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just-here-with-my-thoughts · 12 hours

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Welcome To The Outpost: Part 2.4 - Grief

gif from @midnightdjarin

Fandom: The Bad Batch Characters: CT-9904 Crosshair, Clone Commander Mayday Word Count: ~3875 Read Here on AO3

Synopsis: Commander Mayday was grievously wounded during the avalanche. As Crosshair insists on carrying him back to base, Mayday reflects on his regrets.

Read Part 1.1 - Frozen Read Part 1.2 - Rise From The Ashes Read Part 1.3 - Lost Battle Read Part 1.4 - No Way Out Read Part 1.5 - Rock And A Hard Place Read Part 2.1 - Last Chance Read Part 2.2 - Broken Read Part 2.3 - Swept Away

The churning and tumbling had stopped. All around him was still, the weight of snow pressing and compressing his body so that he could barely hold the breath in his lungs.

And yet, through his closed eyelids, Crosshair sensed light. That meant he must be near the surface.

He began to struggle, thrashing his way through the seductive cold of the ice until he reached air, eyes shooting wide open as a gasping breath heaved into his body.

His chest burned from the time without air – how long had he been under the ice, at the mercy of the avalanche? And still the seductive cold of that whispering grave pulled at him, sapping his strength, willing him to lie down and sleep.

He fought the urge with a physical shake, pulling his arms free of the snow and righting himself. Dimly he realised he had lost his helmet. Perhaps that explained the cold, but also why his enhanced eyesight had noticed the faint filtering of light that guided him here. If he’d been shuttered behind the tinted visor, he might have stayed beneath the surface until suffocation took him.

The mountain air bit against bare skin already numbed from being submerged in the ice, so cold it burned. Crosshair grit his teeth together to keep them from chattering and tried to recall what had happened.

The avalanche, no doubt triggered by the resonance from the cave collapse. Running.

Mayday, pushing him out the way of danger.

Stumbling, falling.

Mayday’s body, swept up and dashed against a boulder with a sickening crunch. The last sound he had heard before his world became ice and snow.

Mayday.

Glancing around at the near-featureless expanse of white left by the avalanche’s destruction, Crosshair tried to pinpoint something, anything, to get his bearings. There was the mountain peak –the tunnels they came in by had most surely been buried in the surging snowfall.

A tiny spur of dark rock jutted up from the surface. Something constricted in Crosshair’s chest and, fighting the chest-high snow every step of the way, he began to head towards it.

Instinct, more than logic, saw him scrabble at the snow around the boulder, franticly sweeping at the surface until his numbed fingertips met resistance. His hands shook so much that delicacy wasn’t an option, but he did his best to be gentle as he brushed the snow aside.

He unearthed a familiar helmet, powdery ice crystals clinging to the fabric and grubby plastoid. It tilted easily, empty.

A rising tremor of panic shuddered through Crosshair’s body as he dived back into the snow. Now his gloved hands found hair, and flesh, and he grasped broad shoulders to pull the buried commander to the surface.

As he broke free of the ice Mayday choked a sodden breath, his body reacting automatically to the air. His eyes were closed, skin pale with cold, beard almost white with snow.

"Mayday... Mayday!"

It felt awkward to wrap his mouth around the unfamiliar syllables of the reg commander's name. He'd spent the whole time avoiding it, not wanting to give the impression of connection.

But now the instinct to call him by name came as easily as saying Echo, or Tech.

A soft groan in response was enough to assure him that the commander was surfacing from unconsciousness. Crosshair gave him another shake, leaning in close, breath clouding the air between them from his desperate, open-mouthed gasps.

“Mayday, wake up!”

Dark brown eyes fluttered open, glazed with confusion. Mayday tilted is head to the side, a weak cough signalling his return to awareness.

“Come on.” Crosshair barely recognised his own voice, the urgent plea in his tone. “We have to move.”

Mayday lifted a trembling arm from the snow, grasping weakly for Crosshair. The sniper caught his hand, ready to haul him up, but Mayday pushed him away.

“Go.” His voice was no more than a wheeze, and his eyes closed as another wet cough racked his body. As the spasm passed his breath hissed out in a sigh, his face contorting with agony. “I won’t make it.”

Crosshair paused his efforts, gaze roving over the commander’s face. Then he reached for the other clone’s helmet, carefully lifting Mayday’s neck so he could slide the protective headwear back into place.

Mayday choked a laugh through the vocoder as Crosshair looped his arm under his shoulders, gently positioning his body alongside Mayday’s and lifting him to his feet.

“Stubborn, aren’t you.”

Crosshair didn’t reply. Mayday was dead weight against him, unable to stand by himself.

“Where’s your bucket, lad?”

The sniper shook his head, taking a fighting step through the snow, hauling Mayday with him. “Lost in the avalanche.”

“Got your rifle?”

Crosshair paused, startled, his sudden stop pulling another grunt of pain from the commander. He hadn’t even thought about his rifle.

