#ive only got about three days worth of work left on the translating front and then just putting it together in a doc

[the-mononoke-facade]

Every time this dude is put in a situation where I think he's about to explode in a rainbow of bitterness and entitlement, he just doesn't, and it's very bizarre

Of course he's also the pov character and I don't know that I'd call him a reliable narrator so he could be omitting the parts where he made himself out to be a dick, but still

[jackrrabbit]

Adversary /// Overhaul x f!Reader (18+)

Summary: You make a deal with the devil to save your life, but it turns out Overhaul’s not interested in your soul.

A/N: Remember when I said I was going to do a fantasy collab and then dipped for like 9 months? Hahaha…anyway…

@pleasantanathema @ present-mel @shadowworks—if it’s not too late, here’s my part for the Pleasant & Strider Fantasy AU Writing Collab from a million years ago. Go check out the masterlist and gorge yourself on these amazing pieces!!

Tags/Warnings: dubcon, demon fuckery & occult things, big heresy/sacrilege/perversion of religion, sex in a church ft. Catholic sex guilt, other than that it’s not that bad lol, inexperienced reader, mild degradation, shameless camp and demon-fucking clichés, Overhaul calls you “little girl” 👉👈

He doesn’t look like a demon.

Not that you really know what demons are supposed to look like. But…red skin, right? Fangs and claws and swirling masses of bad energy. Maybe cloven hooves for feet. Yes, that’s the Disney version—but even if you didn’t expect a cartoon personification of evil, you didn’t expect this.

He looks like a doctor, you think. Lab coat hanging open, surgery mask pushed down under his jaw, stethoscope draped over his shoulders. No, he’s a little young to really look like a doctor…an intern, you amend, shifting back in your hospital bed. He looks like he fits right in here, not a hair out of place. Except for, you know, the polished black horns curling out of the sides of his skull.

Overhaul. It was written in the book. That’s the only thing you have to call him in your head.

He’s standing in the center of the sigil you drew at the foot of your bed before midnight, surveying the room critically without meeting your gaze. He looks annoyed—that’s not a good sign, is it?—but then again, of course he’s annoyed. You’d be annoyed too if you got summoned out of your cozy hell dimension in the middle of the night. According to the book, you’re lucky he even showed up…although ‘lucky’ isn’t really how you’d describe yourself most days.

“So,” Overhaul says after a long moment of silence in which you question every choice you’ve made in your relatively short life. “You’re dying.”

You nod.

“And you don’t want to be.”

You nod again, wondering if you’re supposed to be contributing more to this conversation. It’s a bit difficult when your mouth is so dry it feels like you’ve been eating dirt, but you suppose being in the presence of an unholy servant of Satan will do that to a person.

“Fine.” He sighs, frowns, and then finally lowers his gaze onto yours—and you shiver.

Those eyes. No human has eyes like that.

“Make me an offer,” Overhaul tells you, and through his open mouth you catch a flash of sharp white teeth.

Okay. Okay. The chirping of the heart monitor speeds up (as if it weren’t obvious enough that you’re terrified) and you fold your knees up to your chest and fidget with your ring and think. He’s giving you a chance to establish parameters. You’re supposed to start with his end of the deal, the thing you want from him. That’s what it said to do in the grimoire, aka the 19th century demonology volume your creepy cousin brought back from her pagan anthropology research trip in rural France. The one you keep hidden under your bed because your mother would burn it if she knew you were reading about summoning demons.

Offer nothing to a hell creature without first telling him your price. You know the words by heart, both the winding calligraphy of the original French from the grimoire and the rushed scrawl of the English translation your cousin left for you in sheets of lined paper layered between the pages of the book for you to read. Really, this is her fault. She was the one who slipped you the book, who told you that it worked, who snuck you the ingredients for the summoning. She was the one who left a bookmark at the chapter on this particular demon, one that specializes in ‘Contrat pour Remédier au Déséquilibre des Quatre Humeurs’, which she said meant a contract to cure any illness. Even his ‘name’ is translated in her hand, practically an afterthought in the margins of the page.

‘Le Malin qui Ravage et Rebâtit’— Overhaul?

You looked up the literal meaning of this phrase on your own. It did not reassure you.

“Girl.” His voice is cold, irate. Your eyes snap back up to his and it feels like that burning gaze is laser-beaming into your skull. “Do not test me. My time is limited…as is yours.”

You swallow. “How long do I have left?”

“Less than a single human year,” he tells you without a trace of sympathy. “Seven months, twelve days, three hours. Or so. You’ll be too exhausted to leave this bed in four months, and the pain will become intolerable in six… By the end, you’ll wish—“

“Stop,” you breathe out. The heart monitor is beeping wildly and you squeeze your knees into your chest, trying to calm down your breathing. “Stop, I—I want to live.”

“Of course you do.” Overhaul’s lip curls. “How very predictable.”

Be specific, you remind yourself, doing your best to ignore the stifling disapproval from the man—the demon—in front of you. Something about him (maybe how clean-cut he looks, maybe the indisputable authority in his demeanor) makes you want to impress him. But you didn’t turn your back on your religion—you didn’t draw pagan symbols on the floor in chalk, fill silver cups with various questionable substances (including your own virgin blood), and turn the crucifix your mother hung over your bed upside-down so you could let a demon make you feel guilty for wanting to survive. “I want to be cured. I’m okay with whatever natural death I have instead when I’m older, I just don’t want to die of this illness. I want you to make me healthy.”

“Simple enough. What else?”

‘Simple’? Your heart surges with something you’ve felt very little of since your initial diagnosis—hope. “T-That’s it. Just the cure.”

Overhaul glares at you. “Humans… Every vice in the world available to you, and you limit yourselves to the basest priority of survival.”

“But you can do it? You can cure me?” you persist.

Overhaul steps forward (quiet, so quiet you wonder if he really moved) and holds a hand out to you past the foot of your bed—you hesitate, and a second later you can see the muscles in his hand flex, stretching the latex of his plastic gloves tight over his knuckles.

Just do it. You give him your hand. Carefully. Like you’re scared the contact will burn you. It doesn’t (although his skin feels warmer than yours), but after a moment his grip tightens, sliding down past your hand to circle the fragile bones of your wrist and squeeze.

“Ow?” You wince.

The demon’s eyes flicker closed for a second, lips moving silently like he’s talking to himself—and then he drops your hand unceremoniously back onto your lap. “You could be cured before the sun rises this morning. I doubt your stay in the hospital will extend past the end of the week.”

He sounds bored, voice as flat and passionless as it was earlier, but your heart is soaring. Cured. You’ve lived with this illness for so many years, you can’t remember the last time someone told you you could be cured. And getting out of the hospital that soon? You can just imagine taking down all the decorations from the walls of your room here and setting them up in your old bedroom at home. You could see friends on the weekend and not take an oxygen bag, you could get a job or—or apply to college, you could have a life—

“That is…assuming you have something to offer me in exchange for the cure.”

Your stomach drops. You’d almost forgotten about the other half of the deal.

“Don’t tell me I came all this way for nothing.” Overhaul steps back, and the orange light of the candles you set sends strange shadows over his arrogant face. The fires look brighter now, and you find yourself tracing the lines of those shining black horns. In an odd way, they look natural—so organically framing his temples that you can’t imagine him without them.

“N-No, of course not. I have some money—I mean, my mom has some, and I can get it for you…” Which is half the truth. If you know anything, it’s that your mother’s spent most of her savings on your treatment and care. You probably have more debt than you have money in the bank right now—you’d try to get rid of that, too, if you hadn’t read in the book how important it is to keep your request as simple and straightforward as possible.

…Although it’s apparently not enough. Overhaul’s eyes narrow, molten gold irises carved into slits. “Even if I had a use for human money, do you really believe your life is worth so little?”

“No—no,” you say quickly. “I just thought—in case you were interested—”

The air crackles with energy, the candle flames spark bright blood-red, and the hair on your arms stands straight up. “I am not.”

“Okay! I get it.” You wave your hands back and forth, pulling your IV line from side to side with the motion. The book was very clear about staying calm and rational while you work out the terms of the deal, but that’s easier said than done when you have a real live (live?) hell creature in front of you. You always knew this was going to be the hard part—all the stories say there’s only one thing that a demon would be interested in, and no matter how inviting the prospect of living past this illness is, you know you’d rather die than sell your immortal soul to the devil. “I’ll give you anything except my soul! And—and don’t hurt anyone I care about, or— just don’t hurt anyone, okay? Other than that, if there’s anything I can give you, I will.”

