. This insight suggests that puberty blockers could lead to lasting structural changes. Additionally, research has shown a link between testicular microlithiasis and testicular cancer.

[ D) Representative images of normal (top) and fully atrophied sex gland (bottom). ]

This study also utilized single-cell analysis to investigate the effects of puberty blockers and aging on testicular cell composition. It took a very detailed look at individual cells from the testicles of a 14-year-old who had been on puberty blockers for over 4 years. The study analyzed a total of 130,100 cells, including 11,199 cells from the juvenile puberty blocker-treated patient.

The study observed that over 90% of the cells responsible for sperm production in this patient were stunted at an early developmental stage, unable to progress further. Additionally, it found "pathologically" higher and lower levels of two types of support cells (Sertoli cells) necessary for healthy sperm development. These findings suggest that puberty blockers can disrupt the normal maturation process of cells critical for sperm production.

In another part of the analysis, the authors found distinct cell-specific changes, including altered expression patterns of puberty-associated genes in endothelial cells, due to puberty blocker treatment. The authors believe that these drugs might induce juvenile testicular atrophy in part by disrupting the normal function of testicular endothelial cells.

Another aspect of the study focused on examining the effects of puberty blockers on the genetic activity of early-stage sperm cells, revealing significant changes that could potentially influence their development and fertility. By analyzing the activity of specific genes within these cells, the researchers found that puberty blockers may have caused alterations in gene expression, affecting processes crucial for the normal growth and function of these cells. This analysis suggests that the use of puberty blockers in gender dysphoric youth could have lasting implications for their reproductive health, particularly by impacting the ability of these early-stage sperm cells to mature properly.

Study Impact

Puberty blockers are increasingly used as a treatment for gender dysphoric youth to halt the development of secondary sex characteristics, such as breast development and widening of hips in females, or the growth of facial hair and deepening of the voice in males. Thousands of children in the United States are placed on this medical pathway as part of the gender-affirming model of care, under the presumption that these drugs are safe and fully reversible.

However, many aspects of the long-term consequences of puberty blockers, which have been administered to children off-label in an experimental manner, remain unknown. This study contributes valuable insights into the potential irreversible harm these treatments can cause to bodily and reproductive functions. 

Arguably, the most critical finding is the evidence of mild to severe sex gland atrophy in children treated with puberty blockers. This atrophy signifies potential damage or impairment to the structures essential for sperm production, raising serious concerns about the long-term fertility impacts of these drugs for these individuals. 

Given the Mayo Clinic's esteemed reputation in the medical and research communities, should the study pass peer review without any issues, its findings will carry significant weight.

Broader Implications

Puberty blockers belong to a group of synthetic gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogues. These drugs act on the pituitary gland to hinder the release of chemical signals that typically trigger the production of estrogen and testosterone. Historically GnRH analogues were used to treat conditions such as prostate cancer, fibroids, and endometriosis and, in some cases, as a measure to chemically castrate sex offenders.

In children, puberty blockers prevent the natural changes of puberty driven by sex hormones and have been used to treat central precocious puberty, a condition where a child begins to sexually mature much earlier than usual. In gender dysphoria, puberty blockers are administered experimentally, lacking long-term testing.

Notably, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved puberty blockers and sex hormones for use in pediatric gender care. No clinical trials have substantiated the safety of these drugs for such non-approved applications and manufacturers of puberty blockers have repeatedly declined to conduct safety trials for their use on this cohort.

While puberty-blocking drugs are often promoted as “safe,” "reversible" and a "pause button" on puberty, these characterizations seem to stem from their approved use for treating central precocious puberty in younger children, not their burgeoning off-label use for managing gender dysphoria in adolescents. 

Past studies have indicated possible negative effects on bone density and brain health. There is also a concern that these drugs might solidify gender dysphoria in adolescents, potentially leading them down a lifelong road of biomedical interventions. Following reports in 2016 of suicidal ideation in children administered puberty blockers, the FDA instructed drug manufacturers to include a warning about potential psychiatric issues on the drugs' labels.

Puberty blockers are increasingly administered to adolescents at Tanner Stage 2, the first signs of puberty. Research shows administering puberty blockers at this stage, followed by cross-sex hormones, may result in infertility, sterility, and sexual dysfunction. Furthermore, they inhibit the development of mature male genitalia, making it difficult to create a pseudovagina in the event of a later vaginoplasty due to a lack of sufficient tissue.

The National Health Service England recently announced it would no longer prescribe puberty blockers to youth outside of research settings and closed down its only national clinical service for pediatric gender medicine, following a review that deemed the service "not safe.”

Several European countries, including Sweden, Finland, the UK, Denmark, and Norway have updated their guidelines for youth transition to align with systematic evidence reviews, the gold standard in evidence-based medicine. These reviews concluded that the risks associated with youth transition outweigh any purported benefits. Consequently, these countries have implemented restrictions on medical interventions, prioritizing psychotherapy as a first-line response for minors experiencing gender-related distress.

==

They're sterilizing boys and giving them cancer. When "god" does it, we call him evil. When humans do it, we call it "gender affirming care."

[jungkoode]

THE 25TH HOUR | O3

"memory protocol"

"The most dangerous temporal anomaly isn't the one you can measure. It's the way your body remembers what your mind forgot."

next | index | wc: 2,5k

↦author's note : Y'ALL. The medical examination scene has been living in my head rent free for WEEKS. You know those moments when you're trying to write something serious and professional but your characters are like "no❤️ watch this"??? Because same. We've got Jin being the only responsible adult, Yoongi attempting to maintain professional distance (and failing spectacularly), Jimin choosing violence as a lifestyle, and Y/N's body remembering things her mind doesn't. Also featuring: temporal physics being completely ignored in favor of sexual tension, inappropriate uses of leather gloves, and the team collectively deciding to Look Away™️ when things get spicy. Speaking of the team - can we talk about how Jimin has evolved into this chaotic force of nature who just EXISTS to make Yoongi's life harder??? The way he just *gestures vaguely* KNOWS THINGS and chooses to use that knowledge for evil?? An icon. A legend. The reason Yoongi's blood pressure is through the roof. Also, fun fact: This entire scene came from me thinking "what if we made temporal physics sexy?" and then it spiraled into... whatever this is. Shoutout to my physics professor who would probably have an aneurysm reading this. Sorry not sorry, but time manipulation is hot now, I don't make the rules. Anyway, get ready for some quality UST featuring: precise measurements of inappropriate physical contact, clinical descriptions of sexual tension, and Yoongi pretending he's maintaining professional distance while everyone else pretends not to notice him failing miserably at it.

"Stabilized!" 

Namjoon’s voice blooms across the room.

Agent Min releases your wrist like it's burning him, despite the fabric barrier. The sudden loss of contact sends your temporal readings fluctuating—a 0.7% variance you automatically note.

"Gloves?" Jin asks, already reaching for a drawer.

"Please." 

The leather gloves hit his palm with practiced accuracy. He pulls them on with movements too precise, too controlled. Black leather, reinforced temporal shielding based on the metallic thread pattern, custom-fitted.

The man before you—Jin—carries himself like a medical professional, if medical professionals used quantum resonance meters and discussed memory patterns like cellular structures. Your analytical mind categorizes the differences: standard medical equipment replaced with temporal monitoring devices, traditional vital signs supplemented with chronological variance readings.

"Sit down, please." His instruction carries the same clinical tone you'd expect from a regular doctor.

You comply, settling onto what appears to be a medical bed. The surface feels wrong—vibrating at a frequency just slightly out of sync with normal time.

Agent Min shuffles through data streams with the doctor, their voices low but intense:

"...temporal resistance patterns..."

"...cognitive overlay rejection..."

"...signature destabilization risks..."

"Can I at least know what you're planning to do to me?" You interrupt their technical exchange, keeping your voice steady.

"Memories." Agent Min turns immediately when you ask. "We're attempting to reintegrate your memory backup."

"What memory backup?" Frustration edges into your voice. "That's not technologically possible with current—"

Agent Min exchanges a look with the doctor.

"Have they explained?" The doctor asks. "About forced memory integration?"

"Yes," Agent Min runs a hand through his hair. "Hoseok and Jimin made that abundantly clear."

"So my hands are tied regarding information transfer," the doctor says, settling into a chair facing you. His temporal signature reads oddly stable compared to the others you've encountered here.

"But you're planning to inject memories?" Your mind automatically starts calculating the energy requirements for quantum information transfer. "The technological limitations alone make that scientifically impossible—”

"Memory injection is actually quite different from..." He stops, glancing at Agent Min before sighing with something like fond exasperation. "Alright, let's start here—tell me what you know about this world."

You frown, analyzing the request. "What could I possibly know that you don't? You clearly have access to technology and information beyond standard clearance levels."