He cast his gaze back along the trough of disturbed snow where he had fought his way to Mayday. The dark metal of his firepuncher was half-buried where he had originally surfaced.

He could almost hear the weak grin in Mayday’s voice as he said, “Never known a sniper get separated from his rifle.”

“I had other things on my mind.”

Crosshair carefully eased Mayday back into the snowbank before wading back along the channel to retrieve his rifle.

Some deep part of his mind was horrified that he had let it go. It had been in his hands when the avalanche struck. He was trained never to leave himself defenceless. Countless missions, years worth of training; no matter how bad things got, the only way to get his rifle out of his hands was to pry it from his unconscious fingers.

And yet, fighting his way from the ice, his only thought had been to find Mayday.

Making his way back to the commander, Crosshair carefully lifted him again. Maday sagged against him, and he took the weight gladly.

This time he didn’t bother with reassurances, fighting the chattering of his teeth. He merely set his sights on the horizon and began to walk.

Mayday heaved another shallow inhale past the stabbing pain in his lungs, light-headed as the gasping breaths failed to deliver enough oxygen to his system. Every staggered step through the snow jarred his injuries, still unchecked, but there was no need to stop and assess them.

He was dying.

His memories following the avalanche were hazy. Crosshair’s voice had come to him as if from a long way off, tinged with desperation. He’d fought his way towards the sound, command instinct compelling him to reassure the younger trooper.

As consciousness gripped him and pain swamped his senses, he’d realised he wasn’t making it back to the outpost. Better to tell Crosshair to go on alone.

A command the sniper ignored. Instead he’d dug Mayday out of the snow, gentle as he could be when he cried out in pain, then carefully lifted his body to help him walk.

Not that Mayday was doing much walking. Crosshair was half-dragging him, Mayday’s own legs too unsteady to take him more than a few steps at a time.

But still the sniper carried him. So much for his earlier dismissive attitude.

A faint, distracted smile curled Mayday’s lips inside his helmet. He’d seen Crosshair’s façade for what it was early on, recognised the self-imposed distance that only those who truly cared – and had been truly hurt – ever exhibited.

He leaned a little more heavily into the sniper. Despite his acid demeanour, and all the rumours about the CT-99s, Crosshair cared. He could have left him in the snow and didn’t. Even when Mayday told him to.

Now it was Crosshair’s turn to stumble, almost going down in the snow. Mayday dropped to his knees beside him, trying to get his blurred vision to focus on the sniper’s narrow face. The thin clone was wracked with whole-body shudders, his armour not meant for the weather, what little body heat he had rapidly being lost through his unprotected head. His brown eyes were narrowed in a determined glare, but it took him two tries to push to his feet again.

Still, Mayday didn’t try and rise immediately. Instead his hands went to the strips of dirty fabric binding his chest, numbed fingers barely able to find the ends, and started to unwrap it.

Crosshair turned wearily, ready to help the commander stand, and stopped when he saw what Mayday was doing. He huffed an open-mouthed breath, too tired to speak, but the question was in his eyes.

“Gotta cover your head,” muttered Mayday by way of explanation, swallowing against pain as he moved his arms stiffly to unwrap the fabric. “Gotta keep you warm.”

Piercing brown eyes studied him as he wound the length of fabric round his hands, slowly revealing the white clone trooper armour he wore beneath.

His cuirass began to crumble. He’d been hiding the cracks in it for so long he’d almost forgotten them. Now, without the cloth wraps holding it together, the entire chest plate began to disintegrate.

He saw the soft horror in Crosshair’s questioning gaze and swallowed, summoning an explanation.

“Standard clone plastoid… isn’t designed for prolonged exposure to the cold. It goes brittle, cracks.” He panted with the effort of speech. “Doesn’t soak an impact, but it’s better than nothing. Least it’s another layer again the cold.”

Crosshair dropped to his knees with a strangled protest, stopping Mayday’s hands. His gaze was on the ground between them, unable to look at him.

Mayday lifted a trembling hand, clapped it clumsily against Crosshair’s shoulder in an attempt to reassure him. But the sniper covered his hands with his own, taking the bundled strips from him. Then he lifted the sliding bottom section of the cuirass back against Mayday’s ribs, beginning to ravel it back into place.

“What’re you doing?” slurred Mayday. “You’ll freeze without this.”

“So will you, if your armour falls off your body,” bit Crosshair, annoyance his tone, a mask for fear. He batted Mayday’s hands away and quickly resecured the bindings.

Mayday sagged forwards, forehead of his helmet coming to rest against Crosshair’s pauldron. “I’m gone anyway,” he said softly, a bitter chuckle sending lancing pain though his ribs to choke the sound off with a gulp. “You need to get yourself out of here.”

“Shut up,” snarled Crosshair, pulling Mayday’s arm back across his shoulder, heaving him to his feet. With his other hand he retrieved his rifle, thumping it butt-down into the snow. He levered himself against the rifle, starting their stagger forwards once more, feet dragging through the snow.

