Alright more Demon!Darlings Au because I was thinking about it at the airport and typed this out while I was at the bar. Waiting. For 5 hours... Ghost’s demon’s name, a little bit of their magic, and a lot of me just vibing.
"Die, you there?" Ghost asks aloud, pressing his finger to his mic out of habit.
"Always," your voice hums by his ear, as clear as if you were next to him, you might be, he hasn't really figured out how this works, "what do you need?"
"Need a count on hostiles in the area."
"Parameters?"
"Hundred meter radius," he presses his back to the wall and waits, he's getting used to this. The loss of pressure on his chest when you leave, the warmth of your return.
"Four count 25 meters ahead, another six 50 meters to your right and zero behind," you pause, "nice work on that by the way."
"Thanks," Ghost checks his mag, crouches to grab the spare you offer from his shadow.
"Want me to drop 'em?"
"Negative."
"You never let me have any fun," he can hear you pouting, "what's the point of having a demon if you never let them do anything demonic?"
"Didn't ask you to tag along, you can shove off back to hell any time." Ghost nods, satisfied with his weapons check and lifts his gun to the ready, pushing off the wall to continue his sweep. You're more than happy to keep your thoughts on that little remark to yourself. Plenty of soldiers would love to have a demon, just because he's perpetually woken up on the wrong side of the bed…
"On your left," you whisper, watching Ghost turn and execute the target with brutal efficiency. Aw, you can't stay mad at him. "Stellar work LT, must have a guardian angel."
"Pushing it," he grumps, unloading the life from another two combatants as he moves closer to target.
You get the memo, less talky, more helping him keep his head. You wonder if any other demons have to deal with this or if you just got assigned to a particularly difficult human. Well, you eye his soul, human might be pushing it.
You whisp ahead, stretching out through the shadows to feel out positions and not to kill anyone, a real misuse of your power honestly, before reporting back to Ghost. He touches his mic whenever he talks to you, it's funny. Like you're going to talk over comms and not directly to him. You keep eyes on him, collecting unused ammunition from corpses and handing it up to him from the shadows whenever he reaches for it. It’s easy work if a waste of your talents.
But if this is how he wants to do things, you’re not going to disagree. You can give him shit for it all you want but at the end of the day he’s technically in command. You wonder if other demons have this much trouble with their summoners. You barely managed to tell him your name before he seemed completely uninterested in you. Now you felt like you were just a glorified UAV in his eyes. Hardly a decent prize for a man of his caliber. You’re sure he feels the same way.
Maybe he’s disappointed in you? Maybe he was expecting a different sort of demon, something less specialized? Maybe he wanted a hell hound or one of those idiots from the all brawn no brain division. He’s practically starving you of your purpose.
Your distraction has consequences. A lone man jumping from a shadowing hiding spot to attach Ghost from behind. You feel him as soon as his feet hit the floor, already vibrating on the edge of violent impact. This is what you’re made for.
Ghost is just a moment too slow, the enemy combatant already halfway towards bashing his skull with the butt of their rifle. Thankfully you have no problem with reaction times. Flicking your wrist to direct you magic, and Ghost’s shadow to do the one thing you’re best at. A long needle of inky shadow pierces through their neck straight through the back of their skull. The man chokes and gurgles blood, dropping his gun to claw and grasp at your construct. Ghost has his knife drawn, you imagine it was with the intent to enact a similar violence. He glances down at the blade, your eyes blinking back at him curiously through the reflection on metal.
“What else can you do?” He asks, professional curiosity coloring his tone more than he’d care to admit. You feel your lips curl into a grin. You’d been hoping he’d ask.
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Elder Bones, what is your opinion on Brightflower supposedly being in the Dark Forest according to the 'magical warrior cats god' Su Susann? According to the Warriors Wiki, Su Susann put Brightflower in cat hell for hating Yellowfang once and supposedly not being sane after the truth was revealed about the death of her children. I quote, "On Vicky's Facebook, Su Susann wrote that Brightflower resides in the Dark Forest since she was filled with hate when she thought Yellowfang killed Mintkit and Marigoldkit, and was subsequently shocked and no longer sane when Brokenstar revealed the truth about the death of her kits." Seems pretty fucking messed up if you ask me.
HOT TAKE: I think it works okayish with the older "vibe" of the Dark Forest being the sort of place where your feelings put you. Like you lose a mortal part of yourself in death, and what lives on in the afterlife is your life's energy.
So it would be fucked up if, say, your kittens died and you blamed the wrong person, were consumed by it, and then in death were dedicated to that revenge in a sort of nightmarish Angry Ghost kind of state. But also, kinda neat. No wonder they take such good care of their elders, when their belief is that negativity at death can make you into an evil spirit.
And that's interesting with Ashfur in mind, too! Like it's not really something StarClan can control! If you feel like you were justified, if you didn't believe you had hate in your heart, you go where you think you should go. Tweak the line from Yellowfang to Ashfur, and have him decree, "My only crime was that I loved too much!" And you have GREAT setup for TBC.
It could unironically have made a really good way to drive conflict-- have heroes who believe they don't deserve Heaven, and villains who fully believe they do. Makes an interesting worldbuilding idea, at least.