"Trust me," Agent Min murmurs, "we don't."

The doctor rolls his eyes at him. "We need to gauge the level of bleed-through this time."

"Bleed-through?" You ask, the term spiraling with curiosity inside your head.

"Min, timeline shifts since her last reset?"

"None." 

"Well, at least there's that."

"Timeline shifts? Resets?" Your mind tries to parse terms that shouldn't exist in any approved temporal physics database.

"Please," the doctor says, "tell me what you know about this world."

You analyze the request, breaking it down into quantifiable components. "That's an incredibly broad query. Could you specify the parameters?"

"Start with temporal mechanics," he suggests. "How does time work?"

The question seems absurd—like asking how gravity works. It's a fundamental constant, documented through centuries of quantum research and temporal physics studies.

"Time is regulated by the Chrono-Sync Network through quantum resonance frequencies calibrated to maintain perfect temporal alignment," you explain, falling into the familiar rhythm of technical exposition. "The Master Clock, located in Sector 1, generates the base frequency that all Chrono-Sync Watches must match within 0.001% variance. Any deviation beyond that threshold triggers automatic correction protocols."

"And this system has always existed?" Agent Min's question carries an odd weight.

"Of course. The Network was established in 2157 following the Quantum Wars. It's basic history." Your voice holds the slight edge of someone stating the obvious. "The temporal monitoring system prevents chronological warfare by maintaining universal time synchronization. Before the Network, temporal terrorists could manipulate local time fields, creating devastating paradoxes."

"What about before 2157?" The doctor—Jin—asks carefully.

"Temporal chaos. Unregulated time flow. Multiple competing chronological frequencies." You recite the facts with precision. "That's why CHRONOS was developed—to prevent temporal warfare through standardization. The historical records clearly document the devastation caused by chrono-terrorism."

"And the 24-hour cycle?" Agent Min's question seems to carry extra significance.

"The natural human circadian rhythm." Your response is automatic. "CHRONOS simply enforced what was already biologically standard. Studies have proven that deviating from the 24-hour cycle causes severe physiological and psychological damage."

"Really?" Jin's pen scratches against his paper. "No other possible time structures?"

"The 24-hour cycle is scientifically proven to be optimal for human function," you explain with the precision of someone who has spent years studying these principles. "Any variation would create cascading temporal instabilities. The human brain is specifically calibrated to function on this cycle. It's elementary temporal biology."

"Friends? Relationships?" Jin's pen moves steadily, changing topics with suspicious abruptness.

The shift in questioning triggers a slight increase in your temporal readings—0.02% variance. Within acceptable parameters, but noteworthy.

"Limited social interaction to maintain optimal temporal efficiency," you recite. "Two approved recreational contacts: Lisa Martinez from the Academy, Thomas Park from my housing block."

Agent Min's jaw tightens fractionally at the second name. The reaction is precisely 0.23 seconds too fast to be casual. You begin calculating potential causation factors.

"And that seems normal to you?" Jin asks. "Limited social interaction for efficiency?"

"Of course. Personal relationships introduce temporal variance through emotional instability." The words feel rehearsed somehow, like a textbook you've memorized but never quite internalized. "The Network functions best when all participants maintain strict chronological compliance. Emotional attachments create unpredictable temporal ripples."

"What about deviation?" Agent Min's voice carries an edge. "Have you ever wanted to break schedule? Act outside approved parameters?"

"That would be highly inefficient.Temporal compliance is crucial for societal stability. The system exists to protect us from chronological warfare."

"You've never questioned it?" Jin presses. "Never wondered why everything is so perfectly structured?"

"Structure creates efficiency. Efficiency creates stability." The response is automatic, but your Chrono-Sync Watch registers a minor desynchronization. Curious. "Why would I question proven temporal mechanics? The data is irrefutable."

"Because your body already is," Agent Min says quietly.

You start to protest, but then you notice: your hand is reaching for your watch again. Seven minutes exactly since the last check. You've been doing it the entire conversation without conscious thought. You immediately begin calculating the statistical probability of such precise timing occurring naturally.

"That's..." You search for a logical explanation. "That's just good temporal maintenance. Regular monitoring ensures optimal synchronization with the Network."

"Is it?" Jin asks. "Or is it programmed behavior?"

You calculate probability matrices for their increasingly concerning implications. Their questions display either dangerous ignorance of basic temporal physics or... something else. Something that makes your precisely ordered world feel slightly off-axis.

"I'm not programmed." The words come out sharper than intended. "I have free will. I make my own choices. I'm certified in temporal monitoring, scheduled to start at the Center tomorrow morning. My employee ID is A-735, my clearance level is—"

"Perfect temporal compliance," the doctor interrupts, making notes. "Standard citizen programming. What else?"

You frown at his word choice. "Programming?"

"Just continue," Agent Min says. His eyes haven't left the temporal readings displaying your vital signs. You notice his attention seems to focus on specific frequencies—ones that shouldn't matter according to standard temporal theory.

"I..." You retreat into facts—the only stable ground in this increasingly unstable situation. "I grew up in Sector 4. Parents are both temporal compliance officers. Sarah and James Chen. I attended the Academy of Temporal Sciences, graduated top of my class in quantum mechanics and chronological theory. I live alone in approved housing block 7B. My daily schedule is optimized for maximum temporal efficiency as required by—"

"Parents' names?" The doctor interrupts again, looking up sharply.

"Sarah and James Chen," you repeat. The names feel solid in your mouth. You remember Sunday dinners, temporal compliance lessons, your mother's smile, your father's strict adherence to schedule. 

Memory integrity: 100% clear. 

"At least they didn't give her a husband this time," the doctor mutters.

Agent Min clears his throat loudly. The temperature in the room drops 0.3 degrees.

"A husband?" You ask, latching onto the inconsistency. Your mind automatically starts calculating the statistical probability of memory tampering based on their behavior. The results are concerning.

"Different reset," the doctor waves dismissively. "Continue. What do you know about CHRONOS?"

You catalog his dismissal for later analysis, noting the 0.47-second delay before his response. "The artificial intelligence system that maintains temporal order. Created in 2157 to prevent temporal warfare and ensure humanity's survival through perfect chronological control."

"What about anomalies?" Agent Min asks. "Temporal variance? Chronological inconsistencies?"

"Contained and corrected." You watch their reactions carefully, measuring micro-expressions against standard behavioral baselines. "Any significant temporal deviation is identified and eliminated before it can destabilize the Network."

"And what happens to those who deviate?" Jin's voice is carefully neutral.

"They're..." You pause, discovering an unexpected gap in your knowledge. Curious. Your temporal compliance training should cover all aspects of the system. "They're corrected. Brought back into alignment with standard temporal flow."

"How?" Agent Min presses.

"That information isn't included in standard temporal physics education," you admit, analyzing their reactions. Their behavior suggests they know something you don't—a statistical impossibility given your education level and clearance. Your hand automatically moves to check your watch again.

"What about emotional responses?" Jin asks suddenly. "Do you experience feelings that seem inconsistent with your memories or experiences?"

Your body chooses that moment to lean slightly toward Agent Min without conscious input. You straighten immediately, analyzing the movement with growing frustration. The proximity increases your heart rate by 3.7 BPM despite no logical reason for the response. Your temporal signature shifts by 0.06%—still within compliance range, but the pattern is... concerning.

"I..." You stop, recalibrating. "My responses are within normal parameters."

"Really?" Jin asks. "So your heart rate always spikes around strangers?"

You glance at the monitoring equipment—your pulse is indeed elevated. "That's likely due to the unusual circumstances." Your voice maintains professional detachment even as your body betrays you by shifting 0.2 centimeters closer to Agent Min.

"And the temporal resonance patterns?" Jin gestures to another reading. "The way your signature stabilizes with proximity to Agent Min?"

"Coincidence," you say firmly, even as your body shifts another 0.3 centimeters closer to him without your permission. "Temporal signatures naturally seek stability. It's basic quantum mechanics."

"With specific people?" 

“Jin.”

"I..." You check your watch. Six minutes exactly until your next scheduled check. The wrongness of potentially missing it makes your skin crawl. "This isn't... I don't..."

"What we are trying to say," Jin interrupts, "is that perhaps your understanding of this world isn't as complete as CHRONOS wants you to believe."

You start to argue, but then you notice: Agent Min has shifted exactly 2.7 centimeters closer. The movement carries too much precision—like he's performed it countless times before. Like he’s anticipating something. 

Your hand reaches for your watch again—five minutes and forty-three seconds until your next scheduled check. The compulsion feels simultaneously natural and foreign, like a subroutine you never consciously installed.

"Then choose to skip your next time check," Agent Min challenges.