Overhaul’s lip curls, baring a thin strip of those unnaturally sharp canines. “And is your soul really so valuable?”

This throws you for a loop. Isn’t that the standard deal? A soul for a wish? That’s how it’s supposed to work—at least in this twisted version of reality where you can summon a demon to perform unholy miracles for you. But if you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense, does it? Why would your soul be valuable to him? You can’t form an argument, especially since you’re not willing to barter it away in the first place.

Your mouth is pursed open as you search for a response, but Overhaul doesn’t seem willing to wait. A gloved hand wraps its way around the railing at the side of your bed, and he leans in closer. “Little girl…what makes you think you possess anything I desire?”

Little girl. You’re not a little girl, you’re a grown woman—and yet there’s no untruth in the statement. In front of him you feel insignificant, immature, weak. You have nothing real to offer, and something tells you that you’re not going to get rid of the demon you summoned without a sacrifice you’re not willing to make.

You twist your ring around your finger—the nervous habit you haven’t bothered to break because you’ve always had more important things to worry about—and the glint of silver in the candlelight must catch Overhaul’s eye because before you even notice him moving, your delicate hand is trapped in his larger one to give him a better view of the tiny piece of jewelry. “What is this?”

“It’s—um, a ring. A purity ring.” Has he never seen one before? Well…actually, that makes sense.

Overhaul turns your hand over in his without touching the band of silver. He’s looking at it closely, inspecting the lovingly engraved cross in the design and the inscription on the other side. “Matthew 5:8,” he reads out.

“…Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” you recite cautiously. It feels wrong to speak the words in front of him, but somehow you can’t help yourself.

Overhaul’s hand doesn’t leave yours. “This ring is important to you.”

“It’s a symbol of a—a promise I made to God. To save myself for my future husband.”

“To ‘save yourself’? To save what?”

You can’t believe you’re explaining this to a literal demon. You close your eyes and inhale slowly and taste smoke. “My…virginity. It’s a promise that I won’t have sex until I enter into a biblical marriage.”

At this, Overhaul is quiet. You give him a moment to answer, half expecting him to question why you think God cares about your sexual status (honestly, you’d be lying if you said you haven’t wondered this yourself), but he stays quiet until you peek up at him to try and gauge the look on his coldly handsome face.

He’s still staring at the ring. He hasn’t touched it—maybe he can’t, because of the cross?—and through the latex, his skin feels hotter than a human’s is supposed to be.

“Is there…” you start, but you trail off when you realize you have nothing to ask. You give a little tug to try and take your hand away and you’re surprised when your wrist actually slides out of his grip to fall back on the nest of sheets in your lap. You didn’t think he’d let you go so easily.

Overhaul turns his head to the side, eyes drilling into you so you feel like you should lower your gaze. The candlelight flickers in strange shadows over his horns. “This will do,” he says quietly.

“What?”

“In exchange for your cure.” The demon taps his own left ring finger, the place where the purity ring sits on your hand, and your heart soars. He actually wants that? It’s just a simple silver band, not worth much, but you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe it has some special significance because of the religious connotation. Your mother will be angry you’ve lost it, but you’re happy to cope with that if it means living to actually get married!

“Yes!” you blurt out before he has a chance to rethink his offer. Sure, you’ll miss the purity ring—you’ve had it since you were a kid, after all—but there’s no question you’re getting the better end of this deal. At least in your opinion.

Something flashes through his yellow eyes, something you don’t even want to try and identify. “The contract, then.”

You barely have time to notice that his voice has gentled, that it’s practically silken in comparison to before, when the candlelight flickers again and suddenly the contract is everywhere. Everywhere. Writing appears on every surface in the room, covering the walls, stretching over the ceiling, coiling around the sides of the hospital equipment and decorating your bedsheets until you and Overhaul are the only untouched surfaces in sight. The characters are inscribed in red, dark red like—don’t think about that, you tell yourself squeamishly. You can make out some of the letters, even a word here or there—French, you recognize, mixed with what looks like Latin and interspersed with what you can only guess are runes.

“I can’t read this,” you tell him, fidgeting with your ring for what you now realize will be the last time.

“I only need your name,” he purrs, and then you feel a fragile weight in your hand: a feather, pearl-black and glossy and too large to belong to any bird you can think of, its angled tip glistening with wet ink. There’s an empty space in the writing before you, and Overhaul’s gloved hand comes to yours again to guide you into place.

This feels wrong…then again, of course it does. Even if you’re getting off relatively easy and just losing your ring rather than your soul, you’re still making a deal with a demon. You sign your name, forcing yourself to think about the future you have ahead of you rather than a disapproving white-bearded caricature of The Man Upstairs wagging his finger at you for haggling with a literal servant of Satan. People have done worse things to survive, haven’t they? It’s just a ring.

You set the feather down and Overhaul sighs, thick black eyelashes obscuring his intense gaze for a moment—and then the contract is gone, leaving your hospital room as blank and sterile as it’s supposed to be (well, aside from the candles and all the other ritual stuff you threw together to summon a demon in the first place).

“Are you going to cure—heal me now?” you ask.

“…Patience, little girl.” He’s pulling his glove off, peeling it down his fingers to bare the pale skin of his hand. You catch your breath and wonder what this is going to feel like, and then the tips of his fingers meet your cheek and—

you stop breathing.

It doesn’t hurt.

Or if it does, you don’t remember the pain a second later when breath floods back into your lungs. What you do feel is energy. Strength in your muscles, blood pumping through your veins, every inhale and exhale as light as a bird and freer. You feel healthy. You’re surprised you even remember what health feels like but you do: it’s like you’ve only been half alive, and now life is surging into you and through you and around you, bubbling up in your core like a spring overflowing. You blink rapidly, thinking you might cry from the sheer pleasure of it, but when you open your mouth it’s laughter that comes out. You’re healthy. You’re alive. You barely notice the IV line literally falling off of your skin because the hole where it entered your vein is sealed shut and healed perfectly.

No more needles. No more hospitals. Even without all the monitors beeping out your heart rate and measuring your vitals, there’s not a shred of doubt in your mind that you’re cured.

“Thank you!” you laugh, looking up at Overhaul and for the first time, not caring that he’s evil incarnate. “I feel—I’m okay! It worked!”

“Of course it did.” His expression is inscrutable, but he lets you have a few moments to enjoy your newfound health.

You roll your shoulders back, flex each muscle you can isolate one by one to test, make fists with your fingers and then run them over your hair, which is already thicker and shinier than it was a moment ago. Your body thrums with energy—you want to run, to feel the ground against your bare feet and the cold night air on your face, and you think you could do it! Your legs are already swinging over the side of your cot, ready to run barefoot out of the hospital if that’s what it takes, but before you can stand up Overhaul’s pushing you back down onto the bed.

“Have you forgotten your end of the bargain already?”

Honestly you did forget, but only for a second, only because you were so excited to just be outside again. “Oh, yeah. Of course.” Your hand goes to your left ring finger, ready to slip the ring off and hand it over, but Overhaul shakes his head.

“Not here.”

“What—?”

You’re falling. Your hospital room is disappearing, the image of your walls and your window and your bed disintegrating into yawning black, and you’re falling through it into nothing, into emptiness, and Overhaul’s still-bare hand in yours is the only anchor you have so you clutch onto it and squeeze your eyes shut. You want to scream—that’s the sane thing to do when you’re falling through miles and miles of empty space, right?—but when you open your throat the sound is swallowed up just like the light was…

Overhaul’s hand burns into yours, an improbable lifeline that you pull closer more out of terror than conscious thought. The slick, empty air rushes around you and you think I am going to die like this and then, incredibly, as soon as you’ve accepted your imminent demise, you feel your back mold onto a chilled, flat surface, vertebra by vertebra up to the back of your head, as if you’ve been lain down onto it.

Your heart thuds in your ears and you brace for an impact because your body hasn’t quite accepted yet that it’s not falling anymore—but at the same time, you know you’re lying down on something. You pry your fingers away from their vice-grip on Overhaul’s arm and feel around blindly for what’s underneath you, and when it seems reasonably tangible you let yourself open your eyes.

Way above, vaulted dozens of feet over your head, is a ceiling studded with gilt-edged frescoes and stained glass. It’s raining (even though it wasn’t in the hospital, you think) but through the massive panes of colored glass there’s enough oily blue light to make out that you’re in a church.

