#M; Vengeance Itself

[mandysxmuses]

❣ Armadia

//OH BOY THIS'LL BE A REALLY INTERESTING ONE

Pros:

Your vengeance is her vengeance. If there is anyone that has slighted you and you do want revenge, you're literally dating someone who has dedicated her whole life to exactly that and because you're dating, she'll be inclined to listen to your specifications more carefully (aka "maybe DON'T burn down the entire city they live in and just focus on this one person").

Despite her outward disgust for affection and attention, once Armadia actually starts getting it she pretty much stops that. Instantly.

Instant home security! Granted, a demon with lots of powers is probably overkill, but at least you are protected.

Cons:

Extreeeemely irrational. Violently so. And it's hard to argue her out of it, especially if it's in regards to someone she doesn't like, which is most people.

Loud. This could be a pro to some, that Armadia speaks in a strict dichotomy where she speaks really really quietly or YELLS, but still. She's loud.

If you are even a centimeter shorter than her (she's 5'2"), you will never hear the end of it in an argument. She treats this as a victory in almost every case.

[spencersmopbucket]

Fatal Attraction (3) | Paul Lahote

Pairing: Paul Lahote x Reader Summary: The battle is ruthless, just as everyone had expected. But bones aren't the only thing that crack.

The moments before war were quiet. Still. It was as if every molecule in the air was paralyzed, creating no movement. You felt suffocated, yet every undead nerve in your body was buzzing with anticipation. The flameproof gloves on your hands let out a small squeak, only audible to a vampire, as you tightened and loosened your fists. The reason for the gloves?

Grip. The skin of a porcelain figure was easier to hold on to with the gloves. Not to mention the heat.

Today would be the first time anyone but the Cullen family or the Volturi saw the power you held. You could feel it sitting in your chest, propelled by the dread and anticipation. It was ready to loose itself. The feral newborns, organized by Riley and Victoria, wouldn't be able to make sense of what they were seeing. They'd be eliminated before they could.

You felt Rosalie beside you, a cold hand meeting your clothed shoulder. Her touch was grounding — cool, elegant, and oddly reassuring. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Her silence was louder than words, laced with quiet solidarity and shared rage. It wasn’t just about survival anymore. It was about proving something. To the enemy. To yourselves.

The wolves had begun to form behind the tree line, thick paws silent on the snow-dampened forest floor. You didn’t have to look to know Paul was there. You could feel him — his heat, his presence — burning against your spine even with all that space between you.

Your eyes flicked toward the open field ahead. It felt wrong to call it that. A field. It sounded too peaceful. There would be nothing peaceful about what happened here. You curled your gloved fingers again, listening to the minute sound.

"You good?" Rosalie asked lowly. Her voice was tight with tension, but it had the edge of protectiveness. You and Rosalie had never been soft with each other, but there was respect. And she’d seen what this war meant to you. Now, it wasn't just extending your protection to people that had once been your family. It wasn't just extending your protection to the human woman who'd destroyed your relationship. It was extending your protection to the one fated to be with you.

A wolf, nonetheless. He didn't really need your protection. You knew Paul could handle himself. Him and his pack of dogs were ruthless. It didn't mean the mating bond didn't make you feel like he did — in fact, your skin crawled at the idea of him even being involved. You couldn't help it.

You were sure he felt the same. In fact, you could feel it in the way he watched you. Tracking your every move with dark, brown eyes.

A quiet growl rumbled low from the tree line. Not loud enough for the humans. Not even for the vampires, unless you were listening for it.

You rolled your golden irises, sending a sharp glance his direction, before answering Rose.

"'M alright," you responded, pulling your gloves further up onto your deadly hands. "Just ready to get it over with. It's unfortunate it had to come to this."

Rosalie hummed her agreement, though her expression remained cold and unreadable. Her gaze was already fixed on the shifting silhouettes beyond the trees. “They made their choice,” she said. “Now they’ll see the consequences.”

You didn’t respond. What was there to say? You were tired. Not physically — you hadn’t felt physical exhaustion in a long time — but emotionally. Spiritually. This cycle of blood and vengeance and claiming had worn you thin. The newborns were victims of their own manipulation, but still, they would not leave this field breathing.

You felt Paul’s presence close in again, pressing against the edges of your consciousness like a pulse, a heartbeat not your own. He hadn’t moved, but you could tell he was poised to. Ready to lunge at whatever or whoever dared get near you first.

Possessive bastard.

You sighed, flicking a bit of snow from your glove. “If he growls one more time, I swear—”

“He’s going to combust if you so much as get a scratch,” Rosalie muttered, voice dry.

You scoffed. “We both know I’m the one they should be worried about.”

“Then show them.”

Your eyes flicked toward her. There was something hard in Rosalie’s face now — something proud. She'd always put herself in front of you, protecting you closely as your best and closest friend, but she knew strength when she saw it. And she knew what it cost you to stand here, for Paul, for the Cullens, for the strange twisted fate you never asked for.

A crack. A blur of movement at the far end of the clearing.

The newborns had arrived.

No more time for dread. No more space for grief.

You turned toward the chaos with a calm that felt entirely foreign. You were done hiding what you were. What you’d become.

Behind you, you heard Paul’s growl deepen into a snarl, the unmistakable sound of his shift beginning.

The wolves charged.

So did you.

You saw them approaching, red eyes thirsty for chaos. There were newborns of all kinds — young girls, young boys, grown men and women. All confused about what they were and what they'd experienced. You could feel it, your empathic ways burning the inside of your body. As confused as they were, they were also as rageful as they'd been taught to be.

You watched as Leah Clearwater eviscerated a small girl who'd eagerly reached for her throat, a deafening snarl ripping from her own. First kill. It had officially begun.

The air was filled with snarls and bone-crunching collisions, snow spraying like white fire with each movement. You didn't hesitate. You launched yourself into the fray, a blur of precise, lethal momentum.

You dodged a broad-shouldered newborn who aimed too high, twisting beneath him and gripping his arms — your flameproof gloves sparing your skin from the fire — and ripped them clean from their sockets in one smooth, brutal motion. He collapsed to the ground, howling, only to be silenced by a wolf — Embry, maybe — who tore into his throat with a snarl.

You moved on.

The field was chaos incarnate. Jacob barreled into two enemies at once, sending limbs flying. Rosalie fought beside Emmett, the pair of them a tornado of sheer force and fury. Jasper was methodical, cruelly elegant, dispatching his targets with a grace that looked almost choreographed.

And you —

You were the storm.

The power building in your chest finally cracked free like a dam breaking, spilling outward in a wave of blistering energy. A newborn lunged toward you and froze midair, his body seizing like he'd hit an invisible wall. His scream was choked, trapped in his throat as his rage turned to blind terror. Your ability turned his aggression against him, amplified it until his mind couldn’t hold. His body burst into flames, melting his jacket, permeating the air with the smell of burning leather.

He hit the snow hard, twitching and trembling, before you snapped his neck with a twist of your boot. Your golden eyes were emotionless, cold.

Another came at you — faster, savvier, but sloppy — and you ducked, grabbed her by the wrist, and let the gloves channel your hold. She struggled, screeched, her panic blooming in your veins. You shoved it back at her tenfold. Her eyes widened, mouth open in a silent scream. She dropped.

You didn’t hesitate. You ended it.

It was going well, newborns getting crushed left and right by older and far more experienced vampires. Their sloppiness, their bloodlust, their hunger was turned against them, causing their instincts to become their own fate.

Although you were focused into sharp precision, you tried to keep a watchful eye on Paul.

The moment you'd been bombarded with four newborns working in a team, though, your watchfulness slipped. A grunt left your lips as you swiftly leapt into the air, mounting the shoulders of one and tearing his head off. Next, you used your momentum to fling his limp body into another, knocking her off balance.

She hissed, lunging for you, but you were faster — ducking beneath her outstretched arms and planting a kick straight into her ribcage, sending her crashing into a nearby boulder with a sickening crack. Her body shattered on impact.

The third one barely had time to blink before your hand was around his throat, your power flaring like wildfire. You didn’t even need to tear him apart — you flooded him with enough dread to paralyze him completely. He groaned in panic as his limbs went up in flames. That moment of hesitation was all you needed. A clean twist. Gone.

The fourth was smarter, staying just outside your range, eyes darting between you and her fallen comrades. She didn’t attack — she ran. You braced for the chase, your lip pulling back into a snarl, but then you heard it.

Agony tore across the battlefield — not human, not vampire. A sound only a wolf could make.

You turned, instincts screaming louder than reason.

Paul.

Two newborns had him pinned — one latched onto his flank, the other clawing at his shoulder, trying to rip him open. His massive form bucked beneath them, snarling, struggling, blood darkening his fur. But he wasn’t getting free fast enough.

You moved before you could think, a blur of black and vengeance.

“Embry!” you barked, voice slicing through the chaos like a blade. He caught your eyes, understood instantly, and broke from his own fight to follow you.

Together, you hit the newborns with every ounce of fury you had left.

Embry tackled the one on Paul’s back, ripping his throat open with a savage snap. You landed on the other, barehanded now — gloves long forgotten — your fingers digging into his jaw. He screamed, more in confusion than pain, as you flooded his senses with fear and regret so potent he collapsed under the weight of it.

One more twist. One more break. He was done.

You didn’t wait to watch him crumble.

You fell to your knees beside Paul as he shifted back, bloodied and gasping, naked and trembling against the snow. His breaths were ragged, pain carved into every inch of him.

“Hey — hey, Paul. Look at me.” Your voice was lower now, frantic, but controlled. You gripped his jaw gently, trying to ignore the crimson staining your hands. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re gonna be fine.”

His eyes flickered open, glassy and strained.

“You came,” he whispered hoarsely, barely audible.

“You idiot,” you snapped, voice cracking despite yourself. “Of course I came.”

Embry hovered nearby, eyes wide, panic barely masked. “We need Carlisle. Now.”

You nodded. “Go. I’ll keep him awake.”

Embry darted off, but you didn’t tear your gaze away from Paul.

You leaned in, pressing your cold forehead to his burning one. “You’re not dying here,” you whispered fiercely. “You don’t get to scare me like this and then check out. You hear me?”

His bloodied lips curled faintly, a ghost of his usual arrogance. “Still bossy.”

You snort halfheartedly, rolling your eyes. "Yeah. I am."

The thunder of footsteps barely registered as you kept your hands firm against Paul’s bleeding side, your mind a frenzy of panic and desperation. You could hear Embry muttering to Paul, encouraging him to keep his eyes open, but your focus stayed locked on the open gash across his ribs, where angry red muscle met shredded skin. It wasn’t just pain you felt—it was the sickening, molten fear crawling up your spine through the mating bond.

Then — finally —

“Move aside,” Carlisle’s voice rang out, calm but urgent.

You shifted immediately, though your hands hovered like you couldn’t bear to let go. Carlisle dropped to his knees beside Paul, his medical bag already in hand. You hadn’t even seen him arrive, but that was Carlisle — quiet, fast, terrifyingly competent.

“I need you to stay calm,” he said without looking at you. “You’re not helping him if you panic.”

You exhaled, sharp and shaky, but nodded. You forced your hands into fists at your sides to keep from reaching for Paul again.

“He lost a lot of blood,” you said, voice low and tight. “Two of them. They blindsided him.”

“I know.” Carlisle’s hands were already working, examining the wounds with surgical precision. “Embry, hold him still.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a curved needle and suture thread.

Paul groaned when the needle bit into his skin, and your knees nearly buckled. You hated this. You hated having a mate. You felt everything they felt, you had an overwhelming urge to protect.

Your fists clenched tighter, nails digging into your palms as you forced yourself to stay still, to let Carlisle work. But every sound Paul made felt like it was happening to you. The bond flared and sparked in your chest like a live wire, his pain weaving itself into your very marrow.

You hated this.

You swallowed hard, jaw tightening. “It shouldn’t have happened. I should’ve—”

“No,” Carlisle said gently but firmly, finishing the final stitch. “Don’t do that. You saved him. Focus on that.”

You looked down at him, your golden eyes locking with his bloodshot brown ones. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Didn’t mean to,” he muttered, a soft smirk tugging at his lips. “But it’s kinda hot when you go all feral for me.”

You huffed, a weak glare directed at him. “Shut up and stay alive.”

“Deal.”

Somehow — somehow — he managed a chuckle, weak and breathless. “Figured… you cared.”

Your throat tightened. “Yeah. Well. I fucking hate it.”

Carlisle's voice cut in, brisk but less urgent now. “Bleeding’s slowing. I’ve stitched him up. He’ll heal — wolves always do. But don’t let him shift for at least twenty-four hours. If he does, he’ll tear the stitches open and we’ll be back to square one.”

Hours later, when the battlefield cleared and the worst was over, you sat at Paul's bedside with the permission of Sam.

He slept, sometimes a small groan slipped from his lips. You felt his warmth, pouring from his unnaturally hot body and seeping into your bones. Your golden eyes analyzed him, looking for any cause for concern.

When you looked at Paul, with the absence of his mouthiness and snide attitude, you felt almost better about the whole imprinting-mating arrangement.

He was beautiful.

Even bloodied and bandaged, bruises blooming dark along his ribs and arms, Paul looked like something carved from heat and fury — raw, rough, and undeniably alive. His copper-toned skin was slick with sweat, stretched taut over sinew and muscle. Strands of his black hair clung damply to his forehead, disheveled from both battle and fevered tossing in unconsciousness.

There was something about the quiet that made it easier to look at him without the usual firestorm of emotions. No yelling. No bickering. No storming off in opposite directions only to find your way back to each other again. Just silence — and him, lying there in the aftermath.

His chest was rising and falling in shallow, steady breaths. His jaw, normally tight with arrogance or smirking mischief, was slack with sleep. Even the scar just beginning to form beneath the fresh stitches couldn’t mar how peaceful he looked.

You swallowed hard. Your hand hovered over his for a second before you gave in, intertwining your fingers with his. His hand, even while unconscious, shifted slightly — the smallest movement, like his body recognized yours even now.

Stupid wolf.

You hated how your chest ached when you looked at him. How the imprint made every inch of you ache to pull him close and protect him from everything — even the things he was built to fight. You hated how natural it felt to care. How it was no longer about choice, but instinct. Like breathing.

You hated how easily your eyes traced every scar and fresh wound, how your chest clenched tighter each time you counted one. Even still, in all the aftermath — bloodied, battered, breathing — Paul Lahote had never looked more real. More yours.

"You're holding my hand. Didn't even have to force ya." His raspy voice rang out, laced with amusement.

You didn’t pull away.

Didn’t snap at him. Didn’t deny it.

Your eyes stayed shut, trying to smother the sudden flare of emotion in your chest — part mortification, part bone-deep relief.

“You were unconscious,” you muttered, your voice lower than usual, hoarse. “Didn’t think you’d wake up to be annoying about it.”

Paul gave a breathy chuckle — more of a wheeze, really — but the sound was warm, familiar. “Wouldn’t be me if I didn’t,” he said, voice cracking slightly.

You opened your eyes and turned your head to find him watching you. Barely, but it was there — the steady weight of his gaze, soft beneath the sharp edges of exhaustion and pain.

He didn’t speak for a moment. Just looked at you — not with the usual bite or smirk, but with something quieter. Something almost hesitant.

Then, in that same rasping voice, he said, “You’re cold.”

You blinked, brows pulling together slightly. “Uh, yeah. Vampire.”

He huffed — a weak laugh that turned into a wince. “Exactly. Cold. You should… maybe get in here.”

You stared at him.

“What?”

He didn’t look at you, suddenly preoccupied with the ceiling. “I’m burning up,” he said, as if it were the most casual thing in the world. “Thought maybe your freakish ice-block skin could help break the fever.”

It was such a Paul thing to say — dramatic, stubborn, and absolutely terrible at asking for what he actually wanted.

You didn’t move right away. Your hand was still in his, and his grip hadn’t loosened. If anything, it had grown more certain, more intentional.

“You want me to get in bed with you,” you said flatly.

“I want to not melt into the mattress, yeah,” he muttered, eyes flicking toward you without turning his head. “But if that helps you sleep at night, sure. Let’s pretend it’s just a temperature regulation thing.”

You rolled your eyes but didn’t fight him on it. Didn’t tease, didn’t call him out — not this time.

Carefully, you shifted, slipping out of the chair and easing onto the bed beside him. The moment your body touched his, he sighed — not dramatically, not playfully, just… relief. Quiet, tired relief.

Your palm rested gently against his chest, over the slow thud of his heart. His hand moved, settling around your waist with surprising softness.

Neither of you spoke for a long moment.

Then, just as your eyes began to close, you heard him murmur, barely above a whisper: “You smell like rain.”

You smiled against his shoulder, settling in.

“Try not to drool on me, wolf.”

“Can’t make promises when I’m feverish,” he mumbled, boldly pulling you closer to him.

For a while, the room was filled with nothing but the rhythmic sound of Paul’s breathing and the low hum of the fan overhead. His body radiated heat like a furnace, but your touch didn’t flinch. If anything, the contrast between his feverish warmth and your chilled skin made you more aware of every place your bodies touched — shoulder to chest, thigh to thigh, his arm curled loosely around your waist.

You told yourself it was only temporary. Just until he fell asleep. Just until his fever broke. Just until you could talk yourself out of the weight in your chest that came from being this close to someone who wasn’t supposed to matter this much.

But then his fingers moved, slowly — not with the intention of pulling you closer, but more like he needed to remind himself you were real. That you were there. His hand splayed across the small of your back, fingertips brushing the hem of your shirt.

“I didn’t think you’d say yes,” he said, voice soft, eyes still closed.

“To lying next to you?”

“Mm.” He turned his head slightly toward you. “To staying. After everything.”

You exhaled, the sound quieter than a sigh. “You’re not exactly easy to leave.”

A half-smile ghosted across his lips. “Flattered.”

“Don’t be,” you muttered — but your voice was gentler than your words.

There was silence again, but this time it wasn’t empty. It held weight — the kind that filled the room like fog, quiet and creeping and full of things left unsaid.

You stared at the rise and fall of his chest for a long time. Watched the way his lashes rested against his cheeks. Traced, in your mind, the lines of his face — normally sharp with attitude, now softened by exhaustion.

“Can I ask you something?” you said, barely above a whisper.

His eyes opened, a little unfocused. “You just did.”

You rolled your eyes, and he smiled again, smaller this time. Tired, but genuine.

You tried again. “When you imprinted on me… did you hate it?”

His brow furrowed, and for a moment he was quiet.

“No,” he said finally. “I didn’t hate it.”

You didn’t speak — just waited, because you could feel there was more.

“I think I hated how much I felt everything. How fast it hit. How much it scared the hell out of me. You walked into my life and every instinct I had went to war with itself.” His voice dropped again, quieter now. “But no. I never hated you.”

You swallowed hard. “I didn’t hate you either.”

“Liar.”

A soft laugh escaped you before you could stop it. “Okay — I hated parts of you.”

“Still do, probably.”

“Definitely.”

His hand moved again, up your spine now, gentle and tentative. “Still staying?”

“For now.”

He hummed low in his throat, pressing his cheek against your temple.

“Then I’ll try not to push my luck.”

You didn’t tell him he already had.

Instead, you let your eyes fall closed, the heat of him warming the cold edges of your body, your mind. Your hand found his beneath the blankets and stayed there.

"Name?" He asked, breaking the silence. "It's my turn to ask you something."

You blinked your eyes open at the sudden shift, but the warmth of his voice kept you from moving too much. You were comfortable, more than you expected to be in his presence, and now curiosity piqued.

“What’s the question?” you asked, your voice softer than you intended.

His eyes studied you with an intensity that made your breath catch. His hand moved to brush a strand of hair from your face, his touch gentle, almost reverent. It was so much quieter now — no noise from the battle outside, no tension from before. Just him and you, the quiet weight of everything between you, settling in like it had always belonged there.

“Why?” he asked, the word simple, but there was more to it. “Why stay? Why not walk away like I expected you to?”

Your chest tightened at the question, unsure how to answer. How could you explain that the choice wasn’t as simple as leaving or staying? That something in you just… stayed, no matter how hard you tried to pull away?

“Because...” You took a breath, feeling the weight of the silence hanging between you. “Because I’m here. With you. And for once, it doesn’t feel like I have to fight it. None of it matters — the age old enemies bullshit, the Cullens.. None of it.”

He studied you for a moment, his dark eyes searching, trying to find the answer hidden beneath your words. Then he exhaled, a slow breath, like he’d been holding something in for longer than you could see.

You could feel it in the air, that moment — the subtle shift between tension and something more. Something soft, undeniable. Something you hadn’t expected to feel, not in a thousand years of trying to fight it.

He leaned in slowly, his lips hovering just a breath away from yours. There was no rush, no need to say more. The space between you was filled with everything that had been unsaid, everything that had been building since the first time you met.

And then, with the quietest of movements, his lips pressed to yours.

It was soft. Tentative, at first, like both of you were testing the waters. But it deepened, the hesitance melting away as your body instinctively leaned into him. His hand found the curve of your back, pulling you closer, as though the distance between you could no longer exist.

The world outside — the battle, the old grudges, the mess you’d both carried for so long — faded into nothing. It was just the two of you now, in this quiet room, the warmth of his touch and the softness of his kiss pulling you deeper into something more than just the physical. It was comfort. It was home.

And for the first time, you didn’t feel the need to fight it anymore.

He pulled away, nuzzling his nose against the crook of yours. His mannerisms even reminded you of a wolf, nuzzling its snout into its mate.

You giggled quietly, your hand coming up to press against his cheek. The smell of him didn't even bother you anymore — in fact, it naturally faded into something you enjoyed with the help of the mate bond.

He paused at the sound of your soft giggle, his lips curling into a small smile against your skin. There was something about the sound of it — a break from all the tension, the heaviness that had lingered for so long — that made his heart ease just a little more.

His eyes softened, tracing the lines of your face as your hand lingered against his cheek, the warmth of your touch grounding him in a way nothing else could. The connection between you, the bond that had been created so fiercely and unexpectedly, was undeniable now, as natural as breathing.

"You know," you said, amusement lacing your voice and bringing back the soft banter. "For a big, slobbery wolf.. You're not a bad kisser."

Paul's eyes flickered with amusement at the jab, and a low, rumbling chuckle escaped him. His hand found the small of your back, pulling you in just a little closer.

"Slobbery?" He raised an eyebrow, his lips twitching with the hint of a smile. "You're lucky you're cute. Otherwise, I'd have to take that personally."

You grinned, the playful edge to your voice never fading. "I mean, you are a big, slobbery wolf," you teased, letting the words hang in the air like a challenge. "Doesn't exactly scream 'smooth operator,' you know?"

His expression shifted to mock offense, but there was a warmth in his eyes that made it clear he was only pretending. He leaned in, brushing his lips lightly against yours, the kiss lingering just enough to remind you of how natural this felt now. How comfortable.

"I'll have you know," he muttered against your lips, "I could teach you a thing or two about being smooth."

You rolled your eyes, but couldn't hide the smile that tugged at your lips. "I think you're doing just fine," you said softly, your voice playful but genuine.

You studied him for a moment, the seriousness of his tone stirring something in your chest. But then he gave you that half-smirk again, the one that made everything feel light again.

"Maybe I'll show you just how smooth I can be, if you’re lucky," he added, voice thick with promise.

A laugh escaped you, and you settled back into him, the rhythm of your heartbeat aligning with his as if you were always meant to fit this way.

"Then you'll have to try harder," you teased, "because I’m not easily impressed."

Paul chuckled low in his throat, brushing your hair back from your face with a tenderness that surprised even him. "Challenge accepted."

And for the first time, it didn’t feel like a challenge at all. It felt easy. Natural.

Like everything was falling into place.

The next morning, when you went back home to the Cullens, they instantly smelled the wolf on you.

The moment you walked through the door of the Cullen house, the familiar scent of the air seemed to shift just slightly. A subtle change in the atmosphere, something that was immediately noticeable to anyone who was paying attention.

Alice, of course, was the first to notice. Her sharp eyes locked onto you as you stepped inside, and her lips curled into a knowing grin. "Well, well," she teased, a playful edge to her voice. "Did someone have a very interesting night?"

You froze for just a second, the heat creeping into your cheeks. You didn’t even have to look down to know that the scent of Paul still clung to you, mixed in with your own. The imprint bond was still fresh, stronger than ever, and it left an undeniable trace.

"Please don’t start," you muttered, trying to sound nonchalant, but you could feel your face flush deeper.

Jasper raised an eyebrow, giving you a knowing look as he stood up from the couch, his eyes never leaving yours. "It’s not exactly subtle, you know."

You sighed, but couldn’t help the smile tugging at your lips. "I didn’t plan for it to be," you shot back, though the way your heart raced said otherwise.

"Mm-hmm." Alice waggled her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner. "And what exactly happened last night, huh? You just happened to get cozy with a hot, muscular wolf who’s been on your mind for weeks?"

You crossed your arms, rolling your eyes, but you couldn’t stop your smile from widening. "It wasn’t like that," you protested weakly, though deep down, you knew Alice had nailed it.

Emmett, lounging on the arm of the couch, let out a low whistle. "You know," he started with a smirk, "I thought you’d be the one to hold out longer. But hey, who am I to judge? The wolf's got his claws in you now."

"Not funny," you muttered, though the light teasing didn’t bother you as much as it would have before.

"You stayed the night?" Edward asked, his tone more neutral than Alice’s, but there was an amused glint in his eyes as he watched you.

You winced slightly, but your response was straightforward. "Yeah, I stayed. He was… sick. I had to make sure he didn’t burn the house down with his fever."

"Right, sure." Alice’s grin widened. "And you just happened to stay because of his fever, huh?"

You groaned and rubbed your temples. "Alice, please."

But her smile only grew. "It’s okay," she said, her voice mockingly soft. "You don’t need to be shy. We all know what’s going on." She gave you an exaggerated wink. "Just remember to tell me all the juicy details later."

"Not happening," you muttered, though there was no hiding the amusement in your tone now.

"You might want to watch your back, though," Emmett added, his voice playful. "That dog's probably gonna be even more clingy now that you’ve shared a bed with him."

"Emmett," you protested, though you couldn’t deny that the idea made your heart skip a beat. "It wasn't like that!"

"Keep telling yourself that," Alice teased, crossing her arms over her chest. "We’re all just so happy for you."

You shot her a look but couldn’t suppress the smile that played on your lips. "Thanks," you said, a little sarcastically, but the warmth in your voice betrayed you.

And as the teasing continued, it felt strangely comforting. Despite the teasing, despite everything that had changed, it was easy to relax in their presence — to know they weren’t judging you, but just enjoying the newfound dynamic.

They might have been a little over the top with their teasing, but it didn’t matter. You were here, with them, and with Paul. And for the first time, you didn’t feel the need to hide it. You felt okay.

The ache of loneliness subsided. You felt loved.

[tiredmamaissy]

Ralak te Sepwan ieyk’itan: Special Episode III

Calm After the Storm

An Illustrated Collaboration with @zestys-stuff

Masterlist ; Rut/Heat/Knotting Info

🔞 minors, do not interact 🔞

Hyperlinks are attached to specific paragraphs that when clicked on will lead you to its illustration by Ralak's creator @zestys-stuff.

Characters: Metkayina!Ralak (24) x Sully!Omaticaya!Reader (19)

Warnings: nsfw, smut, fluff, profanity, age gap, rut cycle, heat cycle, extreme knotting, marking, scenting, territorial/possessive behaviour, breeding kink, p in v, mating/bonding, multiple climaxes, creampie, belly bulge, actual breeding, let me know if I forgot anything?

Word Count: 6.3k

Requested: Yes || No

Author’s Note: Happy halloween guys! I know I literally fell off the face of the earth and I will make another post to address that. But I know I haven’t participated for @pandoraslxna ‘s kinktober event (I’m so sorry bby) but if I could only participate for one of the days it would be today for sure. So I definitely wanted to get this out before midnight. It’s not purely a/b/o but honestly entails all the aspects of it. I think we can all definitely tell who’s the alpha and omega here (Ralak is alpha material hands down, ofc). I hope you guys enjoy this one, and I apologize for such a wait <3 Also I feel like I’m a bit rusty, so apologies for any typos, errors, or just plain suckish writing.

ALSO a big happy birthday to my babe @neteyamsoare <3 love you and hope it was a good one!!

Synopsis: Your heat starts to subside, but Ralak’s rut is only getting stronger. What could possibly go wrong?