Your hand is already moving toward your watch. You force it down, but your skin crawls with the wrongness of it. Five minutes and thirty-eight seconds until your next scheduled check. The knowledge sits like lead in your stomach.

"This proves nothing," you argue, even as anxiety builds at the thought of missing your seven-minute mark. "Regular temporal monitoring is simply good practice. The Network requires consistent synchronization to maintain stability."

But your mind is already cataloging the inconsistencies:

- Why does your body respond to Agent Min with mathematical precision?

- Why do you check the time every seven minutes with mechanical accuracy?

- Why does breaking that pattern feel physically wrong?

- Why can you remember every detail of your life with perfect clarity, yet find gaps in your knowledge of the system itself?

"I..." You swallow hard. "I need to check my watch in five minutes and thirty-three seconds."

"We know," Agent Min says softly. 

His gloved hand twitches.

Voices interrupt your pondering.

"The quantum resonance patterns are fascinating but I think I'll pass on another lecture from Namjoon about temporal mechanics," The pink-haired man suddenly announces, sauntering into the room. 

He immediately starts fiddling with Jin's equipment, who doesn't even flinch—just continues monitoring your readings.

"You'd think after hundreds of timelines he'd have a more interesting way to explain it," Hoseok adds, dropping into a nearby chair.

“Doesn’t matter how many times he explains, I don’t get shit.” Jimin responds. Then, glances between you and Agent Min. "So what's the story this time? Three kids? White picket fence? Nuclear family in temporal compliance heaven?"

Agent Min's foot connects with his shin. Hard.

"Ow! What? I'm just asking what narrative they programmed this time. At least it's not—”

"Jimin." Agent Min's voice carries warning.

"Not that you'd remember," Hoseok says, grinning despite the tension, "but last reset they gave you this whole elaborate backstory. Husband named Richard. Real piece of work."

Your mind tries to process this. "Richard?"

"Oh yeah. Super by-the-book temporal compliance officer. Yoongi spent months trying to trigger his outlier potential just so he could—”

"Hoseok." Agent Min's temperature spikes 0.4 degrees.

"What? I'm just saying, you did try to convert him. Multiple times." Hoseok's grin widens. "Though we all know it wasn't because you wanted him on the team."

Your analytical mind catalogs Agent Min's reactions: jaw tension increasing 15%, pulse elevated to 67 BPM, careful distance from your position maintained at exactly 1.2 meters in case temporal stabilization requires contact.

"The temporal variance patterns are unstable enough without adding cognitive stress," Agent Min says, voice clipped. "Focus on the present reset."

"Present reset," Jimin mimics, still rubbing his shin. "Like you weren't calculating exactly how many anomalies it would take before CHRONOS had to—”

"12 minutes," Agent Min cuts him off. "Either help with the readings or get out."

You find yourself analyzing his response with unusual intensity. "You can influence CHRONOS' resets?"

"No," he says too quickly.

"Yes," Jimin corrects.

"Sometimes," Hoseok clarifies.

"It's complicated," Jin adds, not looking up from his equipment.

Your head starts throbbing again. Agent Min takes exactly one step closer—close enough to stabilize your temporal signature if needed.

"You rewrote time to... eliminate my husband?" The words feel strange in your mouth. You have no memory of a Richard, no context for their claims, yet something about Agent Min's reaction feels significant.

"Technically, CHRONOS rewrote time," Jimin says helpfully. "Yoongi just... creates enough temporal instability that CHRONOS has to adjust things. Usually in ways that coincidentally benefit him."

"After trying to trigger Richard's outlier potential," Hoseok adds.

"Which didn't work," Jimin continues.

"Multiple times," they finish together.

Agent Min's hands clench at his sides. The room temperature drops another 0.5 degrees.

"Your temporal signature is spiking again," he says instead of addressing their comments. "Focus on the cognitive process before—"

"Before what?" You press. "Before you rewrite time again? Before CHRONOS erases more memories I apparently don't know I have?"

His eyes meet yours, and for a moment something flickers in them—frustration, resignation, something else you can't quantify.

"Before we run out of time," he says finally. "Again."

"Always running out of time with you two," Jimin mutters. "Some things never change, no matter how many resets."

You want to ask what he means, but your nose starts bleeding again.

It starts as a single drop—precisely 0.03 milliliters. Your analytical mind starts calculating the iron content before Agent Min moves.

His response time is 0.33 seconds—faster than standard human reflexes. The motion carries too much familiarity as he steps forward, black-gloved hand already reaching for your face. The leather is cool against your skin as he catches the blood with clinical efficiency, his hand remaining steady under your nose.

But there's nothing clinical about the way your pulse jumps 7 BPM at the sustained contact.

You look up, trying to analyze his expression, but his focus remains fixed on the task. His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly—you notice his masseter muscle contracting at 23% more tension than baseline. He makes a soft sound of disapproval as another drop falls onto the black leather.

The contact feels... correct. Like your body recognizes something your mind can't compute. His gloved hand doesn't waver, maintaining its position.

Temperature at point of contact: 2.3 degrees above normal, even through the leather.

Proximity: 34.2 centimeters closer than his usual maintained distance.

Your cognitive functions: Surprisingly compromised.

Jimin clears his throat with exaggerated purpose. Agent Min's head snaps toward him while his hand remains steady under your nose.

"Jin." His voice carries an edge of urgency. "Ready?"

Jin's fingers move over his equipment. The device in his hands emits a soft hum at exactly 432 Hz, releasing a cloud of temporally charged particles that coalesce into a perfect sphere.

"Yeah." Jin lifts the sphere with careful movements. The air around it distorts slightly—light bending at impossible angles.

"What is that?" Your voice remains steady despite the way your skin prickles with increasing temporal static. Agent Min adjusts his gloved hand slightly, catching another drop of blood without breaking contact.

"Memory backup." Jin adjusts something on the sphere's surface. "This shouldn't hurt, but temporal cognitive recalibration can cause some discomfort."

"Discomfort," Jimin mutters. "That's one way to put it."

Agent Min shifts slightly—angling his body 3 degrees more toward you, his hand never leaving its position. A protective stance your mind recognizes from standard security training. But this feels... different. Personal.

"Your neural activity is spiking" he says, voice carrying that strange mix of professional distance and something else. Something that makes your chest tight. "We need to—”

"How many times have you done this?" The question slips out before your analytical mind can stop it.

His free hand twitches—an aborted movement toward you that he catches at exactly 2.7 centimeters of motion.

"Too many," he says softly. Then, catching himself: "A-735, focus on maintaining cognitive stability. Your vitals are—"

"Going crazy because you're too close," Jimin interjects helpfully. "Maybe step back a few meters? You know, for medical purposes? Her heart's about to beat out of her chest."

Agent Min doesn't move. If anything, he shifts 0.3 centimeters closer, his gloved hand remaining steady under your nose.

"The proximity helps with signature dampening," he says, voice clipped. But you notice his heart rate has increased to 68 BPM.

"She's already stabilized in here," Jimin sighs. "You heard the man.”

"You are wearing the gloves, right?" Hoseok asks suddenly, eyeing Agent Min's position. "Because the way you're hovering—"

"Of course I'm wearing the gloves," Agent Min snaps, though his hand remains perfectly steady under your nose.

"Just checking," Hoseok raises his hands in mock surrender. "Given your track record with protocol 47.3..."

An adjustment of your position creates an unexpected point of contact—your knee brushing against what your analytical mind immediately identifies as anatomically significant. You immediately begin calculating the exact angle and pressure of the contact before you register its implications. Your body's response is both immediate and puzzling—heart rate increasing by 12 BPM, skin temperature rising 0.24 degrees.

Position correction should be simple. Yet your body seems to know exactly how to shift to maximize the contact pressure—a knowledge that triggers several questions about muscle memory and timeline retention that you file away for later analysis.

His gloved hand remains perfectly steady under your nose through sheer force of will.

"Wow, that ceiling tile is fascinating," Jimin announces suddenly, tilting his head back with exaggerated interest.

"Absolutely riveting," Hoseok agrees, studying his shoes with intense concentration.

Jin becomes very focused on adjusting his equipment settings.

Agent Min's voice comes out exactly 0.7 octaves lower than usual: "A-735. Position adjustment required."

You move with deliberate precision, establishing appropriate professional distance. Your body protests the movement with an intensity that warrants further investigation—when you're not calculating the exact newtons of force his masseter muscle is exerting. 

"7 minutes," he grits out, the words tight with restraint. His tongue presses visibly against his cheek as he inhales deeply. "Jin, if that sphere isn't ready in the next 30 seconds—"

"Working on it, boss," Jin responds, still very interested in his calibration dials.

"Maybe if you stepped back..." Jimin suggests helpfully, still studying the ceiling.