You’re in a church, with a demon. Isn’t that against the rules?

You sit up stiffly and look over at Overhaul, who’s standing at your side and looking down at you…which is how you realize the soft, cold surface you’ve been deposited onto is the blanket on top of the altar in the sanctuary. “Where...did you take me?”

“You should know this place.”

And you do, when you look around. It’s empty now and you’ve never been here at night, but this is a church your mother would bring you to when you were little, back before the disease got so bad you couldn’t risk traveling to it anymore. This is where you took your purity vow…the ring feels heavy on your hand. “Why—why—“

“I can’t stand human hospitals. Filthy places… How that reek of illness and death doesn’t bother your kind, I’ll never understand.” Overhaul pulls his latex glove back on. He’s dressed differently now, no longer impersonating a doctor—black shirt, black pants, and a…bird mask in red leather and gold. So are you, as a matter of fact. Instead of your hospital gown, you’re in a gauzy white dress that’s already been pushed up to pool around the tops of your thighs.

The slip is too thin for the cold, and you can feel your nipples standing up under the cloth so you fold your arms over your chest and hug yourself. “Why did you take me here?” The sound of your voice echoes off the walls eerily and you wish you hadn’t spoken so loudly. The reflection of your words sounds girlish, nervous.

“I told you. Your side of our contract.” Even in this dark, the angular features of his face are clearly concentrating—on you. “Are you already having second thoughts? Such a fickle little thing…”

“You mean the ring?” You reach for it again, ready to tear it off and throw it at him if that’s what it takes to see your deal through, but Overhaul snatches your hand away, pinning it above you.

“Not the ring,” he says. “The promise.”

The…promise?

A chill makes its way down your spine despite the heat radiating off the demon’s body and onto yours. “I don’t understand.”

“The promise,” Overhaul repeats—and you hear a sound almost like wings flapping and then he’s on the altar with you, knees straddling your hips as a single hand holds both your wrists above your head. “To remain a virgin until marriage. Your promise to God.”

A streak of lightning cracks down on the other side of the stained glass window behind the altar, illuminating the room briefly in spectacular pits of red and orange and yellow…and then it’s dark again, and the only color you can make out is the gold in Overhaul’s eyes.

“I’m going to break it,” he murmurs, lowering his head toward your ear right as the answering thunder rolls through the sanctuary, up through the altar, up into you.

///

Méfiez-vous de son piège, the grimoire said. Beware of the catch.

Of course it wasn’t just a ring.

Overhaul’s fingers are in—inside you, his middle and ring finger pumping through the length of your cunt like they belong there, like you were made to be touched this way. A mixture of your juices and your own spit cling to the latex because he made you suck his fingers before he put them in you and he hasn’t bothered to take his gloves off—not that you asked. You’ve been too busy biting your lip to try and muffle the moans that he keeps forcing out of you. He’s bracing himself on top of you with one hand and fingering you with the other, so your own hands are free to push into your eyes and hide your face…until he yanks your arm back and stops.

“Look at me.”

Your eyes are screwed shut and you shake your head back and forth, the movement shuddering your whole body right down to your pussy wrapped around Overhaul’s fingers. He slows the movement and kneels back, pushing one of your thighs up into your chest as he does it.

“Look at me.”

And you’re not sure whether it’s some unearthly power he has over you or the plain old deterioration of your willpower, but you can’t refuse him. You crack your eyes open and he’s glaring down at you, skin pale as ice in the blue light. Once he’s satisfied that you’re watching, the demon leans back in to fuck your cunt with his fingers, slowly at first and then quicker when he hits something inside of you—a spot, a place on the inner wall of your pussy that makes you feel like you’ve been shocked— heat blooms through you like blood in water and you gasp and he curls his fingers up to pet over that spot again.

“Wait—wait, that’s—it feels—weird!” You’ve never felt like this before. You’re not supposed to feel like this, it’s wrong.

“I understand you’ve never touched yourself, but don’t pretend you don’t like it.” Overhaul says, voice as indifferent and calm as ever even though your cunt is dripping clear sticky liquid over the plastic of his glove.

He pushes back in and grinds his palm over the little button on the top of your pussy—your clit?—and you want to scream. “No, I—I don’t—nnhh...”

Do you like it? The demon’s body is so hot next to yours, like he’s running a fever except you’re the one going out of your mind… You’ve heard metaphors for sexual pleasure before (that it’s like having something to drink when you’re dying of thirst; or that it’s the ultimate act of intimacy, love in physical form) but all of that’s a fucking lie. There’s nothing to compare it to, no reference that makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense—you don’t even want him to keep going, do you? You’re only doing this because you signed your name on a devil’s contract, because you don’t want to die and there’s no alternative…but that doesn’t explain why you feel so warm from the inside out, why you’re squirming and your hips are rocking involuntarily no matter how much you try to keep still. This isn’t right. You feel like you’ve been lied to.

A good girl wouldn’t like this.

Overhaul isn’t going to let you close your eyes, so you don’t—but the sounds coming out of your mouth are so…indecent (and how can you think these things about yourself? the word feels like someone else is saying it when you hear it in your head) that your hand is drifting up to your mouth before you can stop yourself, trying to stifle all of it…

“Let your voice out. I want you to hear yourself moan.”

Long fingers slide their way out of your pussy and then move up to rub quick little circles around your clit and you moan, like a whore, like a girl getting her cunt rubbed by a demon— “Oh, uhhhn—something, it’s—coming—“ There’s something building up in your core—a peak, a climax, something that makes you fist your hands in the nightgown he put you in (so tight you’re surprised the thin fabric hasn’t torn) and tilt your hips up into him, begging without words because you don’t have any to express what your body is asking for…

But he doesn’t give it to you. Overhaul takes his hand away from your pussy and the shock of the cool air after his too-hot touch is almost enough to send you over that edge—almost. Not quite. And without it, you’re left shivering and quaking, thighs twitching as your baser instincts beg you to just put your hand between your legs for once and hump your fingers to completion if the demon won’t do it.

You’re not going to risk that, though. Not when Overhaul’s dragging your body closer, bunching up the blanket on the altar under your spine, so your pelvis is angled to his… He’s already shirtless and you hear him unzipping his pants but you can’t bring yourself to actually look at him, even when you feel something hard and hot nudging up against your inner thigh and then aligning to your sticky wet slit.

“This will hurt a bit, but I want you to look,” he says, and you don’t even understand at first until you make yourself feel it—his cock, pushing up against your tight cunt to finish this, this perversion of what your first time was supposed to be…

And what was it supposed to be? Roses and candles and soft kisses? A nameless, faceless husband unzipping your wedding dress and making love to you with the lights off? The way the demon touches you should be cruel in comparison but it isn’t, it’s lighting fires under your skin and turning your brains to mush, so how is your body supposed to tell the difference?

It’ll hurt, you know that, you’ve heard enough about sex to know that it always hurts the first time for girls…women. It was already a stretch to fit his fingers in your virgin pussy, so of course his cock is going to hurt. You turn your head toward the window at your side and try on look out at the rain drawing rivulets like veins over the glass, something to focus on instead of him.

“I said look,” the demon hisses, and his hips push forward a bit and you bite off a whimper of pain. “Watch me take your virginity…look at your tight little cunt swallowing me up just like it was made to.”

“N-No—“ you whine, even though it’s not like you can ignore it. “Don’t make me, don’t make me look, I can’t—“

“Then look at me.”

It’s what he wants, some kind of wicked satisfaction he gets off on, but you’re lucky enough to even get an option so you choose that one, shifting your gaze up into his face instead of the place where his cock is pressing deeper and deeper inside you. Overhaul’s eyes are half-lidded and it’s hard to tell from behind the mask but the look on his face is…pleasure? No, that would be too human. Restraint, at least. He could just thrust up into your body in one stroke, but he wants you to feel it for some reason.

Maybe because it’s a worse betrayal of your chastity if you want to get fucked.

Lucky for you, though, you can barely feel anything aside from the pain. The heat you felt building earlier is draining out of you even as Overhaul tilts deeper, layering his chest over yours. You’re almost grateful for the modest barrier the dress provides between your torso and the solid muscle of his abdomen. His cock in your pussy feels like it’s too big too deep too much and it’s the first time you’ve felt like your body wasn’t created specifically for this purpose so you hold it tight.

“Does it hurt?”