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——

Only an hour has passed before you feel your not-so-gentle giant stirring behind you, waking you from your sleep. You’d both been on your sides for too long now and everywhere seems to ache. You whine when you feel his hips shift against you, tugging at the immense pressure between your hips. The bulge protruding from your lower abdomen has barely gone down and you feel almost as full as you did when he initially emptied his load inside you.

Silken strands of his hair fall onto your prickled skin as he props himself up on his elbow from behind you, perching his chin on your throbbing shoulder. He inhales deeply – longingly. His hot breath gently blows against your neck just as you feel his arm snake under your leg and yank it back in one rough tug.

“Ralak.” His name falls from your lips through a nearly inaudible croak. “‘m so full.” You barely mumble out, rolling your head to the side. Yet, the flame within you is without a doubt reigniting with a vengeance.

And he can sense it.

Simply by the way you push back into him, making that bulge in your belly protrude a little more. His large hand resting on your stomach can indubitably feel it. And the smile that it puts on his face is almost baleful, bearing his lengthy canines that yearn to sink deep into you once more. “Sorry, tìyawn [love].”

He just can’t help it.

No matter how hard he tried. The desire—no, the need—to fuck into you and claim you as his time and time again is… irrepressible. In this moment, nothing else felt better than your little, used cunt hugging his cock so tightly that it almost hurts. He yearns to fill you over and over. Again and again until your womb is overflowing with his seed. The mere thought has his balls pulling tight to his body, firming up by the second all just to flood your womb again.

“Muntxate [wife].” Ralak growls into your neck, sliding his hand down to your inner thigh. “I will try to be–” He groans slowly, his pointer finger now burrowing itself between your tied pelvises, “–flrr [gentle].”

The final accented word comes out roughly, and if it weren’t for his finger slipping past his knot and into your cunt, you would’ve probably heard it clearly. You yelp out when he traces his finger around his knot, stretching your already taut skin, attempting to work a little space to allow his bulge to slip out.

It's all consuming and you’re simply too overwhelmed with his size that you fail to realise how your body is synced with his and bearing down to push him out. All whilst he’s struggling to fight the snap of hips to avoid hurting you. But the tugging is nothing like you’ve felt before adn you can finally understand why he was so insistent in the first place.

ut there was no getting out of this now, not that you even wanted to.

“It–it’s…” You brace yourself by grabbing onto his forearm, “...t-too big.”

“Ngaytxoa [sorry]” He huffs out his fourth apology, losing himself once again as his hips finally jerk back out of his control.

Pop.

His knot slips out of you with such force that the squelch it makes is as loud as your whimper. It’s so wet and slippery that his cock follows behind his knot, sliding out of you effortlessly. He’s more than half-hard yet so heavy and hung it rests close to your knee. Then you feel it. His cum dribbling down your thigh, still warm and sticky as if he just filled you up seconds ago.

It’s such a conflicting feeling — a mixture of relief and pent up frustration. Your heat is still in full bloom, despite it being so quenched until you’re almost nauseated. It’s as if you were two pieces perfectly linked together, allowing nature to run its course with no second thought. He grunts when he feels the crisp night air against his groin, his cock now springing up to its full length in just a few seconds.

He, too, feels some sort of feverish way now. Itching to be back inside your warmth, enveloped by your gummy, slimy walls. He opts to pepper wet kisses along your neck, and then up to your jaw, lingering there as he tries to distract himself from the ache to shove it back inside you.

Until it becomes too much.

“Tanhì.” He moans into your ear, heavy lidded eyes struggling to stay open as his tongue trails the skin on the back of your neck. “Need you.” It’s his way of begging for permission. Permission to slam his cock back inside you and hammer into you until the annoying itch deep in his core goes away again. You were the only one to make it go away. To stop the hurt. “Please.” He whines out a plea of desperation, now gritting his teeth from the way his stomach is tensing. “Now.”

But that last plea wasn’t much of a question, no. It was more of a demand. A way of saying, ‘give it to me, or I’ll take you on my own terms’.

“Fuck.” You mumble under your breath, sliding your free hand down your side to hook it under your leg. You pull it back and reposition your hips to give him access to your cunt. “P-Put it in, ‘Lak.”

Ralak’s hips begin to stutter — the leaking, mushroomy tip of his cock now repeatedly prodding between your puffed up folds. His breath turns raggedy as he tries to guide himself back inside you handsfree. Your slick is overflowing, making it even more difficult for him to align himself with your entrance. The frustration brewing within him bubbles over when his cockhead glides past your swollen clit instead of sinking in your cunt. So he pulls back in one swift move and —

Thrust.

Your body jolts from how quickly he slams every inch of his cock inside you, forcing you split-open. Ralak huffs a shaky sigh of relief, his breathing growing a little steadier now that he’s deep inside his mate. Meanwhile, your mouth hangs agape yet no sound falls from your lips. Your eyes well up with tears and your ears lay flat against your skull. Your body is in complete submission to the beast dominating it and there’s nothing else you can do but give in to the pleasure.

“Your scent.” He whispers open-mouthed, tips of his canines grazing the nape of your neck. “It is driving me crazy.” You release the breath that you didn’t even realise you were holding. You didn’t even know what to say. Not like you could really say much right now anyways. You’re too lost in the fog of your own heat. For once, Ralak is doing most of the talking. “It makes me…” He snaps his hips back, only leaving half of his length inside you. “...lose myself completely.”

A deep roll of his hips.

A lewd moan dripping off your lips. 

“How do you do that?” He huffs, pressing his teeth against your neck. You don’t answer yet again. You just can’t find the words. Not right now. Not when he’s so deep inside you. “Hm?” A deep growl vibrates up his throat, his teeth just barely piercing the first layer of your silken skin.

“I—” You’re cut off by your own squeal when you feel the sting of his bite. Your breath catches in your throat and he immediately unlatches, lapping at the nicked skin to soothe it. “Sorry.” He whispers breathlessly, planting a quick kiss on each of your marks. “Sorry. Sorry.” A few more apologies flow from his mouth, as if he were drunk off of too much fermented fruit. Somewhat lucid but still so spaced. “I cannot —ngh— help myself.”

Thrust.

“‘M sorry.”

He knows he went a little too deep just now. But you feel so fucking good around his cock.

Chomp.

Another mark. Right on the bend of your shoulder, next to your first.

“Ngaytxoa [I’m sorry]”

A small cry from your quivering lips.

“S-Stop. No more apologies. I am yours to do what you p-please with.” You finally get out in one, weary breath.

Ralak’s languid, deep thrusts are laced with desperation. And with each stroke they become harsher and harsher. Faster and faster. Now he’s got your full permission he lets go once more, falling into the thick fog of his rut.

Within seconds his cock is pumping in and out of you, his half-deflated knot continuously prodding and poking at your entrance. The tip of his cock drags against your walls, putting an immense pressure right on your sweet spot. Yet still, sounds barely fall from your flushed lips. You’re too out of it. Too focused on the raw sensations rippling through you all at once. His overwhelming pheromones. His marking. His relentless pounding.

Rather, hot tears well over your eyes and stream down your face.

He can’t stop slamming himself inside you. He doesn’t want it to stop. It’s absolute rapture and he’s unapologetically drowning in it.

“Tanhì. Tanhì.” He groans needily. “y/n.”

He only says your name when he’s serious about something.

And hearing it drip from his tongue onto the nape of your neck has your hairs standing high and your clit throbbing.

“Eywa. Yes, ‘lak? T-Tell me what you need.” You blubber out, tightening your grip on his forearm.

“Haa — spread yourself.” He demands, prompting you to tuck your leg back as far as you can. His pace quickens, hips striking you with a sinful vengeance. But no matter how hard he fucks you, or how deep he buries himself inside you — its just not enough. He needs to be closer. To be deeper. To really be inside you. To knot you.

“More.” He grunts, slowing his thrusts into rocking, grinding himself inside your slippery, tight cunt.

You go to tug at your leg and meet nothing but resistance. “I-I’m trying.” You can feel it now. Perhaps it’s the bond or maybe it’s the way his knot is working you open but he’s growing more and more frustrated by the thrust.

“Mmmh. Wider.”

“I can’t. I can’t.” You’re quick to answer, feeling nothing but pressure from the way he’s trying to shove more of himself inside you.

“Agh.” He growls in frustration, pulling out of you and grabbing you by the ankle to flip you onto your back.

Ralak situates himself between your legs without hesitation and pushes them so far back your knees graze against the tips of your ears. You can barely breathe in this position and are having a hard time seeing anything else but his raging cock at your entrance. You can feel the burn in your thighs from how far back he’s shoving your knees but that sting is masked by the pleasure of him plunging himself back into your pussy.

The moan that rips from your lips is obscene and like no other. The crown of his cock is drilling itself directly into your sweet spot, causing it to swell with unadulterated pleasure. And each time he pulls out just to sink it back inside you he winds you in the process – making you sputter out absolute nonsense. Even he knows you're close, despite being in the thick of his rut.

But frankly, he doesn't care.

All he’s concerned about is satisfying his own urges.

“Not enough.” He grits through his teeth as his eyes shift to an even deeper shade of mauve. “‘ts not enough.” He pants, voice laced with something of worry. Panic that this feeling won’t go away. It makes you panic too, wondering if you’re doing enough for him. If he’s going to take even more from you. If you can manage it.

“You’re okay. Do what you need.” You try to reassure him, grasping your feet and holding them back–opening yourself up even more. But fuck, that only made things worst for you.

And by worst, you mean better. It feels like you’ll burst any second now, especially with how much pressure is on your bladder. “Fu-ck me. God, fuck–ahaa-fuck me.”

His brows bunch together as he peers down at you, beads of sweat rolling off his face to drip onto your chest. His jaw is so tense it looks as if it may fracture. He’s grunting with every push and huffing with every pull.

“Right there! Fuck. I’m close. I’m so fucking close. I-I need you to cum i-inside me. Oh—please ‘lak. Please!” Your cries are choked and muffled, breaths short and raggedy. The heat pooling in your core is unbearable. It needs out. Now.

Ralak swallows. Hard. Through his own haze he can see that you’re in need too. He shuffles closer to you, tucking his feet under him to assume a squatting position. Now he’s all but on top of you, folding you into a merciless mating press. This one shift in position has you coming undone on his cock, coating it in your thick slick as you sob from the white hot pleasure. The force of your climax has you pushing him out and only has him drilling himself further inside you. If it’s not for the way your pussy walls tighten around him surely his knot would have popped inside you by now.

He’s still fucking into you, right through your orgasm and towards his.

“Say what you need.” He panics through a tightened jaw, grinding himself inside you – pushing his knot against the resistance.

You know what he’s actually asking from you. To say something. Anything to tip him over the edge. To rid him of this maddening itch.

“Breed me.” You whisper, locking eyes with him. You watch as his pupils blow into thin rings and then constrict into nothing but dots. You try to swallow what spit you could, attempting to clear your throat. “Breed me. Please.”

“Then take it.” He lets loose a sinister growl, putting all his weight into his final push. For the first time, you feel his knot pop inside you, veiny and as thick as can be. You let out a high-pitched whimper, and feel your teeth begin to chatter. That doesn’t make him ease up, though. He continues to grind himself inside you until you feel the familiar, warm sensation of his sticky seed spraying inside you – filling your womb to the brim. His cock throbs wildly, in perfect synchrony with his own heartbeat, and soon yours too as the bond equilibrates your souls once more.

Strangely, you thought you’d be sore and overstimulated by now, but your body has never felt better. You’re full and content and more than satiated. Ralak heaves a sigh — one of pure relief. It’s glued to his face. All panic washes away and he’s feeling more at peace the longer he remains inside you. He’s rigid, firmly holding his position on top of you — ensuring he empties every single drop inside you. Yet, his heavy lidded eyes begin to close.

“I can’t breathe.” You mumble, snapping him out of his tranquil trance. His eyes meet yours and the corner of his mouth pulls into a little smirk. He exhales a breathy chuckle and carefully manoeuvres you both into a more comfortable position. He settles himself on his back and supports your body whilst positioning you on top of him.

“Better?” Ralak husks, drawing circles into your back with the tip of his finger.

You take a deep breath, filling your lungs to full capacity and then slowly release it. “Much.”

“Nga yawne lu oer [I love you]” His accented words slur together as he dozes off.

“Nga yawne lu oer, Ralak [I love you].”

——

Ralak woke repeatedly throughout the night for his fill. If it wasn’t him, it was you. Waking up in a clammy state, shaking and nuzzling into his chest from your heat. You honestly thought that the more time passed — the more rounds you went — the more he would calm down.

But, you thought wrong.

He’d start by leaving tender kisses wherever he could, whispering he’d do his best to be as gentle as he can be. Then, he’d slip a finger inside you, stretching you out in attempts to pull his knot out without hurting you. But it would always sting, even just a little bit. After that he’d beg. Pleading with you to let him back in, and apologize right after plunging inside you regardless of your answer—which was always yes.

At this point your own foggy haze would take over. Perhaps it was your body’s way of coping with the overstimulation, but you pined for every single second of it. Sometimes it would last for a few minutes. Where he’d be quick to fold you in two and growl in the shell of your ear, ‘you’re mine, haah — fuck, take me’. 

Sometimes it was closer to an hour. Where you’d both be so tired you’d take breaks, lazily taking turns fucking each other, telling him to ‘put it back in’ whenever he’d slip out. But one thing remained the same every time. You’d sob when you’d cum and then beg him to breed you. And he would, without a doubt, breed you.

Mercilessly.

And with each breeding, he’d lose himself a little deeper. Knotting you over and over. Marking you repeatedly until your body’s littered with bites. Until you were so fucked out you’d lost the feeling in your legs. Until your throat was so dry you could barely speak. Until you needed a break.

——

“Wait.” You crawl towards the bedside table with wobbly knees. “Just need some water, Lak.”

Ralak pounces on you, knocking you onto your stomach and pressing himself against you. You extend an arm out, fingers splayed out and shaking from you trying to reach the cup of water Ka’ani left there more than a day ago. Ralak grabs your hips and hoists you up onto your knees and elbows, and mounts you from behind.

“Water. Water, Lak.” You beg with a hoarse cry, only for him to line the crown of his cock up with your sopping cunt. He growls next to your ear as he stretches over you and reaches for the cup of water, filling his cheeks and putting it back down within a couple seconds. With a quick grip of your jaw, he turns your head and meets his lips with yours.

Before you can process what’s going on you’re gulping down water as fast as you can. And when he pulls away, you’re yet again met with the hazy eyes of his rut. That’s when it dawns on you that whilst your heat is coming to an end, his rut is only getting stronger.

Rather than looking away, he locks his gaze onto you, just so he can watch your face screw as he slams his cock inside of you in one, hard thrust. It works a sudden, breathy moan from your mouth, eyebrows pinching together from the stretch. He holds his position, basking in the warmth and tightness of your cunt as his breath goes shaky.

“Wait.” You mumble weakly, shoving a hand behind you to push against his lower stomach. “Please.”

For the first time, you were telling him to stop.

His jawbone flutters as his eyes search yours. Restraint plasters to his face, and the only audible thing is his heavy breathing. He nods. Just once. A firm and intentional nod. He swallows the residual water left in his mouth and tenderly pulls out of you. You hear the thud of his footsteps quiet down as he nears the marui door, and then the splash of the water when he dives into the rough sea.

It’s pouring outside.

Storming, actually. Thundering and lightning. Yet he feels this is the only way he’d be able to resist the urge to storm back in and fuck you. But the instinct to protect his mate, even if it’s from himself, is more than enough to give him the willpower to walk away.

You take this moment to just breathe, turning your head to face the plush bed beneath you as you gather your thoughts. Did he just show that much restraint? Enough to walk away from a female na’vi during her heat cycle… all whilst in the height of his own rut cycle?

“Lekye’ung [insane]” You mutter, using your trembling hand to grab and bring the cup to your lips. They, too, are sore and chapped. Having gone so many hours without any food or water, you knock it back, shaking the cup to get out every drop. Finished already? You think to yourself, looking inside the cup with hazed vision, confirming it’s indeed empty.

After setting it back down onto the table, you slump back into the bedhead, relaxing your body. You’re sore. Actually, sore is an understatement. Every single muscle and fiber in your body burns—and that isn’t entirely due to your heat either now that it’s finally subsiding. Perhaps you should be taking this time to have a look at your… condition, but you’re finding it harder and harder to keep your eyes open.

So you give in, sinking further and further into the bed as you doze off.

—

A few hours go by and Ralak returns with a net of fish thrown over his shoulder and a bucket of fresh water perched on his hip. He carefully sets down the bucket and rests the net next to the fire pit. He’s cautious not to wake you, nor come too close to you. Ralak ignites the fire and fans the flame. As quietly as possible, he prepares and cooks the fish, setting them aside to wrap in the leaves of a spartan tree.

Since coming to Awa’atltu, one of your biggest adjustments—despite the obvious—has been your change in diet. Fish weren’t uncommon back home, but they certainly weren’t the main source of food. You prefer the other foods here, your favourite being what you call ‘inland boar’, which is an animal that resembles what your father calls a ‘pig’ from his star.

But not even that, (boar) could smell better than this (fish).

The aroma alone rouses you from your sleep.

Your eyes open to a dark room and a glowing fire pit. The fire is out but the wood remains hot, shifting among different shades of orange and red. Ralak sits beside it, with his back leaning against the support beam of the pod. His arms are crossed over his chest and his knees are slightly bent. It’s hard to see more than just his silhouette with the lack of moonlight.

“That smells good.” You rasp. Ralak’s eyes fly open to reveal a familiar shade of deep blue. Like the sea. They glow and flicker before you, examining you now that you’re sitting up out of bed.

Crack.

A bolt of lightning strikes in the distance, illuminating the room. For a moment, you were able to see every single bike mark, scratch and bruise you’ve given him. It also reveals that he’s shaking. Trembling from being wet and cold, or possibly from the strain he was putting himself through from just being in the same room as you.

Ralak moves quickly, shuffling to his feet and going right for the leaf that holds a few sloppily rolled fish. He brings it to you, setting it slowly on your lap, being overly cautious not to touch you. Grabbing your cup on the table, he dunks it in the bucket and sets it beside you.

“Eat.” He whispers, backing away to sit next to the pit. You watch as he slides down the beam and into a sitting position, and then glance down at your food. Saliva pools in your mouth from the aroma wafting up your nose.

You’re hungry.

“Thank you.” You say quietly, hastily stuffing an entire roll into your mouth.

You moan as you chew, nodding your head from how good it tastes. It’s hard to swallow, given that you bit off more than you could chew—literally—but when it finally goesdown you feel your stomach grumble for more. Ralak watches you intently. A wince screwing his face with every swallow he witnesses. And when you finish, you chug down your water and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.

Another crack of lightning strikes, and then a low, lengthy rumble of thunder follows.

“That was… one of the best you’ve made, lak.” You say with a wobbly smile, slowly getting on your feet to wash your hands. The bucket is nearby your mate, who is still fixed in position. Although he remains unmoving, his eyes follow your every move. You shake your hands to dry them and shuffle over to Ralak and sit next to him.

“so… how do you feel?” You ask quietly, raising your hand to check if he’s feverish. He turns his head before your hand can make contact with his skin and his gaze locks onto the charred wood in the fire pit. 

“Fine.” Ralak mutters.

Eyebrows pinching in confusion, you tilt your head to try and look him in the eye. Your brows relax when you come to the realisation that he’s already taken care of himself. And only Eywa knows how many times.

“You know, you didn’t have to do that. I would have—”

“Ma’ muntxate [my wife]”He croaks, swiftly turning his head to look directly into your eyes. “Oeru txoa livu [please forgive me].”

“Txoa? [forgive?] What for, ma’ muntxatan? [husband]”

“I have… neglected you.” He’s struggling to speak. You can hear it in the strain of his voice.

Regardless, none of his words are really making any sense to you right now. How has he been neglectful? Despite the circumstances, it’s obvious he’s been trying his hardest to be good to you. Somehow, even conjuring up the strength to pull out of you and walk away.

“Ralak. You have not. Please, I—”

“Look at yourself.” He snaps, taking a quick glance at your body before dropping his head in his hands.

Crack.

Conveniently, another strike of lightning and boom of thunder, revealing exactly what he’s talking about. For a few seconds, you’re met with the sight of your battered body—scabbed and bruised. You lift your head, staring at his shameful demeanour. But the more you stare, the more you see your own reflection.

“And have you looked at yourself?” Your words bounce as you shuffle closer to him. “I bet you can’t even feel all that damage I’ve done to you.” You coo, using your thumb to gently graze past an easy six-inch scratch mark on his bicep. “I haven’t been so gentle with you either.”

Ralak shakes his head, allowing it to sink further into his hands. “You were starved.” He mumbles into the palms of his hands.

You sigh, pulling your knees to your chest and resting your chin in the dip between them. Your eyes wander over to the fire pit, catching sight of the outline of a few fish rolls.

Has he really punished himself by not eating?

“Have you eaten?” You ask, resting a gentle hand on his back.

“No need.”

“You should, you know. Don’t want you starving on me, lak.” You say lightheartedly, allowing your hand to slide up his spine and to the base of his skull.

He lets loose a quiet groan, fighting the twitch of his ears. Your fingers smooth over the base of his kuru, playing with the braid encasing that covers it. “If you do that—”

“Do what?” You whisper coyly, quickly running your hand down the length of his kuru.

His spine immediately straightens, his head lifting from his hands. The tips of your fingers gently make their way to his tendrils, carefully teasing them as they try to wrap around your digits. He sucks in a sharp breath and closes his eyes, allowing a shiver to run through him. It feels like your fingers were inside his skull, tickling his brain in the best way possible. 

Reaching for your kuru with your free hand, you bring it up and over your shoulder. You lean into Ralak, your lips only inches away from his. You pull away your fingers to grip and pull his queue forth. The loss of contact has him sitting up straight, opening his eyes to look at you.

“I will not let you suffer alone.” You whisper, lessening the distance between the two of you, tilting your head to the side ever so slightly. He stills himself, even limiting his own breath so as not to make any sudden moves. “Okay?”

You wait for just a moment. For him to say something. To move away. But he remains stock-still, waiting for you to initiate this. You smile, your top teeth briefly rubbing against this lower lip, and lock your lips with his. He exhales through his nose, coming to life from your kiss and returning it full force. You take this as a good sign. A sign that you’ve broken through that wall once again, and bring your kurus together — making tsaheylu [the bond].

Both your eyes fly open, blown pupils staring into one another as your spirits unify. You both pull back, shoulders and chests heaving from your quick, unsteady breaths. You feel all that he feels – the frustration, the panic, the tension. It’s all fading, now finally nearing the end. He feels your subsiding heat, your soreness, your overpowering urge to care for him.

Before another second could pass, your lips crash into each other again—tongues intertwining as they explore one another’s mouth. Using his hand to support your upper back, he slowly lowers you onto the woven floor, parting your legs with his free hand. He situates himself between them, pressing his crotch firmly against yours. He’s warm, just like the toasty fire pit next to you.

I will try to be gentle. Ralak thinks to you, just like he’s been promising to be night after night.

I know you will. You smile, moving your kisses down his jawline as he slides his hands between your sticky pelvises.

——

It hasn’t even been two full weeks since the synchronous heat that had you and your mate locked away in your marui pod for a little over two days. Your back and thighs–and honestly everywhere else– still ache but outside of that, you feel like a brand new person. You weren’t able to confidently say that Ralak feels the same way, however.

Of course, he was adamant on limiting intimacy until you were ‘healed and recovered’. But, he had a bounce in his step. As if he were physically lighter. As if the weight of six years of pent up sexual frustration and self neglect melted off his back when you satiated the ‘insatiable’.

The constant aftercare was almost sickening. Even after most of your marks had faded he remained adamant on treating them with your own omaticayan herbs from back home. He praised them at every use, thanking your people for making such exceptional ’umtsa [medicine].

But as you entered the second week, after tons of reassurance, things dissipated and went back to normal. Ralak went back to his usual routine—fishing, hunting, responding to a few calls to Tonowari and your father. Ralak, without a doubt, made a vow to you and himself not to initiate anything until you were more than healed. But nonetheless clung to you in the nights.

He even, in fact, added a new step into your usual nighttime regimen. As usual, it began with the snuggles and tucking you under his arm just right, providing you with enough warmth to endure the cool night air. Then, he would release the perfect amount of pheromones to get you drowsy enough for bed.

But recently, he’s spent the past seven nights delaying the nightly routine until he’s had his fill of your scent. He’d lay himself down on your chest, nuzzling his face into your bosom and just breathe. You allowed it, thinking it was his own newfound way to wind down for bed.

Yet, the real reason was much different.

——

Right on the two week mark, Tsireya had roped you in with helping her with some of her Tsakrem duties. You were always happy to help her though, as it meant getting away from the marui pod for a little even if it meant being poked and prodded at.

And it certainly didn’t take long for that to happen.

Tsireya lets out a frustrated sigh and plops the medicinal pouch she’s weaving in her lap.  “I can no longer ignore it, y/n. You smell different.”

You lift your head, tearing your focus from your task of weaving and look at her with a puzzled expression on your face. You bring the end of your tail to your nose and sniff, but smell… nothing. “Like what?” Her brows lower and her eyes glisten with concern. She purses her lips and unsheathes the lengthy pin from its casing and grabs your hand. “Here we go.” You mutter to yourself, squeezing your eyes shut as you anticipate the sting.

Prick.

“Sss—ah! You need to be careful with how deep you go with that, you know. You could really—” The tsahik in training puts the wooden stick to her tongue and stares at you wide eyed, mouth agape. It’s as if she wants to speak but the words are lodged in her throat. “What? What is it?”

“You—perhaps I am wrong.” She stutters, quickly sheathing the tool back into its casing. “You should see my mother, y/n.”

“What? Why? Just tell me.” The words come out in a haste, and your voice is laced with panic. Do you have some sort of disease of the sea? Is there a cure? 

“You — you are with child.” Her lips tremble as she says the words in an uncertain tone of voice.

“What?” You stare at her dumbfounded, a little caught off guard by her choice of words.

“Pregnant. You’re pregnant. But I am likely mistaken. I am only in training. Which is why I said you should see my moth—”

“Oh. No. You’re… you’re probably right, Tsireya.” You swallow the spit pooling in your cheeks, avoiding eye contact.

“H-How? I mean. I know how. But how? Surely Ralak knows not to do such a thing during your heat. He can control himself. R-Right?”

“Right. If I were the only one… in heat.” You say the last few words under your breath, fixing your shawl before picking back up your task.

“What do you mean?” Tsireya leans in with a tilted head, looking a little closer at your covered shoulder. “Did you help him with his rut?” Tsireya asks bluntly. “He’s been unmated for six years, y/n. Did you reall—”

“I am his mate. Of course I did.” You nearly snap, baffled by the tone she’s having with you.

“H-How did that even work?” Tsireya shakes her head, slowly raising her hand towards you.

“What is that supposed to mean?” You finally lift your head to shoot her a puzzled, yet offended stare. “It worked like it would for any other Na’vi.”

“Y/n…” Tsireya quickly grabs your shawl, pulling it off your shoulder to reveal a large, deep and scabbed up bite mark. It looks almost infected because of the strange omaticayan herbal concoction smeared over it. “You should have just let him ease you into it. Look at you, you’re all bruised and—”

“Tsireya.” You interject, “thank you for the concern, but—” you aggressively pull up your shawl, “I feel just fine. Besides, being in heat was the best way to ‘ease me into it’…He was as gentle as he could be.” You mutter, twiddling with the twine as you think back to the way he tried to handle you with care.

“By the looks of it, he was anything but gentle with you.” Tsireya seethes, angry that the man she grew up looking at like a brother would do something like this to you.

You wince at her words. They’re like a knife to the heart.

A long, awkward silence fills the space between you and Tsireya. She reflects on everything she’s said, realising that perhaps she was a little more harsh than needed. She softens her gaze, “I’m sorry. I should not have said that. I just hate seeing you hurt.”

“I get it. I know you’re just looking out for me. It’s alright, ‘reya.”

You exchange lighthearted smiles.

“You are definitely pregnant then. After six years, he must have really filled you—”

“Tsireya!” You laugh, giving her shoulder a light shove.

Tsireya’s grin morphs into a more serious expression. “See mother to make sure. Okay?”

Your smile also fades into something softer as you nod your head in agreement. “Okay.”

[lord-squiggletits]

Ngl sometimes I think people Are Not Getting The Point about TF One's moral conflict at the end bc they don't understand that the moral choice isn't just about Megatron Killing One Guy but the underlying motives behind why he did it AND what that one killing indicated about his priorities and level of care for other people.