"Can't," Agent Min responds through what sounds like clenched teeth. "Nosebleed."

His gloved thumb twitches minutely against your skin. The movement suggests significant muscular tension—likely from maintaining precise control over multiple physiological responses.

"You could just let someone else—" Hoseok starts.

"No." 

"You sure there hasn't been any... accidental contact?" Jimin drawls. "Because this is giving me déjà vu from timeline 466 when you claimed you were 'just stabilizing her' but really—"

"6 minutes," Agent Min cuts him off. His temperature rises another 0.2 degrees. "Seokjin.”

Jin holds up the sphere, which now pulses with a soft golden light that matches the traces you've seen Agent Min leave. "Ready. But Yoongi..."

"I know." Something in his voice makes you look up again. His eyes meet yours for exactly 1.2 seconds before he looks away, though his hand doesn't waver from its position. "It has to be different this time."

"It's always different," Jimin says quietly. "Doesn't change how it ends."

Your nose threatens to start bleeding again. You feel Agent Min's gloved thumb shift slightly against your skin, ready to catch any new drops.

Time: 01:59:00 AM.

Temporal stability: Rapidly decreasing.

Questions: Infinite.

The way your body leans toward him without conscious input: Concerning.

The way he maintains careful fabric barriers between every point of contact: Even more so.

next | index

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© jungkoode 2025

no reposts, translations, or adaptations

[covid-safer-hotties]

“You may now become who you thought was disposable”: COVID-19 Politics and Ableism - Published July 4, 2024

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“You may now become who you thought was disposable”: COVID-19 Politics and Ableism Andrea Kitta Journal of American Folklore, Volume 137, Number 545, Summer 2024, pp. 321-330 (Article) Published by American Folklore Society For additional information about this article muse.jhu.edu/article/931461[37.228.238.33] Project MUSE (2024-07-09 12:59 GMT) American Folklore Society

This essay critically examines the intersection of COVID-19, Long COVID, ableism, and health care disparities in the United States, emphasizing the transformative impact of COVID-19 as a mass disabling event with a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. I also bring an autoethnographic lens to my experi- ence of COVID-19 and Long COVID, underscoring the importance of recognizing the diverse and often untellable experiences of individuals with disabilities and challenging the prevailing ableist perspectives embedded in society. I raise ethical considerations of storytelling in the context of Long COVID and urge researchers to embrace empathy and a more inclusive approach that challenges traditional notions of objectivity and distancing within academic research. I call for a collaborative approach between disability studies and folklore studies, encouraging scholars to interrogate and explore the traditions shaped by experiences of disability.

On December 13, 2020, disability advocate Imani Barbarin created a TikTok where she stated in the caption: “COVID is a mass disabling event. Things will never be the same. Never. You may now become who you thought was disposable” (Barbarin 2020). Barbarin was not overstating what is happening in the United States. In addition to the overwhelming number of US-based COVID-19 deaths (1.07 million as of November 1, 2022, according to the New York Times COVID-19 Tracker [New York Times 2023]), there is also an alarming number of cases of post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) or, as it’s more commonly known, Long COVID. Long COVID happens in anywhere from 5 percent to 50 percent of COVID-19 infections (although most medical experts agree the rate of Long COVID is somewhere around 20–30 percent of all infections). Long COVID affects women at a 22 percent higher rate than men (Sylvester et al. 2022:1391), and one study of Long COVID listed over 200 symptoms (Davis et al. 2021). The most common symptoms are fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, chest pain, brain fog, sleep disturbances, depression, joint pain, and dysautonomia (a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system that typically presents as the inability to control temperature, breathing issues, and other things the body normally controls automatically).

Current estimates of those affected by Long COVID in the United States are between twenty and forty million. COVID-19 has also been shown to reactivate other viruses (Gold et al. 2021; Chen et al. 2022; Su et al. 2022), and one current theory is that Long COVID is the result of the COVID-19 virus continually being reactivated in the body (Klein et al. 2022). The latest research out of Yale University shows that COVID-19 cases entail cellular changes to the B and T cells, lower levels of cortisol, and that the virus can reactivate other viruses (Su et al. 2022:891–2). A recent study with more than 154,068 participants showed that “in the post-acute phase of COVID-19, there was increased risk of an array of incident neurologic sequelae including ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, cognition and memory disorders, peripheral nervous system disorders, episodic disorders (for example, migraine and seizures), extrapyramidal and movement disorders, men tal health disorders, musculoskeletal disorders, sensory disorders, Guillain–Barré syndrome, and encephalitis or encephalopathy” (Xu, Xie, and Al-Aly 2022:2406).

Both COVID-19 and Long COVID exposed inequities in the US health care system, with Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) populations dying from COVID-19 at much higher rates than White people at the beginning of the pandemic. Compared to White people, Alaskan Indian or Alaskan Natives died at 2.1 times the rate, Black people at 1.7 times the rate, Hispanic or Latinx people at 1.8 the rate, and Asian Americans at 0.8 times the rate (CDC 2023). According to the Washington Post’s analysis of CDC’s statistics, the rate of White people dying from COVID-19 became equal to the rate of other groups beginning in October 2021, then (except for the Omicron wave) increased, primarily due to White people being unvaccinated. Strangely enough, the equalizing trend wasn’t because death rates dropped for BIPOC people, but rather was due to the rise of the White death rate. Tasleem Padamsee, Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University who researched vaccine use and who is a member of the Ohio Department of Health’s work group on health equity, stated: “Usually, when we say a health disparity is disappearing, what we mean is that . . . the worse-off group is getting better. . . . We don’t usually mean that the group that had a systematic advantage got worse” (quoted in Johnson and Keating 2022).

Additionally, at the time of this writing in Spring 2023, the pandemic has been declared as “over” despite the fact that around 400 people are still dying per day in the United States and that those dying tend to be people with disabilities and the elderly (New York Times 2023). It’s difficult to imagine a situation where 400 deaths a day are deemed acceptable, yet here we are. Many people are desperate to “get back to normal” and seem to care more about going maskless or dining indoors than they do about those who are dying of COVID-19. Those who are unvaccinated and unmasked also seem to not understand (or not care) that the longer they continue on that path, the longer the pandemic will take to dissipate. Simply put, the majority of people do not seem to care about people with disabilities, including those who are immunocompromised, and their increased health risks due to the pandemic.

People with disabilities are an unrecognized health disparity population, and they died at much higher rates during COVID-19 (Krahn, Walker, and Correa-de-Araujo 2015). The National Council on Disability found that 181,000 people with disabilities in long-term care facilities died from COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic, making up one-third of COVID-19 deaths at that time (National Council of Disabilities 2021). The report is worth quoting at length.

In addition to disproportionate fatalities, key findings of the report include:

People with disabilities faced a high risk of being triaged out of COVID-19 treatment when hospital beds, supplies, and personnel were scarce; were denied the use of their personal ventilator devices after admission to a hospital; and at times, were denied the assistance of critical support persons during hospital stays. Informal and formal Crisis Standards of Care (CSC), pronouncements that guided the provision of scarce health care resources in surge situations, targeted people with certain disabilities for denial of care (National Council of Disabilities 2021).

Students with disabilities were denied necessary educational services and supports during the pandemic and have experienced disruption and regression in their behavioral and educational goals (National Council of Disabilities 2021).

The growing shortage of direct care workers in existence prior to the pandemic became worse during the pandemic. Many such workers, who are women of color earning less than a living wage and lacking health benefits, left their positions for fear of contracting and spreading the virus, leaving people with disabilities and their caregivers without aid and some at risk of losing their independence or being institutionalized (National Council of Disabilities 2021).

Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Deaf-Blind, and Blind persons faced a profound communication gulf as masks became commonplace, making lip-reading impossible and sign language harder (National Council of Disabilities 2021).

[invis-o-william]

Dannymay 2025 - Day 3: Potential

Blurry visions of green and a muffled voice. Those were her first sensations in this life, muted colors and sounds that almost made her feel off balance in a way. She squinted, trying to focus more on her surroundings. With effort she saw that the green was a swirling green liquid encapsulating her, though now it was slowly disappearing from sight. 

With a click and whirring sound, a large glass tube lifted out of place around her. A tall man was waiting, face covered by a medical mask. He carefully picked the small girl up and carried her to an examination table.

The girl watched in curious silence, sitting there whilst the masked man checked her pulse, breathing, and reflexes. He then took her hand and with a small device pricked her finger, collecting the small amount of blood that blossomed there. She flinched from the brief moment of pain, but was quickly distracted by the numbers and lights showing up on the screen of the device. 

Seemingly finished with his examination, the man pulled off his mask before meeting her gaze with a furrowed brow.

“Are you able to speak?” he asked. The girl blinked at him before experimentally opening and closing her mouth. Talking. She didn’t know how, or why, but she was sure she could.