A second of clarity makes you want to snarl (of course it fucking hurts, I’m losing my virginity to a demon I summoned from hell) and you dig your fingernails into your palms to stop yourself from saying it out loud. Overhaul pulls out a fraction of an inch and then pushes back in and you feel like the breath’s being pushed out of your lungs. “Yes! Yes, it—it hurts—“

“I can make you enjoy it…for a price,” he sighs, settling into a slow rocking motion of his hips pushing into yours.

And you want to, every sore muscle in your cunt is telling you to give in and give up, give him what he wants so you can enjoy it like he says—but you’d rather hate every second of this than make another deal. You shake your head quickly and because you’re still too afraid to look away from him, you don’t miss the look of surprise that flits across his face before he tamps it down. “I don’t—I don’t want to—like it,” you gasp out between thrusts. “It’s better if—if it h-hurts…”

This time it’s obvious—his eyes really do widen, and you feel some petty triumph at having caught him off guard like this. Who’s predictable now? you think—and then he’s lifting one hand off the altar at the side of your head and tugging his glove off with his teeth, and you don’t even have time to be afraid of what he’s going to do to you because it’s too late, his bare fingers are already stroking over your mound and onto your core, massaging into the flesh of your stomach so he can feel his own cock sliding in and out of you—

and it doesn’t hurt anymore?

You only have a second to try and understand—he cured you, he healed the pain from your first time just like he healed your illness?—before he hooks his grip under your thigh and folds your legs into your chest so he can fuck into you harder than before. His cock slaps into your pussy and you can hear it, hear how wet your filthy little cunt is, smeared through with your juices. It’s sick—the sound of skin against skin, and the moaning you can’t hold back, you sound like a woman in a porno and you wish the pain would come back just so you could keep hating what he’s doing to you. “What—what did you do—“

The demon ignores you. “It feels good, doesn’t it.”

“Nn—“ It’s deeper like this…deeper and rougher and you can feel it. Now that the pain’s been reduced to the dull ache of a stretched muscle, you can feel everything—his cock sliding against that same spot in your cunt that makes you want to squeal, the friction of his body moving against your clit, all of it, everything you wanted to block out— he pumps into you and you hear your breath sobbing out a moan a second out of rhythm, the sounds of you bouncing on demon cock echoing over the walls. “Please—ah, ahhh…”

“‘Please?’ Are you begging—me, little girl?” Overhaul pushes your thigh up and drags his cock through you, excruciatingly slow, forcing you to feel the thick head slide over every gummy wall in your slick pussy.

You shake your head, mewl, try to force your hips to stop rocking back into his and grinding your clit against him. But you can’t. You’re a—you were a virgin, for fuck’s sake! Overhaul’s immortal. Probably thousands of years of experience on how to make you feel like you want this, like you’re only alive in the places he touches you… You’re at his mercy, if he has any. You never stood a chance.

“Then are you begging your god?” His body lowers directly onto yours and like you’re being controlled by puppet strings your arms fold around him and rake your fingernails uselessly into the smooth skin of his back. You can feel the vibration of his mirthless laughter through his chest. “It must hurt terribly…to know he isn’t listening.”

“Don’t—stop, please,” you sob. “Don’t say—don’t stop—please!”

“Listen to yourself, girl—“ Overhaul’s breath is faster now, but you don’t have time to question it because you feel your peak coming again, the tension rising up through your cunt and your abdomen, harsher and crueler than when his fingers were in you but you want it just as much. More. “Has he ever answered your prayers? Has he...ahh, fuck—who’s the one giving you what you need?”

“No— please, please just let me let me, please—“ You’re talking nonsense now, begging for the release—at least then it’ll be over, and you need it, you need it so badly you feel your muscles locking up, cramping, your ankles crossing each other behind Overhaul’s back.

“Good girl,” the demon breathes, and then he lifts off you so he’s kneeling upright with the two of you still connected, his thick, heavy cock still speared in your pussy, and his fingers come down again to rub at your clit. Everything’s so wet you can hear the motion of his fingers slicking themselves through your juices, sliding up and down the little button over and over and it feels so good that a tiny part of you almost wants to drag it out, to savor it, but the rest of your body is going to die, is going to go crazy if the demon doesn’t let you cum right now, right now, right now!

And he does. Praise the Lord. The pads of Overhaul’s fingers pass over your clit one last time and your head rolls back, your throat moves but you can’t even make a sound, your legs shake and you cum.

You didn’t know it was like this.

Your cunt squeezes down on his cock, throbbing and pulsing and your toes literally curl (you didn’t think that was a real thing!) and your vision goes black for a moment and—oh fuck oh fuck i want this i want more how is it possible that i’ve never felt like this—you understand, more intimately than ever, why sex is wrong:

because nothing that makes you feel this good could possibly come without a cost, could it?

///

It must take longer than you thought for you to come back to your senses, because when you regain awareness of your body you’re in your hospital bed. You’re clean, too, and you wonder for a second if Overhaul bothered to clean you up? Or no…he probably just snapped his fingers and transported you back to your room. You’re not really sure how it works.

What you are sure of, however, is that you just got fucked by a demon. You’re sore in places that you didn’t know it was possible to be sore, and there are already bruises forming on the flesh of your thighs from how tight he was holding you. You don’t really have time to inspect these, though, because apparently your…ordeal (if you can call it that) isn’t over.

Overhaul’s still here.

He’s facing the hints of sunrise through the east window, dressed again in the immaculate lab coat and surgeon’s mask. “You’re awake,” he says without looking at you.

You nod hesitantly. You’re not really sure what the protocol is in this situation, but at least you’ve finally held up your side of the contract, right? And so has he. Despite having been up all night doing sinful things, you’re still itching to get out of this bed and test the limits of your healthy body. “You’re…going to leave, right?”

“Yes—”

At that, you sigh in relief and settle back into your starched bedsheets.

“But there’s one more thing you owe me.”

“Goddamnit,” you swear for the very first time in your life. After what you just did, taking the Lord’s name in vain seems like a relatively minor sin.

Overhaul’s mildly irritated expression doesn’t change, but he holds his hand out to you, palm up, the way you imagine someone would if they were helping you out of a car or requesting a dance at an old-fashioned ball. And really, you want all of this to be over—you want to get out of this hospital, you want to taste what the air outside is like, you want to distract yourself from what you just gave up in exchange for a future. At this point you’re just going to have to hope God isn’t as picky about the whole premarital sex thing as you grew up believing.

So you put your hand in Overhaul’s.

Slowly, carefully, like he’s afraid it’ll burn him, he slides your purity ring down your finger and balances it in the palm of his bare hand. It sizzles when he touches it, glowing orange until it eventually burns down into a ash-black circle in the center of his palm. Once he’s satisfied that your pretty little ring has been reduced to nothing more than a scorch mark, he closes his hand around yours and you feel something sharp, painfully hot, etching onto your finger.

It’s over in a second, but you still yelp and yank your hand away from him as soon as he lets you. “Ah—ow, what was that?”

He burned you, he literally burned you! He’s already healed it, but there’s still a thin, pale scar, an intentional one left wrapping around the skin at the base of your left ring finger. Like a wedding ring.

When you look close, you can make out a symbol on the back of your finger where the cross used to sit—and even though your conscious mind doesn’t recognize it, the sight of it rings out something inside your ribcage, deeper and truer than flesh and blood. It’s the devil’s mark, you think. It’s his.

“…A promise,” Overhaul says softly, and even though it’s a chilly morning, you can feel the heat of his hands on yours a long time after he vanishes back into the dark.

[hale-13]

Strangulated

By Hale13

For the Summer of Whump Day 26 Prompt - Asphyxiation

“That’s pretty new,” Peter muttered aloud, perched on the side of a building in Midtown and staring intently at the man in a full on metal rhino costume destroying the front of a Well’s Fargo. The police that had responded to the call had drawn their weapons and were perched behind their cars, clearly just as baffled and making no attempts to stop or prevent the crime.

Words: 1754, Chapters: 1/1 (Complete), Language: English

Fandoms: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)

Rating: Gen

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Characters: Peter Parker, Tony Stark, Rhino

TW: Strangulation

Read on AO3 or below the line break.

“That’s pretty new,” Peter muttered aloud, perched on the side of a building in Midtown and staring intently at the man in a full on metal rhino costume destroying the front of a Well’s Fargo. The police that had responded to the call had drawn their weapons and were perched behind their cars, clearly just as baffled and making no attempts to stop or prevent the crime.