Mayday couldn’t contain the mewl of pain as he stumbled against the sniper, something in his chest dragging and stabbing further at the already damaged parts of him. Crosshair paused, a flash of concern crossing his drawn features. Mayday quickly shook his head, a silent plea not to worry, and forced his injured body to stand straighter.

Crosshair was exhausted. Just as exhausted as Mayday. And if Mayday didn’t keep walking, Crosshair wouldn’t either. He’d sit by his side and let the snow take him.

The question now was how long could he hold on, for Crosshair’s sake.

Day passed as a brightening of the snowstorm that turned the whole world to white. Night descended with it dulling to grey once more.

Through it all the two clone troopers trudged wearily on. Hunger gnawed at Crosshair’s insides, a familiar emptiness. They’d brought no rations.

Each time his long eyesight picked out an ice vulture circling overhead, he wondered if it would be the one to feast on their corpses.

But somehow they fought on. At his side, Mayday struggled through the snow, barely able to stand at times against the driving wind. Sometimes his arm slithered from around Crosshair’s neck as he collapsed to the ground, lost to the brief respite of oblivion that claimed him.

Crosshair had no such respite. Each time he lifted Mayday once more, draping the unconscious commander across his back and finding some inner reserve of strength to carry him.

Mayday always awoke before long. The movement of walking jostled him, starting him groaning as he came back to wakefulness. Crosshair didn’t investigate. There was nothing he could do about whatever injuries were hidden inside his armour, and the exposure would kill him first if he tried to inspect them. Better to ignore his cries of pain, and keep walking. Get back to the Outpost.

It was their best chance of survival.

No amount of dogged determination could keep Crosshair walking forever. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. They’d walked all night to reach the raider’s base, then most of the day after the avalanche. That was without however long he’d been awake before that, nervously awaiting the mission, the flight to Barton IV and the fight at the depot.

Sleep was an alluring idea, but seductive though it was some deep-seated self-preservation told him it was impossible. A rest though. Just a short break, sheltered from the wind and driving snow, a chance to gather his reserves to continue. He could spare the time for that.

Not that there was anywhere sheltered enough to stop. He’d carry on. They’d walk a bit further. Surely he’d find somewhere they could stop.

The storm increased its ferocity. True dark enveloped the mountain, the kind even Crosshair struggled to see in. Still no shelter.

Crosshair could hear the commander’s laboured breathing through the vocoder of his helmet. He felt every grunt of pain that shuddered through the man, transmitted to him where their bodies pressed close together.

They had to stop. Mayday couldn’t go on.

Reluctantly Crosshair steered them towards the wall of the mountain. It wasn’t shelter. Not really. But the nook in the cliff-face was enough to rest against.

Levering himself up the slope with his rifle, Crosshair all but collapsed to sit against the rock-face, tucking his back against the dark wall. Mayday followed him down, half-staggering, and without thinking Crosshair wrapped his arm around Mayday’s body and pulled him close.

It was meagre comfort, his body too numb to feel the contact. But he draped his other arm over them too, rifle coming to rest across their laps. In response Mayday curled into him, knees and arms coming up as his helmet rested against Crosshair’s shoulder, a sigh of relief escaping him as his body sank against the sniper’s.

Crosshair tilted his face against him, ignoring the chill of the ice-crusted fabric as he pressed his cheek to Mayday’s helmet. He had to keep his mind busy. Couldn’t let sleep creep up on him.

Had to get them back to the outpost.

Had to save Mayday.

“Geo and Dene died in a snowstorm.”

Mayday’s broken laugh pulled Crosshair from the edge of slumber and he sat up with a jerk, startled by the unexpected comment. He settled his expression into a frown, pulling his arms, which had slackened, more tightly around Mayday.

“Ray of sunshine, aren’t you,” he grit out between chattering teeth. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“It was my fault. I ordered the patrol.”

Crosshair didn’t know what to say to that. He chose to stay silent, but at least Mayday’s words had given him the jolt of adrenaline needed to stave off sleep.

The commander was no longer shaking. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Should’ve done better. Should’ve done more to protect my men.”

Mayday’s voice faded in and out, the edges of his words blurred by pain.

“That’s what a leader does. He protects his squad.”

A real leader protects his squad.

Look where that’s gotten you. They’re all going to die here because of your failed leadership.

Crosshair’s stomach seized, a churning sensation that would have made him feel nauseous if he’d eaten anything in the last thirty-six hours. Instead it was just cramps, almost indistinguishable from hunger pangs, except for his brother’s voice echoing in his memory.

“You did what you could,” he muttered, the platitude sounding hollow even as he said it.

“Should’ve done more. Should’ve… should’ve fought harder to get the Empire to send supplies.”

Crosshair’s answer was a bitter scoff. “You’re one man. The Empire weren’t going to listen to you.”

He hated himself as he said it. Hated the bitter taste of truth as he refuted his own delusions to reassure the other man.