“Y…yes.” Speaking felt foreign, yet familiar, though she couldn't explain why.

The man hummed in approval. “Good. Now, can you transform?”

“Transform?” She asked, looking confused. Her tongue fumbled over the pronunciation of the word.

The man muttered something about faulty memory transfers before taking a step back. “Like this.” A flash of light engulfed his body. Once the light had cleared, the man's appearance had changed, his skin taking on a pale green hue and his eyes a blazing red. His feet left the floor as he floated up into a comfortable position and waited for the girl's response.

“Oh, I think…?” She concentrated and searched for something within herself, finding that one part of her that didn't feel at home in her current body, and tugging. With a flash she felt herself change, becoming lighter, becoming more than she was yet still feeling slightly out of place in her new form. It seemed that regardless of which form she took, something would always feel off. 

She smiled at her success, looking up at the man with hope. Hope for what, though, she wasn't quite sure. Approval? Pride? It was hard to sort out and understand her emotions yet. 

The man floated in a circle around the table, inspecting her new form before grabbing a clip board and scribbling something on it. With another flash of light he looked as he originally had to the girl once more. 

“Well, you're the closest to perfect yet, I suppose you should have a proper name.” He mulled something over for a moment before shrugging, “Danielle will do.” 

Excitement welled within the girl. A name! Something within her knew that names were given by parents, so the man must be her father. He glanced back up at her from his clipboard with a pitying look.

“It's a shame my dear, you seem to have so much potential. Both a human and ghost form, a fairly stable cellular structure, even controlled transformation. Unfortunately you just don't have everything right.” He sighed and shook his head. “Back to the drawing board I suppose. You can join your other siblings in the East Wing.”

The excitement that was growing in Danielle dropped like a stone in her stomach. Her parent, her father, didn't want her. She wasn't good enough.

“Wait!” She cried out as he turned away. “I can get better, can't I?”

The man looked back at her, confusion evident on his face.

“Isn't there something I can do? I can…I can become perfect, right?” She stumbled over the words, but managed to get her pleas out nonetheless.

Her father's confusion morphed. First to pensive thought, then a smirk slowly took over his expression.

“Well, no Danielle, at least not on your own. Neither you nor your poor siblings will ever be complete. At least, not without part of your original brother's DNA.” 

Hope flourished in Danielle at his last words. “Okay, we can get that right?” she asked, almost frantically. 

Vlad shook his head sadly, though his original smirk never quite left his face. “I'm afraid not my dear, your brother, Danny, is quite the selfish little badger. Why, he won't even let me near him. I would never be able to retrieve the one thing that could fix you!”

Danielle's thoughts raced. Maybe…maybe. “I could get it from him!” she offered. Maybe she could bargain with this Danny guy. Maybe she'd have to fight him. Either way, she would do whatever she could to get better. Maybe then her father would be proud of her!

She didn't notice his cruel smile as he accepted her offer, too engrossed in the thought of what could be.

[a-gnosis]

I got the results from the colposcopy today and the good news is that they showed no cellular changes. But the HPV infection is still there, so I'll be called for a new examination in about half a year again. I wish it would just heal and go away already. Then maybe I would feel less worried every time something feels slightly off in my genitals. This also reinforces my old feeling that my genitals are "defect" and don't work as they should, at least regarding things relating to sex, something I had a lot of depression and self-hate about in my youth.

I'm all right so far, though. Thank the gods for comics, good tea, and the ability to dive into fictional worlds.

[misssparklingpaws]

Shadow in the Flame

Chapter 29: Echoes of sentry

The gym buzzed with movement and effort, each strike, shout, and thud echoing against steel and glass. Morning light filtered in through the high windows, catching on sweat-slick skin and the sharp edge of discipline.

Aria Stark stood on the raised walkway above the training floor, arms folded over her chest, her dark hoodie zipped to just below her ribs. At nineteen weeks, her bump was undeniable beneath the fabric, but her posture remained stiff, unyielding commander.

Her sharp gaze swept across the team.

“Yelena, tighter footwork. You’re telegraphing your attacks like a teenager with a crush.”

“Not true,” Yelena grunted, dodging Ava’s sweep.

“Then why is Ava smiling?” Aria shot back.

Ava smirked. “Because I like being right.”

Below, John Walker blocked Alexei’s punch with a grunt and countered. Aria called down, “Walker, your stance is sloppy. Shift your weight or go home.”

John rolled his eyes. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“Not unless I’m choosing to,” she said, and tapped something on the datapad in her hand. “And I’m not.”

Bob stood off to the side, arms crossed, quietly observing with barely restrained energy. He watched Aria as much as the training how her brows furrowed every time someone lost rhythm, how her hand instinctively braced against the railing whenever a sharp noise startled her. She hid it well, but he knew the signs. Something was off.

After the circuit wrapped, Aria’s voice rang through the space: “Hydrate. Ten-minute break. Then drills.”

The team dispersed in a mix of groans and grudging respect. Aria turned to step off the walkway, but her balance shifted.

The metal beneath her feet seemed to ripple. Her vision flickered. Her breath caught short.

Bob was there before she could steady herself.

“Hey,” he said, low and urgent, taking her elbow. “What is it?”

Aria blinked hard, then clutched the rail with her free hand. “I don’t… feel right.”

Bob’s eyes darkened with concern. “What kind of not right?”

“Dizzy. Sharp pain low in my abdomen. It came on fast.”

Without another word, he moved. One arm around her, steady, protective. “We’re going to Bruce. Now.”

---

The medical wing was prepped by the time they arrived. Bruce Banner stood waiting, eyes immediately flicking to Aria’s pale face and the way Bob practically carried her.

“What happened?” Bruce asked as Aria sat gingerly on the examination table.

“Pain. Pressure. Dizziness,” Aria replied, every word clipped but controlled. Her hoodie was unzipped now, exposing the black tank top stretched over her bump.

Bruce nodded, already rolling over the ultrasound machine. “Let’s have a look.”

Bob hovered beside her, fingers woven through hers, silent but visibly wound tight. Bruce applied the gel and began the scan, eyes narrowing as he adjusted the resolution and contrast.

On screen, the baby appeared, small, curled, heartbeat fluttering like a distant drum.

“Vitals are present. Growth is on track…” Bruce said slowly. Then his expression changed. “But… there’s something else.”

“What?” Aria asked, too fast.

Bruce enhanced the image, toggled to a secondary filter. Faint but unmistakable—the flicker of energy patterns around the fetus.

“There’s early manifestation of abnormal bio-signatures in the neural tissue. They’re faint, but measurable. It’s not ordinary cellular development.”

Bob’s breath hitched. “It’s the serum.”

Bruce hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. It’s mimicking patterns we’ve seen in you, Bob. Not fully formed, not stable, but it’s there. Meaning… some element of the Sentry serum has been passed to the fetus.”

Aria went still.

She hadn’t moved since the word neural was spoken.

“So what does that mean?” she asked, steel just under the calm.

“It means we need further analysis, cord blood sampling, cellular mapping. Right now, we’re not seeing distress. But the child’s DNA is… reacting. Mutating in a way we don’t fully understand.”

Bob stepped back like he’d been struck. “It’s my fault.”

“No,” Aria snapped, her voice suddenly sharp. “Don’t do that.”

Bob stared at her, pain in his eyes. “It’s the serum. My DNA. My mistake.”

“You’re not a mistake,” she said, softening, just slightly. “And neither is this child.”

Bruce quietly set down the probe. “We’ll monitor closely. No missions, no stress, no exertion. We’ll get answers within 48 hours.”

Aria nodded once. “Do what you have to.”

Bob sat on the edge of the exam table, elbows on his knees, hands clutched together like he could hold the world still with sheer force.

Aria stood a few feet away, arms crossed. She hadn’t said anything in several minutes. Just… watched him. Felt him crumble in silence.

He didn’t look at her. Couldn’t.

“I’m not even human,” he finally muttered. “Not really.”

Aria’s brows lowered slightly. “Bob”

“I mean it.” His voice cracked, brittle as glass. “I’m a science experiment with a ticking bomb inside. I never should’ve let myself want this, want you. I thought maybe if I held on tight enough, if I stayed good enough, it wouldn’t touch you. But it’s in her/him now. Our baby. The serum, the instability. The Void. I gave her that. I gave you that.”

He finally looked up at her, eyes shining and wrecked.

“I did this to you.”

Aria’s eyes didn’t soften. Not immediately. They stayed hard steel forged in grief and fire.

Then, slowly, she walked toward him.

“Get up,” she said.

Bob blinked. “What?”

“Stand up.”

He obeyed out of instinct. She stepped into his space, close enough that her belly brushed his shirt, and reached for his hands. Her fingers laced through his, grounding him.