“It is new Peter,” Karen’s voice chirped happily from his mask. “You have not faced this criminal before. Would you like me to activate instant kill?” She sounded far too hopeful for Peter’s liking and he sighed, dodging the small chunk of concrete that flew his way.

“Karen, darling, love of my life. We’ve talked about this,” he told her gently, swinging closer and dropping down behind the line of cop cars. “Instant kill is not the answer to all lives problems.”

“If you say so,” and she sounded so disappointed. Peter would have to have a conversation with Mr. Stark – he had no idea how he made his AI’s so lifelike but he really wanted to know.

“Ugh,” one of the cops said, rolling his eyes as he noticed Peter. “Scram Spider-Guy, this ain’t any of your business.”

Peter fought an eye roll of his own. “Real nice pal,” he said sarcastically, stepping forward anyway. The guys partner nudged him pointedly in the side.

“Just send in the freak. Might save us the effort.” Peter fought the urge to cringe at the sneer directed at him. He had a pretty thick skin but he wasn’t the biggest fan of being called a ‘freak’. Especially by the people he was trying to help.

“Happy to be of service,” Peter grunted with a two finger salute. “Just stay back and let the professional work.” He fired a web and took off in the direction of the rhino guy before either of the police had the chance to respond. He purposely used their car as a jumping off point just to really rub it in and smirked a little at their grunts of irritation. “Hey big guy!” He called as he landed in the pock-marked and cracked street. Rhino-guy turned around and charged with a roar. “Whoa there!” Peter called as he jumped over his head. “You haven’t even introduced yourself yet!”

“I will squash you like bug!” The man said in a thick Russian accent, scraping one of his feet against the ground like a bull and charging Peter head first again. Peter nimbly dodged again and dangled with one hand from a nearby streetlight.

“You know spiders are arachnids right? Not bugs?” Peter bantered, swinging around the pole and releasing at just the right moment to launch himself across the street the nail Rhino in the face, sending him stumbling back before he corrected himself with a roar. Peter somersaulted out of the way of another charge.

“Stay still so I can kill you,” he roared.

“Tempting,” Peter mused, webbing Rhino’s arms to his sides. “But I’ll pass.”

Rhino roared again in obvious frustration and ripped through Peter’s webs with great effort. “That’s not ideal,” Peter said as he fired more webs in an attempt to slow down Rhino to no avail. Freed once more, Rhino changed forward. This time, however, Peter took a step back into one of the holes in the asphalt and tripped; he was able to right himself quickly but not fast enough to dodge out of the way of Rhino’s hands.

“Oof,” Peter gasped, hands flying up to his throat where Rhino had wrapped his mechanized hands around Peter’s throat, holding him a couple feet above the ground and leaving Peter to flail his legs in an attempt to escape. “Not cool bro,” Peter breathed out with his limited air supply as the Rhino squeezed tighter and backed him up to slam Peter into a nearby brick wall.

“You talk too much,” Rhino grumbled, redoubling his hold on Peter and making him grunt with effort and scrambled to pull the hands from around his throat.

“Peter your pulse ox is dropping rapidly,” Karen said, displaying the number on his HUD and Peter squeezed his eyes shut as it ticked from ninety-three percent to ninety-two. “Calling Mr. Stark.”

“No don’t,” Peter wheezed out a little desperately, his throat feeling raw and swollen and his lungs beginning to burn.

“On my way kid,” Tony’s voice said through his comm as Karen connected his mentor to Peter’s HUD. “Any chance you can break out before you pass out.” Peter just let out a frustrated puff of air and, with intense effort, lifted his legs to press his feet against Rhino’s chest to begin pushing. His vision was tunneling and pulsing around the edges and Peter knew it was only his stubborn pig-headedness and sheer force of will that was keeping him conscious at this point. The pulse ox reading in the corner ticked down to eighty-seven and, with Herculean strength, Peter finally knocked the Rhino away from him and collapsed to the ground.

“‘M good,” Peter croaked tightly, letting his head rest back against the road as he recovered his breath. He didn’t have long through as his Spidey sense tingled violently and he threw himself to the side of the road to dodge out of Rhino’s path. His vision was still a little spotty and he stumbled like he was drunk but Peter was able to pull himself back to his feet and stand without assistance. “Not cool dude,” he said, his throat burning and his words coming out like he had been gargling gravel.

He needed to end this quick. He couldn’t afford to get caught again. With effort, Peter jumped back into the air, firing webs at rapid speed as he did so – attaching Rhino to the ground in a veritable cocoon. Rhino screamed in anger and struggled but Peter’s webs held this time much to his relief. “He’s all yours boys,” he said in the direction of the police, his voice thready and painful and he swallowed down a cough.

It took all the energy he had left to swing away, alighting on a nearby apartment roof and dropping first to his knees and then back to sit cross-legged. His neck hurt and he could feel the swelling starting to constrict his trachea and vocal chords. Tony landed in front of him a few seconds later, stepping out of his suit and squatting down in front of Peter with several cracks and pops of his knees.

“Try not to talk buddy,” Tony told him, lifting his mask up to his nose and pulling the neck down carefully, wincing at whatever he saw and making Peter hunch his shoulders and pull away, fixing his mask back to its usual position. “Helen’s waiting for us back in the MedBay. I’m going to carry you and your not going to bitch about it capiche?” Peter rolled his eyes knowing it would translate to the large white lenses on his mask but didn’t protest when Tony stepped back into the Iron Man armor and picked him up.

The flight back to the Tower was quick since Peter had ventured into Manhattan to patrol today and they were soon landing on the small balcony outside the MedBay doors. Peter still felt a little light-headed and dizzy and swayed a little in place when Tony lowered him back to the ground to stand on his own while the suited disassembled around him and flew off to the armory. “Steady there,” the man said gently, slinging Peter’s arm across his shoulders and helping him walk into the building.

“Hey Peter,” Helen Cho said as she approached them from the nurses station down the hall and ushered them into an open exam room. “Karen sent me your stats so let’s just see the damage yeah?” She said as Peter settled on the exam bed.

Peter smacked his hand into the spider emblem on his chest, letting the suit fall down to rest around his hips, pulling his mask off and tossing it next to him on the bed. Dr. Cho wrinkled her nose and softly palpated Peter’s neck making him grunt and grimace, manfully resisting the urge to pull away from her. “Well you’ve already got some pretty severe swelling,” she said, clipping a pulse oximeter onto his finger and frowning at the result. “And you’re still not oxygenating as well as I’d like.”

“So what’s the plan then,” Tony said, slapping a hand over Peter’s mouth when he opened it to speak and ignoring the glare Peter sent him and the spiteful lick Peter gave his hand in the hopes that Tony would remove his hand.

“Well I’m going to start supplemental oxygen first,” Dr. Cho said, unwinding an oxygen mask from the wall and pushing Peter back until he was reclined on the bed and slipped the mask over his mouth and nose. “I’ll have a nurse come in with something for you to change into and then I want to start IV steroids and pain relief to get the swelling down. With you’re healing,” she said addressing Peter, “you should only be here overnight. I just want to make sure that your airway doesn’t swell closed. You’ll also need to rest your voice since you probably have some damage to your vocal chords.”

Disappointed, Peter nodded. This was not in his plan for the day and he was really looking forward to playing Beast Slayers with Ned tonight but, if he was confined to a MedBay bed and doped up on his pain meds he doubted he would be worth much of anything. Well at least he’d probably catch up on some of his sleep.

A few hours later, floating due to his super strength meds and curled up under a pre-warmed blanket, Peter squeaked out a hoarse ‘thanks’ making Tony, sat beside him and tapping away at a tablet with his feet propped up on the end of Peter’s bed, fix him with a glare. “Aren’t you supposed to be resting your voice?” Peter just gave him a dopey smile and burrowed deeper into the blanket, adjusting the melting ice pack that was wrapped around his still tender throat.

He’d have to do some research of mechanized rhinos in the morning. He had already come up with some fun tweaks for his web fluid that might be beneficial going forward. With chemical equations dancing around in his brain, Peter fell into an deep, easy sleep.

[ashtail-scribbles-blog]

Found: One Stray, No Tags(Chapter Two)

Summary: Alfredo wants very few things in his life after his last gang falls apart. He wants a quiet life with his plants and his games. To make some connections. But Los Santos is a grinder, it takes people like him and twists them, bends them to its will.