For a moment Mayday fell silent. His head went heavier on Crosshair’s shoulder, and for a moment Crosshair feared he’d passed out. Then, “I’m failing you. Just like I failed them.”

“Shut up.” His voice shook. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Guilt was compounding Mayday’s grief over the deaths of his men, and Crosshair risked being pulled into the vortex of his despair. His brown eyes roved over Mayday’s helmet, snow-crusted and tucked so close to his chest.

He brought one arm around Mayday’s shoulders, giving a squeeze that he didn’t know if the cold-numbed commander would feel through his armour. His eyes stung hot despite the ambient temperature, and he pressed them shut before tears could freeze on his lashes.

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he repeated in a shattered whisper. “Please don’t say that.”

He felt Mayday shift against him, didn’t open his eyes. Just held tighter, until Mayday straightened, righting himself so he leaned less heavily on him.

“Hexx was my oldest friend. We’d been together since… since forever.”

Crosshair grunted, easing his eyes open and letting his gaze relax over the swirling snowstorm outside their huddled position. He didn’t ease the pressure of his arm around Mayday.

“Been with him since the beginning. Thought I’d see the end with him, too. Never thought he’d go before me.”

His voice wavered, regret leaching into his words. “Kriff, I never imagined I’d have to go on without him.”

“You’re a trooper,” said Crosshair flatly. “You know the risks.”

“Yeah. Just… we’d survived everything up ‘til now. Almost survived this.”

Mayday’s voice grew stronger the longer he talked, like the train of thought was staving off unconsciousness. Crosshair wanted to tell him to be quiet, to keep his doubting, draining words to himself. He couldn’t find the heart to.

“I was just a shiny when we met. Fresh out of Kamino. He had green paint, but it was so new it didn’t have a scratch on it. He wasn’t much older than me.”

Crosshair huffed a soft breath of disbelief. That wasn’t forever. Him and his brothers had been together forever. Ever since he was a cadet, too tiny to remember a time before his brothers were his world.

Part of him wanted to stay quiet and listened to the older clone talk. Part of him burned as Mayday’s unsteady voice evoked those jealous, bitter thoughts about his own past.

“I remember after the order. Scouring our paint off. Stripping the armour back to white.” Mayday choked on a wet cough, the spasm wracking his body and causing him to collapse weakly against Crosshair once more. “Still saw green hexagons every time I looked at him. Couldn’t… couldn’t understand it at the time. Why the Empire wanted us all the same.

“Veetch never got to paint his armour. Never got… never got a lot of things, that boy. Lived on Barton IV, and died here too. Not much of a life.”

Crosshair thought of the two troopers who had shadowed Mayday when he first arrived at the base. They had both looked battle-worn and weary to him, their armour scarred by the elements and similarly bound by dirty wraps, just like Mayday’s.

He didn’t know which had been Veetch, and which had been Hexx. Usually he didn’t worry about that sort of thing. But now he was ashamed.

Mayday’s voice broke through his thoughts. “Tell me about your squad.”

With a surprised exhale, Crosshair almost laughed. “There’s nothing to tell.”

“What colours did you wear? Before the Empire put you in this.”

Mayday’s knuckles rapped weakly against Crosshair’s chest-plate. Crosshair caught the other clone’s hand in his own, wrapping his fingers round Mayday’s, for what little good the extra warmth would do.

“Grey and red,” he said, barely recognising the voice as his own. “Ash grey and blood red.”

Mayday’s feeble chuckle reverberated though their closely pressed bodies, and Crosshair found the sound elicited a wild, hopeful light in him. He rested his forehead against Mayday’s bucket, squeezing his eyes shut as he begged a maker he didn’t believe in to spare the commander, just a little longer.

“You clone commandos always were extra,” wheezed Mayday past his laugh. “Poetic.”

Crosshair found a shaky, shuddering laugh was drawn from him too, so unfamiliar that he panicked to hear it and clamped his jaw shut. When was the last time he laughed?

He didn’t remember. Too long. Not since before.

Before the order.

And now here he was, facing death in the freezing wilderness, and it felt hysterical and freeing to laugh.

Agonising, and cathartic, to let Mayday needle the memories of his brothers, like drawing poison from a wound too long unattended.

He replied at length, squeezing Mayday’s numb fingers in his own. “Yeah. I guess it was.”

“How was your armour painted?”

“With a crosshair. And skulls.”

Mayday’s snorted laugh set off another coughing fit, and Crosshair scrambled to his knees, leaning the commander forwards and holding him until it passed.

“A crosshair,” panted Mayday at last. “That’s on the nose.”

Crosshair just huffed a laugh, settling them back into their nook. The storm still raged, but somehow it seemed further away now.

“And skulls?”

A nod. “Yeah. All of us had them.”

“I’d’ve liked to see that.”

Crosshair lapsed into quiet, his thoughts turning inwards.