“You didn’t do this to me,” she said quietly. “You did this with me.”

“But.”

“You think I didn’t know what came with you? You think I didn’t look at the serum reports, your psychological files, and every record SHIELD had buried in their archives before I let myself love you?”

Bob stared at her. “You looked me up?”

She arched an eyebrow. “I’m a Stark. Of course I did.”

He huffed a tiny, broken laugh. But the guilt still swam in his eyes.

Aria reached up and cupped his face in both hands. “You didn’t trick me, Bob. You didn’t curse me. You gave me something real. Something no one ever offered me without conditions.”

Her voice dropped, raw and honest. “You love me. All of me. Not Stark’s last name. Not the armor. Me. And now… we have this little chaos forming inside me. Maybe she’ll glow gold. Maybe she’ll shatter planets. Or maybe she’ll just cry too loud and hate vegetables. I don’t know yet.”

“She,” he whispered.

Aria hesitated, then gave him the faintest of smirks. “I like the odds.”

Bob’s chest stuttered, like the breath had just been punched out of him.

She pressed her forehead to his. “We are going to get through this. Together. On my terms. Got it?”

He nodded, swallowing hard. “I just… I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t,” she said, fierce and certain.

“Even if it gets worse?”

“Then we fight harder.”

Bob choked on a laugh that was almost a sob. “You’re so much stronger than me.”

Aria smiled really smiled, just a flicker. “I know.”

He leaned into her hands like they were the only safe place in the universe.

And for the moment, maybe they were.

---

Night fell quietly over the Tower, the skyline humming with distant lights and muffled traffic below. Inside their quarters, the soft glow of the bedside lamp flickered against shadows dancing on the walls. Aria was curled on her side, face buried in a pillow, her bare midriff rising and falling with every even breath.

Bob lay beside her, unmoving, eyes wide open.

Sleep had come quickly. Peacefully.

Then… the Void.

The nightmare was as vivid as a memory.

He stood in a hospital room painted in blues and whites. Aria screamed, silent, her mouth open but no sound came. Her hands clawed at the sides of the bed, and blood pooled beneath her. A nurse turned away, her eyes swallowed by black, inky darkness spilling down her face like tears.

Then the baby was in his arms.

Too still. Too quiet.

But alive until black eyes flicked open, glowing, pulsing, unnatural. The baby stared at him with pure void.

And then the shadows screamed.

Aria reached for him, her voice finally breaking through like glass shattering. “Bob, don’t let it take me”

And then they were both gone.

The room turned to dust in his hands.

He gasped awake with a choked sob, heart pounding like a war drum. Sweat clung to his chest and neck. The air felt thick.

Next to him, Aria slept undisturbed, moonlight caressing her skin. One arm flung lazily over her head, her dark tank top had ridden up slightly, revealing the gentle swell of her stomach, peaceful, alive, untouched by shadows.

He sat up, hand hovering just above her belly.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered to the sleeping form, voice cracking. “I shouldn’t have given this to you.”

Bob slipped from the bed silently, grabbing a hoodie as he padded barefoot through the hallway and out onto the terrace. The wind was cool against his skin, grounding.

He didn’t expect to find anyone else there.

But Bucky Barnes leaned against the railing, coffee in hand like he hadn’t slept at all. His sharp eyes flicked over as Bob approached.

“You look like hell,” Bucky said without judgment.

Bob let out a shaky breath. “Thanks. You always this nice at 3 a.m.?”

“Depends. You always show up looking like you wrestled death in your dreams?”

Bob didn’t answer right away. He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes on the skyline. “It was Aria. And the baby. The Void took them from me.”

Bucky was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “That’s your guilt talking. Not prophecy.”

“You didn’t see it,” Bob muttered. “It was real. Her screaming. The blood. And the baby, God, the baby wasn’t even human anymore. It was like something wearing a child’s skin.”

Bucky nodded, slowly. “I’ve seen war do worse to good men than any nightmare.”

Bob’s voice cracked. “What if I gave this to her? What if she dies because I loved her?”

Bucky turned, finally facing him fully. His voice was steady, colder than Bob’s panic but far more grounded. “You didn’t give her a curse, Reynolds. You gave her a future. A messy one, maybe. But she chose it.”

“I should’ve known, my DNA, my serum, the Void, it was never safe.”

“And she still chose you,” Bucky repeated, firm. “You think Aria Stark makes blind choices?”

Bob barked a bitter laugh. “You really think she’s okay with any of this?”

“She’s scared,” Bucky admitted. “I see it in her posture, the way she holds her stomach like a shield. But you know what else I see? She lets you stay.”

Bob was quiet.

“That means something,” Bucky continued. “When Aria lets you close while she’s vulnerable, it’s not by accident. She trusts you. Now trust yourself.”

Bob dropped onto the bench beside the planter box, burying his face in his hands. “What if I can’t protect them?”

Bucky sipped his coffee, watching the horizon. “Then you learn. You fight smarter. You ask for help. But you don’t run. Not unless she tells you to.”

Bob looked up, eyes glassy. “I can’t lose them.”

Bucky’s voice was low but strong. “Then you don’t.”

Back in the room, Bob returned like a ghost reentering his body. He sat on the bed quietly, careful not to wake Aria.

Still, as if sensing him, she stirred. One eye cracked open, voice thick with sleep. “Bad dream?”

He nodded.

She reached out, blindly, until her hand found his and tugged it to her belly.

“Still here,” she murmured.

And he melted, forehead pressed to her stomach, whispering to the life they made together like it was the only prayer he’d ever known.

---

The compound kitchen buzzed with low chatter and the clink of cutlery against ceramic. Morning sunlight spilled across the counters, too warm for how cold everything suddenly felt.

Yelena was flipping eggs with theatrical flair while Alexei and John argued softly about something in Russian and protein-related. Ava sat curled at the edge of the table, sipping her tea with sharp eyes scanning the door.

The second Aria and Bob walked in, the room fell quiet.

They looked wrong.

Bob’s usual glow was dimmed, golden presence dulled like sunlight through storm glass. Aria trailed beside him, hoodie zipped, face unreadable but not unreadable in her usual way. This was cracked porcelain.

Yelena straightened. “Okay. What happened.”

Aria sat down stiffly at the table, folding her hands with precision that tried to mask the tremor in them. Bob didn’t sit. He stood behind her, a protective shadow with sad eyes.

“We went to see Bruce yesterday,” Aria said, voice flat at first. Her stare was fixed somewhere past the table. “To check on the baby.”

Ava put down her mug slowly. Yelena’s brow furrowed.

Bob looked like he wanted to speak but didn’t.

Aria’s jaw tightened, and then,like something inside her cracked, she exhaled shakily. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “The baby is showing signs of absorbing the Sentry serum… it’s unstable. Bruce doesn’t know how it will affect development. Or… if the baby will even make it.”

The room felt like it stopped breathing.

“I” she tried again, then broke. Her voice cracked, a rare fracture in all her iron. “I don’t know how to fix this. I don’t know how to protect them.”

Bob finally sat beside her and gently took her hand, his thumb rubbing slow circles over her palm.

“I’ve lost people,” Aria whispered. “Too many. But this… this is mine. Ours. And I don’t know if I’m strong enough to lose something like this.”

Yelena moved without hesitation, settling a hand over Aria’s forearm. “You don’t have to be strong every second, Stark. That’s why we’re here.”

Alexei nodded solemnly, uncharacteristically quiet. “You’re not alone in this.”

Ava leaned forward, eyes steady. “Whatever happens… we handle it. Together.”

Bob’s voice was low, cracked with guilt. “If anything happens, it’s because of me. My DNA. My.”

“Don’t,” Aria cut in, squeezing his hand. “Don’t carry that. We go forward. We don’t drown in blame.”

She looked around the table, tears unshed but visible in her gaze. “You needed to know. I’m not stepping down. I’m not retreating. But I’m not pretending either.”

There was no cheering, no easy comfort. Just the silence of a team absorbing pain… and silently promising to hold it with her.

Yelena passed her a napkin with a soft snort. “If this kid is anything like you, they’re not going down without a fight.”

A ghost of a smile touched Aria’s lips. It was enough to breathe again.

[hintze-of-bird]

The aspects derived from unicellular organisms of my alterhumanity is something I need to explore further, but I realised in my Biology lesson today that it is not limited to discrete organisms.

In fact, I believe my feelings extend towards cells in general. Macrophages, in particular, feel like me in some form. Though this is something I will have to examine further, as I am not sure what nature of “being” applies in this scenario, it did raise a few unrelated questions from me.

I do not know what species I am a macrophage of for certain. This made me wonder — are there other alterhumans whose identifications go beneath the species level? Beneath the cellular level, even?