He makes a mistake. He crosses the wrong people and now he has to serve in the most feared crew in an effort to avoid a harsher punishment. But in a world where magic is in half the population and there’s a family in the crew who holds his leash, maybe he can find a something a little better than debts paid.

Rating: M

Tags: GTA AU, Magic, Crew as Family, Found Family

Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence

"You weren't kidding. He really does look like me."

The next time Alfredo woke up, it was much faster and less pleasant than the last time. Whatever pain medication he was on now was way shittier than what he'd been on previously and his chest and arm practically screamed at him, feeling like they were on fire. He couldn't help the whimpering groan that left him as his eyes blinked open.

"Easy kid. Deep breaths." Large weathered hands were on his shoulders, and he would be disturbed by the fact that he was shirtless later, and his eyes snapped to the face in front of him. With sleepy blue eyes and a neatly trimmed beard he wasn't immediately recognizable to Alfredo but he radiated power and confidence.

"Caleb took you off the good shit so we could have a talk. He's gonna dose you up nice and good once we're done." Alfredo gave a quiet huff in affirmation, his voice feeling like it was out of reach and he was too tired to try. The first set of hands withdrew as another pair came into view, holding the cup and straw from earlier. Alfredo leaned forward without prompting and sipped slowly. This person was tall, thin and had dark hair swept to the side. He radiated a different kind of power to the first man, distinctly magical, and the aura he put off was soft and relaxing.

Done drinking, Alfredo sank back into the bed, the restraints on his wrists jingling with his movements. The two men shared a telling look before they settled back in the chairs he hadn't noticed before, a serious countenance settling over them and the room, though the aura of the second man stayed warm and kept Alfredo feeling relaxed and at ease.

"Let's start simple and get some of the minutia out of the way. You're not gonna die, and we're not gonna torture you. Caleb's put too much work in piecing you back together over the last few days. I'm pretty sure if we undid all his work he'd throw an epic snit, and everyone knows you don't make medics mad." The second man's voice was smooth and higher than Alfredo would have expected.

"Now that that's out of the way." The older man's voice was rougher and still higher than Alfredo would have guessed. "Can you guess where you are?" Alfredo knew of course, but it was a matter of getting his voice to cooperate.

"F-Fakes." He eventually forced out, but it was a mistake as his chest seized in a violent cough. His arms jerked against the restraints, shaking the bed and he was dimly aware of both men shooting to their feet as ragged coughing seized his body. Eventually he settled back, feeling exhausted and chest heaving, and then Caleb was there, gentle hands examining his injuries.

"No damage that I can see or feel. He shouldn't talk for a while though. I can get Matt in here to translate if you want. The restraints can come off too. He's obviously no danger and weak as a kitten besides." Deft hands made short work of the hospital restraints but all Alfredo could do was shift his bad arm closer to his abdomen before he ran out of energy.

"I'm not going to call an end to the conversation but I am putting a time limit on it. No more than 15 minutes. He'll need a fresh IV and some stronger pain medicine by then." The two men agreed easily and Caleb nodded to the room before slipping out again.

Honestly, at this point, Alfredo wasn't certain that this wasn't some weird fever dream. He was sure he was going to wake up in some dingy interrogation room or maybe he was dead and this was some weird "what if" scenario his consciousness had made up to keep himself entertained in limbo.

"Hey kid! Focus on me." Alfredo snapped to at the sharp voice, eyes on the older man. "I'm gonna spell it out for you. You nod or shake or your head. Understood?" A nod.

"Good. Do you know who we are specifically?" He shook.

"I'm Geoff Ramsey, Fake Kingpin and this is Trevor, day-to-day Crew leader for the FAHC. And you, my little friend, disrupted a deal of ours on behalf of Fake Chop. Do you remember that?" Alfredo knew he should be feeling fear, but that feeling of warmth and relaxation had penetrated deep into his body, suppressing all his natural responses. Definitely magical, and probably emanating from Trevor, the second man.

With no other recourse, he nodded, dipping his head and trying to look appropriately contrite.

"Cute, but we're not done. My guess is they told you it was a game, that we wouldn't care?" He nodded. "My boys over there have always played fast and loose with my rules. So, yea, mitigating circumstances or whatever. You didn't know exactly what you were getting into, but the fact still stands that you stepped in on a deal you had no business stepping in on. You coulda hurt my boy, even. There has to be a punishment, y'know?"

Fear finally began to creep to the surface. He knew, knew he shouldn't have taken the job. Should have begged off, offered Aleks and James something in exchange for not doing it. Look where it got him. Lying in a bed in a FAHC base recovering from being mauled by a bear facing repercussions for his actions. All kinds of scenarios raced through his head, none of them pretty. Sure they'd promised not to torture or kill him, but that didn't exactly limit the ways they could punish him.

A hand threaded through his hair and he was blasted by a deep sense of calm, suppressing all the fear that had bubbled up. "Stop. Breath. Listen to what he has to say before you do anything else." That was Trevor and he was radiating the same deep sense of calm that now sank into Alfredo's bones. Well that settled it. Alfredo had only heard about the rare wielders of emotional manipulation magics and being on the receiving end of it now he could see why to they were spoken of with fear and reverence in equal measure.

Trevor relinquished his grip but the calm remained as he returned to his seat. "He's pretty handy, right?" Geoff's voice was a little smug and Alfredo couldn't even find it in himself to answer. Trevor's presence was like a sedative and if it weren't for the pain of his injuries he'd be asleep by now. "I'm gonna speed this up because you're about as useful to me as a box of rocks right now. The total for the drugs you destroyed was a quarter of a million. Another hundred thousand for Jeremy's car, which was destroyed. I'm going to assume you don't have that lying around somewhere?"

He shook his head. He had an idea he knew where this was going.

"Well then, that settles it. Until I'm done with you, you belong to me and Trevor. And we say when we're done with you. You understand?" It was ominous, of course. Not even his magic-addled brain could miss the unsubtle "you belong to" rather than "you work for" in Geoff's final proclamation. He also knew he had no choice. He didn't have the money to replace the drugs and repair the car. Fake Chop's jobs had been worth a couple thousand a piece, enough to keep him living reasonably comfortably and save a little bit for emergencies, but nowhere near what he owed.

Alfredo bit his lip and steeled himself before he nodded. He didn't even want to contemplate what the response would be if he tried to turn him down.

Geoff's face split in a beatific smile and a spike of triumph and contentment lanced through the room. Alfredo really didn't like how tuned in he was to Trevor. It was really creepy to be able to get the emotional temperature of someone without having magic of his own, but Trevor was broadcasting so much in an effort to keep Alfredo subdued.

"Well, now that that's all settled I'll let Caleb at you. I need to go take care of my wayward boys across town. Trevor will be by to fill you in on your new responsibilities once Caleb thinks you're good for it." They rose up in tandem and left the room, heads together in conversation. Caleb swept in after them, hands already glowing green. He changed out Alfredo's IV, gave him some more water and changed the bandages for fresh clean ones.

"You look pretty good overall. I'm gonna say you need to stay for another two or three days before I'm comfortable releasing you. We can try you on some soft foods tomorrow though, so that's something to look forward to." Caleb's voice was soft and Alfredo drifted on it. Once he was comfortable Caleb injected something into the IV line and Alfredo was floating, far far away.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Three days later and Caleb pronounced Alfredo  strong enough to be discharged the next day. He been moved back up to soft solid, if somewhat bland, foods and been allowed to walk the halls of the facility with the assistance of a long-haired man named Matt. He still struggled with talking and coughing sucked, a lot, but overall he was doing fairly well for being less than a week out from being mauled by a bear.

So it was with little surprise that night, as he was sitting up and pushing jello around with his good hand, that the disturbingly familiar aura of Trevor entered his awareness. His appetite abandoned him in that moment and the door opened, revealing Trevor dressed in pinstripe pants and vest, white sleeves ruled up to his elbows. He practically radiated excitement and he had a manilla envelope in his hands.

"You're awake. Good. I'm on a time crunch, so let's get started." He pulled up a chair close to Alfredo and his emotions washed over him like a tidal wave, making him nauseous since they were so at war with Alfredo's own feelings. He hated this. Trevor made him sick with his magic, uncomfortable in his own skin. Was Trevor just so strong that he couldn't help but broadcast to those around them? Was Alfredo just sensitive to this kind of magic?

