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downthe-f4ndom-rabbith0le · 1 year

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The Way Back Home (Spencer Reid x Reader) - Chapter One

The Way Back Home (Spencer Reid x Reader) - Chapter One Reader Insert: she/her pronouns Word Count: 4867 Warnings: major angst, major fluff, mentions of murder, graphic descriptions of dead bodies, crime scenes, near-death experiences, slow-burnish romance, death, canon violence, rape, swearing, guns, knives, prostitution, canon cuteness of the team. Spoilers: Maeve's death, mentions of previous cases or canon events from seasons 1-10.

Spencer and you have an unspoken connection with one another. Nothing has ever happened between you two, especially since everything went down with Maeve, but your love has grown and overcome and is now clear as day to everyone. However, just when Spencer builds up enough courage to ask you out officially, you're requested on an undercover mission that halts your budding relationship in its tracks.

Months go by without a word from you until bodies of prostitutes start showing up in New York and the BAU is brought in to help. Spencer and you finally reunite as both your cases collide, but your lives and your love are both on the line now.

Will you and Spencer be able to find the way back home this time?

~~~

In the bedroom of his apartment, Spencer fiddled with his tie as he looked in the mirror. He didn't know why he bothered though, it was always perpetually crooked. Something you always tease him about.

Teased.

He clenched his jaw at your memory. It had been eleven months since you'd left. Eleven. Months. You just... up and disappeared without a call or a note. Heck, he would've taken a text despite his adversity to how it was inevitably devolving people's interpersonal communication skills.

When he'd shown up to the office on Monday, he expected to see your dazzling figure with two coffees in hand - one for yourself and one for him - and that infamous bright smile on your lips. He hated to admit it, but he'd become reliant on you to always be there. You had only joined three years after he had, around a similar to time to Emily (who had been like a big sister to you), but even after others came and went, you had always stayed.

You had stayed with him. By him. He selfishly thought sometimes it was for him.

So when Hotch had informed him and the rest of the team that you had been offered another position with a different unit across the country, he shouldn't have been all that surprised that you had jumped at the chance to do something more than what you were doing at the BAU.

Again, selfishly, he thought that what you both did would be enough for you. It was for him.

He should've been happy for you despite how shocking the news came. But instead he was struck with an odd sense of open-endedness - no closure. If you were leaving, you would've said something... right? He wasn't the best at recognising social cues or reading people's emotions, but he couldn't have mistaken the smile you'd given him when he'd asked you out that night. It was joyous, it was relief, it was overwhelming excitement for the future. There could've been no faking that you felt what he felt and wanted what he wanted.

His fingers dropped from his tie, seeing no point in trying to fix it any further. Instead, his gaze drifted to his hair. It was long again, unruly curls caressing the top of his neck and tucked as neatly as possible behind his ears. You would always play with those curls as you gave him head massages when he was having his migraines, and kept the habit up whenever Spencer was stressed or tired. It helped him relax, it soothed him.

The image of you pouting whenever he got his hair cut short and close-cropped tugged his lips slightly upwards. He smoothed back the curls on his forehead. He had a random thought to just shave them all off. They were just another reminder of how much time had passed since you'd left.

He raised an eyebrow at himself in the mirror.

He wondered if he could rock the bald egg look.

He grimaced at the thought and shook his head. What the hell am I doing? He rubbed at his tired eyes before looking at his wrist watch briefly. He had to be in the office in just over an hour. So he quickly grabbed a suit jacket from his closet, but decided halfway to the kitchen that he would need extra warmth today and so turned around to grab a cardigan from his messy chest of draws.

He winced at the chaos of colours and material he found waiting for him. For a highly organised, intelligent man, he really could be a complete mess.

He wasn't looking for any particular one, but he absentmindedly sought out the regal navy blue one you'd gifted to him on one birthday. It was the most worn in his collection by far, having worn it multiple times a week (sometimes even consecutively) in the past eleven months. He fiddled with the soft material for a moment, and he swore he could still smell your perfume on it.

Vanilla Caramel and Peonies. An odd combination, but just the right balance of sweetness and freshness.

It was the right balance of you.

She's not coming back, he told himself, and his broken heart yearned for what could've been once more. He'd called you - well, tried calling you - for days, weeks, months even after you'd left. But he'd just go straight to voice mail, and you had never tried to call him back. It was like six years of working together had never happened, like they had never mattered.

Like he had never mattered.

He shook his head and dropped the cardigan in favour of an emerald green one that his mother had just sent him from one of her travels. It was oddly cold compared to yours, but at least he knew where his mother was and that he was on her mind, no mattered how disorganised it had become.

He wondered if he was still on your mind, wherever you were.

It didn't take him long to put on the green cardigan, grab his lunch from the fridge - it was just leftover Chinese from the takeout place down the street - and lock his apartment up before making his way to work. The drive to the FBI Head Quarters in Quantico was its usual, monotonous route, making it to the highly secured facility in under an hour. He entered the bullpen and went straight for his desk first, placing his satchel bag on it before heading for his safe haven - the break room.

They'd just closed a case yesterday and so he expected to be filling out a lot of reports today. Thus the reason for the copious amounts of sugar in his coffee he was currently making.