I know alterhumans such as cladotherians exist, so identities tnat stem from organisms are evidently not limited to species, but I don’t believe I have encountered others who are parts of an individual within a species. It’s a silly question to ask if it is possible, considering the diversity and potential of identity, but is it something others experience or have experienced?

A part of me wonders if this stems from my perception of the world, and what an individual is defined as. My interest in taxonomy has led to an examination of how the classification of matter can influence the way we think about matter. It is not a perfect system, as demonstrated by the symbiosis of the parts some species are composed of. The relationships between different organisms are so integral that they need each other to survive, so should they even be considered distinct from one another? Alternatively, if we can divide these complementary organisms, then can we use a frame of thinking that splits what we would consider an individual into several, collaborating individuals instead?

I have mentioned previously that being the Distortion (The Magnus Archives) sometimes involves shifts where my sense of where one thing ends and another begins is skewed — where I might previously have perceived a table, I may see a slab of wood with four legs instead, joined together by nails or glue. (I fear I do not know table anatomy /silly.)

Does my self-perception of being some cog in a greater machine hold implications of how I view my relationships with other life?

[mushynka]

𝐁𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐬 #𝟑

The fever had taken hold of Victor Creed like a wildfire, relentless and consuming. His body, once an unbreakable fortress, was betraying him piece by piece. The mutant virus had done what no enemy, no battle, no brutal winter ever had-it had stripped him down to something raw, something breakable.

He was barely conscious when they moved him, his muscles twitching in response to unseen threats, but his body had no strength to act. He was a man built for survival, yet now, as Hank McCoy examined him under the clinical glow of the med-bay lights, Victor Creed was nothing more than a sick animal backed into a corner.

- His fever’s climbing - Hank muttered, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he adjusted the scanner. - This virus is attacking his healing factor at a cellular level. Without it functioning properly, his body isn’t fighting back the way it should.

- Good - Logan grunted from the doorway, arms crossed tight over his chest. - Maybe it’ll slow him down for once.

- Logan - Xavier’s voice was firm but calm.

Logan exhaled sharply through his nose and leaned against the frame, watching like a wolf guarding its den-but there was no mistaking the tension in his stance. This wasn’t the way Victor Creed was supposed to go down.

A ragged breath pulled from Victor’s throat, his lips parting as he stirred slightly. His eyelids fluttered, barely opening, revealing a fever-glazed amber gaze. His body shuddered, chest rising and falling in uneven gasps.

Then, a sound rumbled from deep in his throat.

Soft. Barely there.

A sound so foreign coming from a man like Victor that, for a moment, no one reacted.

A purr.

Beast glanced up from his work, brow raising in curiosity. - Fascinating.

Logan’s eyes narrowed. - The hell was that?

Xavier, seated just beside the bed, felt something shift in Victor’s mind-a flicker of something not quite aggression, not quite fear. He reached out, his voice a quiet, careful murmur. - Victor.

The response was instant. Fever-clouded eyes snapped toward him, muscles tensing for a fight that never came. He didn’t lash out. Didn’t snarl.

He only… stared.

Xavier could feel it-the disorientation, the fever burning through Victor’s mind, lowering his defenses in ways the man would never allow if he were fully aware.

The walls were still there… but they were thinner now.

Xavier’s voice remained gentle. - You’re safe.

Victor’s lip curled slightly, an instinctual reaction, but it lacked his usual malice. He blinked sluggishly. His chest rose, fell, then that soft, involuntary purring came again-as if the warmth, the touch of a hand on his arm, was something he didn’t know how to process.

Logan made a noise in the back of his throat. -That ain’t normal.

Victor’s breathing hitched suddenly, and a hoarse, disoriented whimper-small, strangled escaped him before he could stop it. His fever-addled mind was slipping into memories, into something far older than the man he had become.

Not Sabretooth the killer, not Sabretooth the monster, but something lost and aching, he mumbled, voice thick and slurred. Xavier’s expression softened. He knew that phrase. The words hung in the air like a ghost, a whisper from a past that refused to stay buried.

“The monster is hungry.”

Xavier felt the weight of it immediately. Those weren’t just fevered ramblings. Those words meant something. A memory, a scar carved deep into Victor Creed’s very foundation.

How, as a child, he had spent weeks chained up like an animal, locked away in a dark, rotting cellar beneath his father’s house.

How his nails had cracked against the stone floor, how he had begged for food, for scraps.

How his father would wait until he was too weak to fight, then throw down nothing but rotten meat, bones stripped bare, watching him crawl for it like a starving dog.

How he had learned, before he even lost his baby teeth, that hunger was just another form of punishment.

And now, decades later, burning up with fever, that broken child was still there.

Still hungry.

Still locked away in the dark.

Victor’s brows knitted together, his sluggish, hazy mind struggling to process. Xavier could feel it-the virus had burned through so much of his defenses that the usual iron grip Victor held over his own mind was failing. For the first time, Sabretooth had no walls left to hide behind.

And that was when it happened.

A trembling exhale. A shift in his breathing. A sound so small, so foreign, that Logan almost didn’t believe his own ears.

A whimper.

Low, rough, unintentional. A sound of distress.

Sabretooth-the monster, the predator, the untouchable force of nature-was vulnerable.

And Logan hated it.

He clenched his jaw so tight his teeth ached. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

Victor Creed was a bastard. A ruthless, violent son of a bitch. He didn’t deserve comfort.

But even as Logan thought it, the words rang hollow in his chest. Because the man lying in front of him, burning up with fever, his mind fraying at the edges, whispering broken things from a childhood. This wasn’t the Sabretooth he knew. This was something else. Something smaller.

Something Xavier must have recognized as well because, without hesitation, he reached out and placed a hand against Victor’s burning forehead.

Victor shuddered.

The reaction was instant. His entire body tensed-muscle memory, the expectation of pain, of violence-but when no strike came, when there was only warmth, only the steady, grounding weight of a hand… His body stilled.

His breathing hitched, caught in his throat like it didn’t know what to do.

And then, slowly, he leaned into it.

The shift was subtle, barely there, but Xavier felt it. The way Victor’s head tilted just slightly toward the touch, the way his body-so used to bracing for pain-sank the tiniest bit into the mattress.

A hesitation. A flicker of something unspoken.

Xavier said nothing about it. He simply kept his hand where it was, letting the fevered, exhausted man take whatever comfort his body was instinctively searching for.

Behind them, Hank McCoy observed quietly, a thoughtful hum in his throat. - Interesting...

Logan, however, wasn’t as composed. His hands curled into fists at his sides, frustration burning behind his eyes. He hated this. He hated how familiar it felt. And, more than anything, he hated that some part of him understood. He turned sharply on his heel and stormed out.

But not before he heard it again.

A low, instinctual rumble.

A purr.

The sound was so quiet, so foreign, that it took a second for Hank to register what had just happened.

Purring.

Sabretooth-the Sabretooth-was purring.

It was faint, more of a deep, rattling vibration in his chest than an actual sound, but there was no mistaking it. His fevered, overheated body, desperate for comfort, was responding to warmth and gentle touch the way any large feline might.

It was bizarre.

It was unnatural.

And yet... it was oddly heartbreaking.

Xavier didn’t move his hand. Didn’t comment on it. He simply observed the man in front of him, his mind threading carefully through the fevered haze of Victor’s thoughts. The walls were down, leaving behind nothing but raw, unfiltered memories. No wonder he had built his walls so high.

Hank adjusted his glasses. - His fever’s dangerously high. If this continues, he might start experiencing hallucinations.

Xavier knew. He could feel it already-the way Victor’s mind kept slipping, caught somewhere between the past and the present.

---

The fever didn’t break overnight.

By the time dawn painted the sky in muted shades of gray, Victor was still burning up, his massive frame too warm under the blankets Hank had draped over him. His healing factor - normally an unstoppable force-was struggling against the virus, leaving him weaker than anyone had ever seen him.

Weaker. And… strangely compliant.

At least, for now.

Xavier had been monitoring him through the night, both mentally and physically. He had felt the fevered haze of Victor’s thoughts shift, restless dreams slipping between memory and delirium.

But more importantly, he had felt no anger.

No sudden lashing out.

No defensive, animalistic aggression.

Even when the others had entered the med bay to check in-Hank bustling about with medical supplies, Ororo keeping a wary distance, even Scott pausing by the doorway with a barely concealed frown-Victor had remained still, staring blankly at nothing in particular.

Logan, however, was less than thrilled.

He stood near the foot of the bed, arms crossed, his presence an unmistakable storm cloud.

- He’s gonna turn, Chuck. You know it. The second that fever drops, he’ll be back to his usual "rip and tear" routine.

Xavier regarded Logan with a calm expression.

- Perhaps.