"Hey, are you listening to me?"  Alfredo cut his gaze back, face flushing as Trevor's face creased in a mixture of annoyance and amusement. "Listen I'm gonna make this fast so just try to pay attention for the next few minutes okay?" He nodded, steeling himself to paying attention despite the buffeting emotions. Trevor spent a second staring at him, something dark in his gaze before he grunted and pointed to a few of the papers sitting on the tray next to his abandoned jello.

"There's not a lot you can do for the first few weeks, so you'll mostly be running comms and watching feeds. After Caleb clears you for action again you'll run errands, drive and provide over watch on deals. You won't be heisting with us." That got a sigh of relief. Alfredo had absolutely no interest in heisting, thank you very much, especially the special brand of chaos that was a FAHC heist.

Trevor was fiddling with a jewelry box and he pulled out something black with a little green pendent. "Give me your good hand." He ordered and Alfredo did so cautiously. Strong fingers grasped his arm and moved it closer and then Alfredo felt cool leather encircle his wrist. Deft fingers made quick work of the buckle and then a tiny padlock, locking it in place. From the little o-ring hung the black and green pendant that proudly displayed the FAHC's rubber ducky emblem. "We've already locked down your apartment and moved everything you'll need to the penthouse. Someone-"

Alfredo jolted in place. "What did you do to my apartment?!" His voice scraped in his throat and he felt a flash of genuine anger. His apartment was his. Keeping it was the whole reason he was back in the game to begin with. It was his safe spot. His plants, his sketchbooks and his game collection were all in there.

Trevor's hand struck out, snake-like, and grabbed his chin, ignoring Alfredo's gasp as fingers dug into healing scrape marks. "Part of me wants to write it off as you being in pain at the time, so I'll say it again. You belong to the crew now. You belong to Geoff and I. This?" He held up Alfredo's arm so he could see the trinket in his periphery. "This means you're ours. You're ours until we decide otherwise. If we say jump, you ask how high. If I say entertain the boys, you keep them entertained, no matter what you need to do. Your usefulness extends to what we can get you do for us and nothing more. Do you understand me? Say it now. Say 'I understand, Trevor.' so I know you do."

Trevor's aura was dark, oppressive and made Alfredo's skin crawl as he fought to get his voice to work. "I understand, Trevor. I get it. I'm sorry." His voice quivered in his throat, and he sounded weak, scared to even his own ears. Trevor kept him pinned with his glare for a minute longer and it felt like it was an eternity before the hand gripping his chin turned gentle, thumb smoothing over the scratches he'd been pressing into seconds before. The broadcast of emotions turned positive again, but it was chilled and he wanted to shrink back but didn't dare, not when Trevor's gaze was still dark, dangerous.

Finally, finally Trevor let his face go, settling back into his chair and Alfredo brought his arm close to his chest. "Now as I was saying. Everything you need will be at the base. When you get there tomorrow, you go to Geoff. He's going to introduce you to everyone so there's no more accidents. He'll decide what you're going to do after that. Understand?"

Alfredo started to nod, but when Trevor made an annoyed sound he stopped. "I understand." He whispered and Trevor pulsed with approval.

"Good. Your escort will be here at 10am. I need to go now." Trevor didn't even bother with a proper goodbye, instead grabbing up the papers and the now empty jewelry box, leaving Alfredo alone in the room. He didn't relax until the other man's aura was out of range to be felt before he crumpled in on himself.

He would never admit to the tears that stained the bandages on his chest.

[aion-rsa]

Saga’s 15 Greatest Hits (So Far)

WARNING: The following list contains several spoilers for “Saga.” Read at your own discretion.

“Saga,” created by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, has been one of the most consistently well-received comics series since it was first released in 2012. Some even credit it as being a major turning point in helping to usher in a new wave of comic book readers across the globe.

RELATED: 15 Most Insane Moments From Invincible

The story follows Alana, Marko and their daughter Hazel as they flee their respective races who are locked in a never-ending war with each other. But “Saga” is much more than a story of forbidden love story, as it regularly touches on the concepts of family, struggle and loss. Throughout its run, “Saga” has dealt out far more than its share of emotionally charged moments that have either hit us deep in our hearts, excited ur, or both. Here are 15 of the most impactful scenes that probably left you sitting in a pool of your own tears – either of sadness or joy.

THE WILL MEETS SOPHIE

The Will is a mercenary charged with hunting down Alana, Marko and Hazel. He’s been around since the very first issue of the series and has been involved with a lot of its best characters. Even though he’s a bounty hunter, he’s not completely heartless. As a matter of fact, he’s shown a glimmer of humanity on a number of occasions. The most respectable of which came when he made a pit stop on a planet called Sextillion, which is basically the Las Vegas of space, only three times as gritty.

After being guided to the darkest of Sextillion’s shady corners, he was introduced to a “slave girl.” The Will was shocked and appalled to find a young girl no older than seven waiting for him. The child before him had been sold into the sex trade by her uncle and had been forced to endure an unspoken level of cruelty. Naturally, The Will did what anyone with a heart and a retractable lance would do: he saved her and taught a painful lesson to the scumbags who were holding her captive.

LYING CAT COMFORTS SOPHIE

Given the life she was forced to endure at such a young age, Sophie understandably came out with some insecurities and issues with her identity. For quite a while, she still had the bad habits of looking to please everyone around her and constantly referred to herself as a slave girl. The Will and Gwendolyn did their best by giving her a new name and constantly reminding her that she was free, valued and worthy of being loved, but the most comforting words came from Lying Cat, a creature who has a natural talent for pointing out when people aren’t telling the truth.

Perhaps one of the most heartwarming scenes of the entire series came as Sophie sat next to Lying Cat, going over her newfound identity. After slipping into a moment of self-loathing, she called herself “dirty on the inside” for doing “bad things” in reference to her past. To most people, it’s clear that nothing that happened to Sophie was her own fault, which made it hurt to know she felt that way. Luckily, Lying Cat was lying next to her and said the only word she knows how to speak, washing away all of Sophie’s doubts in an instant.

“LYING.”

ALANA GETS ADDICTED TO FADEAWAY/THE BREAKUP

When their relationship works, Alana and Marko are one of the best couples you’ll find in any medium. They fell in love despite coming from opposite sides of two warring planets and always seem to find their way back to each other no matter how far they stray. However, their ugly moments tend to get really ugly.

For example, when Alana was working as an actor and hated herself for it, she was introduced to a drug called Fadeaway. Not only did it make her better at her job, but it also made her enjoy doing it. The problems came when she got addicted to the drug and was even high in front of her family. This all came to a huge confrontation around the same time that Marko was warming up to Hazel’s dance teacher and it looked like he was actually going to make a huge mistake. Fortunately, he didn’t, but that didn’t help much when he got into a fight with Alana and threw a bag of groceries at her, reminding her of the abusive household she was raised in.

MARKO OVERDOSES ON FADEAWAY

Fadeaway played an active role in breaking up a family that readers had come to love and feel like they were a part of. Alana was able to break her drug habit, but that just made it hurt even more when Marko went into a tailspin and overdosed on a bad batch of it himself (in an attempt to better understand his estranged wife by trying the same drug she had). It wasn’t easy to watch him be driven so close to the edge of his mental and emotional breaking point that he would lean on the very same drug that tore his family apart.

The trip that Marko then had into his deepest memories was both revealing and pushed the knife even deeper into readers’ guts. At a young age, he lashed out and hit a girl who was picking on defenseless animals, which went against everything he was taught. After his father found out, he whipped him with tears in both of their eyes.

It’s worth noting that this entire flashback wasn’t even in English, but the emotion of it still translated perfectly, which is a testament to Fiona Staples’ art.

THE TALE OF D. OSWALT HEIST

Without D. Oswald Heist, there would be no “Saga.” Well, not exactly. Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples surely would’ve figured something out. For the sake of continuity, however, Alana and Marko never would’ve fallen in love if it weren’t for Heist’s novel.

When readers first meet the veteran author, he’s having a seemingly pleasant conversation with Prince Robot IV about their differing ideologies on war and the effects of it. But as the conversation goes on, it delves deeper into the two men’s past experiences, even leading to the revelation that Heist’s son was a war veteran who returned home and hung himself in the bathroom.

Despite Heist being a pacifist, he ends up fighting with Robot IV to protect Marko’s mother, Klara. Later on, he prepares to fight for his house guests again, but Gwendolyn busts through the door and stabs him through the head with The Will’s lance.