It's not just the fact that Megatron Did A Murder but also that he 1. disregarded Orion's attempts to reason with him 2. became cold and threatened Orion with force when Orion didn't acquiese to him 3. dropped Orion into a pit despite the fact they were lifelong best friends 4. proceeded to immediately try to kill Elita and Bee who just watched him drop Orion into a pit 5. proceeded to immediately try and kill Orion once he came back as Optimus.

Megatron did not make the decision to kill Sentinel in a vacuum. The entire point of why it was a whole plot point is because that single action (killing Sentinel) is an indicator of Megatron's overall intentions and driving emotions (destroy anyone who gets in his way, fueled by anger/spite/vengeance).

The point isn't "ew killing bad guys is evil" the point is "you repeatedly disregarded the advice/wishes of your friends who had nothing but good intentions for you/each other and decided that you would rather go your own way, ignore anyone who contradicts you, and outright kill whoever you see as a threat to your dogma."

Like y'all. I understand that the act of killing/sparing is in itself a moral quandary, but you have to also realize that in stories, Life-Altering Decisions Made At The Story's Climax are meant to be symbolic of more than just whether it was morally okay to kill the BBEG. They are signifiers of a character arc, they're shorthand for a character's moral character, they're single decisions that say a lot about what someone values and what they're willing to do to achieve them. Talking about OP not wanting M to kill Sentinel as if it's just "he's saying that killing a bad guy makes you as bad as the bad guy" is reductive and completely missing the point.

Not to mention you know the personal element of "Maybe Orion has the right to be a little upset that his friend cared more about Killing The Bad Guy than he did about listening to his counsel. Or the fact that Dee may have shot Orion on accident, but dropping him into the pit and then fighting him afterwards were both choices that he made completely of his own will, and maybe the fact that he did those things indicates that he's Not Trustworthy as a person, and if Dee/Megatron isn't trustworthy to treat his own best friends well then what the hell does that say about him as a leader. But what do I know.

[childrenofcain-if]

ROs and MC as the seven deadly sins?

C LACROIX: pride — an excessive self-love and an inflated sense of self-importance, often leading to a disregard of others’ well-being.

V NÆSHOLM: greed — an excessive and selfish desire for more of something, often leading to the neglect of others and spiritual impoverishment.

W OSTENDORF: envy — a resentment or sadness at another’s good fortune or excellence, accompanied by the desire to possess it, often to the detriment of others.

D DIACONU: lust — an unbridled or excessive desire for pleasure, particularly when it is pursued for itself, divorced from its procreative and unitive purposes.

M WHITLOCK-SINGH: wrath — intense, uncontrolled anger or a strong desire for vengeance and a strong feeling of hatred or resentment.

[pancaketax]

What Remains | Chapter 19 Arms of Iron (Tony Stark x M! Reader)

TW : Depictions of revenge and moral ambiguity. Near-death experience Summary : Tony Stark rescues you from the edge of death, carrying you in his arms through a ruined warehouse soaked in blood, silence, and trauma. As your broken body clings to life, Stark becomes a living shield, absorbing a bullet meant for you. In the heart of chaos, faced with your attacker’s last desperate attempt to kill, Tony comes terrifyingly close to delivering final, lethal justice. But a single breath from you , a whisper of his name pulls him back from the edge. He chooses restraint. He chooses you. Amidst the rubble, the blood, and the unbearable weight of vengeance, he carries you out not as a hero, but as a man refusing to let you die. Not today.

word count: 17.5k

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His voice had dropped like a blade, but it wasn’t the question that mattered. Not really. It was what he was trying to cover. What he was trying to hide. Because it wasn’t a real question. It was a decoy, a fog cast between him and reality. A desperate attempt to keep control. To pretend there was still a conversation to be had, an exchange, a world where words could hold a bullet at bay.

You don’t answer. You can’t. There’s no word that could answer that.

No breath, either. Just a suspended tension, suffocating, sticking to your skin like cold sweat. Your body doesn’t belong to you anymore. It’s frozen, cemented in place. Everything is focused on the barrel of that gun. On the potential trajectory. On that fraction of a second you might not get. The silence that follows isn’t a lapse — it’s protection. A refusal to feed the scene he’s playing out for himself.

And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even acknowledge your silence. Because he’s not really waiting. It’s not a request. It’s a game. A demonstration. Raw, brutal, sordid domination. He stares at you without truly seeing you. He talks just to hear himself exist. To convince himself the world still revolves around him, even on the edge of collapse. He keeps playing the role of master even as the stage crumbles beneath his feet. But what he doesn’t see, what he refuses to feel in the room, is the shift. Subtle, at first. Invisible to someone who can’t read silences. But it’s there.

Thick. Dense. Electric like the air just before a storm tears open the sky. A silent pressure, suspended in the atmosphere, ready to burst. Something has changed. It’s not a feeling — it’s a certainty. An invisible but undeniable shockwave. The air has grown heavier. Every particle seems frozen, waiting. And you, even without turning your head, you feel it. You know. Because at that exact moment, Stark isn’t looking at you anymore.

The shift is imperceptible, but total. The slightest movement of his armor, the way the angle of his helmet adjusts, the way he straightens by a single millimeter… everything changes. It’s a silent, surgical mechanism. There’s no sound, no word, but the impact is stronger than a scream. He’s no longer here to cover you. No longer waiting for a move. He’s not gauging the situation. He’s read it. He’s decided.

And now, every fraction of his attention is aimed at the one holding the gun. The barrel hasn’t moved. But he’s no longer holding the scene. Not really. Because in this closed space, now sharp as glass, a new force has emerged. Not loud. Not theatrical. But absolute.

Stark is motionless.

But that calm is a lie. It’s the calm of predators. Of intelligent weapons. Of rage that’s learned to disguise itself as silence. The red light in the center of his chest pulses softly, like a heart that’s learned patience. But you know that light. You’ve seen it glow fiercer, sharper, when it switches into combat mode. And now, it’s changed. The angle of his helmet is fixed. Too fixed. His gaze, hidden behind the golden visor, is locked onto Matthew like a targeting system. He’s not watching the gun. He’s watching the arm. The shoulder. The center of gravity. He’s calculating. Anticipating. Waiting for the exact fraction of a second.

Matthew, for his part, doesn’t seem to have realized yet. He’s still talking. Or pretending to. A sentence. A half-taunt. Maybe a threat. You don’t hear the words anymore. Only the void around them. The tremble in his voice he thinks he’s hiding. The barely visible tension in his fingers. His clenched jaw.

Stark moves. No warning. No cry. No signal.

It’s not an attack. It’s a sentence. The motion doesn’t come from a jolt, or a desperate reflex. There’s no panic, no sign of improvisation. That move — he had it in mind before the scene even started, before Matthew spoke a single word. He knew. He’d seen your body. Noted every visible contusion, every barely contained tremor, every micro-fracture in your expression. He’d heard that voice, flat, disconnected, and recognized that tone — the one that still believes it holds power because it holds a gun. But what he didn’t know was that Stark wasn’t here to negotiate.

Inside the helmet, the interface deploys with a blink barely perceptible. Holographic markers tighten around Matthew’s silhouette. The thermal scan pulses one last time, the heat of the live barrel flaring in bright red. An angle appears. A firing arc. A margin of error. Everything syncs with icy fluidity. A choreography of lethal engineering. And the right glove moves. Not a punch. Not yet. Nothing showy. Just a pulse. A quick pivot of the shoulder. A millimetric rotation of the elbow. The metal plates glide over each other without a sound, as if the suit itself is holding its breath. The palm shifts slightly, in a gesture of unnerving restraint. It doesn’t promise violence. It delivers it.

The beam fires. A flash, red and sharp, searing. Barely visible. Not a burst. Not a shot meant to kill. Stark isn’t aiming to kill. He’s aiming for certainty. For neutralization. For total control. The impact is instant.

A dull thud, a muffled snap — and Matthew’s hand jerks. His fingers splay open in pain like twigs crushed in an invisible vice. If he cries out, it’s swallowed by the shock. He doesn’t fall. He staggers. And the weapon drops from his grip.

It spins through the air, in a grotesque arc, almost slow despite the speed. You see it, suspended for a heartbeat, before it hits the ground with a sharp clack. Metal on concrete. A cold sound, final. The pistol slides a few inches. It doesn’t smoke. It didn’t fire. It won’t again. Matthew looks down. As if he doesn’t understand. As if he needs to see the absence to believe the loss. His injured hand trembles slightly. A red glow rising along the tendons, a burning pulse, almost invisible unless you know how to read pain. But Stark doesn’t move.

He doesn’t speak. He waits. His arm is still raised, half-extended, ready to correct if needed. His silhouette is upright, locked onto one point: him. The attacker. The one who thought holding a gun was enough to control a scene. The error has been made. And in the air now, there’s no threat. No imbalance. The error has been made.

And in the air now, there’s no threat. No imbalance. Only this residual tension. This silent vibration, like a chord suspended. Like a question that only has one answer left. The answer to what Stark will do, now that the gun is on the ground. He straightens in the same motion, fluid, sharp, as if the previous action was only the first step of a prewritten sequence. And now he moves forward. Slowly. Relentlessly. Each step is a sentence, made audible by the dull thud of alloy striking concrete. He’s no longer just a man. He’s no longer Tony Stark.

He’s Iron Man.

The cadence of his steps is metronomic, unalterable, like a war clock. Each metallic impact vibrates in the air, echoes through the walls, shakes the silence itself. There’s no hesitation, no visible fury. Just that cold, determined mechanic that knows neither pause nor mercy. He doesn’t walk — he devours the space between them. He still doesn’t speak.

There’s nothing left to say. Words belonged to before. When balance was still possible, when the weapon still rested in an outstretched hand. Now, the language is metal. Impact. End. And it’s that absence of voice that breaks Matthew. He screams. But it’s not a cry of pain or submission. It’s raw, deformed, warped by shattered pride. A guttural burst, spat like an injured beast. It comes from the gut, from panic, from that sudden fear of never having been anything more than a fragile puppet, losing the stage. His injured hand, the one that held the weapon seconds earlier, hangs limp, fingers twisted, trembling, unable to grasp anything. But his other arm remains free.

And he raises it.

It’s a gesture without calculation. Without tactic. An animal reflex, one buried in marrow, triggered by terror. He charges. The scream that comes with it has nothing human left. It’s a tear. An implosion. A desperate attempt to reclaim dominance, to erase humiliation with a single punch. He runs. Not fast. Not straight. But with that blind rage that keeps cowards standing a second too long. His legs drag on the filthy floor. His boots slide across debris, his shoulder slams into a metal crate he doesn’t even see. But he keeps going. He rushes toward him, arm out, fist closed. He still believes. He believes that punch will bring him down — the man of metal. As if you could topple a wall with an insult. As if armor could feel the weight of an ordinary man.

But Stark doesn’t back down. He doesn’t need to.

He’s anchored to the ground, center of gravity locked like a rupture point. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t raise his voice. He stands there, upright and threatening, expected like an answer forged in iron. And deep down, even in panic, even in his charge — Matthew knows. He already knows he’ll strike only air.

He dodges.

It’s not dramatic. Not a heroic leap, no cape fluttering in the wind. It’s a half-step. A minimal shift. A slip barely noticeable, like a breath moved aside. Like a musical note just off from the last. A cold elegance, almost dance-like, fluid as if gravity itself hesitated to impose on him. The suit follows silently. No creak. No stray sound. Flawless engineering. And in that slight movement, his elbow rises.

Not in a burst of rage. Not in a violent explosion. A sharp, calculated pivot. The arm lifts, the shoulder locks, and the elbow draws its arc through the air with the precision of a blade. No need to look. No need to aim. He knows. He’s already read every trajectory. The strike lands — surgical, clean, mute.

And it hits.

The contact is brutal. Metal crashes into Matthew’s temple with a dull, horrifying crack. A clean snap, like a branch broken with firm hands. No scream. No outburst. Just that bone-deep sound, final, undeniable. Matthew’s body reels from the impact, his skull whipped sideways like a puppet cut loose. The violence of it freezes the air, slows time. But he doesn’t fall.

His foot stumbles back, his shoulder hits a decayed pillar, he staggers. His breath hitches, torn into ragged shreds. He gasps. One hand clawing at the air for support, the other clutching his temple, already swelling, purpling. Blood drips from his mouth, darker than red beneath dying lights. He shakes his head once, twice, as if he could snap his thoughts back into place. He spits. A thick, viscous string staining the floor between his boots.

He growls. A sound that’s neither human nor alive. A vibration. A primal whimper. A wounded beast not yet finished. And he comes back.

Not with intelligence. Not with plan. Just with that filthy rage that eats through guts, screaming that losing isn’t an option. His eyes drop. Searching blindly. His trembling fingers graze dust, shards, rubble. Then close on something. A piece of rusted metal, thick, heavy — a collapsed beam fragment, filthy and scarred. And he rises, swaying, holding this improvised weapon like a sacred axe.

No thought. No measure. He lifts it over his head in a shaky arc, trembling, but loaded with brute violence. And he swings. A wide strike. A gesture of desperation, a frozen scream in motion. Like a drunk lumberjack swinging at a storm. Metal slices the air. It’s the attack of a man who has nothing left. Nothing to lose. Nothing to prove. Nothing to save. The impact rings out in the silence like a shattered drum.

The metal smashes into the armor with all the force Matthew can summon, every ounce of rage, hate, and desperation. But this isn’t ordinary armor. Not just a shell. It’s a wall. A mobile fortress. The alloy doesn’t budge. Not a crack. Not a vibration. Not even a flicker on the surface. The hit makes a dull, almost mocking sound. A muted clong, as if the suit swallowed the blow just to show how meaningless it was. The improvised weapon rebounds, hits the dust with a pathetic thud. Matthew stumbles back, disoriented. And in front of him, Stark doesn’t move a single inch. No reaction. No hesitation. The armor renders him unreachable, nearly inhuman. He doesn’t even flinch.

And this time, he gives no more leeway. He strikes back. His arm lifts in a fluid motion, almost slow. No haste. No rage. Just a logical response, mechanical. A blow delivered with the force of a motor and the cold of a verdict. The fist strikes true, direct, into Matthew’s abdomen. Not to the side. Not to injure. To take the breath. To break the core.

The impact is brutal. The sound, a muted burst, like a sandbag tearing open.

Matthew’s body lifts from the force, thrown back a few centimeters before crashing to the ground. His feet give way. His chest folds. Air is torn from his lungs in a horrific wheeze, like the world collapsing inside him. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Just a silent gasp, a stolen breath. He wavers. His arms wrap around his belly in a reflexive, pathetic gesture. His legs tremble, buckle, fail. And he falls.

First to one knee. Then the other. Slowly. Inevitably. He stays there, kneeling in the grime, back hunched, breath shattered, racked by small spasms. Dust clings to his palms, his knees, his sweat-slicked cheeks. He trembles. He gasps. He’s nothing but an emptied body, a rattled shell. A man reduced to silence by a blow too precise, too well-placed, to be mere defense.

Stark still says nothing. He watches. Fixes his gaze. A statue of metal and contained fire. And you, now lying on the floor, finally discover what it feels like to no longer be in control. But even there, even on his knees, breath ripped away and ribs bruised, Matthew doesn’t let go.

He pants like a wounded dog, but he still spits. Blood at first—thick, dark red, sliding down his chin and hitting the floor with a dull splat—then words. Fragments of sentences, scattered, without logic or structure. Formless curses, guttural growls, syllables vomited in a mix of rage and bile. His voice is broken, trembling, but still carries that brutal hatred, that venomous bitterness that seems to rise from a bottomless pit. He clings to that anger like a lifeline, even if it won’t save him. Because that’s all he knows. Destruction. Defilement.

He raises his head in a painful effort, features contorted, jaws clenched. And despite the blood in his eyes, he searches for Stark’s gaze. He wants to be seen. He wants to be understood. And in that twisted, feverish stare, there’s still that spark. Sick. Obsessive. A flame refusing to go out. He won’t surrender. He doesn’t want to. He wants to keep going. To hurt. To wound. To kill, if he can. Even if his body no longer follows. Even if reality is already closing in on him like a cold jaw.

And Stark sees it. He doesn’t need a scanner. Doesn’t need analysis. He reads that hatred like a red warning signal on a screen. He knows what it means. What it demands. What it justifies. So he steps forward. One step. Then another. The metal of the suit echoes on the soiled ground, a dull, regular sound, implacable, like an endgame clock. He no longer needs to speak. No need to aim. No weapons, no blasts. Technology fades, unnecessary. He has become the weight itself. The answer. The wall.

Reaching Matthew, Stark stops. A dense silence falls, interrupted only by the man’s broken wheezing. Then, he raises his arm. His glove clicks gently as it tightens. Slowly. Like a lock closing. He doesn’t grab violently. He doesn’t strike. He simply closes his hand around the collar of Matthew’s shirt, where the fabric is torn, damp, clinging to skin. He grips—not excessively, but with terrible constancy.

And he lifts him. Not in a snap. Not with violence. He hoists him. Like lifting an empty sack. A body already drained of power, of authority, of threat. Matthew’s feet leave the ground in a pitiful scrape. His arms flail weakly, his breath whistles, trapped somewhere between terror and exhaustion. His feet kick the air, in an irregular, desperate rhythm. Frantic jerks, twisted knees, heels searching in vain for support, for grip, for a way to find the ground. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the void beneath him, and the iron grip suspending him like a useless, dismantled puppet.

His breath cuts off. Brutally. Clean. The collar of flesh and cloth tightens around his trachea, and the world becomes narrow, trembling. His lungs scream for air they won’t get. A sharp whistle rises in his throat, strangled, pitiful. He tries to cry out, but the scream chokes on nothingness. Matthew’s hands, already wounded, claw at Stark’s wrist. His fingers cling like a man grasping a cliff’s edge. He scratches, pulls, slaps ineffectively. His knuckles whiten, his skin slips against smooth metal, no grip. He struggles with all the misery he has left. But nothing moves. The arm holding him is fixed, unshakable, sculpted from brute will.

And yet, Stark isn’t squeezing to kill. Not yet. He could. With a simple gesture. He knows it, and so does Matthew. It would be so easy. A bit more pressure. A sharp move. And it would all end. But that’s not what he does. He holds him there, between heartbeats. Suspended. Halfway between punishment and sentence. And above all, he looks at him. Not with anger. Not even with hate. He stares. Straight into his eyes. An implacable gaze. Silent. Charged with something infinitely colder than rage. And what Matthew sees in that frozen instant has nothing of a hero. Nothing of a savior lit by glory.

It’s the gaze of a man emptied out. A man who’s lost time, peace, sleep, faith in logic. A man who’s been forced to act. To cross his own lines. To choose between containing horror or erasing it. What he sees is a vast fracture behind the steel. A calm darkness. A silent abyss. And above all, he understands, at last, there will be no mercy. Not tonight. Not for him.

Then Stark throws him to the ground. Not like shoving an obstacle. Not like dropping a sack. No. It’s a calculated, measured motion, still carrying all the force of a verdict. A cold, controlled trajectory—no unnecessary excess—but no softness either. The dull thud of impact echoes like a hammer on concrete. Brutal. Sharp. Irrevocable.

Matthew’s body hits the ground in a crash of flesh and bone, a grotesque shockwave folding him in half. Some limbs tuck beneath him at awkward, almost absurd angles, like a puppet with cut strings. His head hits the dust, breath shattering in his own chest. He groans. A hoarse, painful, strangled moan, more like an expelled breath than a voice. Every breath is a tear. A wheeze. A rebellion of the body against what it’s enduring. His chest lifts in jerks, unstable, uncertain. He gasps, mouth open, pulling air through a burning throat. The sound he makes is no longer human—a choked, rattling sob. His fingers claw the ground without really feeling it, his legs tremble, curling in on themselves. He tries to move, to rise, but every muscle screams its own fracture. He doesn’t get up. He collapses further with every attempt.

This is no longer resistance. Not even survival in the noble sense. It’s instinct. A primal urge. Not to die here, in the dirt, in front of him. And despite it all, despite the obvious failure of every gesture, there’s still breath in his throat. A twisted, crawling will, clinging to the ruins of his pride. A sick spark, refusing to go out. He still wants to believe he can resist.

But Stark isn’t finished. Not yet. He doesn’t move right away. He observes.

His eyes, invisible behind the mask, analyze every spasm, every breath, every millimeter of the collapsed body before him. It’s not the look of an executioner. Nor that of a savior. It’s the look of a man deciding. A judge. An enforcer of truth. The silence that follows is more threatening than any scream. And Stark, standing over him, is the shadow that remains when all light has been torn away.

He tries to crawl.

His elbows slip on the sticky concrete, drawing a dirty trail through the dust, like a wounded slug. His muscles tremble, too weak, too dislocated to truly support his weight. Every movement is agony. A slow, painful, desperate friction. He barely moves a few centimeters forward, crawling more than progressing, his ragged breath echoing like a muffled whimper against the floor. Mouth open, he gasps, sucking in air like a drowning man.

His face, contorted by pain, is smeared with blood — from his temple, his split lip, his shattered teeth. He blinks, grimaces, pulls his injured arm forward. The other hand dangles lifelessly, broken earlier by the surgical shot. But that one arm... still clings on.

And his gaze. That wild, sick, incandescent look. It scans frantically around him until it stops. There. Just a few inches from his bloodied fingers, just out of reach: a blade. His blade. Thrown earlier in the chaos, abandoned but not forgotten. A metallic silhouette, half hidden in shadow, lit only by the flickering reflections of unstable neon lights.

A breath. An impulse.

He stretches, slowly, painfully, every centimeter gained at the price of a groan, a gasp, a shiver of pure suffering. His fingers reach, extend, almost brushing the handle. He believes. He still believes. One last chance. One last act. Maybe with that knife, he could still change the course. Hurt. Scare. Leave a mark. Regain a fragment of control. Even a sliver.

But it's too late.

The shadow above him never left. Stark saw him crawl. Saw his gaze latch onto the weapon. He anticipated. As always. He waited, patiently, unhurried. Until the exact moment. And when it comes, he acts.

A simple weight shift. A servo impulse in the leg. Clockwork precision. And the boot slams down. A dull, sharp noise, a thick snap. Like an overripe fruit crushed, like a dry branch giving under a heel. It's clean. Absolute. Metal meets bone. And bone loses.

The scream erupts immediately. Raw, tearing. It shatters the air like an animal alarm. Not a man's cry. A child's, almost. Something broken, beyond anger, beyond hatred. A naked sound, ripped from the throat like a primal scream. The echo bounces off the walls, pure, raw, unfiltered. He doesn't even beg. He screams because he can't do anything else. Crushed fingers twitch uselessly at the void. The knife is there, still there. Within reach. Untouchable. Pain wipes out everything.

Matthew writhes on the floor, shaken by uncontrollable spasms. His body still tries to resist, but it's a lost cause. Everything in him screams — with pain, with fear, with shattered rage. His face is wrecked — no longer by hatred, but by naked suffering, the kind that can no longer hide, the kind no pride can silence. His features twist into a grotesque grimace, deformed by agony. His eyes, bulging so wide they look ready to pop, are flooded with tears he no longer controls. They run in filthy streaks down his hollowed cheeks, mixing with blood, with sweat, with the metallic taste clinging to his cracked lips.

His mouth opens and closes in ragged, arrhythmic gasps. He chokes. He coughs. He tries to breathe, but air refuses to come. And through this suffocating panic, torn sobs escape. Harsh, broken, humiliating. Nothing noble, nothing dignified. Just the desperate cry of a cornered animal, reduced to a raw state, incapable of hiding its collapse.

And Stark moves.

Not abruptly. Slowly, even. He leans down, with mechanical control, almost ceremonially. The armor barely groans under the tension. The sound of metal sliding on metal, quiet, chilling. He doesn't rush. He doesn't need to. He comes down to Matthew's level not to lower himself, but to dominate. So that Matthew has no escape, not even visually. So he can't look away, can't flee, even in thought.

The slits of the helmet glow with a dark light. Behind the visor, Stark's eyes are invisible to the world. But Matthew feels them. He feels them on him. Cold. Fixed. Merciless. There's nothing human in that gaze. Only judgment.

Judgment without appeal.

At this moment, Stark no longer sees an adversary, or even a criminal. He doesn't see a man. He sees a mistake. An aberration. A parasite. An anomaly to be eradicated from the system. His breath, inside the helmet, stays calm. Steady. Not a word has been spoken in long seconds. And that silence weighs the most. It crushes.

Then, finally, the voice falls.

A sentence. Simple. Relentless.

— "You made a monumental mistake."

The words are cold, sharp. No emotion clings to them. No anger, no contempt. Just the icy neutrality of a verdict already rendered, already weighed, already written. It's a condemnation. Not a threat. Not a promise. A bare truth, spoken like a knife sliding into flesh.

Matthew gasps, each breath a stab to the chest. His torso rises with difficulty, shaken by painful spasms, and his blurry eyes seem to drift without anchor. His pupils flicker in their sockets, swinging between raw panic and the numbness of pain. It looks like he no longer really sees. That everything around him is a blur of light and noise, that reality slips away under his clouded gaze. But deep in that chaos, something still crawls. A toxic impulse, a habit rooted in his bones: arrogance.

And then, despite everything — despite the blood on his chin, the nerves snapping under his skin like broken cables — he tries to smile. A rictus. Abominable. Twisted. More a grimace of pain than a true smile, but the intent is there. Split lips stretch into a parody of defiance, revealing teeth stained with red. It's not bravery. It's provocation. Pure vice. A last reflex of a pitiful player refusing to fold even when the game has long been lost.

— "Fuck... Stark..."

His voice is raspy, strangled, barely more than a whisper. It slides out of him like a malformed sigh. The words bounce off his broken teeth, drown in iron-tinged spit. He spits, a thick thread of blood spurting from his open lips, splattering the cracked concrete beneath him. But he goes on.

— "I can still negotiate..."

And in that phrase, everything tips. The tone, the intention, the subtext. There's nothing rational. Nothing intelligent. It's a pathetic instinct — that of the manipulator who still believes words can reverse the tide, even when drowning has already begun. He may think it's still a game. That naming the right cards can change the outcome.

But he's wrong. He just made the worst possible choice.

In front of him, Stark doesn’t answer. No word escapes his lips. No sarcastic line, no judgment. Only a subtle, glacial shift in the tension of his body. The jaw tightens under the mask. A brief tic of disgust. Of revulsion. Then silence. And that silence says more than all the threats in the world.

Stark doesn’t need to speak. His body speaks for him.

The arm lifts. Fluid. Natural. As if the motion had been restrained too long. And the fist comes down. Without flair. Without performance. Without explosive anger. It’s a dry fall, a verdict dropped straight from the sky. Alloy meets flesh with a dull, muffled sound, almost silenced by the weight of the impact. A pure hit. Clean. Devastating. The kind of blow not measured by strength — but by finality.

Matthew's head jerks violently backward under the force of the blow, as if torn by a titanic force. A dull thud echoes through the warehouse when the back of his skull slams against the ground — but he doesn’t get the chance to fully collapse. Stark’s hand catches him. The metal glove, clenched like a hydraulic clamp, grips him by the collar and holds him there, suspended at the edge of the void, keeping him from crumpling completely. Not yet.

It’s a cruel suspension. Deliberate. As if Stark refuses to even grant him the relief of surrender. As if he wants him to stay right there, conscious, lucid, to hear every word. To feel the slow sting of each second that follows. And Stark speaks. Finally. His voice comes from the helmet like a glacial blade, perfectly controlled. Without apparent hatred, but with a firmness that crushes everything in its path.

— "That was for daring to touch him."

No need to specify who. The tone, the density of the word, is enough to make the absent name echo. It’s a sentence. A judgment carved into speech. And before Matthew can utter even a defense, Stark’s fist rises. Not in rage. Not in excess.

It’s a mechanism.

A movement of clinical precision. The elbow bends, the shoulder pivots, and the fist comes down with relentless regularity. A hammer falling on a living anvil. The point of impact is the jaw. Right there, on the edge where the bone is vulnerable, where the shock can shatter the balance of the entire skull. The sound is sharper, more targeted, a contained crack within a muffled vibration. This is no longer a blow of anger. It’s an operation.

Matthew’s head bounces against the concrete, shaken like a dislocated puppet. His mouth opens in a disjointed groan, without a scream. He doesn’t scream anymore. He can’t. He moans. A low, hoarse sound, no longer human. A muffled, slippery whimper, like the breath of a wounded animal, cornered, emptied of hatred but not yet of fear. His body trembles. Not a shiver from cold, nor conscious fear. It’s a spasm. An uncontrolled nervous discharge. His arms buckle, his legs twitch as if still trying to flee, but there’s no direction anymore. No logic. Just a series of convulsions, a visceral, animal panic shaking his muscles in a last reflex of survival.