Logan scoffed. - No "perhaps" about it.

Hank cleared his throat. - Regardless of how we feel about Creed’s past actions, the fact remains-his condition is still severe. If we don’t tend to him, the virus could reach a critical stage.

Ororo exhaled quietly. - And if it does?

Hank hesitated.

Then, finally: - Even with his healing factor, there’s a chance he wouldn’t recover.

Silence.

The weight of the statement settled over the room like a thick, suffocating fog.

For a long moment, no one spoke.

And then-

A low, faint rumbling sound.

Xavier’s gaze flickered back to Victor. The deep, subconscious purring had returned, though weaker than before.

But it wasn’t just the purring that caught their attention.

It was the way Victor turned his head slightly toward the nearest warmth-toward Xavier-before his brow furrowed ever so slightly, as if searching for something.

Scott stiffened. -…Did he just...?

Ororo’s eyes softened in something dangerously close to sympathy.

Logan scowled. -You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.

Xavier only sighed, speaking gently, carefully.

- He’s delirious. His instincts are responding to care.

Scott looked uncomfortable. - He’s Sabretooth. He shouldn’t even have instincts like that.

- Maybe not anymore - Xavier admitted. - But he did once.

No one could argue with that.

---

Later that morning the fever had left Victor too weak to move much on his own.

It was bizarre seeing him like this-so still, so exhausted, his usual feral edge dulled by sickness. Even his voice, when he managed to grumble something unintelligible under his breath, was hoarse and heavy with fever. And then there was the matter of feeding him. Which, as it turned out, was an ordeal in and of itself.

Hank had prepared something simple-something warm, easy to swallow. But Victor, stubborn even in sickness, barely reacted when Hank nudged the bowl toward him.

- You need to eat - Xavier said, his tone patient, but firm.

Victor grunted something under his breath.

Logan-still watching from a distance-snorted.

- What, the big bad Sabretooth can’t hold a spoon?

Victor’s golden eyes flickered toward him in a glare that, under any other circumstances, would’ve been deadly. But right now? It just looked tired.

Xavier reached for the spoon himself. - It’s alright - he said simply, scooping up a small amount of broth. - Just try.

Victor didn’t move at first. Didn’t react.

But when the spoon lightly tapped against his lips-when the warmth registered against his skin-he parted his mouth just slightly. Xavier took it as a victory.

Scott looked like he didn’t know whether to be disturbed or impressed. - Are we really spoon-feeding Creed right now?

Ororo, ever the voice of calm, responded

- Would you rather he starve?

Scott exhaled sharply. - No. But this is… Weird - He trailed off, shaking his head.

Logan just muttered something under his breath and crossed his arms.

But Xavier wasn’t paying them any attention anymore.

Because Victor’s expression had shifted.

For just a moment-just one brief second-there was a flicker of something unfamiliar behind his tired gaze.

Not hostility.

Not defiance.

Just… acceptance.

Xavier continued to gently offer him spoonfuls of broth, his movements steady and calm. The room was silent except for the faint sound of the spoon clinking against the bowl and the soft, almost rhythmic hum of Victor’s breathing.

Then, without warning, Victor’s breath hitched. His body stiffened for a moment, and his golden eyes widened slightly, as if he didn’t quite know what was happening.

Before anyone could react, he let out a sneeze.

“Hh’CHhh!”

It was loud enough to echo in the small room, but the sound was almost pitiful, especially coming from the usually ferocious mutant. He quickly turned his face into the crook of his arm, as though embarrassed by the vulnerability of it.

Xavier’s expression softened. He quickly reached for a nearby tissue and handed it to him, his voice gentle. - Bless you, Victor.

Victor barely reacted, only grunting as he wiped his nose, clearly a bit annoyed at how uncharacteristically weak he was feeling. But there was a faint glimmer in his eyes, something almost… tender beneath the usual wall of aggression.

- You’re okay - Xavier reassured, offering the spoon once more.

Victor hesitated for a moment, then grudgingly accepted it, his golden eyes flickering toward Xavier with something that could have been described as… gratitude.

It wasn’t much. But in that moment, it was enough.

---

The mansion was quiet, a stark contrast to the usual hustle and bustle.

Inside the medical wing, Xavier sat beside Victor’s bed, his presence a steady, calming force for the ferocious mutant. Victor lay beneath a thick blanket, the fever still holding him in its grip, but the delirium was now less frequent, replaced with occasional moments of clarity. His golden eyes followed Xavier’s every movement, watching him closely as if trying to piece together this new dynamic-this strange sense of comfort that was unfamiliar to him.

- Feeling better? - Xavier asked, his voice soft.

Victor made a low sound, a grumble of sorts, before he nodded ever so slightly. His body still trembled slightly, his muscles tense from the fever that wracked him, but his breathing had slowed a bit. The fever had him shivering one moment, then drenched in sweat the next, and his once-imposing figure was now far more fragile.

Xavier placed a hand on his shoulder, his touch almost maternal. - It’ll take time, but we’ll get you through this.

Victor flinched at the contact, not used to being touched with such care, but he didn’t pull away. He simply looked up at Xavier, his golden eyes searching. Meanwhile, across the hall in the infirmary, Beast worked at his desk, surrounded by test tubes and complicated diagrams. The virus, in all its grotesque complexity, was proving far more resilient than Hank had initially expected. He muttered to himself, his voice low and thoughtful as he jotted down notes on a medical pad.

There was a small tap at the doorframe, and Jubilee poked her head around the corner. She grinned widely, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

- You’ve been holed up in here forever, Blue - she said with a playful wink. - You sure you’re not getting bored of all this nerdy science stuff? I mean, who even knew Sabretooth was this sick, huh?

Hank turned to face her, raising an eyebrow.

- I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple. - He motioned to the tests. - If his body doesn’t adapt, it could become more than just a change in temperament.

- Yeah, yeah, science stuff -Jubilee waved him off playfully and stepped closer to the table. Seriously, don’t you think he’s adorable now? Like, he’s all vulnerable and cute. I mean, you should see him when he sneezes. It’s hilarious!

Before Hank could respond, there was another sneeze from the medical room.

“Hh’SHHhh!”

Jubilee snickered. - Heard that? He sneezed again. That’s like the third time today! I’m telling you, it’s a sign-he’s becoming a little kitten.

She shot Hank a teasing grin, clearly amused by the idea of the once-mighty Sabretooth now reduced to something so delicate.

“Hh’CHhh!”

Victor sneezed again, this time turning his head toward the side, his nose scrunching up and his cheeks flushed. He looked somewhat embarrassed, as though he couldn’t quite grasp why he was suddenly so vulnerable in front of everyone.

- Bless you - Xavier’s calm voice echoed from the door. He looked over at Jubilee, his expression soft but amused. - I think you’ve been spending too much time with Logan. He’s rubbing off on you.

Jubilee grinned and shrugged. - What can I say? I’m just having fun. Who would’ve thought Sabretooth would be this cute? I mean, come on. You can’t tell me it’s not a little funny seeing him sneezing like a kitten.

She paused, watching Victor with a softened gaze. She hadn’t expected to find him so… endearing. But there was something about him now-so fragile, so human-that made him difficult to see as just the brutal, vicious Sabretooth.

As if on cue, Victor gave a small, quiet purr-the kind of sound that wasn’t born from contentment, but from something more vulnerable, almost pleading. His body shifted slightly, his face now turned toward Xavier, though his eyes remained closed in exhaustion.

For a moment, there was no response, just a long, tense silence. Then, as though Victor couldn’t quite help himself, he nuzzled into Xavier’s touch-a gesture so unexpected from the once ferocious mutant.

- It’s okay, Victor - Xavier said again, his voice full of quiet reassurance. - You’re safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.

---

Previous chapters here:

Thank you for reading ♥️ Feel free to join my ao3 where I'm also posting - Mushka025

[bpod-bpod]

Love is Deaf

From birdsong to love songs, sound can play an important role in any romance. In some species removing that ingredient can even stop a relationship in its tracks, according to researchers investigating the impact of deafness in mating of disease-carrying mosquitoes. A study examined neurons (brain cells) that express a particular gene essential for hearing in the dengue- and zika-transmitting Aedes aegypti mosquito. The neurons (shown in green) protrude into the brain's auditory centre (pictured), and help transmit sound-induced movement from the antenna. When the gene was silenced, rendering the mosquitoes deaf, males were unable to mate at all, failing to modulate their patterns of wingbeats in sync with females as they normally would during mating. Hearing is therefore not just important, but essential, to mosquito reproduction, which could present a new route to population management and attempts to slow the spread of deadly diseases.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Yijin Wang, Dhananjay Thakur and Emma Duge, and colleagues

Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and the Neuroscience Research Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), November 2024

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