His stomach burned hot and sick with resentment, bile gathering behind his teeth as he remembered how they left him. But his fingers, numb inside his gloves, had other plans. With a trembling hand he reached up, began to trace the traitorous pattern on Mayday’s helm.

Half a skull. Even as he tried to shut out the thought, it was impossible to ignore the parallels between the long-haired commander and his estranged brother. His fingers skimmed through the crust of ice on Mayday’s helmet, picking out the pattern in perfect relief.

“They left me behind. After the order.”

He hadn’t meant for his voice to crack. Hadn’t meant for the sob to escape.

Now it was Mayday’s turn to fold his arms around him, drawing Crosshair close against his chest.

“I know, lad. It’s okay.”

Fourteen months since the order. Fourteen months under Imperial control.

Hunting his brothers down. Not understanding the buzzing in his head that wanted them dead.

Then wanting them to suffer the way that he had suffered.

Before they had left him. Again.

Something inside Crosshair broke. As inexorable as the avalanche had been, the tide of grief he had been holding back burst through the brittle dam of his self-control. The howl that ripped from his lips rivalled the wind, anger and sorrow mingling as his so-long repressed fears refused to be chained inside his heart any longer.

Mayday held him as he shook apart. And continued to hold him as they finally slept.

*something something broken armour Mayday showing Crosshair the fractures in his soul allowing Crosshair to feel his own loss*

I gave passing consideration to concise storytelling and then decided to completely disregard that in favour of writing whatever I liked to my heart's content. So sorry not sorry for the long chapter I guess :)

How are you feeling, beloved readers? There is only one more Angstpril prompt for me to fill: Day 29, Betrayal. I'm sure you all know where this story is heading.

Have you enjoyed all the stories this month? It's been great to work on this challenge in partnership with @kybercrystals94 and @the-little-moment! Keep an eye out for our last few stories, and the eventual master-post rounding up all our fics :)

#angstpril2024 #thebadbatch #fanfiction #day26 #grief #the bad batch #the bad batch fanfic #tbb fanfic #clone commander mayday #commander mayday #barton iv #the outpost #tbb crosshair #crosshair #ct 9904 #crosshair & mayday #crosshair and mayday #littlekyberthoughts

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rainydaywhump · 4 months

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Whumpcember Day 26: Collapse

How the heck is it only one day after Christmas? I've been so busy, I could've sworn it was the 27th

Art below the cut! This is from the scene where my OC Reed wakes up in an unknown location that triggers his claustrophobia. He's also terrified that he's been captured by some other hostile entity. Cervine, his rescuer, catches him when he collapses + faints from fear, pain, and exertion after struggling to get up despite his mental fog and just-bandaged wounds.

Taglist: @whumpcember @i-eat-worlds @pigeonwhumps @den-of-whump @generic-whumperz (lmk if you'd like to be added or removed!)

Also: I used a reference from a random screenshot of a pose ref that I took ages ago. If you happen to know the artist who made the pose reference, please do feel free to tell me :)

#whump #whump writing #whumpee #whump art #whumpcember #whumpcember2023 #whumpcember2023day26 #day26 #hope ive been tagging this right #oc reed #oc cervine

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kadiwright · 6 months

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Day 26: Flight

Prompt belongs to DarkDragonDeception on DA

Kid Cosmic (C) Craig McCracken

Art (C) @kadiwright

#goretober 2023 #day26 #flight #kid cosmic #kid cosmic kid #kidcosmicart #kid cosmic fanart #digitalart #myart #artist on tumblr

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bogusboxed · 2 years

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Boxtober - Day 26: “Headcanons For A Sick S/O”

Day 26: - [The Puppeteer, Bloody Painter, Nurse Ann & X Virus] X GN!Reader “Blankets” x “I’m doing it, shut up.”

-I do not own any of these characters and do not take credit for them.

The Puppeteer

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-If he figures out you’re sick, prepare to be stuck in one place for a while.

-Typically, if he wanted to keep someone in place, he’d use his strings, but he understands it's not the most comfortable thing, so he opted for the next best thing. Which is to cover you in blankets and then proceed to string you up like a caterpillar in a cocoon. It's best not to struggle, or he might laugh at you.

-He might act bossy near the beginning when it comes to your sickness. He'll say things like "I’ve got a mission to attend to" and so on, but the second you cough, he’s right there holding you. This man is a liar about not wanting to help you and will fold when there is any form of pain coming from you.

-And if you dare try to get out of bed for anything, he will pick you up. He doesn’t care if you fight back. All that's going through his head is the fact your sick and need help.

-"I have to go get something!"

"I’m doing it. Shut up."

-He doesn’t mind losing a target or two if it means you're okay. He knows how it feels to be left alone in a time of need, so he will never do that to you.

-Though you should expect him, since he’s a poltergeist, to stay up all hours of the day watching you, if you feel too intimidated, just tell him to cuddle you or he's worsening your condition. And he'll do exactly what you ask, just wanting to make sure you're okay.