Dust floats around him, stirred by even his slightest movements, as if the air itself refuses to cover him. And Stark, standing over him, doesn’t move yet. He watches. He measures. He decides. He doesn’t need to rush the next step. Because in this chaos, he sets the rhythm. Stark straightens. Slowly. Like a mechanism returning to its default position, a war machine whose systems haven’t powered down. Every movement of his armor produces a subtle metallic creak, the scrape of advanced alloy against itself. It’s not a jolt. It’s not rage. It’s a verdict concluding.

His shadow stretches across the cracked concrete, immense, shifting, elongated by the artificial lights overhead. It spreads like a wave, engulfing Matthew’s curled form effortlessly. It covers him entirely, surrounds him, erases him. It leaves no doubt: here, now, Stark is everything. The ground, the ceiling, the sky. The authority. The unrelenting. His shoulders square, locked into a stance both defensive and predatory. A cold tension animates his neck. His chest rises in a perfectly measured rhythm. He breathes. Calm. Controlled. But his eyes, behind the visor, still burn. Two embers that refuse to die. Two centers of judgment still ablaze.

Then his voice drops. Low, calm, composed. But every word is weighed down with deep gravity, a tone that leaves no doubt about the sentence:

— "You thought you’d get away with it."

No emphasis. No shouting. Nothing theatrical. Just the raw truth, brutal, sharp as a blade.

And suddenly, movement. Direct. Sharp. Without warning. Stark lifts his foot. And brings it down into Matthew’s ribs with surgical precision. Not a wild strike. A controlled blow, measured to hit where it breaks but doesn’t kill. The noise is muffled but heavy — a dull, organic thud that resonates through the space like a sinister drum. Matthew’s body folds instantly under the impact, thrown onto his side like a marionette with snapped strings.

A rasp tears from his throat, hoarse, twisted, strangled. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Air seems to escape him, snatched away, ripped out by pain. His chest rises in a brutal spasm, his arms curl around himself, seeking protection that no longer exists. He chokes. He can’t see anymore. His eyes flutter into the void, roll back. His body still searches for meaning, direction, escape. But there’s nothing.

Stark doesn’t lean in. Doesn’t yell. He watches. His armor, dust-streaked, stands firm in the heavy air like a rampart. He is the silence after the storm. The echo of judgment. And even without moving, even without another word, he places over Matthew a threat greater than all the blows already dealt. Because at this precise moment, it’s not just the man he’s facing. It’s what he represents: consequence.

He stares.

Coldly. Motionless. No hesitation. No visible emotion filters through the metallic mask. And yet, in the silence that settles, it’s clear everything inside is burning. That everything he’s held back so far pulses, swirls, seeks a breach. But he doesn’t give in. He doesn’t move. He simply watches. Steady. Unyielding. Like a judge staring at the condemned before pronouncing the sentence.

At his feet, Matthew is nothing more than a disjointed body. Chopped breath. A carcass drenched in sweat and blood, incapable even of lifting itself. He trembles. Shudders. But still exists, still takes up space, still soils the air. A crawling presence, still here, still alive. And that’s the worst part. Stark could end it. Right here. Right now. A simple move. A command to his armor. A shift of his heel. That’s all it would take. He could silence him, crush that grotesque groan, smother that breath of hate and poison like erasing a mistake on a board. He could erase all trace of that face, those hands, that voice.

He could let it all go. Let the anger he’s swallowed for far too long erupt. Release the tension coiled into every fiber of his being. Let out a war cry against the injustice of having watched that child — that fragile, broken being he’s seen fall, stand again, fight — be hunted, beaten, shattered all over again. He could strike in your name. For the fear he felt. For the dread that gripped him. For that image he will never forget: your body on the ground, your scream in the night, your silence ever since.

But he doesn’t. Not yet. Because he knows it wouldn’t be enough. It would be too easy. Too brief. A flash, an end, a hasty conclusion. No. What Matthew deserves isn’t a quick death. It’s not an immediate outcome. Not an end that would free him. What he deserves is to understand. To feel the weight of his choices. To see his own failure reflected in every passing second. He needs to feel fear seep in slowly, shame settle in, pain grow dull, heavy, unbearable. He needs to understand that he lost. And not just physically. Not just because of the blows. But because he holds no power anymore. Because he never truly did. Because everything he thought he held in his hands vanished the instant Stark walked in.

Tonight, vengeance must not be swift. It must be methodical. Cruel in its slowness. Complete. And Stark, a statue of metal with eyes of burning light, knows exactly how to do it.

A little farther away, removed from the incandescent chaos left behind, in that zone where the light barely flickers, where the walls seem to close in under the weight of night, a sound breaks the silence. Faint, nearly absent. But it’s there. A minuscule vibration. An anomaly in the weightlessness of fear.

A breath.

Shaky, disordered, clinging to life by a fraying thread. It rises from a corner where nothing had moved, where everything seemed frozen by violence. At first, it's a rattle. Coarse. Uneven. The sound of a body trying to surface while still buried beneath the black waves of shock. A breath that falters, stumbles at the threshold of the lungs. Then another. Sharper. More urgent. Like a jammed engine sputtering a cloud of pain before restarting. A raw survival impulse cutting through the space without anyone noticing right away. Not even you.

Because it’s you.

You, curled up in the shadows, erased by the brutality that just unfolded before you. You didn’t move. You couldn’t. Your entire body froze under the threat, reduced to a paralyzed observer. A spectator of your own impending end. Prisoner of terror, pain, and vertigo.

And now, slowly, you resume. A breath, a spasm. Your chest rises, but it’s an immense effort. As if every breath scrapes the bottom of a burning well. You gasp, like someone dragged too late out of the water. Your ribs protest. Your stomach tightens. A wave of pain ripples all the way into your clenched jaw. Your hands clutch at the floor, seeking anchor in this trembling reality. You feel the filth, the blood—yours, someone else’s. It’s all mixed. Your throat, burning, emits only a muffled sound. You want to scream, but you can’t. You want to speak, but your tongue is stuck to your palate like cloth forgotten in the rain.

A viscous liquid rises up your trachea. Blood. You know it even before you taste it on your tongue. It tastes like metal, iron, impact. You half-swallow it, half-choke on it. Then you turn your head. Slowly. One centimeter, two. As if each degree stolen from your stillness sets fire to your tendons. Your cheek grazes the floor. Your eyes try to open wider, but the light is too harsh, too raw after the darkness where you’d sunk. You make out shapes, distant movements. Sounds, distorted, reach you in waves: the breathing of the armor, metallic clicking, ragged breathing further away.

You’re here. You’re alive. But nothing holds.

Your body is broken along its axis. Your mind drifts, still clinging to fear like a lifebuoy. But one thing is certain, indisputable, almost violent in its clarity: you are breathing. It’s not a triumph. Not even a victory. It’s just… a return. A starting point. The spark of a comeback.

And then you spit.

It’s involuntary, uncontrollable. A hiccup, a jolt, a brutal rejection of what’s choking you. The liquid is warm, thick, saturated with that metallic heaviness unique to blood. It slides from your mouth in a thin line, dark and viscous, crawling slowly to the floor. There, it spreads, lazily, flowing into the concrete’s cracks, mixing with dust, oil, filth. It leaves a trace. A mark. Your imprint. A silent declaration of pain, of existence, of survival. A rasp escapes you, hoarse and gravelly, strangled before it even reaches the air. It’s not a call for help. It’s a reaction. A primitive sound, almost animal. The proof that something in you still stands, even if everything else is falling apart.

Your fingers move. First one, then two. Slow, numb, as if your whole body were thawing after a too-long winter. Your muscles protest. Your nerves scream. But they respond. You’re here. Not intact. Not unscathed. But here. Present in this soiled room, in this aftermath. And on the other side, Stark stops dead. It’s not theatrical. He doesn’t freeze to dramatize. He stops because a detail, an infinitesimal shift in the saturated air, just struck him head-on. It’s not a sound he hears. It’s a vibration. A wave. A shock.

You.

It’s as if your breath passed through the walls, pierced the alloy of his armor, struck directly into the fibers of his being. A flash at his neck. A vertigo. The sound of a truth no one expected anymore. He felt it, like an invisible hand on his shoulder. His shoulder pivots slowly. Almost mechanically. The rest of the body follows, in a silence thick with electricity. His arms, still tense, are heavy with contained energy, with rage not yet fully dispersed. His fists, still clenched, vibrate under the weight of restraint. But his breath halts. Just for a second. A suspension of air. As if the world, too, had stopped alongside him.

He looks for you. He doesn’t know what he hopes to see. He fears what he might discover. A slumped form. A lifeless body. A snuffed-out light. And yet. What he feels at that exact moment is neither fear nor relief. It’s something else. A dull wave of relief tainted by guilt. You are breathing. And he knows. Because he just heard you return. Because your rasp, your blood, your spit, your breath… it’s the sound of presence.

His eyes fix on you. At first, you’re just a spot in the scenery. A detail misaligned in the surrounding chaos. A form half-hidden in shadow, covered in blood, dust, silence. Then the illusion shatters. The high-tech armor, packed with sensors, doesn’t react yet. But the man inside falters. He doesn’t understand. Not right away. His visual receptors analyze, measure, compare. But his brain, still charged with the adrenaline of a lawless fight, refuses to connect the data. His mind wants to believe what he sees is a shock residue. A hallucination.

Until he sees the movement.

Tiny. Broken. But real.

Your chest lifts. Unevenly. As if battling an invisible weight, a sea of pain and exhaustion. A breath stolen from the void, torn from asphyxiation. He sees the spasm in your throat, the dull jerk that stirs you, the silent fight to hold the air. And he hears it. That wet gargle, that sound of agony suddenly turned into a cry of life. The breath scraping, rasping, whistling through blood.

Then he moves. Already. Without thinking. Without warning.

A step — heavy, precise, loaded with cold urgency. Then a second, faster, almost desperate. The armor grinds against the concrete at each impact, pounding the floor like a tragic metronome. Every step is a slap to fear. A denial of the impossible. He crosses the space in seconds, driven not by tech, but by raw instinct. That of the man, not the hero.

He falls to his knees. Hard. The shock makes the metal vibrate. But he doesn’t care. He no longer feels the armor’s weight. Not the room’s cold. There’s only you, lying there. Your grayish face, smeared with dust, stained with red too vivid. Your eyelashes stuck with sweat. Your split lips. Your jagged breath. And that puddle growing under your cheek, mixing into the filth of the floor.

His hands, once weapons, now hesitate.

They lift slowly. Unsure what to do. Protect? Stabilize? Support? He wants to rip you from this vile floor, get you out of here, but he knows the slightest move could worsen your state. So he stays, frozen, inches from your face, watching for the slightest twitch, flutter, sound from your throat. Then you move. You move. It’s slight. Barely noticeable. But real. A shiver runs through your arm. A spasm in your hand. Your mouth parts more, letting out a breath heavy with blood. It’s ugly. It’s fragile. But it’s alive. Tony inhales, and for the first time in hours, it’s not out of rage.

It’s a breath cut short by emotion. A tension unraveling inside but refusing to collapse. He feels his own heart pounding against his chest walls like a caged beast. Not panic. Not yet. But a fracture. A wave. Hope. Fierce. Unstable. Twisted, like everything in him. But unshakable. Because you’re here. You’re breathing. You’re holding on. And it’s all he needs to keep going. To believe, even for a second, that he can still get you out. That it’s not over. That despite the blood, the fear, the violence — he wasn’t too late.

Your eyelids move.

Barely. First a tremor, faint, nearly imperceptible. Just a twitch at your skin’s surface, drowned in the general stillness of your broken body. An involuntary spasm that could be a leftover nerve reflex, an empty motion. But it returns. A second tremor, more marked this time. Rooted in flesh, in will. A micro-rebellion against unconsciousness.

Your brow contracts. A line slowly forms, deeply, between your eyebrows. Like a crack on a wall kept too long in tension. Your lashes, glued by fragments of dust, dried blood, acid sweat, tremble with effort. They shake under the weight of the world, of what you’ve just endured. And then, with the painful slowness of a body coming back from the brink, you open your eyes. It’s not a simple gesture. Not a waking. It’s a tear. A raw ascent, wrenched from the darkness where your mind had taken shelter. Your lids part by mere millimeters, each fraction of opening struggling against exhaustion, gravity, and the pain pulsing through your skull. You open them, slowly, against the current of the panic still lurking inside you.

Even dim, even dirty, the light hits you like a shock.

It assaults you instantly. Pierces your retinas like a blade, raw, invasive, unwanted. A white burn. Your eyes, flooded with a surreal blur, struggle to focus. Shapes dance, liquid, inconsistent. Nothing is stable. Everything dissolves. You can’t make out the ceiling above, or the walls closing in.

And most of all, you don’t yet recognize the figure leaning over you.

It’s just a mass of metal and shadow. An imposing blur, haloed in light like a mirage in armor. A presence without a name. You feel more than you see. The heat of a gaze fixed on you, the magnetic tension in the air, the echo of a heartbeat close by — not yours, his. You barely distinguish the muted red of the visor, the cold sheen of steel shoulders. But your body knows. Your unconscious mind recognizes the aura, the weight. Something in you wants to flee. Something else refuses to move. You don’t speak yet. Your throat is ruined, your tongue dry, your chest too painful to make a sound. But you’re here. Present. Pulled to the surface. And that’s already a miracle. An act of resistance.

Your blurry, derailed gaze finally catches a steady light. Two eyes, behind a visor. Two embers locked behind glass. They’re there. Watching you. Worried, maybe. Furious, surely. But they found you. And in this moment suspended between shock and lucidity, that’s all that matters. You breathe. The helmet hisses softly as it lifts, almost solemnly, like the metal knows it must be silent. And suddenly, his face appears. Clearer. Closer. More human.

Tony.

You recognize him before you can truly see. It’s a feeling, an anchor in the chaos. It’s the way his eyes pierce you without violence, but with an intensity that freezes the world. That light in his gaze doesn’t come from the suit or the surroundings — it’s deeper. Older. Fiercely alive. His face is tight, marked by fatigue, by still-burning anger, but above all by silent worry. His features don’t move, but you feel the tension beneath. The stillness isn’t calm: it’s restraint. A dam about to break. His eyes scan you, read you, as if searching for every micro-expression, every twitch of muscle. He observes like he’s afraid to miss a sign. A blink. A breath. An absence.

And he says nothing. No commentary. No panic. He just stays there. Present. Not like a dream, not a last image summoned by a dying brain. Not a remnant before the end. He’s really there. The man. Not the hero. Not the billionaire. Just him. In the silence, in the dust, in the blood. His hands, still covered by the suit, approach. Slowly. Carefully. He doesn’t touch you — not yet. He brushes. He avoids pain. He leaves space. A gesture that could seem clumsy, but is actually perfectly controlled. He doesn’t want to hurt you more. He won’t risk snapping the thin thread of consciousness you’re clinging to.

He waits. He waits for you to be lucid enough to understand. To feel. To know. He doesn’t need to say it. Doesn’t need declarations. It’s in his presence. In how he doesn’t look away, how he kneels despite the armor, despite the blood. He came.

For you.

Your lip trembles. You taste blood in your mouth — metallic, thick, bitter. Your jaw opens slowly, like a door rusted by pain. Every motion makes you flinch, every inch is a battle. Your lips part at last, cracked, dry, nearly fused together. Your tongue, rough and sore, searches for a sound. A word. Just one. Then, in a breath barely audible, more groan than voice, you call him.

— "T… Tony?"

His name escapes like a moan from your core, a syllable broken by pain, doubt, fear. A fractured whisper the air barely carries. You don’t know if he’ll hear. You don’t know if he’s real. You don’t even know if your brain invented that face to comfort you before the end. But you say it anyway. Because you must. Because there’s nothing else. Because that name, in your mouth, is your last link to the world, your last refuge. A desperate call. A reach for solid ground. A lifeline in the wreckage. And you fix your gaze, best you can. Through the blur, through the too-bright light, through tears that won’t fall. You search for his eyes. You want to hold on. You want to see an answer. Proof. Even if the world shakes around you, you feel it: he heard you.

You know it. He looks at you. Long. Deeply. Without once turning away, like his gaze alone could anchor you to the world. Like looking at you could be enough to pull your shattered pieces together. He barely moves, but his silence is thick with unspoken words, searing tension. And then he answers. Not with empty lines. Not with grand declarations. He answers with what he is, what he offers in that instant: a short, shaky breath. A barely visible pulse in his throat. A light in his eyes that has nothing to do with his suit. It’s a promise. Raw certainty. Undeniable truth.

He’s here. And he won’t leave. His face, still tight with fear and rage, softens just enough for you to notice, even through blurred vision. He dips his head, leans his forehead slightly toward you — not too close, just enough so you feel his warmth. And his voice cuts through the space.

— "Hey, kid…"

It’s low. Gentle. A rough caress in the chaos. Nothing sharp left in it, no sarcasm, no defense. Just what matters. Naked vulnerability, stretched between the fear of losing you and the relief of finding you. He doesn’t talk like to an employee. Not like a lost kid. He talks like to someone he almost lost. Someone he searched for. Someone he found. A shiver runs down your spine. Your eyelids flutter shut for a second. You inhale. The air still scrapes. Each breath is a fight, but you continue. You want to stay here. With him. Then your eyes open again. Slowly. Like rediscovering the world inch by inch. Like your body itself needs confirmation. That face, hovering above, is real. That voice belongs to this moment. Not a trick of a delirious mind.

You blink once. Then again. The image sharpens a little. You recognize the contours. The details. The exhausted black eyes. The drawn features. The sweat on his temple. The dust on his cheek. It’s him. It’s Tony. And he came. You want to speak, but your breath is too short. Your body, too heavy. So you stay there, half-conscious, clinging to his gaze like to a rope stretched over the void.

You’re not alone anymore.

Not abandoned in this corner of misery, of cracked concrete and walls weeping grime. The smell of blood, rust, and dried fear still hangs in the air like a second skin — but it no longer traps you. Something pierced it. Someone. He stands before you, frozen in a stance that’s not stiff. It’s contained tension, dense, like a spring stretched to its breaking point. He doesn’t move, but not from hesitation. From total control. Alertness. His eyes lock on you, burning with a fire his armor can’t hide. The metal shell, the articulated plates, the sleek lines of technology — they seem irrelevant now. It’s not Iron Man kneeling there. It’s Tony Stark. A man. Present. Focused. And his sole purpose, his one anchor, is you.

— "We’re getting out of here."

His voice is low. Flat. Not a shout, not a command. A clipped phrase, direct, nearly hoarse, like it was carved from stone. He’s not trying to joke, not defusing the moment with a quip. He’s not trying to sound heroic. What he says isn’t a promise — it’s a fact already in motion. You won’t stay here. Not while he still breathes. You want to answer. To tell him you can handle it. That you can walk, or at least try. That you’re not just dead weight. You want to move, prove you still exist, that you’re more than this broken body he has to carry. Your arms try to bend but collapse. Your legs are just pain, tension, inertia. Every nerve screams. Your back tears out a silent cry at the slightest motion. You claw at the air like a man condemned — but nothing responds. You want to help. But your body has deserted you.

And he sees it. Every flicker of your jaw, the smallest twitch of your fingers, your chest struggling to pull air like a rusted forge. He reads the effort. The wounded pride. He understands you want to fight, even now. And he doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t sigh. Doesn’t say anything to shame you. He just moves closer.

— "Let me handle it, kid."

His voice is different this time. A softness in the rough. Almost a whisper. Not a command. An accord. A hand offered over the abyss. Then he acts. His movements aren’t mechanical, despite the suit. They’re precise, controlled, but hold a tenderness that feels almost unreal. He lifts you slowly, as if he feels you are far more fragile than you appear. One arm slips behind your back, dodging pain with surgical care. The other cradles your neck, supports your head without pressure, just enough so you won’t fall.

You feel his chest against you — smooth and cold under metal, yet oddly reassuring. You hear, against your ear, the low hum of his artificial heart. That steady sound becomes a reference point. An anchor. And in this suspended moment, where everything still teeters, you understand he’s truly holding you. Not just your weight. Not just your body. You. Your existence. Your pain. Your damaged breath. He holds them all. Without flinching. Without backing down.

You let go. Without shame. Because this isn’t weakness. It’s finally safety. You feel yourself floating. Literally. Like your body gave up all structure, all logic, all will. You’re nothing but a suspended weight, raw flesh battered by pain, consumed by exhaustion. Your breath is short, choppy, erratic. You don’t know if you’re inhaling or exhaling — just that air moves, barely enough to keep you between two heartbeats. And in that drift, there’s him. Tony. An anchor. A presence. A weight unlike any other.

His arms hold you, firm and sure. He doesn’t shake. He doesn’t waver. And even through the suit, you feel something human. A strange warmth. A steady calm. The metal is warm against your skin, as if it’s absorbed some of you — the panic, the blood, the fever. And his gestures... they aren’t those of a man in a hurry, or a soldier on a mission. They belong to someone who’s careful. Who adjusts every step to keep from jarring you, every shift to avoid worsening your injuries. He wraps you in a silent promise: that he won’t let go.

You want to thank him. But your tongue won’t work. You want to open your eyes, keep them open, show him you’re still here, holding on. But the light becomes an assault. It pulses, wavers, dissolves into white blots, then black. Glare, halos, as if reality itself melts into patches of filthy light. Your vision narrows. Everything wavers. Even sound changes. Footsteps, the scrape of armor, the breath in your ear it all blurs into a hazy echo your mind can’t hold.

You’re slipping. Softly. Slowly. And yet, in the void, you still feel. His arms around you. The curve of his forearm beneath your head, the hand steady on your shoulder, the way he cradles your neck without weight. You feel the steady hum of his chest reactor, like a second heart — mechanical, faithful, unwavering. You feel the control in his fingers, the calculated support of your body, as if every angle, every contact, was planned to spare you pain. And you feel something else a tension, a mute urgency, beating against him like a restrained fear.

So you hold on. To anything you can. To that warmth. That metal. To him. You don’t need to fight anymore. Not really. Just stay. Present. Conscious, even a little. Because now, you can let go. Just a little. You can surrender to that grip without fearing the fall. You can sleep knowing he’s watching. He’s here. And he won’t let you fall again.

Then a noise. Sharp. Distant. A metallic crack. A vibration too precise to belong to the empty space of this room. The sound of a mechanism. A lock. A step that doesn’t come from him. Something is coming. The sound slices through the air like a blade. Distinct from everything else. Not a groan. Not a sigh of pain. Not even the crash of something falling. No. It’s sharper. More precise. More intimate. A click. Pure. Cutting. Like a guillotine dropping. The familiar sound of a safety catch being disengaged, slowly, methodically, as if it had been anticipated. As if it heralded what’s to come. It’s a sound you never forget. A promise folded into metal. A threat spoken by a machine only the hand of a dangerous man knows how to wield.

It’s not just a sound. It’s an ultimatum.

And immediately, the silence — that fragile tension stretched out for long minutes — shatters like glass under a blow. The moment freezes. Every molecule of air locks into deadly stillness. Stark stops. Instantly. A block. His whole body locking like a defensive system on maximum alert. The suit doesn’t creak, doesn’t shake. But you feel the tension, everywhere. In the angle of his shoulders. In the sudden curve of his back. In the way his head stays immobile, as if the slightest move could trigger what’s next.

And you. Even you. Even in this dissociative state, this blurry space between consciousness and collapse, you feel it. You recognize it. That sound. That chill. You don’t know exactly where it comes from in the room, but your body knows. It remembers. It contracts. Instinctively. As if every nerve, every cell, every bone recognized that frequency. That message. That danger signal etched into your flesh.

It’s not an ordinary sound. It’s a silent scream. The scream of fractured memory. Of a body that hasn’t forgotten what fear is. Real fear. The kind that freezes. That anchors you. That always comes back through the sound of a weapon being cocked — above your head, behind your back, or in the middle of the night.

And then, the voice.

It scrapes the walls. Twists the air. It’s there, too close, rising from a poorly extinguished corner of shadow. Broken. Hoarse. Soaked in bile. Strangled by hate. It stumbles on the words but doesn’t die. A voice you’ve heard scream, laugh, whisper, bite. A voice capable of everything. And nothing. A voice that hurts even without strength.

"Put him down."

Not a scream. Not a command. An order. Spat through clenched teeth. A groan of frustration, of muffled rage, but still standing. He’s there. Still. Standing. Armed. And what he demands, what he insists on, is unthinkable: that Stark lets you go. Puts you down. That you return to the floor. That the pain starts again. That the terror returns.

And all at once, you feel the cold. Not the cold of the metal. The cold of possibility. Of threat. Of fear. Stark doesn’t turn his head. Not yet. He doesn’t need to.

He knows. He’s always known that a man like Matthew doesn’t vanish without resistance. That he never really falls. Not as long as he has breath, a pulse of hate, a muscle left to bite with. That’s a rule, a constant for that kind of filth: they don’t go out — they detonate. And Tony understood that from the first second. From the moment he saw that flicker in his eye, that twisted thirst for power, that sick need for control.

So he stays still. Not out of surprise. Not out of hesitation. But calculation. Perfect read of the moment, the trajectory, the danger. His body remains locked, like a beacon rooted in the ground. But inside, his sensors activate. His instincts too. And in that short lapse of time, in that suspended fraction of a second, he measures what’s coming. Matthew is still there.

Behind him. A few meters away. Maybe less. Standing — or something close to it. A grotesque, fragile balance. His silhouette flickers like a sick flame, shuddering with spasms and tremors. His legs are bent, unstable, like two shattered stakes too proud to collapse. One arm hangs useless. The other, armed.

His face is a shredded mask of flesh. One eye almost shut, purpled to the bone. His mouth barely bleeds now, as if his body no longer has the strength to bleed properly. A raw gash cuts across his temple from a blow poorly absorbed. He looks like a ghost. A leftover human who should’ve been buried long ago. And yet, he’s here. Alive. Threatening.

And in his right hand the only one still mobile glints a compact shape. The other weapon. Not the one Stark knocked away earlier. Another. Kept warm, hidden in a boot, a pocket, a sleeve. Plan B. Last trick. Final venom. The barrel trembles, blurry, but aligned.

Not at Tony.

At you. 

At your weakened body, leaning against the suit, clinging to what’s left of consciousness. You don’t see it — not yet — but you feel the shift. You feel the silence twisting around you, like the world holding its breath. And Tony too. Just for a second. Enough to calculate. Enough to confirm. The barrel is aimed at you. And in Matthew’s eyes, despite the pain, despite the exhaustion, despite the blood dripping into his collar, there’s that fire. Weak, but there. A wild ember. A sick rage. A blind, desperate fury. He doesn’t want to win anymore. He wants to destroy. He doesn’t want to flee anymore. He wants to mark you. One last time. To erase you. To own you all the way into your fall.

Even if it kills him.

Stark feels his pulse pounding against the inside of the armor, stronger, more brutal, like a deafening echo reverberating off the metal. Each beat is a war drum hammering in the hollow of his chest—heavy, steady, ready to explode. His jaw tightens slowly. He doesn’t move yet, but every nerve in his body is on high alert, every joint primed to unleash lethal force in a fraction of a second. He has become silence. He has become steel. He has become threat.

His arms tighten around you with an almost unreal slowness, millimeter by millimeter. Not to suffocate you. To hold you. To shield you. He pulls you closer against him, as if the armor isn’t enough to protect you anymore, as if his own body must become the barrier, a living rampart, a fortress between you and the bullet. He knows where the barrel is aimed. He saw the trajectory, the shift, the alignment. It’s not him he’s targeting. It’s you.

He says nothing. Not yet. Words would be a luxury. A useless noise in a scene that has become too fragile, too saturated. There’s no more room for banter, no more space for sharp retorts he knows so well. There’s only this short, held breath, and this heat in his throat, this growl, this fire rising and threatening to overturn everything.

And he knows that this time, if he acts… it’ll be to kill.

The gun is there. Raised. Steady. A black cylinder aimed at them like a sentence, a final injunction. Matthew’s arm trembles slightly, but not enough to make him doubt. It’s not weakness shaking his muscles. It’s adrenaline. Excitement. Hatred. His fingers, clamped to the grip, are clenched so tight they’ve gone white, every joint taut like a cord about to snap. It’s the final spasm of a mind refusing to go down without leaving a last scar.