'Whoa! Talk about having a sweet tooth. Save some for the rest of us, Reid.'

Spencer looked over his shoulder to see Kate Callahan walking through the door into the break room, an amused and slightly baffled expression morphing her gentle features as she eyed Spencer's coffee making. She walked over beside him to grab a mug from the cupboard and poured herself some coffee from the freshly brewed pot beside Spencer.

Spencer spared her a tight-lipped smile. Not long after you had left, so did Alex. It was like a double blow to Spencer's trust system, with two pillars of reliance being taken away so quickly and without warning. Kate had joined the team soon after that, and Spencer was glad to see the past few months that Kate had slotted in with the team just as nicely.

But she sadly couldn't fill the you-shaped hole in his heart.

'Sorry,' he said, putting the sugar container down finally and began to mix what he could in with the hot coffee. 'Our days started earlier when I first started, and normal coffee just never did the trick for me. Now I can't have it any other way but tooth-rottingly sweet.'

She chuckled as she placed the pot down and drank it straight - no creamer or sugar or milk at all. 'Doesn't worry me. I'm a true espresso gal, but I think Morgan may have some issues if all the sugar somehow disappears.'

'I won't tell if you won't,' Spencer offered, tapping the spoon on the cup's edge before placing it in the sink. He took a tentative sip from the hot drink, and relished at the sweetness that warmed his throat.

Kate winked as she took a sip from her own coffee. 'It'll be our little secret.'

Before either could make a move to return to their desks - where no doubt towers of paperwork were waiting for them - the bright, colourful figure that was Penelope Garcia stopped by the doorway. 'Good morning, my beautiful people,' she said by way of greeting, although her smile didn't reach her eyes like usual. 'I know you all just got back but we've got another case. Roundtable when you're ready.'

Kate sighed with exhaustion but Spencer nodded his understanding. Paperwork soothed him, but he didn't necessarily want to be soothed right now. He wanted action, a distraction, something to physically do. Anything to take his mind off you.

'Looks like paperwork will have to wait,' he said, bounding after Penelope with Kate in tow.

'Don't sound so happy about a dead body, Reid,' Kate suggested.

'You don't know it's dead body,' he argued as he swung by his desk to grab his bag and rejoin Kate to walk towards the Roundtable Room, all the while not spilling his coffee. 'Statistically, it is more likely that there are multiple dead bodies involved considering we don't get called in for singular homicide events very often unless it's a high profile victim, in which case the unsub could be a highly trained assassin or of military background. But those statistics are another collection of data unrelated to serial killing, so it's more likely the case involves a serial killer, and therefore multiple dead bodies.'

The two of them entered the Roundtable Room to find the rest of the team already seated and Penelope standing in front of the screen, ready to present.

'What are we talking about?' JJ asked.

Before Spencer could answer, Kate cut in with, 'You don't want to go down that rabbit hole.'

'Okay, my pretties,' Penelope started, clicking a button to start the presentation. Three pictures of women appeared on the screen, alongside birth certificates and a picture of their dead body. 'We have three dead women: Anna Carswell, Petrina Summers, and Larissa Pembroke; and as you can tell from the pictures, their deaths were very messy. There are signs of sexual violence from what remains of their... um... mutilated nether regions.'

'They were stabbed?' Kate asked, her face pinching with disgust and sadness for the women. Spencer didn't blame her. There was blood everywhere including the walls of the dumpsters they were found in. It was enough to make him squeamish; he couldn't imagine what Kate, JJ and Penelope were possibly feeling.

Penelope nodded grimly. 'Yeah. Anna Carswell was the first victim and was only stabbed five times, but the others both have twelve stab wounds each.'

'So much rage...' JJ mused softly as she examined the pictures.

'That,' Derek started, 'or twelve is a significant number for the unsub.'

'Or he's trying to send a message to someone,' Hotch added. 'Look at her clothes, her shoes, makeup and hair.'

Spencer narrowed his eyes to inspect each area individually, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what Hotch was talking about. 'Styled or big hair; tight-fitting tops, skirts and dresses that leave little to the imagination; significantly high heels; and bold jewellery and makeup,' Spencer listed his observations pragmatically before looking away from the screen to address the others properly. 'I don't want to stereotype, but my guess is that they're prostitutes.'

'And boy wonder wins this round of Guess Who,' Penelope announced. 'All of them worked as prostitutes at popular establishments around Manhattan, but they were so far strung that local police didn't put the killings together until Larissa's body was found last night. The first victim was killed six months ago, but Petrina and Larissa make two in the last month.

'That's a bit of an escalation for the unsub,' Rossi finally said, having been quietly contemplating since Spencer walked in. 'Why the sudden increase in kill time, do you think?'

'Maybe he's impotent,' JJ offered. 'Maybe Anna Carswell was just an accident - see, look at the jagged and varied placement of the stab wounds. And for the past few months he's been trying to repress the urge to kill again, and some recent event has been his stressor.'

'JJ's right, Petrina and Larissa's stab wounds are cleaner, intentional. He's perfecting his craft,' Kate stated.

'Who called it in?' Derek asked.

'The first two victims were found by dumpster guys picking up the trash, but Larissa was found by a homeless man trying to find some food,' Penelope said. 'Local authorities have all callers in at their main office and are expecting you within the next two hours.'

'We'll keep debriefing on the plane,' Hotch said as he stood up, tablet in hand. 'Wheels up in twenty.'

Suddenly his phone pinged, and he took a quick glance at it, his face turning grim.

'What is it, Aaron?' Rossi asked.

Hotch pocketed his phone as he said, 'That was the New York FBI office. They've found another body. Wheels up in ten.'