YUMA’S SACRIFICE

It’s hard to say whether Yuma, the ex-wife of D. Oswald Heist, did more good or bad for Alana, Marko and Hazel. On the one hand, she helped Alana get and keep her job on the Open Circuit while they were in hiding. On the other hand, she sold them out, got Alana hooked on drugs and gave Marko a batch of bad drugs that almost killed him. Alright, maybe she did a lot more bad. She made up for it in the end, though!

The main mode of transportation for the “Saga” characters is a sentient living tree that doubles as a spaceship. However, the years haven’t been kind to it, so during a certain battle, the ship suffers a fuel leak. Yuma and Ghus (a beloved talking seal) head down to check it out. Ghus discovers that the leak is inside of the fuel chamber and anyone who steps inside to repair it will die. After a big speech from the little seal, Ghus volunteers to go. However, Yuma knocks him out with a fire extinguisher, fixes it herself and is burned alive while high on Fadeaway. What a way to go.

IZABEL’S ORIGIN STORY

One of the regular companions in “Saga” is a Horror – a.k.a. a pink ghost with half of her intestines hanging out of her T-shirt – named Izabel. For the most part, Izabel is a source of comic relief during otherwise tense moments thanks to her teenage sense of rebellion and ingenuity. She’s also Hazel’s permanent nanny, and not only because she’s literally attached to the child’s soul.

Because of her usually chipper demeanor, it was especially sobering to see her put Alana in her place when the latter lashed out at her immediately after having her big fight with Marko. Izabel did so by reminding Alana that she wasn’t always a ghost. When she was still living and walking on two legs, she had a life of her own and a girlfriend she loved dearly. Then, one day, she walked across a land mine and died instantly before getting to tell her lover how she truly felt. Therefore, she knows as much about loss as anyone else in the series.

IZABEL DYING (AGAIN)

Throughout her entire appearance while traveling with the “Saga” family, Izabel’s been one of the most consistently loyal people they’ve met in their journey. This can be tough, since the family almost always seem to be expanding, including taking in people who sometimes ended up being their enemies at some point (like Prince Robot IV). From their very first encounter, Izabel was doing what she could to protect them from harm, whether it be using her ghostly powers to scare someone off or just being there for Marko or Alana to bounce their ideas and frustrations off of.

Well, readers were in for a big surprise when Izabel was killed by the latest bounty hunters to hone in on the family’s trail. Given her incredibly likeable character and fierce sense of loyalty, it’s only fitting that the reason she’d get taken out was because she didn’t want to sell them out to a couple of Freelancers. If one thing’s been made clear in “Saga,” it’s that no one is safe from death. Not even ghosts.

BARR’S FINAL GIFT

Many families aren’t just made up of parents and their kids. In a lot of cases, an immediate family can expand to include aunts and uncles or grandparents. The latter was the case for Hazel’s family as Marko’s mother and father magically showed up one day. They literally popped out of a portal and started attacking Alana, being under the impression that she had killed Marko. Fortunately, it was a false alarm (as explained by the frantic Marko in mid-combat), so Barr and Karla’s sense of urgency allowed them to meet their granddaughter before it was too late.

It was soon revealed that Barr was terminally ill and only had a handful of months left to live. Unfortunately, those few months quickly became a few minutes, because Barr had to use the last of his energy on a spell meant to save the rocket tree ship from being destroyed. Alana, who he had just warmed up to, was the only one there as Barr faded away before Marko and Karla walked in.

Barr’s commitment to saving his family, even though they’d just met, is further proof of how caring he was.

HAZEL REVEALING HER WINGS

Given that her entire existence could potentially end a war that’s spanned decades, she’s always had to deal with bigger issues than most people would at her age. This including constantly having to hide her true identity from everyone she met and always being on the run. She even found herself separated from her parents for over a year and kept in a detention center. That’s a lot of pressure for a kid. Eventually, she broke.

One day, she got her teacher at the detention center alone and revealed her beautiful wings in all their splendor. This was something Hazel had wanted to do her entire life but had always been instructed not to. The weight of the world was lifted off of her tiny shoulders in that one instant. Seeing those wings fully expanded in the image above was cathartic for both Hazel and the reader. At least, until her teacher fainted and bashed her head open on a coffee table.

SIR ROBOT CRACKS

Prince Robot IV could’ve easily been a throwaway character. There are probably dozens of people trying to track down Alana, Marko and Hazel for a bunch of different reasons and he was just one of them. However, his story developed into something much deeper as he made it his personal mission to rescue the newborn son he had yet to meet (he was offworld on the chase when his boy was born) from the child’s kidnapper.

In order to do so, Robot formed an unlikely alliance with Marko, one of the very people he was assigned to capture. Word eventually got back to the Robot Kingdom and he was stripped of his royal status, and changed his name to Sir Robot. This dramatic fall from grace combined with years of war experience and the tragic loss of his wife would be a lot for anyone to handle. The last we saw of Sir Robot, he was high out of his mind, being incredibly forceful with Alana (despite desperately trying not to let his screen reveal his fetishistic thoughts of her) and holding his own blaster cannon up to his head.

MARKO FINALLY FACES GWENDOLYN

A lot of the time you don’t see heartbreak coming and even when you do, it still feels like you got hit by a brick wall. Some people take that pain and turn it into something positive. Some people use it as motivation to venture across the galaxy to hunt down the person responsible for ripping their heart out. Gwendolyn, Marko’s ex fiancée, would be the latter.

Back on Wreath, Marko and Gwendolyn were happily engaged when he was sent off to fight in the war while she got stuck at home. They stayed in contact for a while as Marko started to lose his motivation for battle, later eventually falling in love with Alana after he was captured. Once she caught wind that another woman was not only with her fiancé, but married him with the ring meant for her, she did whatever it took to find them.

When she confronted Marko at D. Oswald Heist’s lighthouse, he could only hang his head, apologize and tell her that he couldn’t do anything to help her save the life of man she now loved (The Will). It was an interesting mix of sad and anticlimactic, since at this point, we’d seen both characters move on while the chase was taking place.

SOPHIE STABS THE WILL

After crash landing on a random planet, Sophie, The Will and Gwendolyn decided to eat some berries they found. Little did they know, the berries were hallucinogenic and kicked in really quickly. The Will saw his dead ex-girlfriend who told him to act on his impulses. Sophie, on the other hand, saw a vision of her mother, who told her to grab a knife and stab The Will. When The Will realized what was happening, it was already too late as Sophie was standing behind him with a knife inches from his throat. As he blacked out from the blood loss, he made sure to tell her that none of what happened was her fault.

In her short life, Sophie has already known far more struggle and unfairness than anyone ever should, which is why her being saved by The Will and Gwendolyn was such a precious moment. These total strangers became the people who consistently cared about her the most in her entire life. The scene is heartbreaking because you know how much The Will means to her and how she’s going to feel about her actions once she’s sobered up.

REALIZING HAZEL MISSED OUT ON HER CHILDHOOD

Growing up in a land of war can easily rob children of their innocence. Hazel was definitely no exception to this. As mentioned earlier, she even spent some time in a prison/internment camp.

Instead of not believing in Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy, Hazel’s youthful skepticism went much deeper as she was already wondering about death and the afterlife at a very young age. After Izabel died, Hazel could feel the void it left inside of her. While everyone around her attempted to console her and let her know things would be alright, she just knew they wouldn’t. She took some time to process it all, part of which included her talking with a friend named Kurti about where people go when they die. Keep in mind, Kurti’s around the same age as her and his life is basically just as chaotic. Somehow, he took the pessimism of a broken-hearted little girl and said just the right thing to give her a little hope again.

Then they kissed. It was adorable, in spite of the depressing moments that led up to it.

THE STALK DIES IN THE LINE OF DUTY

Again, even bounty hunters have hearts. It actually makes a lot of sense for them to fall in love with each other, because they understand the lifestyle better than anyone else. This made it refreshing to see The Will, who was mostly the cold, brooding type up to that point, have a soft spot for The Stalk, an eight-legged spider woman.

While on Sextillion, The Will called the woman he loved to ask her for advice. Sadly, he ended up hearing her last moments as she was shot dead in an unnecessary conflict with the Robot Kingdom. He never really got over this and would go on to dream of and see visions of The Stalk for years, even getting himself fired as a Freelancer.

While these moment showed The Will’s softer side, they also revealed just how dark and bloodthirsty he could become. When a soldier from the Robot Kingdom picked up the phone to let him know The Stalk was dead, he went full “Taken” with the threats, and understandably so.

What moments did you think were the most emotional or impactful? Take a second to let us know in the comments!

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