And his eyes.

They’re not looking for Tony. Not even for fear or recognition. They’re looking for damage. For the impact. For the end. Bloodshot, swollen with rage, they gleam with a sick, icy intensity. A raw hatred, ancient, visceral, almost religious in its obsession. A hatred without aim, without meaning, just one need: to scar. To erase you.

Then he speaks.

— "You really thought it would end like this?"

His voice rises, rasping, strangled. A thin thread of sound scraped from damaged vocal cords, saturated with bile, blood, pain, and crushed pride. Each word seems to cost him a bit of life, but he doesn’t care. It’s not a line for dialogue. It’s not a question. It’s a bite. A spit. A final provocation. He growls more than he speaks, a kind of dying breath, a defiant snarl from a beaten dog who refuses to die without biting one more time.

And Stark, still frozen, knows. He knows this isn’t a scene. Not a confrontation. It’s the moment. The one before. The one where everything can flip.

Stark exhales.

Not out of fear. Not even anger. A heavy sigh. Worn out. Bone-tired. Like a father at the end of his rope facing the same mistake for the hundredth time, one he doesn’t even bother correcting anymore. The kind of sigh you let out when everything has already been said, when words are too light to hold the weight of the obvious. It’s a breath that stretches. That rasps along the edges of his helmet, infiltrating the tense silence like a crack.

Then, slowly, Tony closes his eyes.

Not for long. A second, maybe two. But in that brief instant, everything in him closes. Resets. He pushes away emotion. He buries it. He stores the fire, the panic, the protective instinct that’s devoured him since he saw you on the ground. He shelves it all to become what he’s always known how to be when it counts: a damn machine. Efficient. Surgical. Unstoppable. When he opens his eyes again, they’re void of compassion. Just a glint of steel. Sharp. Cold.

— "You really are a fucking idiot."

His voice is flat. Slow. Devoid of any emotion, except for the weariness hanging from every syllable like a silent threat. No need to raise his voice. No need to get angry. He doesn’t even need to say he’s about to act. It’s all there already, in the way his body shifts balance. Subtly. A shift in stance. A micro-adjustment. Just enough to strengthen his footing, to restore gravity around him, to calculate.

But he doesn’t let go of you. Not for a second. Not an inch.

His arms remain closed around you, held with infallible precision. He holds you like one would hold an answer. A promise. Like he refuses to abandon you, even for a heartbeat. Like the idea of laying you down on the ground — that ground soaked in blood, fear, agony — is an offense he won’t tolerate. Not after all this. Not now.

Across from him, Matthew wavers.

His legs buckle beneath him, stiff, tense like two rusted metal rods about to snap. He clutches his side, fingers clenched on his ribs as if trying to hold himself together, keep his body from collapsing. His breathing is a rusted saw, wheezing, chopped into irregular, painful segments. He tastes blood on his face. Along his cheek. On his split lips. The taste of metal and dirt, acidic. He trembles.

But he still has the gun.

And he feels it, that last sliver of power. That fragment of unstable balance in the hollow of his hand. He grips it like someone clutches a grudge. He’s not shaking from fear. He’s trembling with tension. With pride. With the refusal to bend, even on the edge of the end. He straightens slightly, still swaying, but raises the barrel toward you both.

And he spits:

— "I swear if you move another inch, I’ll blow his head off."

His words fall like stones into an empty well. Raw. Warped by pain. Loaded with a filthy, childish rage, almost pathetic. He throws in everything he has left: his anger, his fear, his illusion of control. He wants to be taken seriously. He wants to inspire fear. But Stark doesn’t respond. Not yet. He stays still. Silent. And that silence… is worse than a threat.

Stark does nothing — or so it seems. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t yield. He stays rooted to the floor, in the moment, in this suspended second where everything can fall apart — but nothing is lost yet. He’s still holding you, firmly, with a precision that defies pain, fear, even logic. And yet, in this perfect stillness, something shifts.

He simply raises an eyebrow.

Nothing theatrical. Nothing ironic. Just that small, barely perceptible movement, almost mechanical, as if he had just decoded the utter stupidity of what he just heard. As if Matthew’s words were nothing more than a distant echo, a threat already dissolved before it even hit. Then, with calculated, glacial slowness, he finally turns his head. Not in surprise. Not in a flinch.

No, he turns his head with the calm of an ancient god. With that silent authority only men tired of violence can carry without trembling. And when his gaze lands on Matthew — direct, sharp, total — it’s no longer Tony Stark standing there. It’s something else. A stripped entity, devoid of humanity. It’s no longer arrogance. No longer exasperation. Not even rage. It’s emptiness.

Not a hollow void, not a fragile nothingness. No. A void of steel. An absolute absence of emotion, so sharp, so dense, it seems to suck the air around it. A gaze where everything is already over. Where the verdict has fallen, irrevocable, final. A gaze that doesn’t threaten — it condemns. That doesn’t kill — it denies existence. Denies the right to be.

And Matthew feels it.

Oh, he feels it. In his gut. In his bowels. In his knees that, despite himself, begin to give way. He takes a step back. A tiny retreat, almost imperceptible. But it’s too late. Stark saw it. And that movement, that simple body shift, that instinctive micro-defense, is worth more than a thousand confessions.

Then Stark speaks.

— "You really wanna play this game?"

The question is asked without emphasis. Without drama. Like a blade laid on a table. Sharp. Cold. Needlessly polite. And the sound of his voice cracks the air with the same intensity as glass shattering in a silent church. No need to raise the tone. No need for added threat.

Because everything is already there.

Matthew straightens his shoulders. Or tries to. His back bends under the pain, but he wants to give height back to his body, pretend he hasn’t flinched. He tries to swallow the step he took back, erase the gesture. He tightens his grip on the gun, grits his teeth between jagged breaths. And he speaks, louder, to cover the wavering.

But in his eyes, the confidence is cracking. His breathing is too fast. Uneven. His forehead drenched in cold sweat — not from effort, no — from fear creeping in, drop by drop, down his spine. His fingers tremble. Barely, but just enough to throw off the aim. And his movements, suddenly, become too much. Too jerky. Too erratic. He flails like a puppet whose strings have been yanked too hard.

He’s no longer in control. Not of the scene. Not of the pace. Not even of himself.

And Stark feels it. Not just through the suit’s sensors, not only via the micro-vibrations of the ground under his feet or Matthew’s thermal signature burning from the inside. No, he feels it like an animal senses a storm, like a predator senses the irregular heartbeat of prey. It’s visceral. Primal. Obvious. Because he’s learned to recognize it — that vibration, that nervous derailment, that fault line running through a man when he loses control.

Because everyone, sooner or later, has felt that terrible thing when Tony Stark closes up like this. It’s not explosive anger. Not a roar. Not a flare of rage. It’s an internal collapse, controlled, contained, a thousand times more terrifying. It’s the void settling in. The absolute silence before a surgical strike. It’s the moment when humanity fades to make way for something else. Fear. It’s there, in the air, suspended between the grimy walls of this room, between the debris on the floor, between each irregular heartbeat. And Stark, without a word, moves. Almost nothing. A bend of the knee. A subtle weight shift from one foot to the other. A barely perceptible adjustment in posture. But enough. Enough to shift the scene into another register. The gun barrel rises instantly.

— "DON’T MOVE!"

The scream cracks. High-pitched. Nervous. Hysterical. An explosion of panic, a pure fear discharge, vomited into the space like a desperate reflex. Matthew’s voice, already broken, tears itself into a lopsided shriek, too shrill to be solid, too shaky to be dangerous. And in his eyes, you can see it. The moment of terror. The crack.

He wavers.

His pupils dart from Stark to you, and back to the gun. Then to his own hands. As if suddenly realizing he no longer controls anything. That he’s just a link dangling in a mechanism that no longer belongs to him. His breath accelerates, grows loud, almost wheezing. His chest heaves with difficulty. He tries to compensate. To keep face. But the tension betrays everything. His arms tremble. His fingers, clenched on the grip, vibrate despite him. A shiver runs through his shoulders, derails the aim, throws off his center of gravity. He tightens his hold on the weapon, but it’s too late: the doubt is there. The instability. The obvious. He knows.

He knows he’s losing. Not just the upper hand. Not just the battle. But everything. The scene. The power. The narrative. And he feels it, in his broken bones, in his exhausted muscles, in the clammy heat of his blood spilling too fast: this part right here — it’s the end. There will be no glory. No final revenge. Just the fall. And like all cowards, like all monsters too weak to fall alone, he wants to drag you down with him.

— "Put him down. Now."

The phrase comes out in a rasp, between clenched teeth, like a final desperate plea for a balance that no longer exists. It’s no longer a command. Not really. There’s something fractured in the tone, a tremor, a break. He’s begging without admitting it, panting, lost. His voice is jagged, unstable, stretched to the extreme, oscillating between threat and collapse.

But Stark doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t need to speak. You watch him think. Calculate. With surgical precision deployed in perfect silence. Every microsecond becomes a world; each fraction of a moment an equation. He reads everything — the tension in Matthew’s shoulders, the subtle twitch of his arm, the increasing pressure of his index finger on the trigger. He analyzes the angle, the velocity, the firing radius. He isolates trajectories. Assesses the margins. Corrects for the unforeseen. The right moment. The only moment. The one where everything can tip. And then, Matthew screams. A shout. A spasm. A total rejection of lost control. A dying man’s order, a final command hurled like a stone into a storm he can no longer stop.

— “STARK!”

And the shot is fired. A flash. A tear. A sonic implosion in a room saturated with tension. The detonation isn’t just a noise. It’s a shockwave. A blade of fire that lacerates space, rips the air, splits the scene in two. The yellow flash spits its light into the gloom like lightning dropped into the heart of silence. The barrel flares, violent, blinding, and the bullet flies. A sharp whistle. Shrill. A vibration that pierces the eardrums like a scream of metal. A shiver of steel. A heartbeat. Not even a second. Not even a full breath. If Stark’s inhale had been different, if he’d hesitated, if he’d blinked, if gravity had been heavier by a single milligram... the bullet would’ve hit you. Split your throat, your chest, your skull. It would’ve ended everything — brutal, filthy, final.

But it didn’t. Because he left no room for error. Because he saw it coming, sensed it, anticipated it. Because the exact moment Matthew’s finger twitched, the moment the gun’s internal mechanism clicked, Tony Stark had already moved. Already shifted his center of gravity. Already pivoted half a step, his arm pulling you in, shielding you with the armor, ripping you from the line of fire in a motion so swift the world didn’t have time to react. The steel wall intercepted the bullet. An impact. A spark. A tiny burst of light on the reinforced chestplate. The dull sound of a bullet meeting a world it cannot pierce. You didn’t feel a thing. Just a breath. A warmth. Then a tremor through Stark’s entire body — the shockwave he absorbed for you.

And for a fraction of a second, he doesn’t move. He remains frozen. Not out of fear. But to make sure. To listen to your breath. To confirm that you’re alive. Then he slowly lifts his head. And this time, it’s not a look. It’s a sentence.

The impact tears through you like a silent thunderclap. You didn’t understand at first. You felt a warm gust skim your cheek, like the scrape of an invisible fire. Then the rumble echoed inside Stark’s chest — the one cradling your body, limp and suspended between terror and exhaustion. The metal vibrated. His armor took the hit. And you — you couldn’t do anything. Not even scream. Your breath locks in your throat, ripped away by the violence of the moment. You want to speak. To move. To cry out. But your vocal cords are tied, your muscles unresponsive. Your fingers try to cling to him, to seek an anchor, anything — but they slip, powerless, drained of strength. Your entire body is dead weight, suspended by another’s will.

And him… he moves. Slowly. Deliberately. Like an ancient statue waking after a thousand years of silence. No panic. No rush. Just chilling, methodical, surgical precision. His head pivots on a perfect axis. A single angle. His gaze finds Matthew. And something shifts in the air. It’s no longer that abyssal void that burned seconds ago. It’s not flaming rage, ready to consume. No. What emanates now from his eyes, his movements, every line of his face… is worse. Older. More fundamental.

It’s the total absence of forgiveness. An implacable, cold, silent force that seeks nothing but a conclusion. He’s no longer looking at you. Not really. But he hasn’t forgotten you. And yet his movements remain gentle. Tender, incongruously so. He lays you down with surreal slowness, as if afraid to break you more. Every motion is measured. Controlled. Deliberate. His arm slips behind your back, supports your descent, holds you until the last moment. And then, with the care of a surgeon, he slides you against the wall.

You feel the concrete against your back. Rough. Cold. It almost burns. But his fingers linger a moment longer. Just long enough to keep you from falling. Just enough to offer a last anchor. Then his gaze tears away from you. For a second. Just one. Like a parenthesis. Like a temporary farewell. He entrusts you to the ground. And from here on, everything that follows is no longer about you… it’s about him and Matthew.

Then, he rises.

The metal groans softly, as if the suit itself were holding its breath. A low vibration escapes the still-warm joints. A deep murmur, almost organic. A beast waking up. The lights embedded in the joints shift — first imperceptibly, then abruptly: the bright white turns to pulsing red. Combat red. Retribution red. Judgment red. Every LED becomes an ember, each glowing point a silent siren screaming the irreversibility of what’s coming.

Matthew sees it. And he understands.

He tries to back away. A step. Then another, stumbling, uncertain. His body won’t follow. His legs buckle beneath him. His arm lifts again, but the gun in his hand shakes more than he does. The barrel wavers, dances in the air, uncertain. He still believes. In one last chance. One final shot. He tells himself he can fire. That he can take Stark down, or at least slow him. That he can hurt him.

But Tony gives him no time.

The roar of the thrusters splits the space. The armor launches, carried by raw, thunderous force. A comet of metal and fury. The distance between them vanishes in a fraction of a second, erased by the taut trajectory of a body hurled like a cannonball. The impact is brutal. The weapon flies. A palm strike — dry, surgical — hits the grip and sends it spinning into the dark. It spins, skids somewhere out of reach. Harmless. Forgotten.

But Stark doesn’t stop.

His fist crashes down the next instant. It plunges into Matthew’s abdomen like a hammer through plaster. His breath is ripped from him, torn out in a high-pitched gasp. His torso folds, his body lifts, before slamming into the wall with a sickening, wet thud — flesh against concrete. He collapses like a sack, half-conscious, half-empty. But the second blow follows fast. Sharper. More precise. The jaw. A clean crack of bone. A red burst explodes between his teeth. Blood, saliva, a thread of bile. Matthew screams — or tries to — but only a gargle escapes. He crashes to his knees, arms slack, mouth twisted in a grotesque, disjointed grimace.

And Stark advances. This time, he doesn’t run. He walks. Slowly. Methodically. Like an executioner. Like judgment embodied. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t speak. He moves, and that’s enough. His shadow engulfs the floor. It blankets Matthew’s body like a shroud. He stands above him — towering, immovable. The red light from the arc reactor at his chest pulses, bright, steady. His arm lifts.

The gauntlet expands, and the lines etched in the metal ignite a deeper red. Energy hums, pressure rises. The core in his chest vibrates, ready to unleash full power. Each pulse is a promise. A warning. A useless one. Because this time… Stark is ready to finish it. Matthew raises a hand. Not to attack. Not out of anger. Not a trick. It’s a plea. A tremor. Feeble, pathetic. His blood-covered arm struggles to extend. His fingers, bent, broken, flutter in the air as if they no longer remember how to beg. His whole body trembles, his knees trying to hold but collapsing with each passing second. His mouth opens, slowly, painfully, and a word slips out. A syllable, barely. A groan more than a voice.

— “Wa… wait…”

But Stark doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. His gaze is locked. Glacial. Immutable. And his voice falls into the room like a verdict etched in stone, low, metallic, inevitable.

— “You should’ve stayed down.”

And you watch. Pinned to the ground, trapped in your own body. Your breath trembles, unstable, each inhale a tear through your chest. The air burns, scrapes, resists. You no longer have the strength to move. Your arms are limp, your legs feel torn from your control. Your muscles won’t respond, your nerves scream, and yet, you remain conscious. A consciousness glued to the pain. A clarity sharpened by fear. And your eyes… your eyes stay open.

They see it.

They see Stark, standing there, frozen in a stillness that no longer feels human. His silhouette is black, almost liquid under the red reflections of the pulsing armor. Every light seems to beat in rhythm with his heart, but in this moment, that heart no longer beats to protect. It beats to strike. His arm is extended, a perfect line—cold, rigid. His open palm is aimed at Matthew, and in its center, the reactor pulses. Incandescent, unstable light radiates from it like a tide of contained fire.

You hear the crackling. The charged energy vibrates around him, dances in electric arcs along his gauntlet. The armor groans under the surge of power. It growls, lives, almost breathes. Like a beast untethered for too long. The lines of the suit light up in shades of scarlet, the red veins of a war monster waiting only for the order. And that order won’t be shouted. It’s already there. In Stark’s eyes. In the silence that follows the last chance.

And in front of him, slumped against the wall, Matthew no longer resembles anything. A dislocated puppet. A sack of hateful flesh. Curled up. Unable to flee. His face is a mask of blood, fear, and despair. His eyes are wide—far too wide—locked on the outstretched gauntlet like the muzzle of a cannon. He knows. Every fiber, every still intact bone knows. He knows it’s over. That there will be no mercy, no return, no escape.

And you know it too.

You feel it, deep down, that Stark won’t stop. That the rage he’s held back this long is begging to be unleashed. That it’s no longer a decision. It’s an instinct. A drive. A need. He’s gone too far to halt now. Too far to turn back. And in your pain-drenched gaze, fear returns. Not for yourself. Not for what you’ve endured. But for him. For what he’s about to do. For what it will leave in him. For what that blast, if unleashed, will shatter—not in Matthew. In Stark.

You want to speak. But your throat is a raw wound, a voiceless pit. You want to scream, but nothing comes. Even a sound is a mountain. Your lips barely move, cracked, salted by tears and blood, trembling like the leaves of a tree shaken by an inner storm. The air you try to inhale scrapes your larynx, too dry, too thick, like every particle stabs you. But you keep going. You refuse to give up. Because it’s all you can do. Because you have to stop him.

So, slowly, painfully, you gather what strength remains. You dive into the pain, arms wide open—you embrace it, you swallow it, you use it as your anchor. You cross that frozen sea, that threshold you thought impassable, and somewhere, buried deep inside, you find a breath. A whisper. One last echo.

— “Stark...”

It’s not a cry. It’s not even a sentence. It’s barely a breath. A shard of soul, scraped, raw, fragile as the wingbeat of a broken bird. And yet… that word slices the air like thunder. It lacerates the silence. It pierces. It cracks it open.

Stark hears it.

He blinks. A single beat. An imperceptible tic in that fortress of steel. But you see it. You feel it. The silent shockwave. A hesitation. A micro-movement. A fissure in the war mask. His gaze doesn’t leave his target… not right away. But something just struck him. A private tremor. A call he wasn’t prepared for.

Then, he looks at you.

Not for long. A second. An eternity. But it’s enough. Enough for your eyes to meet. For your eyes—reddened, exhausted, shadowed with pain and terror—to offer something other than fear. It’s not a plea. It’s not forgiveness. It’s not even an order. It’s a truth. Bare. Silent. An evidence as simple as it is searing: you don’t want this ending. You don’t want to see his arm become a sentence. You don’t want his hands, the ones that carried you, supported you, protected you, to become the tool of an irreversible vengeance. You don’t want him to cross that line. Because deep down, you know what it would do to him. And you know that he knows it too.

Stark doesn’t move. But you feel the tremor. The internal storm. His mind is fighting. Behind the mask, behind the metal, calculations spiral, pulses of rage beat like war drums, demanding justice. He has every reason. You know it. He could do it. He wants to. Part of him screams to do it. It would be so easy. So clean. So just.

But you’re there.

And you spoke. You threw him that rope at the edge of the cliff. You held him back. With one hand. With one syllable. You just saved him—not from danger, but from himself. From an act that would never leave him. You stopped him from crossing a line that can never be uncrossed. So he breathes in. Slowly. Deeply. A breath long, heavy, weighted like a world. He closes his eyes, briefly. He lets the tension drip away, drop by drop. He feels the heat recede from his gloves, the energy ebb. Without a word, he releases the rage frozen in his arm.

And for a second, you think the world starts spinning again. And the arm begins to lower.

Slowly. Like an overloaded pendulum, like a weight that even technology, even titanium and fire, can barely bear. The energy in Stark’s palm dissipates, dull, into red wisps that flicker, then die. The internal circuits of the suit, which just a second ago vibrated like a heart ready to explode, calm. The sound muffles. Silence returns. Not peace—suspended tension. An electric silence, like the pause before lightning, the moment the air tightens. Stark stands there, half-raised arm, body frozen in a posture of painful restraint. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. His eyes stay fixed on Matthew, his fist still clenched, jaw tight enough to break teeth. His breathing is short. Shallow. Like every breath is a battle against instinct, against the call of swift justice. He trembles. Just enough for you to see it. Just enough to understand.

You feel it. You know it. This isn’t forgiveness. It’s not mercy. Not even principle. It’s you. Just you. A broken voice, a syllable on the verge of drowning, enough to make him lower his arm. Not from weakness. Not from morality. Out of respect. A silent promise. To honor you. And this silence, this suspended moment… could’ve been the end. But then it happens.

A sound. Faint, at first. Almost inaudible. A shadow scraping through the rubble. Then clearer. Sharper. Dissonant. Unreal.

A laugh.

Dry. Broken. A rasp twisted by pain and blood. A sound that shouldn’t be there. That doesn’t belong in this field of ruin. And yet, it echoes. It rises—ridiculous, chilling—like a specter refusing to die. Matthew. He laughs. His disfigured mouth half-opens, red, shattered teeth visible. He laughs through the pain. Through the fractures. Through the blood dripping from split lips. A filthy laugh. Cracked. Sick.

You see him lift his head. Just a little. Too little. But enough for his gaze to catch Stark’s. And what’s in his eyes… it isn’t fear. It’s not even hatred anymore. It’s something rotten. Hollow. A madness laced with clarity, a pure provocation, raw, thrown like a slap.

— "That’s it..." he spits, between ragged breaths, his voice like chewed paper. "The great Stark. The hero. The savior."

He coughs. Violently. A spasm bends him. A spray of blood gushes from his throat and spatters against his chin. But it doesn’t stop him. Quite the opposite. He smiles. A smile that’s anything but human. A hyena’s snarl. Twisted, swollen with violence. A pathetic grimace of hollow triumph.

— "You raise your arm. You could erase me. Literally. And you... you look down because of him."

He turns his head. Slowly. Like a broken puppet refusing to shut down. His gaze slides toward you. And there... it’s worse. Worse than the blows. Worse than the barrel pointed at you. He looks at you with that clammy intensity. Vicious. A viscous hatred. Filthy. A contempt so strong it almost becomes intimate.

— "Fuck... you’re just a parasite. Even now..." His voice breaks halfway in his throat. He swallows it back. Stitches it together with anger. "You need someone to carry you. Defend you. You can’t even stand up. And he listens to you. You."

You feel your stomach twist. Not from fear. From disgust.

— "I knew you were weak..." He laughs again. A hiccup barely human, a rasp that becomes almost a sob of madness. "But not weak enough to make Stark your fucking guard dog."

Silence returns. Not the kind of forgetting. But the kind that rumbles. The kind that doesn’t fall, but rises. Like a tide. Like a warning. In Stark’s eyes, something just reopened.

Stark doesn’t move. Not yet. But something shifts in his posture. Tiny, and yet terrifying. His fists close slowly, the metallic knuckles tightening until the joints of the armor groan. His shoulders tense, muscles — or their steel and servo-motor equivalents — lock into a silent tension. A pressure, muffled and incandescent, builds in his chest like a second energy core about to implode. But he doesn’t look at him. Not yet.

He looks at you.

You, and nothing else. His eyes don’t leave your face. They anchor into yours with such intensity that the world could collapse around him and he wouldn’t flinch. He studies you. Every millimeter. Every breath. As if searching for an answer. A green light. Permission. As if he doesn’t want to decide alone this time. He’s heard the words, the insults, he’s seen the sneer, felt the provocation. He could answer. He could crush him like an insect. But he waits. He’s waiting for you. It’s in your eyes that he searches for the end.

And the choice floats there, suspended between the two of you.

Between the still-glowing red lights in the joints of the armor, pulsing like a heart of war, and the bloodied, grotesque figure on the ground, still laughing despite the pain. Between cold justice... and pure vengeance. The universe holds in that suspended beat.

Then Stark moves. One step. The ground barely trembles under the impact. Another. Slower. Heavier. Every movement is measured, sculpted from steel and decision. But he doesn’t go to Matthew. No. He doesn’t approach him. He doesn’t even touch him.

He comes to you.

He turns slightly, stares at you again like he needs to count you, to register you among the living. And he advances. He walks toward you, his arms still heavy with tension, his jaw clenched hard enough to fracture a soul. He chooses you. Not the hate. Not vengeance. You.

And Matthew, still on the ground, lies there. Abandoned. Sunk in his own filth, mouth still open in a pathetic snicker. A laugh turned rasp, muffled, trembling, with no more substance than the rest of his broken body. Stark doesn’t even grant him a last glance. Not a word. Not a breath. He has erased him from his line of sight. Reduced him to what he’s become: a leftover. Waste. A mistake.

Because he saw your blood on the floor. Because he saw your chest rise with difficulty, as if each breath threatened to collapse under its own weight. Because your body slumped further against the wall, your head dropped a few centimeters too much, and for a moment — he thought. He thought you were going.

He crosses the space between you with no hesitation, each step grounded in brute determination, like he refuses to let distance exist between you. The alloy of his armor groans softly, echoing through the air with a deep murmur, almost organic, like the breath of an alert beast. The lights on his shoulders, hips, pulse faintly, oscillating between the red of alert and the clinical white of medical protocol. He’s not a superhero anymore. Not Iron Man. Just Tony, stripped of everything but the absolute urgency to reach you.

He kneels beside you, and this time the movement is faster, less contained, almost instinctive. This isn’t about control. It’s about survival. Your eyelids flutter, heavy, as if each blink demands an effort your body can’t afford. And yet you see him. You recognize him. Despite the pain tearing your insides apart, despite the fire burning through every exposed nerve, you’re still there. And he sees it.

— "Hey... hey, kid..." he breathes, reaching a hand toward your face, palm open. The glove stops a few millimeters from your skin, suspended in the air like a prayer he doesn’t dare complete. The metal doesn’t touch you. He won’t let it. He won’t risk adding one more pain. But his breath, behind the mask, you feel it. Light. Shattered. As if each word tears his throat. "Breathe. Can you hear me? Breathe... stay with me."

He’s bent over you, back curved with almost animal tension, his arms carefully sliding beneath your limp body. He lifts you, but nothing is abrupt. Nothing mechanical. He adjusts his grip, millimeter by millimeter, avoiding the worst wounds. One arm slides beneath your shoulder blades, the other under your legs, bringing you slowly against his armored chest. He holds you. Cradles you. Protects you. You feel the artificial heat of the armor through your blood-soaked clothes, a synthetic warmth — but comforting.

Your breathing is erratic. Broken. You gasp like each puff of air has to cross a minefield. Your chest rises, trembling, then drops too fast. A bead of sweat slides from your temple to his forearm. And he doesn’t move. He anchors you. He becomes that pillar, that column, the only fixed point in a collapsing world. His sensors — he almost ignores them. But they’re screaming. Your heart rate is irregular. Your temperature dropping fast. The numbers scream in his interface, red, unstable, merciless. But he doesn’t look at them anymore. He looks at you.

And as long as you’re here, he’ll get you out of this hole. No matter the cost. Not in a bag. Not under a sheet. Not in the clinical silence of a hospital hallway where your name is whispered in the past tense. Not as just another statistic. Not as forgotten collateral damage. No. Not this time. He’s here. He crossed hell for this. He found you. He heard you. And you are not a burden.

You’ve never been dead weight. You are not a problem to solve, nor a mistake to erase. You are a life. A voice. Fragile, broken — but alive. And that’s all that matters.

He holds you a bit tighter. Not to constrain. To hold. To remind you that you’re here. That you’re back. That even if everything in you screams it’s too late, that it’s over — he hasn’t decided that.

— "Told you I wasn’t gonna let you fall..." he whispers, his voice muffled in the helmet, but close enough to brush your ear. Not a heroic declaration. Not a punchline. Just words. Bare. Trembling. Worn by fear, charged with a promise that surpasses gestures.