-One downside to all of this is that he can’t get you medicine or buy you food in person due to being a ghost. So, he bugs his friends to go and do it for him, which is most of the time, Helen. So, please thank Helen after you recover because he’s probably messed up like twelve paintings due to Jonathan scaring him.

Bloody Painter

---

-If you tell him you’re sick, he will instantly panic. He’ll probably find a reason to blame himself for not seeing the signs earlier as your dedicated partner.

-And if it's so bad you get bedridden, he won’t let you get up in the sweetest way possible. Either by kissing your forehead to dumbfound you or hugging you back down. He could never find it in himself to hurt you because he's a puppy when it comes to you.

If you tell him you’re getting bored, he’ll bring you some sketch paper to doodle on, and if you want, you can ask him to play Pictionary. Though he’ll beat you at it, if you get a little upset, he’ll let you win, even if he is a literal Picasso.

-A random, dumb idea to have him do is to have him paint the Mona Lisa next to you. I don’t know why I added this, but I think it’d be fun. I also think if you praised him hard enough, he’d say something like "It’s just a sketch" to further his ego.

-If you manage to sneak out, whether it was when he was asleep or when he left for a moment. He’ll usher you back to bed in the nicest way possible, almost like a human to an animal, to be honest. And if you suddenly become too sick to get back, he’ll cradle you in his arms and bring you back. Though he won’t mention your escape attempts, knowing it sucks to be sick.

-Though unlike The Puppeteer, he can go and buy you snacks. He can also get delivery plus medicine due to being human. Even if he doesn’t like to show his face in public, he wouldn’t mind doing it for you.

-But for some reason, when you’re sick, he tends to get more protective of you. It's most likely due to your vulnerable state and how much he’s worried the other creeps will take advantage of it. And if they dare to try anything with you. Well, let’s just say you won’t be the only one bedridden.

Nurse Ann

---

-Probably the worst in the best way possible to come up with this. If you’re with her, she’ll be able to predict when you're about to be sick and will have been preparing for this very moment. And you’ll notice she's becoming more present in your life as well as more possessive.

-The second you cough, she'll bring you to bed, because she already has a personal infirmary just for this. And if you stay put, you’ll recover from this quicker than you normally would with anyone else.

-And she’ll keep you there in the most doctor way, either by nodding her head in disappointment or by holding you down. She is more aggressive than others, which may be just due to having experience. She just doesn’t want it to evolve into something worse, and if that means a scratch or two, then it's worth it. She is a nurse, after all.

-Though even with all of this, she’ll bring you blankets and do things normal nurses wouldn’t do. She may even go as far as to cuddle with you, but expect her to pull away if she feels you're getting too hot.

-Behind all of her cold-hearted actions is just someone who is extremely worried about your health. She couldn’t stand losing you and sees you as her responsibility. Since she is a nurse.

-If you can manage to escape from your hospital bed, she will hunt you down. She would never hurt you to the point of worsening your condition, but she wouldn't mind scaring you back to your bed. But, if you ever show signs of surrendering mid-chase, she’ll soften up instantly and swing you over her shoulder back to bed.

X Virus

---

-Oh no. Unlike Nurse Ann, you’ll be in bed longer than you should be. He will go out of his way to extend your stay and may even cause you to get worse. But, he typically has the best intentions in mind, except when he doesn’t.

-He’ll probably be heavily interested in the worst way possible. He’ll make you think he’s trying to help you. But he may test something out on you. He won’t do anything viral that’ll kill you, but something more minor. But, the second he realizes that he’s making it worse, it tears him apart. He had bad intentions at first, but it quickly dissolves into guilt when he realizes what he did.

-He’ll panic at first, fighting his impulsive thoughts, and eventually run to EJ for any sort of help. He knows he doesn’t have the mental capacity to help you at first, so he gets EJ to help out first. And once he gets the basics, he turns into a sweetheart. However, expect EJ to also keep an eye on you. Which Cody and you are both fine with, seeing as Cody can't be trusted with his thoughts.

-Though he messes up at first, he realizes that you are not a test subject and that you are his partner. It stems from his struggle to sympathize with humanity, thinking that it was okay. But, when you aren’t okay with it, he changes it. So feel free to ask anything of him. He is willing to do anything to atone for his actions.

-And if you get up from bed with something contagious, he’ll ask you politely to get back in bed but won’t try and stop you. Even though he wants to, he can’t bring himself to stop. On the other hand, EJ will most likely stop you and get you back to bed knowing Cody won't help.

-If after all of that, you ask him to cuddle, he won’t hesitate to do so. He’ll drop everything, even if he was working on a virus for the operator. He doesn’t care, he just wants to help you out. Though he’ll bring way too many blankets.

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bongo-clash · 2 years

Text

I Want To Break Free

Ectober week prompt: Six Feet

'When three members of Casper High’s football team make one mistake too many, they’ve got no choice other than to bury the evidence. But, both fortunately and unfortunately for them, dead doesn’t mean gone, and they’ve been living in a ghost town for years.'