BUT that said, that's probably a personal bias. I want the Dark Forest to be SOMETHING deeper and less simple than canon, where everyone who goes there is usually some flavor kind of murderous freakazoid (unless youre frecklewish, in which case, RIP but dont be The Nearest Woman next time, the Erins HATE those). I'm perfectly capable of seeing how fucked up it is that the two Authorial Damnations were basically just... sad women.
The other one was Lilywhisker, who was "bitter" because... she broke a leg. So the only two non-murderers who were actually sent to Hell under that feelings-first system were a Sad Mom and a Disabled Woman. If that system continued, you KNOW we'd end up seeing a billion girls damned to Hell while the boys are judged less harshly by the narrative, because the Erins are a LOT harder on women's feelings than men's.
In any case, it's not canon any longer so it doesn't invoke white-hot rage like some other statements. But it really was massively uncomfortable, considering their poor track record with both women AND mental illness.
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prompt idea! :D
steve being a poet and eddie being a songwriter. they both reference each other in their works and no one has put it together yet.
( also hi you're awesome )
Oooh anon I love this, this is such an intriguing concept bc the possibilities are ENDLESS with this one! I hope you like the direction I ended up taking it in :) (and thank you so much for dropping this in my ask box! <3 )
EDIT: I wrote an expanded version for this one and it's also on ao3 :D
---
Jeff was the one who introduced Eddie to Ronan Right. His mom was moving and when Eddie visited to help, he found his friend with his nose buried in a small book that was nearly falling apart in his hands.
“What's that?” Eddie asked, flopping down next to Jeff among the boxes.
“My mom's favorite poet,” Jeff mumbled, barely glancing up from the page.
And as soon as Eddie got a chance to pick up the book from where Jeff had left it, he was hooked. He was no help at all for Jeff's poor mom, completely engrossed in poem after poem, reading them again and again and again.
Eddie liked reading poetry to get some inspiration for his songwriting, but a lot of poetry had this atmosphere of pretentiousness around it. This didn't. It was surprisingly simple. To the point, with a rawness to it, mostly short poems that had a simplicity with which they managed to cut right to the heart of things.
Ever since that day, Ronan Right became Eddie's biggest source of inspiration. He'd never start working on new songs before reading one of Right's poems first. And whenever he got stuck on his lyrics, he'd pick up one of Right's books – and every time, without fail, he'd find something in there to help him find the right words.
---
When people would ask Steve what inspired him, his answer was always the same, always simple: music. Most people probably assumed that by that, a poet would mean classical music or maybe jazz of some kind. They were wrong: Steve Harrington, professionally known as Ronan Right, liked to blast the most screamy metal imaginable whenever he was writing – much to the discontent of his poor neighbors. He didn't care much for lyrics, it was all about the sound for him: about volume, about harmonies, about a combination of ingredients that somehow managed to flip a switch inside of his brain that unlocked the more creative ways to look at words.
His favorite band was called Corroded Coffin. Something about them stood out in the long list of metal bands he loved to listen to. It was something about the sound of the singer's voice, about the guitar riffs, that simply made sense to him, made the words that he was looking for bubble up to the surface naturally.
He got halfway through the first song on Corroded Coffin's newly released album, when he froze at his desk. He didn't care much for lyrics, but those words... There was something familiar about them.
He replayed the song from the beginning and started frantically flipping through the pages of one of his earliest poetry bundles... Yeah, there definitely was something familiar about those lyrics.
They weren't copied, exactly. It could just be a coincidence.
But the album kept playing on and Steve kept getting distracted by the lyrics because there was so much familiarity in them. It wasn't like the singer was stealing from him, it wasn't even like he was taunting his copyright or anything like that... It was like he was building on Steve's words. Like Steve had laid a foundation that had sparked Corroded Coffin to make something beautiful. Like the two of them shared a mind, a soul, an inspiration.
And Steve wrote the best poem he had ever written, in one go, that day.
---
More bundles followed. More albums were released. And they kept interlocking with each other, one causing the other to do something new, try something different, figure something out.
Ronan Right was still an obscure poet, well-respected but not mainstream enough for bigger successes. Corroded Coffin was still an obscure metal band, praised by the connoisseur but too experimental to ever get anywhere bigger than the verge of the metal scene. The only one who noticed the textual similarities between the two, was Jeff's mother. She'd smile her knowing smile and chuckle quietly, delighting in her own private understanding.
---
A new book was about to get published. Steve had to drive down to Chicago to meet with his publicist and talk some things through, but his car was in the shop so he got on a train instead. The meeting went well, Don't try to be a hero officially got the green light, and feeling content, Steve pulled out the latest Corroded Coffin cd to put in his walkman as soon as he got on the train back home.
“Hey,” the guy opposite him said with a smile and a nod towards Steve's walkman, just before Steve could put on his headphones. “Corroded Coffin, nice.”
“You know them?” Steve asked, taken by surprise, a matching smile creeping onto his own face.
“Yeah.” The guy chuckled. “Yeah, I know them.”
Sunlight fell through the window and shone on the big rings around the guy's fingers, catching Steve's eye – and pulling his gaze towards the tiny book he was holding in his hands.
“Hey,” he said, “Ronan Right, nice.”
The guy stared at him for a few seconds, something like disbelief in his big brown eyes. “You know him?!”
Steve felt laughter bubble up in his chest. “Yeah, I know him.”
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