And his voice trembles. Just a little. A crack. But you hear it. You feel it. A strangled note, drowned in the emotion he never allows.

He holds you tighter, slowly adjusts your back against his chest, until your head rests beneath his chin. He braces your shoulders, stabilizes your position like one would cradle a flower against a strong wind. His armor, designed to destroy, becomes a cocoon around you. A fortress of metal, bent on one mission: to keep you alive.

With a wrist flick, he activates the interface on his forearm. Lights shimmer in an electric shiver, dancing along the glove like a controlled wave. No words. No need. The armor understands. It executes. A trajectory opens. A signal fires.

You hear the rumble. First from afar. A low buzz, barely a tremor in the tainted air. Then stronger. More distinct. The sky answering. A vibration approaching. Not a threat. A response.

The armor. The sky. The way out.

And you, in his arms, feel it. Truly feel it. The artificial warmth of his chest, the tension in his arms, the calm returning to his breath. Not because the danger is gone. But because he’s got you. You falter. No panic. No terror spike. Just... the limit. The edge. Your body has nothing left to give. You left it all here. On this floor. In these walls. In that scream you launched without knowing if it would find an ear.

Stark adjusts his grip on you with almost supernatural precision. One arm under your knees, the other supporting your back against his chest, like he’s carried you a thousand times in nightmares without ever daring to touch you in reality. The gauntlets, built to withstand atmospheric pressure, cradle your shattered body like one would hold a secret too fragile, too precious. He calculates every angle, every support point, every buffer zone so nothing — not even a jolt — aggravates your wounds.

You’re there, against him, your body surrendered in the crook of his armor, forehead pressed to the warm curve of his shoulder. Your breath is uneven, raspy — but present. He feels it. He counts it. Through the metal, he senses every heartbeat, every tiny vibration betraying your pain. And he clings to it. Like a prayer. Like a mission.

Around you, the warehouse has become a tomb. The echo of blows has faded. Screams have given way to a cottony void, warped by crumbling walls and twisted beams. Even Matthew, somewhere in the shadows, makes no sound. No words. No snicker. Just silence. Heavy, dense, saturated with what you’ve both left here. With what you’ll never get back. Only Stark’s footsteps break the mute air, a slow, controlled march that vibrates through the ground with every step. The metal of his boots strikes fractured concrete in a deep cadence, almost ceremonial. He carries you toward the center of the room, where the extraction platform has opened in silence, like a mechanical mouth ready to swallow you and lift you from this hell. The locator beam already draws lines of a safe trajectory. Beacons light up one by one in a discreet ballet of bluish lights.

Stark doesn’t speak right away. He looks at you. Checks one last time the curve of your neck, the tension in your arms, the faint twitch of your eyelids. Then he whispers, barely loud enough for the world to hear:

— "We’re going home."

It’s not a victory speech. Not a boast. It’s a promise. To you. To himself. To what’s left alive between you.

He clenches his teeth. His gaze sweeps the shadows one last time, scanning the scene to make sure nothing is left behind. No enemy. No detail. No threat. Then, finally, his thrusters deploy with a low growl, a rumble from deep inside the suit, like the roar of a monster still held in check. The reactors heat up, shift from blue to red, and a powerful jet forms beneath his boots, casting an orange halo around you.

Dust rises. Bits of concrete vibrate. Metal fragments roll across the floor, pushed by magnetic force. The air shivers. The moment hangs suspended.

But Stark doesn’t take off yet.

He stands still, holding you in his arms with strength made more incredible by its restraint. He checks your weight. Your axis. The openness of your ribcage. Your temperature. He cross-references every signal, every clue, as if he can still delay the moment you leave this place. As if he must be certain you’ll survive every meter of the trip. And then he lifts off. In a single motion. Fluid. Perfectly vertical. A precise ascent, rapid, powerful. The ground recedes, walls blur. The warehouse becomes a gray smudge, swallowed by shadow. And you, in his arms, you rise. Away from the blood. Away from the concrete. Away from fear.

You leave the darkness.

taglist🥂 @9thmystery @defronix @lailac13 @the-ultimate-librarian @ihatepaperwork if you want to be part of it here

[geeks-universe]

Daryl Dixon x Reader

“Just talk to me. Please.”

Daryl’s voice was scratchy from disuse as he spoke, anxiously chewing on his thumbnail.

Beth was asleep in the room over, still reeling from the sudden upheaval as well as her father’s death. Losing Hershel had…

Well, he’d been the voice of wisdom for so long, someone who could be strong yet still have far more compassion than this world deserved. When you joined the group, way back before they ever left the quarry, you’d been rough around the edges. Ignoring your issues and approaching a problem head on was how you managed to stay alive before the world went to shit, and it was the most reliable method of keeping your head attached to your shoulders after it. It’d been Hershel who had coaxed you away from that, who had taught you the importance of feeling.

And now he was…

“I’m upset,” you admitted, wrapping your arms around your knees and pulling them to your chest. The handle of your knife pressed uncomfortably into your thigh, but you’d never risk disarming yourself. Especially not now.

Daryl dropped his hand, leaning forward. It was almost comical, the way he approached you like a rabid animal. The group liked your brutal nature, preferring the cold, calculated killer as opposed to the tired, emotional woman.

Not Daryl though.

He appreciated that you could take care of yourself. He didn’t trust anyone more than you when it came to fighting. However, the person beneath the hard exterior was soft, sweet. It was someone he had slowly learned about, who he’d tried his damndest to protect.

“And not just about-“ you stopped short, your eyes closing for a second.

Hershel.

He understood though. Of course he did. The many days spent alone together had formed a bond between the two of you. Of all the survivors, you’d only ever really opened yourself up to Daryl and Hershel.

The rest, you were trying to, but with them it came far more naturally.

Just Daryl now, you supposed.

“We could’ve saved more.” Your eyes opened, staring directly at Daryl, not bothering to hide anything in your expression. “I could’ve saved more.”

Devastation spread from the downturn of your lips to the furrow of your brow. Your chest heaved, the rise and fall jagged as the full force of guilt planted itself in your heart.

“Don’t-“

“I should’ve gone back.”

“We-“

“You shouldn’t have stopped me.”

“You-“

“I should’ve taken the shot.”

And there it was.

Whoever you were before all of this, Daryl didn’t know. Hell, he wasn’t even entirely sure you knew. What he did know, however, was that the combat skills you displayed, the mastery of weapons, was damn near unmatched. You had one hell of an aim, especially with snipers, and your sights had been lined up on the Governor.

You’d been all but ready to take the shot, and all it’d taken was one shake of Rick’s head to give you pause. Pause long enough for the Governor to kill Hershel.

And then you’d been unleashed- a demon of vengeance on unsuspecting amateurs. Even with all of their firepower, they didn’t stand a chance against you.

Until they did.

Until the gates had fallen and they’d watched as all of their work, all of their hope, had been destroyed with a single swipe of a sword.

Even as it all fell apart, as bodies were torn asunder and bullets rained from the sky, you’d refused to turn away. You tried to stay, to fight, to hold onto the last refuge any of you had- but it was futile.

So, Daryl pulled you away.

He’d grabbed your arm and started dragging, ignoring the pounding of your fists as you begged, pleaded, cried, screamed. You’d only calmed down after finding Beth, after vowing to protect her.

It was only the promise of searching for the others that kept you going.

“‘M not sorry.”

You startled, your wide, glistening eyes searching his for an answer. He shrugged, wiping a hand on his pants.

“You woulda been killed.”

You were on your feet in a flash, an accusatory finger pointed at Daryl, at where he now stood leaned against the wall of the broken down shack you’d sought refuge in.

“Maybe I wanted that. But that was my choice, not yours.”

Something akin to anger burned in his gaze, and he took a harsh step forward.

“To give up? To say to hell with us? To how we feel?”

Anger coiled low, tangling with grief and guilt like a dance you knew all too well. He wasn’t wrong. You wish he was, but he wasn’t.

“It was my choice,” you bit out, not giving an inch.

You didn’t need to, as he stepped even closer.

“Then choose us.”

Choose me.

He didn’t say it, didn’t need to. You could read it in the tension of his muscles, the frown on his lips. The rage sputtered out, replaced with a different warmth- one softer, gentler.

Slowly, ever slowly- like you were worried he might bolt if it were too sudden- you raised your hand to his cheek, to press your palm against his skin. The strain of his body relaxed, and with so much caution you were sure you imagined it, he leaned into your touch.

“You don’t get to quit.”

His words were firm, yet whispered. The air grew thick between you, and you found yourself leaning forward unbidden.

“Neither do you,” you replied, the ghost of his arm hovering above your waist, hesitant to pull you in.

And God, he was right, wasn’t he? You wouldn’t quit- not on Beth, not on your friends, not on the people you lost, and certainly not on him.

[rookflower]

"everyone in mapleshade's vengeance (minus the kits and whatever other exceptions whatever person making this point opts to include) is a bad person" is a take that does indeed work to establish that yes, this is a story piloted by every party with any agency acting out of cruelty and hurting others, and is also an attempt at gesturing towards nuance (or at least, thinking outside of black and white morality. it is in itself a kinda inherently un-nuanced take) within the idea of good vs evil in the story. however where i believe the issue with the phrase lies is in the assertion that the reason why these characters are enacting violence on each other is because of some unique inherent nastiness they were born with or that were predisposed into their character writing rather than addressing that their flaws (while still horrible) are specifically systemically driven.

before she kills ravenwing, mapleshade commits no crime that is worth the persecution she faces, and her mistakes are in fear of facing what she inevitably does. she does not obfuscate information about her childrens' parentage or take them into that river out of malice or uncaring, she does it because she lives in a society that will exile her children in a storm once it finds out that they are illegitimate, and see that she leaves. the birchface thing likely exacerbated her punishment, sure, but she still had no safety net. if it could happen under that circumstance it could happen under any, and that is the tragedy of it. (the bridge-she-couldve-crossed thing is clearly not something the authors remembered or considered so is kind of textually irrelevant)

likewise, frecklewish does not display some unique inherent xenophobia to herself that we don't also see across the timeline from dotc to present, that even characters the writers intend as sympathetic like crowfeather and gray wing will display. this doesn't whatsoever absolve her of culpability, cruelty is cruelty regardless of the source, but it isn't her that is the source of her own hatred, it is the clan system, and her own grief that is amplifying it. "frecklewish wasn't sent to the dark forest for the river thing, it was because she yelled at the kids" is a funny take because yeah to us the readers her violent outburst is clearly her "wrong", but in-universe i really don't think starclan would care LMAO.

now, as with a lot of things in warrior cats that are deeper than the text on page i''m not sure the erins are necessarily consciously Trying to write the clan system as an inherently cruel, violent, and bigoted system- they might very well be throwing in antagonistic characters with the intent that their prejudices and toxic patriotism just form naturally and randomly like mutuations- but as i've said before i do find an interesting parallel between the series' necessity to maintain its status quo and flow of conflict for sake of marketability and series continuation, and the fact that the world in-universe has a code with xenophobia baked into its laws and consistently writes conflicts about the cruelty of the warrior code without ever being able to take steps to major to address and remedy the flaws that lead to this conflict lest it Paint The Clans As The Bad Guys or force them to step too far away from their tried and true formula, so the cycle continues. i think that's the tragedy of mapleshade's vengeance to me- it's a story that occurs because of some pointless interclan war about rocks or whatever else and everything that occurs to mapleshade is done to her by cogs and/or perpatrators of this machine that values compliance and order and clan isolationism. she's a minorly selfish and oblivious person, she isn't born evil. the people that hurt her aren't conniving supervillains, they're just people with the capacity for cruelty given the motivation and the chance. and that's worse, in a way, because they come out on the right side of history and like a dozen generations later squirrelflight and leafpool are going to get put on a trial to go to hell for the same crime that got her exiled, because the system is fucked and the system hasn't changed.

[dreamingofaizawa]

Violent Tendencies - Purple

Sherif! John Price x AFAB! Fem! Reader

~Small Town AU~

***This piece of fiction is rated M for Mature and contains dark content. If you're not 18 or older, BE GONE ty<3***

Warnings: Stalking, death, murder, guns, general violence, descriptive threats of physical harm, penetrative sex (p in v), unprotected sex (practice safe sex ppl use condoms), body worship(a little?), overstimulation, reader questioning her morals

Word Count: 6.6k

Author's Note: Idk I'm just gonna let this one speak for itself. It's dark, it's hot, I'm having a great time writing all these events for something I never intended to be long but HERE WE ARE.

Series Masterlist

Part One Here - Part Nine Here

Enjoy~

***

Having a true friend for the first time in a long time, you’ve become protective. Celeste has made a home in your life where nobody else really cared enough to. Over the course of the last year or so, you’ve spilled a great deal of your secrets and feelings to her, laying everything out on the table for her to see. She knows about nearly every single one of your fights, the ones you can remember anyways, and your time in juvie. John was with you the night you told her, the both of you telling your violent little tale of love and blood.

“That’s so fucking romantic in the craziest way. Makes me nauseous, the two of you waiting so damn long just to have each other again.” It was lighthearted, and we all laughed as she pretended to gag. She knows about the insomnia, about the therapy, about the itch you still get every once in a while. She knows you better than anyone besides John. 

You know about her, too. She’s sweet, kind, and insanely funny. Her humor is drier than the Mojave, just like Simon’s, and you think maybe the two could easily get along. She’s told you how her bar was given to her when the previous owner grew old and tired, retirement calling all too soon. She lives above the bar, on the second floor of the standalone building, having moved in when the previous owner disappeared off to some tropical getaway forever more. You know she’s had many a summer fling, a trail of hearts behind her when a red flag pops up or the man just isn’t worth fighting for. She’s headstrong, unbending to anyone or anything, but gentle. 

She lacks completely the explosive violence you’ve loved and lived on.

Right now there’s a darkness seeping into your bloodstream, tinting your blood burgundy. It’s heavy, lead in your veins with a resolve you’ve only ever had for loving John. Celeste has knocked herself out, snivelling in her sleep beside you in the bed she’d taken over for the last week and a half. It’s only a matter of time before they come back again. You know it somewhere in your bones, deep in the marrow, that these two won’t be far behind you at every turn. You’ve seen the documentaries, the true crime shows, you feel like this is textbook serial abductor behavior. You’re sure they’ll be coming after you and John as well. They’re more dangerous than Graves was, though. He was angry, vengeful, and despite it all you can say that you understand him at the base level. You’ve felt anger your whole life, you’ve felt the pull of vengeance a fair few times as well.

This guy? This one’s mental. Sick in the head with delusion and obsession.

You won’t hunt them. You’re not sure there’s a way to do that, the car having no license plate and beaten enough the make and model are ambiguous. But you won’t hunt them, regardless. No, you’re going to wait until they find their way back here. You’ll wait until they fall right into your little web, wrap them up in silk and drain them of their blood. John doesn’t have to know. Celeste doesn’t have to know. When they break into your home, it’ll be you standing your ground, defending your home and the people in it. 

When John gets home from the station, he can tell something’s off. You know he can. He’s holding you like you’re made of glass, anything could put a little too much pressure on a thin spot and you’ll shatter.

“Tempest? Are you alright?” His voice is soft. Softer than the early mornings, gentler than the late nights. He’s calm. Like the surface of a lake on a clear summer night, reflecting the cool moonlight flawlessly. Everything about him is blue, cool and collected. Even his rage is cold, chills down to the bone when he stares right through someone with electricity in his irises. Where he’s blue, you’re red. Hot and fiery, boiling the ground at your feet in your warpath. 

Maybe he should know. Maybe he’ll be the voice of reason you need to keep yourself from spiraling into a lava pit of murderous rage. It doesn’t feel the same, sharp and searing instead of a rolling boil, the anger taking an unusually volatile turn. 

“Let’s go upstairs. We need to talk.” You leave Celeste then, making sure to close the door to your room so she can’t hear what you’re about to speak out loud if she wakes up.

“What is it? You can tell me.” You have to breathe deep to keep the anger from spiking.

“They’re going to come after her again.” He nods.

“Kyle and I had the same thought.” Good. 

“They’re going to come after us by proxy.” He nods again, his gaze sharpening, glacial blue glowing in the low light of the coming morning.

“We figured that out, too.” Good. There’s a long silence as he waits for you to speak again. You aren’t sure you can say it out loud, no matter how sure you are that you’ll go through with it when it comes down to protecting this house. You were ready to kill Graves. You’re ready to kill these bumbling fools. 

It’s a one-way trip to hell, slipping down the tracks on a train bound for brimstone.

“If they show up here, they’re digging their own graves.” Your hands tremble, grappling at his jacket as you whisper the confession into his chest, leaning close like he’ll run from you. You hope he won’t, but he’s the sheriff. The law is his life, whether he likes it or not. 

“You mean that?” Your knuckles turn white with how tight you’re holding onto him, fear making you tremble. He needs to know. You just pray that this doesn’t change the way he sees you.

“I do. They’re digging their own graves and lying in them to rot.” His lips press into your temple, voice rough and deep as he whispers into your skin.

“Good.” Relief washes over you in a tidal wave, shuddering breath rattling your chest. He’s on that damned train with you, ticket burning alongside yours. Strong fingers grip your jaw, tilting your head to meet his steel blue stare. “Whatever happens, we take care of it. Yeah?” You nod into his chest. You’ll take care of it together. He kisses you, sweet and soft the same way he’s holding you. There’s nothing else that matters now, with him beside you like this. Everything just feels so right, even when it felt all wrong just moments ago. Something about him stabilizes you, steadies you like a mountain in a hurricane, unbending and solid, immovable where he stands, strong and sturdy and yours. The sharp, blinding wrath finds a home somewhere in your heart, bleeding into something heavy and dangerous. It reminds you that you’re no stranger to blood on your hands, and it’s all the same no matter the source.

Tension spikes in the air, something foreign and hot. It’s a level of trust so deep that you’re swallowed up by the black, inky depths. It makes your chest ache as you kiss him, clawing at his shoulders in a desperate attempt to get him closer, your bleeding heart waiting for him to take it and keep it forever.

Strong arms hold you tight, cold hands slipping beneath your shirt to feel your heated skin. He’s slow with his exploration, dragging his calluses across your flesh, memorizing every inch while he steals the breath from your lungs. He’s peeling your clothes off you agonizingly slow, taking his time for once, following his hands with his lips when he drags your jeans down your legs. You can feel his breath over the pouch of your stomach, whine when he presses thick, open-mouthed kisses up your body, over your breasts as he tugs your bra off, sucking bruises into your neck while his hands squeeze you wherever they can reach. Molten lust pools in your stomach, creeps over your skin like ivy. Every hair on your body stands on end, prickling the base of your skull when a thick finger prods at your cunt through your panties. He groans as the damp fabric gives, and you whine low in your throat when he pulls away.

“Fuck, already so wet for me, baby. My Tempest.” You’re pushed back gently, laid down on the mattress while he climbs over you, shedding his own layers while kissing down your skin, imprinting the shape of his mouth into your muscle memory. Your body will never forget the way he feels, never forget every scorching kiss. He drags your panties off, leaving marks on your thighs as you squirm beneath him. You’re on fire, lust like never before engulfing you. He’s never been so thorough, devouring you whole with his hands and lips and eyes. 

“John, please.” He chuckles at your whine, needy and wanton, all for him. Nestling his hips between yours never felt so right. He’s painfully hard, resting over the mound of your pussy and twitching the longer he looks at you. And oh the way he looks at you, like you’re a celestial being sent to save his soul from the fiery pits of hell. Like he wants to drag you down there with him. You reach up to him, holding his face in your palms and he kisses each fingertip gently, before lacing them together on either side of your head. You’re pinned to the mattress, boiling in lust and desire, while he lines himself up and slowly pushes into you. 

Tears gather in your lashes at the euphoria. He fills you so well, stretches you to the shape of his cock. You’re having a hard time breathing, hiccuping when he presses all the way up against your cervix. You don’t want him to move. You’re dying for him to move. You don’t know which you want more, wires crossing in your head as he pants into your mouth, tongue licking at the tears that fall.

“You cryin’ for me?” Frantically, you nod, lock your legs around his back to hold him close. You can feel every twitch, feel when his dick kicks inside you, and you’re struggling to keep yourself together as you stare into the darkness of his eyes, pupils swallowing up the blue. 

“I’d do anything for you. I love you.” You cry out when his hips jerk forward, heat spreading in your belly as he trembles above you, filling you right up with his cum.

“Fuck, you can’t say shit like that baby.” He’s out of breath, but he’s still hard inside you, and you try your best to keep still to keep from overstimulating him. But you’re burning, flames engulfing your body as you lie beneath him and all his love, the depths of it ready to eat you alive.

“It’s true.” He swallows the words, licking into your mouth and rocking his hips forward. Goosebumps erupt across your skin, your breath stalls in your lungs. Every slow thrust has pressure building behind your ribs and your limbs going weak, and your chest trembles with the sob you let out.

“Oh I know, baby, I know. Come on, Tempest, cum for me.” Something snaps in your body, a coil pulled taut in an instant, and white blanks your vision while your chest arches into his. You don’t breathe, not until he nips at your lip and starts fucking you in earnest, rutting deep into your cunt without pulling out and spilling into you all over again. The fire beneath your skin finally begins to calm, smoldering in the aftershocks. He collapses on top of you, still gripping your hands tight in his as you both pant into the humid sex-filled air. 

There’s an understanding that settles between you as you come down, soaking in the afterglow, and your mind is running wild with all of the thoughts criss-crossing through it. You only refocus when his lips find your pulse, hands holding your head when he pulls back to look down at you. Your skin cools beneath his body, taming the fire in a way only he can.

“Talk to me, Tempest.” 

“I’m scared.” His brows pull together, a pout pulling at his lips.

“Of what? Not of these creeps, you’ve dealt with worse.” You trace the muscles in his shoulder with your fingers, follow the raised scars and lines of ink in his skin while you think.

“No, I’m not scared of them. I’m scared of me. Of what I may be capable of, when the time comes.” It’s true. There’s a piece of you that’s terrified of what you’ll be releasing should you manage to kill these men. Murder weighs heavy on the soul, and some souls take that weight like nothing, murder over and over and over simply because they can, and feel joy. Some souls crumble with madness at the thought of having killed someone. You don’t want to be either, but you’d rather be that latter than the former.

“Are you afraid of me, then?” Your eyes snap up to his in an instant, that icy blue staring straight into your soul. The implication is there, his heart cleaved from his chest and bleeding in your palms. You know it’s true. It’s there in his eyes, in the cold, hardened gaze of a man who’s watched life flee a body and probably taken it, too. Love. Devotion. Happiness. Adoration. Trust. You feel a great many things, looking up at this man. 

Fear is not one of them.

“No.” His kiss is cold, just like the rest of him, while his cock hardens inside you. At your gasp he deepens, tongue flicking over your teeth and tangling with your own while he rocks himself slowly. 

“No?” A sharp thrust has you hiccuping, sensitive still, tears gathering in your lashes as you wrap your arms around his neck.

“No.” Big arms find your waist, tugging your body up so you’re seated on his hips while he kneels beneath you, pressing deep and holding you close. He shushes you when you sob, feeling your hearts beating together and your lungs breathing the same air. He’s yours, always has been yours, even now that you know the darkest parts of him. Especially now. 

“Tell me you’re scared of me, Tempest.” You whine into his shoulder, sink your teeth into his flesh when he ruts up into you.

“I’m not.” His growl rumbles through you, a big hand threading into your hair to yank you back and look him in the eyes. They’re wild, looking up at you while he snaps his hips against yours, sending your eyes rolling back in your skull while he sucks bruises up the column of your throat. 

“Tell me you’re afraid of me!” It’s grit out into your pulse, the anger in it fake and purposeful, and the heavy lust comes through too fully for it to come across as anything truly malicious. 

“I’m not!” You could never fear him. He cums like that again, filling you right up, but even through the oversensitivity he’s feeling he keeps fucking you like a madman.

“That’s fuckin’ right. Not afraid of anything. My fuckin’ girl, my Tempest. Love of my fuckin’ life you are.” His hand finds its way between your bodies, a rough finger finding your clit to rub circles into it. It has you shaking in his grasp, legs clamping down around his thighs so tight you might just bruise. 

“Fuck.” He rumbles against your lips when he tugs you to kiss him, but you’re all fucked out, jaw slack while he works your body and builds a coil in the pit of your stomach.

“My Tempest. I love you, violent little thing. Love you with all that blood and rage and fire in your heart. Cum for me again.” That’s all it takes, and you don’t know where you go but you’re gone. White floods your vision, ears ringing and every muscle in your body is strung tight. There’s no telling where you end and he starts, hot and cold bleeding into a blooming warmth. 

Red and blue exploding in a cloud of indigo.

When you come to, you’re both on your sides, lying face to face. His arm is looped over your waist, the other beneath your head to pillow you on his bicep. You’re sticky between your legs, but that’s a problem you can take care of when you can feel your toes again. 

“Beautiful woman. Don’t be scared of yourself if you aren’t even scared of me, baby.” Your heart may just burst in your chest. There’s so much love you don’t know what to do with it all. It’s leaking from your tear ducts, streaming hot down to his arm. The hand on your hip comes up to brush the tears away, his eyes tracking the drops as they fall. “Even when you’re crying you’re the prettiest creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Oh you fucking sap.” His chuckle is low and he shuffles closer, pressing a kiss to your lips.

“Can’t help it. Didn’t get to tell you the day we met, even though I was thinkin’ it. Won’t let that happen again.” 

“I love you, John Price. I love you so much it hurts.”

“I’d kill to have you say that to me every day.” You know he means it. 

You sleep like the dead together. Not a damn thing could wake you while you were tangled beneath the sheets. It’s how you spend a lot of your shared sleep now. Inseparable.

Celeste’s problem vanishes like dust in the wind for two whole weeks. Not a single trace of him or his accomplice remains, the getaway car gone like it never existed. His picture is plastered on every pole and board in town, everyone on the lookout for the man that’s bothering their barkeep. The news spread pretty fast that the guy was after Celeste, since the entirety of the bar watched from inside the window when you’d dragged the guy out by his hair and beat on him. 

You don’t let her go home, even when that false sense of security settles in. Her arguments get shut down quickly when you remind her that Phillip returned after six months for his revenge. This guy doesn’t seem like the patient type.

You’re ready, though. 

You’ve made your peace with yourself, chipped away at that fear you had. John helped. All of your doors had been reinforced properly within a month of Graves being sentenced, as well as your windows. You’ve got a simple security system, nothing insanely fancy, but enough that if there’s any forced entry you’ll know. You make sure the bats and mallets you’ve had stashed around are accessible to you and the other two in your home.

You have John take you to the range with your revolver.

Your aim’s improved in the last week or so, enough that you’d more likely hit an intruder than the wall, but you’re not going to use it at anything further than point blank range. If you shoot, you’re shooting to kill. No chance to miss, no chance for them to walk away. You’d confessed that to John, and he’d looked at you like you hung the moon in the sky. He loves you with all your pitch. Like you do him.

You and Celeste are in the diner, talking about her shift and the crap she’d had to deal with, when the bell chimes and two figures slink in through the door. You recognize one instantly, and so does Celeste, and you’ve already got the shotgun loaded and cocked when she makes it over the counter and calls John at home. She’s whispering her words into the phone while the two advance.

“You fuckers stop right there or you die.” The stalker huffs, but they freeze. His voice is unmistakable from the tinny voicemails.

“Lessy, it’s time to come home sweetheart.”

“Fuck you, crazy asshole! I’d rather fucking die than go anywhere with you.” She’s still on the phone, and you can already hear John’s sirens coming down the road. They hear it, too. When they dart, you shoot, but you hit the wall beside them when they make it out the front door. You’re hot on their heels, the single shot in the gun spent so you toss it to the ground.

They’re fast. Faster than you, by a long shot, and you can’t make it to your car before they’re off again. John is just turning the corner, missing them by a fraction as they vanish out of sight. Rage boils over in your veins, white-hot, and all you can do is scream into the frigid night air at the sheer frustration of it all. They got away. Again. Celeste is on you, and when he parks so is John. When he cools you off, you need to breathe and reassess. This cannot be allowed to happen again. 

About two days go by before the final nail in the coffin is hammered home. A voicemail sent for the first time in two weeks, and it has you seeing red. The normal threats are there, the angry obsession grating your ears as you sit in the station listening alongside the deputies, the sheriff, and Celeste. But at the end there’s a darker tone, a crueler one that completely lacks the obsession you’re used to hearing from the creep.

“Those two can’t keep you from me, Lessy. That girl is going to end up hurt, and I’ll take care of the Sheriff next.” Celeste looks at you terrified, but you know all she’s seeing is rage.