(Content warnings in tags || fic under cut!!)

For all that Amity Park is the poster child for widescale property damage, the crime rate is practically nonexistent. There’s something about finding a common enemy in the violent ghosts ravaging their town that wards off that willingness to go against another human being’s interests like that; murder, in particular, has been shoved off the table since the moment the victims started coming back to haunt them. It’s common knowledge that if you kill someone in Amity Park, everyone is going to find out.

This is exactly why three A-listers are shitting themselves right about now.

Look, they hadn’t meant for it to go this far. It’d been such a harmless thing in theory- or, well, maybe not harmless, but it shouldn’t have gone any further than humiliation and maybe a bruise or two. They should’ve known it only takes a bad fall. They’re footballers- they should’ve known. But it’d been thoughtless, a split second decision made in the incredibly brief time the opportunity had been presented to them. All Dale had said was ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if you tripped him?’.

And it had been funny, until he hadn’t gotten up again. Now Danny Fenton is dead on the shower room floors, and every single one of them is guilty.

There’s a long time where none of them know what to do. God, they’ve just killed someone, is this second-degree or manslaughter? There certainly wasn’t any express malice, but they’d definitely thought about swiping his feet out from under him without considering that he might hit his head; that could definitely been seen as implied malice. But they hadn’t meant to! They’d never wanted to, it was never supposed to go this far, and it was especially never supposed to go this far here.

‘Here’, as in some place at the end of the school day, when the buses were about to leave and the teachers weren’t waiting up for them, having let them lock up before and having been willing to do it again. ‘Here’, as in Casper High in the first place, that had already seen tragedy in a fire taking almost the entire student body in the fifties, and had now witnessed a murder in its reconstructed halls. ‘Here’, as in Amity Park, the ghost town, where there’s a non-zero chance of this literally coming back to get them.

The silence charged with the smell of deodorant and a wet body already beginning to self-digest is broken, finally, by Dash- the one to trip him, and the first one to back away when he’d felt Fenton’s limp hand for a pulse and found nothing.

“What the Hell do we do?” He whispers, voice barely reaching anyone else in the room, but you could hear a pin drop beneath the still-running showerheads, and everyone was straining to hear it, desperate to divert their attention. My dad’s a lawyer, he thinks, is there any chance he could save us from this?

As if reading his mind, and said like the instigator that knows they’ll be thrown under the bus for suggesting this in the first place, Dale interrupts the train of thought with a sturdy “We can’t go to the police.”

“Dude, are you insane?” Kwan splutters, barely able to keep his gaze from flitting back to the crime scene. And holy shit, this really is a crime scene. “Dale, we can’t just try and bury this, that’s so much worse.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re a witness!” Dale snaps, looking overwhelmed but outsourcing it to aggression, eyes wide and afraid but brow furrowed. “You’re really gonna let us take the fall like that? We’re your friends.”

Kwan, to his merit, is standing his ground, despite looking incredibly green around the edges. In fairness, all three of them probably look that way. “I’d rather be a witness than an accomplice! I can’t- we can’t-!”

“We’re the only people here.” Dash interrupts numbly, and this is probably the second most awful thing he’s ever done apart from actual murder, but all that’s running through his head right now is I can’t go to jail. His life can’t be over with one dumb mistake even if Danny’s is. “Who’s to say it wasn’t you who did it? All the teachers have seen how we act around the school; we work as a group, always. They’re not gonna believe it was just one of us. They’re gonna believe it was all of us.”

This is his best friend, and he’s convincing him to help hide a body by threatening him, because Dash accidentally committed murder and this does not in the slightest feel like something that’s actually happening to him right now. The whole world feels like a smudged trail against the lens of a window pane. There are tears in Kwan’s eyes.

“I’m never fucking talking to any of you again.” Kwan spits, voice damp with distress. “You- You’re monsters for this. It stops being an accident the moment you start trying to cover shit up, I just- this is horrible.”

The realisation that he’s never heard his friend swear before is a thousand miles away, back in some world where Dash’s biggest problem was getting detention for making Mikey late to class on Tuesday. It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t sad. “But you’re gonna help us.”

His expression is the picture of helplessness, but he doesn’t say a word in retort. Silently, the agreement is made that no one is going to know.

Figuring out what they’re supposed to do with the body is a completely different ball game, though. Kwan had enough of an interest in forensic science (wrenched from him completely two minutes ago, but he can’t erase what facts he already has) to know that dead bodies are apparently heavy as Hell, and the woods is too far to carry one towards. It’d be a terrible idea to bury the body under or near the football field- the disturbed soil would be way too noticeable- but to get to any other place with easily accessible ground, they’d have to transport the body through town and none of them could drive. That doesn’t leave them with a lot of options.

“Behind the bike shed.” Dale exclaims suddenly. “The gap between the shed and the hedge is so tiny no one even goes there to make out- no one’ll even notice the difference.”

“But won’t people look around the school if someone got murdered here?”