The next time they come back, they die.

A plan is made. They need to be backed into a corner, trapped without an escape route. No more being cornered, it’s their turn. A single shotgun isn’t enough for the both of them, so confrontations can’t happen at the diner anymore. The only way to guarantee that is to keep Celeste out of there. She cashes out some of the insane stash of vacation time she’s got stored up, ready to stay in the house as bait. You told her how much you hate to do it, but even she is in on this plan, ready to be rid of these creeps for good.

She’s never home alone. But you’re sure to make it look like she is. She’d checked her own place’s cameras, and sure enough they'd already looked for her there. Now they’ll probably be coming to your home. They’d obviously been watching her, since they knew where to find her in the diner. They know what your car looks like, and you make sure to leave it out in the driveway. John’s truck stays tucked into the garage, since the sheriff’s vehicle would probably keep them from trying anything. Celeste doesn’t question anything when you ask her to trust you. If anyone else knew, the three of you might be in for premeditated murder. 

But that doesn’t matter. Not when your resolve is a steel beam, load-bearing and shining fresh off the factory belt. You know there’s no coming back from this once it’s done. Hell, there’s no coming back from it now, having set your mind on something between revenge and defense, blood the only thing left to spill. You’re not nervous anymore while you wait for them to make the only move you’ve left open, take the one route they have left. Celeste has been either with you out in public or in your house, and if they’re watching her then they know she isn’t going back to work. There’s one place left for them to look: in your lion’s den.

They come in the night, just as you’re settling in for bed Saturday night. Your lids droop heavy, mind soothed by the steady thump in John’s chest and his hands scratching gently at your skin. You wake instantly at the sound of your phone chiming with the alert, your security system detecting a forced entry. This is it. The revolver and John’s handgun are out of the safe in less than thirty seconds. You can hear them creaking through the house, louder than a stampede with their careless footfalls. This was poorly planned on their part, but that’s exactly what you wanted. They aren’t going to get a chance to improve their strategy. 

You and John know where the boards are solid, slinking down the steps with stealth and speed and razor sharp focus. They don’t get away tonight. Your eyes are adjusted to the dark, feet taking you effortlessly through the layout of this house having lived in it for nearly 30 years. A shadow moves as you’re rounding the corner, and there’s that lanky bastard reaching for Celeste’s door. You reach him as he jiggles it, the lock clicked into place every night since the diner. 

He freezes when you put the barrel to the back of his skull. He jumps when you pull the hammer back.

“You’re going to die tonight.” John had disappeared from your side when you sped off for this guy, and all the creaking has stopped. Nobody’s moving, no shots, no sounds of pain. He’s got the other one in the same position you do. You call through the silence of the house, soft, but John will hear you.

“I’ve got one.” He chuckles, dark and low, sending your blood swirling in your veins, hot and heavy. That damn laugh. Don’t get horny now, damnit.

“I’ve got the other.” There’s a hard thud, then a louder thump of a body collapsing to the ground, and the creep flinches beneath your barrel. John appears, slips right past you and hits the back of his head with the grip of his handgun. He knocks clean out and crumples to the floor, but they’re not dead yet. 

“I’ll tie ‘em up. Then we meet the others.” The revolver is secured in the safe once again while you get everything ready. Part of you is tempted to go wake Celeste, let her know you’re leaving. But she doesn’t need to see the two lumps being stuffed into the trunk of your car. You text her, just in case she gets up while you’re out, then shut your phone off and leave it on the dining table beside John’s. 

She doesn’t need to see the next parts, doesn’t need to know what’s about to happen. So you let her sleep, blissfully unaware for the time being.

John holds your gun while you make the drive to the diner’s parking lot. He wanted you to leave it, didn’t want you to have to do this. It’s not that you want to. But you need to. Part of you thinks that if you aren’t the one to pull the trigger, they’ll rise out of their graves like zombies and come take Celeste anyway, then kill John and you just for getting in their way. It’s an itch you can’t ignore.

An old black Mustang and a navy blue Corvette wait for you there, and when you pull in, your boss steps out of the Corvette. Kate comes to you first, her hand squeezing your shoulder. You can see Kyle in the passenger of her car, Simon driving the Mustang with Johnny.

“Tell me you got ‘em.”

“Wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.” 

“Good. We’ve got everything, I’ll lead and Simon will be behind you.” Then you’re back in your vehicles, driving out of town into the night. It’s a long drive. About an hour out of town, and then a half hour into the wilderness. You’re in the middle of nowhere, not a soul in sight, nowhere to run or hide and nobody to hear a scream or a gunshot.

The task of unloading the cargo is left to the two biggest of the bunch, Simon and John dumping the two wriggling, grumbling lumps on the ground. They’d obviously woken up at some point on the ride, unable to do anything while bound and wrapped in canvas. You’ve all got a barrel trained on them when John cuts them loose, and when their first instinct is to bolt, a warning shot has them frozen solid. The two of them look just about ready to shit themselves. Good. Two shovels are tossed at their feet. Silence. You’re getting impatient, and John makes his way to you, pressing his chest to your back and whispering into your ear. 

“Go on, Tempest.” A chill crawls up your spine. They’re yours. With the other four staring down their barrels, you drop yours to your side. 

“I told you you’d die tonight. I’m no liar. Now dig.” The accomplice falls to his knees, trembling and starting to weep. Whatever he’s trying to say is only coming out in blubbering nonsense. Celeste’s creeper actually finds his voice.

“W-w-we’ll leave her alone! I’ll drop it! I swear!” You laugh, humorless and vindictive.

“Oh you’ll leave her alone alright. You’ve got a choice, though. Wanna hear your options?” He nods, hope glistening in his crazed eyes. You’re having too much fun, you think. But right now you can’t find it in yourself to care.

“You either dig right now, or you dig with a black eye and a broken nose.” Hope dashed, he shakes in his shoes. His sniveling counterpart is a right mess, babbling about being dragged into this bullshit. You couldn’t care less what his reasoning is. But if time is what they need to come to terms with their deaths, time is what you’ll give them. You’ve got all the time in the world. 

It’s a long, slow process once they both pick up the shovels. Hours go by in a haze, watching them sweat and dig and cry. Not once does your heart ache for them. You do try, though. A slice of your heart wants to hurt at the prospect of separating a soul from a body. You try so hard to find empathy in your own cold, dead soul. Try to see it from their perspective, try to find a way to keep them alive despite everything. Every time you try to find an ounce of sympathy, all you can see is them coming after Celeste. The voicemails, the threats of capture, the things that kind of life entails. Death at the very best. You try not to dwell on the fact that everything else would be a worse fate for her. They followed her to her home, her bar, the diner, even breaking into your home when they couldn’t find who they were looking for. 

All just to end up here.

“That’s enough.” John barks. It’s the first words anyone’s spoken in hours. You stand, having sat down in the dirt to watch. The others stayed standing, firearms at their hips, but the two haven’t been stupid enough to try anything. It’s a shame, really. You’re itching. You pop your joints, rolling the stiffness from your body, and eye the two as they stare up at you from their respective ditches.

“Who wants to go first?” The creep tries begging again, blubbered promises to vanish and never come back. Too little, too late. 

“Shut the fuck up. You think I give a damn about your empty, bullshit promises? You think I believe you when you say you regret it? It’s too fucking late for regret. You’re here because you’re fucked in the head, hunting a woman who lives alone with some twisted delusion you could keep her like some doll.” You stalk over to him, kneeling in the dirt to grab his collar and yank him close to you. He’s going to see the rage in your eyes, feel it through your knuckles at his chest, whether he likes it or not. It’s what they had planned after all, wasn’t it?

“Well guess what, you’re my doll now. And I’ve decided I’m done playing with you. So you’re going to die here, forgotten and tossed aside like every other plaything a child grows out of because that’s all your useless life is worth.” You shove him, send his stumbling onto his ass in the grave he’d dug for himself. They’re lucky, really. If you weren’t tired right now you’d have them fight for their lives. The other one is watching you as you stand. You can feel his eyes on you.

Something’s changed about him. 

When you actually look to meet his gaze, an eerie spike of fear shoots up your spine. He’s staring at you like a damn hyena over a carcass. His chest is heaving, eyes wide and trained on you, hands trembling at his sides. They’re both the same kind of sick. 

“You’re so pretty when you threaten people.” It’s sickly sweet, carnal with a twisted desire. From behind you, John growls out a curse. You can hear him pull out his gun, leveling it at the guy.

“Eyes off my woman.” He doesn’t listen, focused on you like you’re the only thing around. Like a kid eyeing a piece of candy. Looks like you know who’s dying first. He nearly drools when he comes to the edge of his pit, resting his arms over the ground at your feet. You cringe with nausea, stepping back when he reaches to grab you.

“No, I think I’ll keep her.” A shot rings out into the night sky, and the guy’s head snaps back. His body lands with a thud in his grave, blood seeping from the hole in his head. The nausea fades, replaced with a steady calm. John wraps an arm around you.

“You okay Tempest?” You nod, breathe in his scent, close your eyes and lean into him.

“I am now.” The fear you expected once it was done never comes. One of them is dead, body still warm, rigor mortis still hours away. But you’re calm. The rage is concentrated, distilled as you stare down at the dead man. His partner in crime is crying, curled in a ball at the bottom of his grave. Part of you feels like being cruel, wants to have him bury his friend with whatever dignity and life he has left. Instead you go to the edge, crouch down to speak to him.

“I want you to know that it won’t hurt. You won’t feel a damn thing.” He looks up at you like you’re some kind of gracious stranger who’s fed him in a famine.

“It won’t?” You shake your head.

“It won’t. You’ll be dead before you can process any kind of pain.” He lets out a little sob at that, at the reminder of what exactly is about to happen to him. “What’s your name?” He blinks, confused.

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“I don’t. I didn’t care when your buddy dropped dead. I won’t care when you do either. It’s purely morbid curiosity on my part, knowing the name of the man I’m going to kill.” You stretch your hand out to him for a shake, giving him your first name. When he doesn’t reach for it, you wiggle it like a little lure. It takes a minute, but he eventually stands.

“Will.” You expect him to yank you into the pit with him, but he just drops his arm when you let him go. His will to live has faded completely. A small part of you is thrilled about it.

“Will. You threatened my best friend. You threatened the man I love. You’re a fucking creep, the scum of the earth really. The world is about to be a much better place without you wasting oxygen. And between you and me, I desperately wish I had the energy to beat you to death with my own two hands to make you feel every ounce of pain and fear you’d put Celeste through. I don’t think you deserve a painless death. But that’s what you’re getting.” You stand when that fight comes back, his eyes hardening as he screams curses at you. Oh yeah, that’s what you wanted to see. He’s too deep to scramble out of the hole, body weak from digging as long as he has. You don’t bother saying anything else, just raise the revolver and shoot.

It’s heavier when you’ve shot at a living thing. Watching the light drain from his eyes has you eerily calm. But you’re unsatisfied, just a little bit. Your explosive nature is making a comeback, the desire to pummel and punch and break making you itch beneath your skin. John’s big hands find your shoulders, and the itch scatters into the darkness. 

“Let’s go home, Tempest. The others will take care of the rest.” 

The ride home is quiet. You’d said you can stay and help, but John wasn’t having any of it. You didn’t put up much of a fight. John’s driving, your two firearms unloaded in the backseat. Exhaustion pulls at your mind. You expected to be horrified at the death you’d left behind. You expected to feel haunted, expected to see their dead eyes ingrained into your memory. The horror doesn’t come, even when you make it home. In fact, you don’t feel much beyond pure relief. Like a plague has been lifted, cured from illness and feeling the strength return back to your body.

Celeste is awake when you get back, the sky beginning to lighten as you pull into the driveway. She’s in the doorway while you and John step from the car, worry etched deep into her face. Something in her expression tells you she knows what you’ve done. That hurts a little more, fear crawling up your throat at the thought that she’s about to run and never speak to you again. But you’ll be okay, if it means she’s safe. When you get closer, she yanks you into a bruising hug.

“Don’t you ever disappear like that. You left your phones, I had no idea where you were or if you were okay or what happened-” You grip her hard, shaking her a little by the shoulders to get her to look at you.

“We’re okay. Let’s get inside, it’s freezing out here.” She nods, and the three of you make your way to the dining room after you and John deposit the guns in the safe. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to use them again for a good long while. Celeste has coffee ready by the time you make it back, hand in hand with John. There’s a silence that settles over the room.

“Celeste.” You call her softly, scared of spooking her.

“I’m gonna freaking kill you if you ever ditch me like that again, damnit.” You laugh at the notion. At least she’s not afraid of you.

“I’m sorry. We had something to take care of. But it’s okay now, we’re safe.” You reach for her hand, squeezing it while you look her dead in the eyes. “You’re safe.” She swallows around the lump in her throat. Her voice is shaky.

“Are you sure? Can you promise me that they’re…gone?” If you could kill them all over again, you would. If you could raise them from the dead just to pummel them right back into their graves, you’d do it in a fucking heartbeat. The fear she’s been filled with still lingers even after they’ve long departed the world of the living.

“I can guarantee it. They’re serving a life sentence, far far away from here. They’ll never bother you again.” Her chest stutters as tears gather in her lashes.

“Don’t lie to me.” She’s begging. Her hands tremble in yours while you squeeze them tight.

“I may be a killer, but I’m no liar.”

[sarkofagos]

Re: Dankovsky not having to deal with Eva's death or his laboratory burning down in the Haruspex route, why do you think that is?

The final act of the Haruspex Route hinges on the tension surrounding the conflict between Artemy's two (sustainable*) choices: Dankovsky's Utopianism (for Artemy, this means sacrificing the Settlement, and by extent Aglaya [or vice‑versa], for the sake of preserving the Polyhedron/Simon as the Udurgh) OR Aglaya(/Capella)'s desire to preserve the Settlement (for Artemy, this means the Udurgh is interpreted as being the Earth/Town and the Polyhedron as the sacrifice [on an interpersonal level I would also argue this includes "sacrificing" Dankovsky as well, that guy is definitely killing himself post Haruspex‑Termite Ending + even if he doesn't I think their friendship is fr over]). Interpretations of the Udurgh aside, there is a lot of emotion involved in the Haruspex’s options; a close friend (whom he considers to be the other half of the same whole — their words not mine) versus a romantic interest he wishes to spare of condemn and, by extension, death.

Dankovsky suffers three major losses in his own (& the Changeling) Route, which escalate in terms of personal importance: Eva, his lab and, finally, his own sense of humanity. These events cause him to become detached and alienated from his own existence (From Day 9, in his quest log: “I think I am going insane as well” + “I’m starting to think that I’ve been in a madhouse all this time” from dialogue with Georgiy Kain for the same quest) and, ultimately, harbor a deep sense of impending doom. By the end of his own route he is suffocated with grief, guilt, anger, confusion, hatred etc etc you get the idea (see literally any piece of dialogue/quest log from Day 9 onwards). And, for him, choosing the Utopian ending comes from a place of spite and hatred for Aglaya, the Powers That Be and the Town itself (As per the dialogue the Changeling has with the Makers, he is “A tempted destroyer [...] too strongly tempted by vengeance and destruction for his not going through with it to be anything less than... miracle”, his final entry in his quest log, should he pick the Utopian ending: “As for the Powers That Be, they are going to regret their hypocrisy.” and from his final dialogue with Aglaya in the Cathedral “Watch me sign your death sentence.”), as well as wanting to free Eva from the physical confines of the Cathedral, after she tells him she is trapped there and will never be able to see the world.

Dankovsky being in this mental stasis cannot work in the context of the Haruspex Route; for one, despite the “Artemy is full of love” character trait being by and large a product of Pathologic 2, it’s pretty evident in Pathologic Classic as well that, contrarily to Dankovsky, Artemy’s choices do come from a place of devotion, respect and duty to his father first and the Town second (From Day 7 in dialogue with Aglaya: “My choices are driven by familial obligations and love”, from the final conversation in the Cathedral in the Changeling Route “My principal goal is not to destroy the Polyhedron but to heal the town.” and, famously, from the Changeling’s dialogue with the Executor on Day 12: “Two diverging pairs of decisions. Both pre-determined, but the dilemma is a harsh one indeed. That made the freedom all the more salient. And then, you see, there were also feelings involved... Love.”)

Dankovsky’s choice already asks a lot of the Haruspex emotionally and, for it to be an appealing alternative, it cannot come from a place of hatred and bitterness, nor can it come from the mouth of a person who is standing against him. And the only way for Dankovsky to avoid being blinded by said hatred and bitterness is by Eva avoiding death, Thanatica avoiding burning and himself avoiding finding out about his true nature. So, as he is spared of having to deal with these events and the emotional aftermath in the Haruspex route, he is able to remain relatively sane and maintain a close allyship with Artemy until the end. As per the Day 10 main quest, his suggestion of the Utopian ending does take Artemy’s Sacrifice–Udurgh dipole into consideration and the Utopian ending is no longer emotionally charged, but a relatively well-informed alternative interpretation of an all-too-vague concept. Consequently, Artemy finds himself in a situation where two people he cares about equally are proposing equally valid and reasonable interpretations of his father’s wish, in a way (<- appeal to feelings of love, devotion and duty) that resonates with him personally, and it is this dilemma that makes the final choice in the Haruspex route all the more compelling.

* side note: i feel like the game forces your hand on which ending you pick more and more as the game progresses: Dankovsky remains mostly ideologically unaffiliated with either of the three factions by the end of his route and has dialogue options nodding to all three endings, Artemy can make a valid choice out of only two of the three options while Clara's Day 11 Main Quest is preparing the Humble Ending with the game very heavily pushing it as the only viable option.

[ladybugmania]

THE FALLOUT. Ding ding Round 1

Ding ding. The bell tolls, and the ring is drawn in ash and gold, not for sport, but for ruin. What was once a calculated alliance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk has turned into a televised descent, one of betrayal, vengeance, and looming revelations.

They danced in shadows, Trump, the political pyromancer; Musk, the tech-oracle with too many sparks and not enough control. Together they fed a machine powered by ambition and denial. $280 million in subsidies, backroom influence, sealed handshakes... all gone up in smoke. And now? The machine has exploded. The alliance is dead.

This isn’t a political dispute. This is myth collapsing in real time. The serpent has bitten its tail so hungrily it has begun to devour itself. One head hisses through campaign speeches and veiled threats; the other tweets and deletes, circling the truth like a predator unsure whether to strike or confess.

What comes next? Possible truths that will scorch the walls of both parties:

– Did federal contracts mask a deeper, transactional loyalty?

– Were political favors exchanged for silence on corporate overreach?

– What secrets lay buried in the data streams, private meetings, and “donations”?

Musk, once hailed as the rebel genius, now looks more like a fallen demigod, trapped in a spiral of his own making. Trump, sensing the turn of the tide, lashes out.

And in Trump’s case? He’s another basket case entirely. As long as he’s the self-proclaimed leader of the Morons, he’ll continue acting like an entitled dick, loud, reactive, and convinced that every flame he starts is somehow a torch of freedom. He doesn't lead; he provokes. He doesn't build; he inflates. And when his allies turn to ash, he simply looks for more gasoline.

So here we are. The two-headed snake has split, and each side is arming for war, not realizing the battlefield is already bloodstained.

But here’s the haunting truth: There may be no escape from this implosion. Not for Trump. Not for Musk. Unless...

Unless Musk does the unthinkable.

If he wants remorse, if he wants redemption—not just from the public but from history itself, then the path is narrow and steep. The only way out of this descent is sacrifice. And that means giving back what his ambition consumed.

Let him donate most of his wealth. Yes, MOST! To the very people caught in the wreckage of the systems he helped exploit. To the workers, the displaced, the voiceless. To climate repair, child hunger, education, and truth.

Because at the end of all of this, money will not save him. Rockets won't fly far enough. Silence won’t protect him. The snake has split, the kraken has stirred, and the reckoning has begun.

What they both do next will decide not just how they’re remembered—but whether they deserve to be.

M H

[hestzhyen]

Already Waist-Deep

Hi internet void. Please allow me to kagura my bachi all over the place for a little bit. I've got a bad case of the brain worms about these boys that I haven't even had together for 20 chapters yet, so let me ramble a little bit about why they're already so compelling as not only a duo, but a ship.

First off, a caveat. Kagurabachi is a Weekly Shounen Jump (WSJ) action series. That means that if romance is ever addressed in the series itself, the protagonist is going to end up with a girl. Doesn't matter how underdeveloped or lackluster his relationship to her is, or how flat she is as a character. Invest lightly and come along for the ride without any expectations of m/m ships becoming canon. (That said, it might not be the worst thing in the world for our MC to end up with a girl in this case- more on that later.)

Second, I don't really ship that often. Not seriously at least. I need more than two guys being close with each other to start wanting them to be a pair, y'know? So I hope you understand the intensity of the material Hokazono-sensei has been giving us the past few chapters. I am on the brink of going all-in on HakuHiro/ChihiHaku in less than 20 chapters, it's that insane.

Third, I will be talking about current developments without marking potential spoilers. There are only 38 chapters out as of writing this, but there are at least two reveals that would be better appreciated going in blind. Spoilers for the oneshot Farewell! Cherry Boy are also a thing near the end.

Okay? Okay. Let's begin.

Who's Involved? First up is our protagonist Chihiro Rokuhira, an 18 year old boy and the son of a famous swordsmith. He was raised with genuine love and care by his father (no idea what happened to his mom yet), taking care of their day-to-day life while learning his father's trade. And from the very first chapter he is steeped in tragedy as he witnesses his father's murder and life's work being stolen. He then sets out on the long, fraught road of vengeance.

Sounds grim and not exactly compelling, right? Especially when this scene from the first chapter was making the rounds being memed to death:

But there's much more to Chihiro than meets the eye. Flashbacks to his time growing up show him being a natural caretaker to his dad and their fish- cooking meals, keeping his dad on task, and so on. We see glimpses of underlying tenderness when he meets and rescues Char, a sweet little girl with her own tragic past. And we get some insight that he might not be quite as resolute as he's projecting himself to be when he faces off against Sojo, a fan of his father who worships a much different version of the man than Chihiro knew. And now the Rakuzaichi arc has definitively shown us that Chihiro isn't as collected as he seems. One of his father's killers easily cracks the mask and shows us Chihiro is really just a desperate kid with a heaping helping of trauma, then Tenri's pointless sacrifice shakes him to his core. But despite it all he's still doing determinator things in the most badass way possible. Chihiro has layers, man. A lot of them. And the best way to understand our protagonist right now is through his foil: Hakuri Sazanami.

Who is Hakuri? A 17 year old boy with a special lineage, but he's a loser who needs to be saved from common thugs. A pathetic guy who latches on to Chihiro and doesn't take the hint when Chihiro literally runs away to ditch him. An utter failure to his family. A lost puppy looking for a samurai.

Hakuri Sazanami is one of the best goddamn foils I've seen in shounen manga yet.

Let me tell you all the ways I love the writing around this kid and Chihiro because MAN I can't even contain all these feels.

What's Going On? From the start, Hakuri looks like he's just another person for Chihiro to bail out. He witnesses Chihiro's awesomeness fighting Sojo in the streets and decides to imitate it by standing up for a little girl being kidnapped. Instead of winning out, though, he's captured and kicked around. Once he's coincidentally rescued by Chihiro he's immediately all-in on tagging along and keeping Chihiro in his life. Look at this pitiful guy:

Chihiro decides to hear him out due to his connection to the Sazanamis, the Big Bads of the arc. He's initially put off by Hakuri's intensity but brings him along anyway, as Hakuri's insider information regarding the Sazanami family makes him useful. Then, as Chihiro wavers under Hiyuki's assault, Hakuri is truly useful for the first time:

And it only gets better from here. We see Hakuri hanging off Chihiro's every word trying to be as useful as possible for his samurai, striving to do anything he can, though it ends up with him forcing Chihiro to give up his precious sword Enten in exchange for his life. (Yes, Chihiro "buys" Hakuri from Hakuri's own family.)

Later on during the invasion of the auction is where things go into overdrive though. We see their character arcs start to invert and shape each other's as the action unfolds and Hakuri's own tragic past comes to light, eventually awakening him to his special abilities. Chihiro's bravery and strength help him pull this off and finally defeat the older brother that tortured him in the name of "love". Hakuri ascends to being the strongest Sazanami since the progenitor that started their line centuries ago. He's the Special Boy!

All this to say that Hakuri Sazanami isn't just a deuteragonist or a foil…

He's the goddamn heroine.

Kagurabachi's Built Different What makes a shounen series heroine? Firstly, they support the main character without getting involved in most of the heavy fighting. A shounen heroine will usually at most have a fight against another girl while the Big Event is happening nearby, making sure the main character has the spotlight. Second, most of the value they bring to the protagonist's story is emotional. They encourage him, validate him, provide a bit of a refuge for him to safely let his guard down. They can get him to express softer emotions that he wouldn't normally show around others. Third… they're the love interest. Hinata, Orihime, Chichi, and now… Hakuri? Really?

We know the third one will not happen for HakuHiro in canon. But what about the first two? Well, let's recap what Hakuri has done for Chihiro so far.

Hakuri can defend himself now, but his most useful ability is access to an interdimensional storehouse. Given the way that his magic works -he needs to prioritize maintaining the storehouse or using Isou- he'll likely be the means of keeping the enchanted blades safe rather than a front-line fighter. Support-centric character that will still get some combat time against lesser opponents: check.

Hakuri's given Chihiro some much-needed direct emotional validation that he hasn't gotten from anyone else yet. ("You saved me." … "That katana suits you.") Hakuri's words fortify his resolve and Chihiro later pays it back by trading Enten, an incalculably precious sword and memento of his father, for Hakuri's life. He even uses the same phrase when asked why he'd do that for someone as worthless as Hakuri ("That guy… saved me."). He later reaffirms that Hakuri's encouragement gave him the courage to let go of Enten in the first place:

This is AFTER we see Chihiro open up to him for the first time just minutes after they met:

Chihiro's been a stoic good guy with buried trauma up until this point. But somehow Hakuri is the first person he outright admits his fears to- not Shiba, not Hinao, but the freaky kid he just rescued. Emotional support pillar: check.

"Well that's not enough!" you say. "That's just taking some moments and doing that thing you said you didn't do- smushing boys together just because they're close!" OK but look at how Hakuri thinks about Chihiro:

Chihiro has been his inspiration from the first time he saw him. It can be read as admiration and hero worship, but doesn't that feel like selling Hakuri's feelings short when remembering how devoted he's been since they first met?

And just look at Hakuri's face here, he's beaming when Chihiro busts in to save him just like he believed he would:

Mostly, though, Chihiro is the one who gives Hakuri strength in the moment. The Ice Woman broke him free of his family's mentality, and now Chihiro gives Hakuri what he needs most: hope. Something he never had before, which doomed his relationship to the Ice Woman; he couldn't prove to her that there was more to life than despair because that was all he knew… but that completely changed once he met his samurai.

And that's been their thing through this arc. Each one is giving the other the vital thing they needed to grow and keep going. When Hakuri was struggling at the start, Chihiro was his guiding light towards a better future. And when Chihiro struggled in the aftermath of Tenri's cruel death, Hakuri pulled him along so they could finish the job. They're in perfect sync now as they take down the Rakuzaichi. Don't just take my word for it, check out Hokazono-sensei's color page for the most recent chapter (38): https://twitter.com/KaguraShiba/status/1804898273859445181 From Hella (KaguraShiba): >Kagurabachi Ch 38 JP Color Page 「阿吽の呼吸で薙ぎ払え」 "Two people dancing to the same beat, mowing down enemies" >阿吽の呼吸/"Aun no Kokyuu" Synchronized breathing >Or when people are the most in tune with each other >阿吽の呼吸/"Aun no Kokyuu" Is a Buddhist expression in Japanese meaning something close to "harmonizing in sync together" >"Aun" is also used to indicate an "Aun relationship", indicating an inherently harmonious relationship or nonverbal communication Yeesh. But holy shit it's paying off. In chapter 38 these boys are already in harmony- Hakuri registers Chihiro into his storehouse (yes they both "own" each other now) and sends him in to fight his father. During the fight, Chihiro trusts Hakuri to interpret his intent and it works. Chihiro wordlessly tags a bunch of grenades with his spirit energy and Hakuri pulls them out into the real world to bomb the shit out of the Rakuzaichi audience. They didn't plan this beforehand- they had no idea Kyoura had fucking grenades laying around in there. But they're close enough to understand each other's thoughts already. Peak soulmate material right there!

What's got me most interested now, though, is how they will pull/push each other after this arc. Chihiro's going to be focused more than ever on tracking down his father's killer and the swords. But Hakuri, well… I think it would be very interesting if he starts to become a despair monster. A reflection of Chihiro's state at the very start of the manga where nothing mattered to him except exacting revenge. We're seeing shades of this in the most recent chapter (38) where he's slumped over and obviously depressed about how all this is turning out. He's going to end his family's cruel trade but at what cost to himself? Will Chihiro see some of himself in Hakuri and be able to help him out, or at least promise to find relief from the pain together? Obviously a Bad End where Hakuri takes himself out is in the cards given Hokazono-sensei's previous works but… on a meta level, I think his storehouse ability will keep him relevant. I mean yeah he could be used to slap Chihiro across the face by showing what a bad end for his revenge story could look like but I think (hope) that won't happen. [Note to future self: I give you permission to go batshit insane if Chihiro stops Hakuri from committing sudoku.]

And this is where my brain worms are coming from. In just under 20 chapters we have an extremely strong set up between them- so much room for them to teach each other; push to grow and pull back from the brink when tragedy strikes again.

But where's the real meat, you ask? The actual literary analysis in this gushing rant about how much I love these boys I barely know? Well, fine. Buckle up because it's time for some…

Daddy Issues The Rakuzaichi arc really digs into comparing Chihiro's affection for his dad to the Sazanami family structure. And I gotta talk about this because it's the key aspect that makes Hakuri such a brilliant foil.

First off, the similarities. Chihiro and the Sazanami kids are all intensely devoted to their fathers. All of them were raised with love while learning the intricacies of their family trade. We see the Sazanami kids getting praised for doing well, just like Chihiro. Hakuri and Tenri were even told they were special. During the arc, the Sazanami kids put their lives on the line to defend their dad and family legacy with zeal matched by Chihiro's intensity to avenge his dad. When he falls, Tenri's final words are apologizing to his father.

It's truly heartbreaking that Kyora never really loved them back.

You see, the Sazanamis are one of those families that put their lineage and craft over everything else. Every member of the family lives for ensuring the Rakuzaichi auction goes off without a hitch. One of the clan is chosen to inherit the storehouse, and the rest are trained to defend it to the death. Kyoura, the current patriarch, has no compunctions about letting his son Tenri die just to delay Chihiro and the gang for a few more minutes. He had his kids put their lives on the line to defend a storehouse door that he had already broken in secret- making it completely useless. And he's equally cold when it comes to children who can't perform to standards like Hakuri. Once Hakuri (apparently) fails to manifest an ability for sorcery, Kyoura turns a willfully blind eye to the abuse his kid starts to suffer. He knowingly lets Hakuri be tortured by his older brother for years and does nothing, then disowns him once some "merchandise" kills herself in front of him. There's no love for children who can't be useful to the family's traditions. And yet any love that does exist between father and child is manipulated as seen here:

What the fuck man.

So Hakuri is going into this arc firm in his conviction to end his family's evil ways. He's been abused physically and emotionally for at least five years straight; he knows his father doesn't love him. But even now when he's about to bring the whole place down with Chihiro, he's still yearning for his dad's praise. Hakuri's family is fucked up bad and he needs a hell of a lot of healing after all is said and done.

Meanwhile, every flashback with Chihiro shows us that he was truly loved and cared for like every kid deserves. His dad wasn't perfect but he was exactly what a parent should be- kind, understanding, and supportive. His goofy advice helps Chihiro to this day. Chihiro and his dad had a genuine father-son bond that was broken by tragedy and thus Chihiro's desire to do right by his father's memory is driven by grief, first and foremost. So when we see his expression after Tenri's death, we know why he's so badly shaken. They clashed out of love and duty for their fathers, supposedly prepared to pay the ultimate price. The Sazanami version of "love" is a very different, much less wholesome version than the kind Chihiro knows… yet no less effective in terms of motivation.

You can practically hear his heart breaking for Tenri. And his inner thoughts in the next chapter say it all: he was naive to think he could enact revenge while holding fast to the kindness he grew up with. Chihiro's kindness that he learned from his father is a liability to him in this situation. In contrast, Hakuri knew from the start that he had to finally give up the last of his familial affection. He hardened his heart and steeled his resolve to do whatever it took.

Both Chihiro and Hakuri knew what it was like to be loved. Hakuri's version might have been twisted, but it was still painful to have that bond suddenly broken. And now we've seen Edgy Revenge Man's inner softness hold him back while Silly Soft Guy has a heart colder than the arctic. I go absolutely feral comparing and contrasting their situation and how their positions have reversed. Yeah, Chihiro's going to be the action guy who saves the day but Hakuri's the reason he can do it. Hakuri's surprisingly strong core has pushed Chihiro to put his feelings aside to get things done. I can't fucking wait to see how this arc ends and where these boys end up. What will the the most important thing Chihiro takes away from Hakuri here? I hope it leads him to be a bit more openly compassionate and soft around his allies- Hakuri's situation being a lesson in not letting your family's bonds overtake everything else. For Hakuri, well… I think being around Chihiro, Char, and the rest will help him heal. But I hope it's Chihiro that keeps him stable as the person that can relate to him best.

Meta Ramblings Whew. Now then… Yo dumbass writing this, we're not even 40 chapters in yet. Don't you think it's a bit too soon to start getting hyped for a character that could be shelved as soon as the arc is done?

It's interesting to see the themes and characters Hokazono-sensei's reused in Kagurabachi. From the four one-shots available to read, it seems like he's is interested in writing about characters encountering tragedy through various kinds of love. I think it's intriguing that three out of the four end in despair, and the one that doesn't still involves a fair bit of sadness. It's a bit early to say about Hakuri's circumstances since this is only the second proper arc in the series, but given Hokazono-sensei's past works, I think Hakuri is here to stay. For one, Hokazono-sensei seems to love his color-coded foils (Chain, Enten, Roku no Meiyaku). Farewell! Cherry Boy also explores the circumstances of a blindly loyal boy who feels useless being given his first chance to prove himself… I think this is a theme that Hokazono-sensei is revisiting in a more in-depth fashion with Hakuri, so there's a good chance there's more planned.

And just for fun, if we want to look at his romance stories… Madogiwa de Amu is all about one person being the other's greatest hope, their reason to persevere in the face of hardship and seeing that reciprocated in turn. Complete with the weaker person becoming strong enough to protect the person who inspired them first. Hmm. (Hopefully it doesn't end the same way though 'cause man, I can see Hakuri doing something similar right now…) It's also not impossible for Kagurabachi to touch on love given we see Farewell! Cherry Boy incorporating love as the crux of the narrative, despite starting as a gangster story. The true MC is quite like Chihiro as well in terms of motivation and action plan.

I also think it's impossible to overstate how important it is for Chihiro to have a friendly peer to compare to, narratively speaking. Char is a woobie, Shiba's an uncle figure, and Hiyuki is set up to be the aggro rival/frenemy. Hinao could become more than a side character but it seems unlikely at this time. Chihiro needs someone his own age to just be himself with. And that, I am 99% sure, will be Hakuri. A guy who's suffered just as much as he has. Someone who knows what it's like to have a famous last name and lineage to protect. An equal who's unquestionably on his side, who will lift him up when he's down, yet will still need some protection and care. So yes I think Hakuri will be sticking around to be Chihiro's foil. He might take a back seat at times as heroines do, but he'll still be there to support our sad boi through thick and thin.

Anyway that's why I'm ready to jump feet-first into this ship. It's got all the hallmarks of a wonderfully strong bond and I hope we get to see these boys comforting each other for years to come. If you read all this… thank you? Maybe get yourself checked for brain worms? And tell everyone you know to read this amazing action-packed tragedy laced with BL crack cocaine.

[marzipanandminutiae]

It started off quite normally- deceptively so, as such things tend to.

"What, none at all?" Edith blinked over her glasses, the movement of her pen slowing but not stilling on the page.

"Surely you've met people with no middle names before. It can't be that unusual, even in America."

"Yes, but Thomas has two." Now the scratching finally stopped. A smile creased the skin around her eyes as she glanced at her husband. "Thomas Chetwynde Firenze Sharpe. I was quite surprised to hear the minister say that, I can tell you!"

Thomas rounded on her, albeit with more playfulness than real heat. "Curse it, I told you never to repeat it aloud!" Crossing the mezzanine with long strides, he took hold of her shoulders and mimed shaking her (an effect thoroughly spoiled by her poorly stifled laughter).

Their mutual wife rolled her eyes and resumed rubbing polish into the rich mahogany of the sofa's carved back. "Thomas has two because he was the heir and could do no wrong," she said wryly. "I have none because I was a nuisance and could do no right."

"I must have vengeance," Thomas interjected. Despite the lingering smile, a hint of concern had crept into his eyes, and he raced on, "I can keep silent no longer- Lucille, my love, the M in our own dear Edith M. Cushing Sharpe's name stands for...Melusine!" On the last word, an ill-considered dramatic flourish made him stumble a bit, and set Edith giggling all over again.

At that, Lucille finally looked up from her task with mild interest. "Was that the late Mrs. Cushing's notion? I can hardly imagine your father as a scholar of medieval literature."

"Don't talk about my father," Edith replied, automatically and without any ire. "But yes, it was Mama's idea. She'd had such a hard labor, and they picked my first name together, so it seemed right to give her the choice. I suppose I can't blame her."

Lucille hummed assent. "She cared. That's good."

And if pressed, in the weeks and months that followed, any of them would have said that was where it started. For in the next moment, after a moment of that deep-in-thought expression that creased Edith's brow so often, she said in carefully teasing tones, "Perhaps we ought to think of a middle name for you."

"Edith-"

"You deserve one! But it must be something that suits. What about...Macaria?"

Thomas blinked at her quizzically, but the object of her game merely sighed and adjusted the placement of a damask cushion.

"The blessed death- I suppose I should be flattered, but I question your assessment of the facts."

"Ligeia?"

"You may leave that drunkard Poe out of this."

"I'm going to keep trying," Edith said serenely, removing her spectacles and capping her inkwell as she prepared to descend the staircase.

"And I'm going to keep wondering why I married you." But the astute observer might have caught a hint of a smile on Lucille's rouged lips.

In time, the game would become well-worn and familiar- a name here or there, thrown out seemingly at random over supper or tending the kitchen garden or even lying sleepily in bed as weak dawn light crept through the attic window. Its roles were finite: of course, Edith acted as mischief itself, and of course, Lucille played the beleaguered victim.

But the latter party never cried halt to it, not in earnest, and the former never stopped.

Because sometimes, even thirty-seven years too late, you need someone to care.

(with credit to @gaslightgallows for Thomas' middle names)

[justice-bringer]

For those who suffer unnecessarily

I am Nemesis, and I bring justice and retribution to those who need it. Come to me and explain what happened, and I will give you the justice and retribution you deserve.

My lover: Rikki aka 🏹 anon @bow-anon-rikki

Little guy I look after: @urbestestwindgod

The funny little guy who saved my son: @the-great-emperor-commodus

Other me: @frick-petbe

The guy I cursed and his "girlfriend" (I don't buy it): @the-prettiest-flower and @invisible-nymph-offical

My daughter: @your-dearest-vengeance

My son: @reckless-is-my-2nd-middle-name

My son: @child-of-nemesis0

My sons boyfriend: @the-son-of-the-sun

My ex-husband and father of my son: @retired-triumvirate-member

My family members: @og-aaaaaaaaaa @moros-doom

My son: m🗡 anon "Marcus"

No nsfw please just don't be weird. Ask box is always open feel free to tag please. I do not interact with blogs based around biblical characters as I am a Christian and it just makes me uncomfy. Also do not start sending me messages if I did not respond to something. It just pisses me off and i can not keep getting these. I will respond when i want to (Dividers by the amazing @saradika-graphics )

Nyx has her own blog now at @night-itself

[sciencebecameouraddiction]

it all fell down

part one: the mighty have fallen

ratings: M (talk of war, rebellion, death and destruction, bleeding, wounds, lots of curse words, etc etc.)

summary: after adam died in the first extermination, lute calls for more frequent exterminations, rallying heaven’s population into believing that hell is a threatening force. once she succeeds, the legion of angels can come down to hell every 6 months, the only difference, charlie and lucifer aren’t safe any more. with their backs against the wall, rebellion is the only option but what happens when heaven pulls their final ace in their sleeve?

part two

the fighting was like a vortex, pulling one in and spitting one out. thankfully, no one had been hurt that was a patron of the hotel. that didn’t mean that the chance wasn’t still there as husk yelled, “they just keep coming!”

i realized as a spear caught my side, an angel sneered at me as then a blast threw me back, we got here by our own doing but we were here due to two mistakes. mistakes that we couldn’t have corrected even if we wanted to, because even though we were in hell, we were incredibly naive.

___________________

after the first fight with heaven, many things had transpired. with adam dead, lute became general and her thirst for vengeance transcended even the most deranged hell born. she pushed and pushed for quarterly exterminations. sera disagreed and pushed back. in one of the meetings they had, lute had pushed too far, causing emily to speak out against everything that had happened. we only knew what happened when golden light ripped through the sky a few months prior. lucifer froze seeing it and rushed out of the hotel, the only thing we could understand was when he yelled, “someone fell!”

maybe that was when all of our problems started. when everything turned to shit, was emily falling. 

after emily fell and recovered we were told about heaven’s plans. what they were trying to do. the most recent meeting that caused emily to fall, lute had brought up the quarterly exterminations, but now she wanted more. she said that the legion of exterminators should have the ability to kill charlie and lucifer morningstar and anyone who comes between the legion and their targets. as they were a threat to the very foundation that heaven stands on.

the silence that fell onto the hotel was deafening as i gripped the couch i was holding onto, my gaze automatically falling to lucifer, eyes wide as he looked disgusted. he shook his head as charlie looked up at him, worried, as vaggie clutched charlie’s hand. his jaw clenched as he excused himself from the group, stating he had business to take care of. my heart was seized in my throat at that moment as he motioned for me to follow him and i squeezed charlie’s shoulder. trying to provide some comfort.

when we reached his room, he sat on the bed, his head in his hands as he broke down sobbing. “i knew this would happen, but i thought they’d point their hatred at me. not charlie. oh, not charlie.” he sobbed, his words coming out broken and disjointed as i quickly kneeled in front of him, pulling him into me and clutching him to me. he was worried for charlie, and i was too, but i was worried for him too. i couldn’t loose either of them. 

the months that followed were many meetings with sera and heaven, fighting against what lute was demanding. lute, though, we underestimated. our first mistake. 

she had gathered a lot of heavenly support, calling for the extermination of hell itself. the entirety of it, as the heavenly residents felt that even the very existence of hell was a threat to themselves. we then learned that sir pentious, who was redeemed in the last extermination was being held in heaven’s prison, partially to protect him but also because the support lute had gathered demanded that the “sinner be locked up.”

we were at our wits end, with no footing to hold onto. it was seemingly the end of the road and that solidified when sera let us know that there had been a compromise and that they would do the extermination twice a year. the new terms included that charlie and lucifer could be killed during an extermination now, but they could defend themselves. it was the lowest and most hopeless i had seen lucifer and charlie. the rest of the hotel were somberly aware of what that meant, hiding or fighting.

after much discussion, lucifer and charlie explained they were fighting. a rebellion was to start and we’d take it to heaven’s door if need be. i stood beside them, clutching lucifer’s hand, the only show of how scared i was showing in the tremor i know he felt.

“we don’t expect you to fight in this. it is most likely a suicide mission. heaven is hell bent to protect the order that has been upheld for thousands of years. charlie’s hotel and the idea itself, was proven with sir pentious, and has scared them. lute is leading this force and will have eyes set out for all of you. if you are not fighting, it would be best to hide.” i explained, speaking up. the crew looked at eachother, many like they were going to cry but shockingly alastor stepped forward.

“while we have believed charlie’s idea to be a fools dream, i was at least proven… wrong. i will be here to help defend the hotel.” alastor said, with the others stepping up. lucifer looked at me shocked as he nodded at alastor in appreciation. this was our second mistake.

__________________

the ringing in my ears signaled me coming back to, not realizing i had passed out on the battle field. i looked up and saw angel swimming in my vision. 

“doll, get up. we gotta go.” he said shaking me and trying to drag me up.

“fuck, angel, i was stabbed. hold on.” i say clutching my side as he all but drags me through the battle field.

“no time. we gotta go.” he says, for the first time fear is on his face. 

“angel, what happened?” i ask, trying to walk to help him.

“lilith. she’s here. she’s here and alastor let her down here. she owns his soul. he’s her little fuckin’ pet. and she’s on heaven’s side. charlie and lucifer are fighting her now but lucifer told me to get you somewhere safe.” angel says. my eyes widen as i see the crew waving at angel. husk telling angel to “hurry the fuck up”. 

“no! i can’t leave them.” i stop angel as he turns to me and i drop to my knees. i quickly pull out a large vial i had around your neck, i unstopper it and drink half, grimacing. i feel myself stitching back up, and i stand up. handing the vial to angel, i instruct him to share it with the others, ignoring the questions i knew he had. “it’ll help heal you.” i explain as i turn to where i could see red, black and green light combating in the sky like a sick fire show against the muted red sky.

“what are you doing?” angel said, tears falling.

“i’m going to help them, and i hope to see you on the other side.” i smile, reaching my arm out, grabbing an angelic axe in an angels body. i wave to the group as i jump in the air and let my wings materialize for the first time since i was in hell. i quickly make it over to the fighting and narrow in on the green magic. my eyes lock in on alastor as i tackle him, my axe at his throat. 

“do you want to fight?” i ask simply. he shook his head no. “i’m knocking you out and tying you up over there. we’ll talk about this shit,” i motion to the green chain on his throat, “later.” i then take the dull end of the axe handle and quickly knock alastor out, angelic ropes quickly binding him. as i turn, my wings disappear as i walked up to what seemed like a tame scene. lucifer was talking to lilith as lilith looked like she was crying. lucifer held his hands up to her, almost like he was placating a cornered animal. trying to show he meant no harm.

“please mom, we don’t want to fight you.” i hear charlie say, and i see vaggie standing in front of her protectively.

“lilith, just stop this. you can live in heaven. i don’t care. heaven doesn’t care. we can make sure you have the peaceful life in heaven you wanted. the one that i robbed you of. just stop all this.” lucifer tried to reason. i saw her eyes turn green and watched as a branch like shadow came out of the ground, headed straight for lucifer.

it felt like time had slowed. it felt like i had gone through the five stages of grief i had heard of before but in a second as i screamed for lucifer to move. i ran toward him, wanting to push him out of the way. he turned toward me shocked, his back toward lilith, his eyes wide as he tried to stop me. i wasn’t quick enough as i watched as the branch impaled his chest and he stood there shocked, looking at the branch as an apple bloomed on it. he turned his head back to look at lilith, questioning why she would do this. no one heard her answer as charlie went into a fit of rage, shoving past vaggie and running over to her mother, tearing her apart limb by limb. the legion of angels seeing their leader, in essence be ripped apart sent them scrambling back up to heaven, looking like a flock of birds in the sky. i rushed to lucifer as the branch disappeared as lilith died, he collapsed to his knees, gripping onto me. charlie ran over to us, holding her dad, crying.

“please… no, dad. you can’t.” she cried, trying to stop the bleeding. “we can fix this? right?” she looks at me sobbing. “i just have to fix this.” her body shaking as vaggie kneels next to her.

“charlie, listen to me, you’ll be a great ruler of hell. okay? you’re going to do amazing things. and even though i wasn’t the best at showing it, i love you more than the stars and sky itself.” lucifer said, kissing charlie on her forehead as he collapsed into me. he rested upon me and i felt the warm liquid seeping from him be absorbed by my clothes. i felt as the fabric became so filled with his life that it dripped off my knees into the ground below. but so did my tears, silent as charlie sobbed, but running down my cheeks, soaking my shirt and his hair. 

“no, please. i have to do something!” charlie cried, looking at vaggie, who looked distraught. vaggie’s expression only making charlie cry harder.

“take care of her?” he asks me, looking up at me. 

“always.” i respond easily. charlie sobs harder, her head on lucifer’s chest, as his hand rests on her head.

“remember me?” is his last request.

“i could never forget you.” i try and smile at him but he smiles back at me, so genuine as if to say don’t worry. his eyes close and charlie screams out. my head falls to his as i press a kiss to his forehead. “goodbye, my love.”

part two

[deathbealady]

on fixing the end of ACOWAR to create a better transition into and story for Nesta

In my unending grief over how Nesta has been destroyed by the narratives of ACOFAS and ACOSF, I wanna talk about some absolutely wasted potential in the series. Because although I believe there’s plenty of stupid, unnecessary bullshit throughout the series, I find there’s a specific moment that was the death knell for me: Rhysand and Amren’s deaths and near immediate resurrections at the end of ACOWAR. It cheapened their sacrifice, and I think that in the interest of honoring the stakes of the battle/war, they should’ve stayed dead. But since we know SJM won’t let her precious bat stay dead, I would like to instead offer a way to have him not be permadead in a way that’s compelling and can fix a lot of the bullshit, including the shitty attitudes of characters I pretty openly despise (primarily Rhysand, Mor, and post-ACOWAR Cassian, but I think this version could fix a lot more!)

It’s gonna get a bit long, but I promise it’s worth it! Picture this:

Feyre realizes Rhysand is dead. She’s screaming and crying, demanding that the other High Lords bring him back. They all give that tiny bit of power, but it doesn’t work. Why won’t it work?

That’s because this time, only 6 of 7 High Lords have given their power. Someone, perhaps Tamlin, realizes this, and asks Feyre if the power has transferred to her; it hasn’t. At this point, Nesta and Elain are with her, holding her and doing their best to console their sister. The Inner Circle are in shock. Rhysand is gone but the High Lord’s power hasn’t gone to Feyre, nor any of them. It’s not gone to Keir, not to… anyone. Is the Night Court just going to be without a High Lord now?

Helion, with the knowledge of all the vast libraries of the Day Court, suggests that maybe the power hasn’t transferred because Rhysand is not quite dead. Even if that’s true, Rhysand certainly isn’t alive; Feyre can’t feel him through the bond. Maybe it’s at this point that Lucien steps up and takes a long, hard look at Rhysand. The gold eye whirrs and clicks; it looks as though the bits of power offered by the other High Lords is sustaining him, but only just. Thesan takes a look as well, trying to see what healing he can offer, if any, but Rhysand is essentially comatose and on magical life support.

It’s at this point that Nesta whips her head up and asks what that humming noise is. Everyone around her stares at her in confusion, what noise? “It’s so loud, how can none of you hear it?” She turns the crying Feyre into Elain’s arms so she can focus. She stares at the Cauldron, realizing that it’s the source of the sounds she’s hearing.

Nesta closes her eyes and tries to concentrate, trying to peer into the wretched mind of the Cauldron. Though she doesn’t understand what her sister sees in him, the loss of Rhysand has broken Feyre in a way that nothing else in their lives ever came close to achieving. So, as terrified as she is to face the Cauldron like this, she knows Feyre had been brave and strong for them for so long, and she wants to try and do something for her sister this time.

As it turns out, the hateful thing that had stolen the humanity from herself and Elain had been seeking yet more vengeance against the Archeron family. When Feyre had been trying to mend the broken Cauldron to prevent the world’s destruction, the Cauldron itself thought to take Feyre’s life in exchange. It was the perfect retaliation for a number of perceived slights: Feyre’s previous attempt to neutralize its power, Nesta’s success in clawing out more power than the Cauldron had intended to give her, and Feyre’s use of it so Amren would shed her fae form, which had resulted in its destruction in the first place. The Cauldron was ready to kill Feyre, if her mate hadn’t gotten in the way.

It’s unclear if he’d made a bargain with it or what, but it seems that Rhysand is essentially trapped and held hostage in some strange limbo of the Cauldron’s making. As a High Lord, he was powerful enough that he just narrowly survived, if that’s what his current state can even be called. Like it or not, if Prythian is to have any hope of surviving in the aftermath of the war, they need to bring Rhysand back to first restore balance. And to get Rhysand back from the Cauldron, they need the power of something Cauldron-born to break him out.

From here, we would begin Nesta’s story. As much as I hate to center much of Nesta’s journey around bringing Rhysand back, I think it’s necessary for a number of reasons.

The loss of Rhysand is a huge blow to Feyre. I imagine she would be inconsolable, having lost him after she had fought so hard for so many years. In his absence, she can hardly keep herself together enough to work with the IC in running the Night Court (not that they do much of it anyway, but you know…). I don’t think it’s something she can come back from so easily, and I think seeing Feyre like that would light a fire in Nesta to act. If I recall correctly, Nesta and Rhysand’s relationship, though hardly cordial, only became really adversarial post-ACOWAR. Nesta setting aside whatever feelings she has toward Rhysand to bring him back for the sake of Feyre is something I can see her doing as an act of love for the sister she just began to get close to in adulthood

Nesta journeying to try and bring Rhysand back would show the IC a different side to her. It would mean interactions with them that didn’t dredge up old trauma for her in the worst ways possible, and they would learn to appreciate her on her own merits. They would also have to give an actual shit about her not falling victim to her depression, self-hatred, and fear. Nesta is their only hope of rescuing Rhysand, and they have to give her the same care and respect they gave Feyre if they want their High Lord back

Nesta could’ve been the one asking to train. She wants to learn to wield her powers properly, not just because she can feel them eating away at her, but because she knows she’ll need to be able to use them to retrieve Rhysand. And she even admits that although she isn’t good at combat and doesn’t want to be a warrior, she’ll need to be able to hold her own in a physical fight, so she asks for Cassian’s help in that

With Rhysand and Amren gone, and Feyre out of commission, the Eris alliance could’ve been Mor’s decision. They had tried asking Lucien first, if he could help Nesta learn to manager her powers, but her flames are stronger than his, and different. And as much as Mor hates and fears him, she acknowledges that Eris has decades, if not centuries of mastery over his flames compared to Lucien; he could be the key to Nesta taming hers. If they want a chance at getting Rhysand back, that’s what it’s going to take.

We could have a compelling love triangle between Nesta, Eris, and Cassian here. Eris, shrewd and cunning, sees through to Nesta’s potential. And, ever the courtier, he has the charm and wit to draw her attention like all the heroes of her favorite books too. He sees his perfect match in her, and tells her as much. Cassian, on the other hand, is inexplicably keeping Nesta at arm’s length despite their undeniable attraction to each other. He hasn’t forgotten what he said to her when the King of Hybern was poised to kill them both, but he’s scared. He would’ve been leaning on Rhysand and Feyre to help him navigate a courtship with Nesta, but they’re both unable to help him. He doesn’t know how to approach her after so much has changed, and now he’s relying on her to save his lost brother. To top it all off, he has that “brutish bastard” chip on his shoulder and fears he can’t compete with Eris

Maybe this time Cassian could actually make good on his fucking promise to protect Nesta

Nesta saving Rhysand might finally drag his head out of his ass far enough that he might learn to respect her. Maybe even respect her and her power enough that maybe he would offer her a spot as his second in command, in place of Amren. Of course it’s for his own benefit by keeping her alliance to the Night Court, but also in a bid to keep her around for Feyre and Cassian’s emotional well-being. Nesta is still torn between her feelings for Eris and Cassian, but where once she had given up hope to fit in with Cassian’s chosen family, she’s offered a specific position in recognition of her deeds and abilities, from Rhysand of all people

Maybe Beron fucks up Eris’s chances with Nesta by saying something to make her think Eris had been manipulating and using her. It’s not true, or maybe not entirely, but it’s enough that it deeply affects Nesta and she can’t trust Eris as she did before. She won’t break the alliance, she and the Night Court need him just as much as he needs them to support his bid for High Lord of Autumn, but the relationship is irreparably damaged

Beyond this, I haven’t thought much about what I would do to give Nesta a better storyline. I think there are plenty of ways to still work in a lot of elements existing in ACOSF (Nesta befriending Emerie and Gwyn, wielding the Dread Trove, facing Briallyn, etc.) while vastly improving both the development of individual characters and relationships between them. And although I admittedly haven’t thought too deeply on it, I would argue that you could still explore the mental health struggles Nesta experiences without abusing her the way that ACOSF did, and I’m almost certain it’d be a far more healing storyline than the bullshit SJM gave us.

Anyway thanks for coming to my TED Talk. Also for the record, I cannot write this out as proper fanfic because I simply do not have the time or patience, and more importantly I am not a writer (trust me, you don’t want me writing it anyway, it’d be shit)