Dale looks to the showers nobody bothered to turn off, and down at the body with glazed eyes. “They won’t know it was here if all the blood’s down the drain.”

There’s not much to argue with there. Dale has the forethought to go outside and make sure the coast is clear while grabbing a sheet of tarp from the equipment shed, bringing it back into the room with lips pursed into a hardset line.

Kwan keels over and spills his guts into the shower drains the moment Dash lifts the body, blood and water congealing at the back of Fenton’s head and spilling onto the floor, but no one says a word about it, they just wait until he’s finished. They wrap the body in the tarp until only the ends of his hair and the tips of his shoes are visible, and Dale directs the showerhead to wash away the gore. He tries not to squirm at the knowledge of what he’s holding in his hands right now, because if there’s any time to freak out it’s not now. Not when there’s still stuff left to do.

When they’ve gotten to the spot behind the shed, there’s already three shovels leaning against the back. Dash puts the body down underneath the hedge, and grabs a handle.

“Six feet.” He says. “And no one’ll have to know.”

It’s probably the most stupid thing he’s ever done other than trip Danny Fenton in the showers, but that same night, he goes back to the place they buried the body.

He doesn’t know why he thought it was a good idea. He hadn’t, most likely, but still, a piece of him felt like he needed to go back, that dumb part of his brain where all the morbid curiosity comes from and all his meanest ideas go. Regardless of the cause, though, at two in the morning not eight hours after they’d tried to flatten the soil, Dash is back at the grave.

His heart still aches with everything Kwan had said, begging them to just go to the police and come clean, because no matter how much he doesn’t want his life ruined he knows it already is. There’s not going to be any coming back from this- whether anyone finds the body and discovers their part in it or not, this is going to follow him for the rest of his life. That soil disturbed amongst the grass from upturning, wedged between the bike shed and the hedge, the ground shaking with motion.

…The dirt. The dirt’s moving. Why’s the dirt moving?

All at once, he jumps back about five paces and freezes stock still, gaze transfixed towards the soil rumbling like the epicentre of a personal earthquake. His mind is terrifyingly blank as he watches, hearing more and more coming from beneath as the time passes somewhere between a good few minutes and an eternity, something like muttering or moans permeating the earth.

A hand grasps for purchase as it breaks through the top layer of the soil- pale, grimy, and fuzzing at the edges with translucence. The palm finds flat ground some centimetres away, and with a sound like a grunt or a cry, the corpse pulls itself out of the ground.

Danny Fenton stands in full form before him, brown blood smudged across his temple from the back of his head and dirt caking every other inch of him. The tarp is sticking out from the ground like a tongue. “Hey Dash,” Fenton sighs, like he hadn’t just crawled out of his own unmarked grave alive. “What are you doing here? It’s… oh man, it’s totally past curfew. My parents are gonna kill me for sure.”

It’s that comment in particular that snaps him out of his stupor, catching the weird look in the other boy’s eyes. “Fenton, what the fuck?” His voice is half-wheezing with disbelief, surprised he’s able to breathe between it at all. This is impossible, shouldn’t be happening, but, this is Amity. The dead come back to haunt them all the time.

“What?” He asks blithely, before tilting his head to look back at the mound in the dirt, the hole that had been filled to hide him. “Oh, that? Don’t worry about it. No one comes back here anyway, and it’s not like they’ll care if they do.”

He can’t for the life of him process the calm in Danny’s voice. “You were dead.” He says. “I killed you. We buried you.”

“But you didn’t report it to the police, huh?” Not knowing how else to respond, Dash shakes his head. “Yeah, makes sense, they never do. Still, guess that gives me less issues to deal with in the long run, and I can’t really complain about that even if the morality of the whole thing bugs me. You really should tell people about these kinds of things before they find out on their own, y’know? Oh, but Dash?”

Fenton has his back turned by now, having stretched his limbs out and began to walk off during his talk, but he turns his head just a little, then. Just enough that Dash can see the glint of sharp teeth underneath his lips. Just enough for his eyes to catch green under a light that doesn’t exist.

“No one’s gonna believe you.”

…

(When Kwan and Dale come to school with him the next day like nothing’s wrong, and they spot Danny Fenton talking with his friends by his locker like any other stupid day, they don’t say a word. They don’t make fun of him when he falls asleep in class after claiming to have had a ‘long night’, and they don’t tell their friends why they weren’t at Star’s house by eight, and they don’t ask Kwan to talk about it when they go to bathroom together at lunch and he has a panic attack over the sinks. Because Danny Fenton being alive is not possible, but if the dead won’t tell their secrets, then neither will they.)

(Neither will they.)

#tw death #tw murder #tw corpse #tw injury #Yes the title's from the Queen song I thought it'd be funny #ectoberweek2022 #day26 #dp fic #dp fanfic #danny phantom fic #danny phantom fanfiction #danny phantom #danny fenton #dash baxter #kwan dp #Bongo's Writing!!!

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