~~~

Spencer stood across from the coroner with the latest victim's body laying between them.

Roxy Vega. Sounded fake, but that's who her brothel manager identified her as. She was the one to call Roxy in, but said that one of her girls was the one to find her. Spencer and Morgan were to go talk to her and the manager after looking at the body.

'She's the same as the others, poor thing,' the coroner said, her brow scrunching with displeasure. 'Stabbed to death. Twelve, to be exact.'

'Anything from the toxicology report?' Derek asked.

She shook her head. 'Hasn't come back yet, but I can guess she'll be like the others too and be clean. People think prostitutes would be similar to junkies, but the truth is it's usually whoever they're serving that put something in their system to... elevate the experience.'

Spencer and Derek must've been pulling shocked expressions, because she chuckled, putting her clipboard down on a table beside her. 'I used to do some escorting myself to help pay off medical school before I got this job. Nothing extreme like these girls, but the same principles applied.'

Spencer gave her a tight-lipped smile before pointing at the sheet. 'If you don't mind, can I look at the wounds myself?'

'Sure,' the coroner said, and delicately manoeuvred the white sheet covering Roxy so that it covered her upper body still. Even the dead deserved some modesty.

But Spencer wasn't perturbed by her female genitalia. He was more interested in the twelve stab wounds that scarred her lower abdomen and pelvic area. Six side by side in each area.

'That's odd,' he murmured to himself.

But Derek heard him. 'What is?'

Spencer hovered his pointer finger over each wound. 'Look at these,' he said. 'They're almost exactly parallel to one another, all in a row. And the cuts are all the same length, too.'

'Well that rules out our unsub being rageful,' Derek added. 'If he was angry when he killed them, the wounds would no doubt be all over the place, and varied in length if he did it in a frenzy.'

'So our unsub is cool, calm and collected,' Spencer mused, but something still didn't add up. 'There is almost something ritualistic about the placement. Like it's a symbol.'

'Well, he's definitely trying to send a message then,' Derek said, eyes drifting back to Roxy laying on the table. 'But who is it for?'

'And has it been heard yet?' Spencer added. The buzz of his phone prompted him to pull it out of his coat pocket and answer the call.

'Hotch,' he answered. 'Morgan and I have just finished at the morgue. The lines on the latest victim suggests that these could be ritualistic killings or a message to someone or even a group. The stabs were clean so the girls, well Roxy at least, would've been restrained or knocked unconscious before they were stabbed.'

'That changes the profile from a raging serial killer to someone who had these killings premeditated,' Hotch concluded. 'Good work, you two. Head down to the brothel to see the manager and the co-worker who found her. Local authorities took their statements but maybe they know more than they think or are letting on.'

'Okay,' Spencer agreed. 'What are you guys doing?'

'JJ and Kate are talking with the victim's families one at a time and Dave and I are at the headquarters talking with the officers and detectives who started this case. I'll ask them if they noticed the stab wound patterns, see if it means anything to them.'

'We'll call JJ and tell her the same,' Spencer said. 'Maybe the unsub is taunting the parents somehow and the key is in the stab wounds.'

'Okay. Call back when you're done.'

'Got it.'

Spencer hung up and turned to the coroner. 'Thanks so much for your help. If you could send that M.E. report to our unit chief, that'd be most helpful.'

'Of course,' she said, offering a kind smile. 'I'll keep looking for other anomalies, particularly if you think they were somehow restrained or unconscious before they were stabbed.'

'The mass blood spillage was just for show,' Derek said. 'I have a bad feeling these girls weren't stumbled upon by accident. There's more to this, and whoever these stab wounds were meant to warn is the key to solving who is behind all of this.'

Spencer quickly thanked the coroner for her time before he and Derek were out the door and in an SUV driving to downtown Manhattan to the brothel.

The Chateau, despite its name, was just a small sign hanging above a door that needed a fresh coat of paint about ten years prior. No doubt the sign would light up neon at night to draw in the locusts that were cheating husbands or deadbeat wannabes. But it was located on a busy street, and daylight made it look unassuming compared to the big billboards and towering office buildings around it. Just a hole in the wall, really.

'This place looks like a dump already,' Derek said as they examined the outside. Posters advertising all kinds of entertainment from the establishment were pinned to billboards either side of the door and down the wall where people stood in line to get in perhaps. But they were torn, like flyers from a travelling circus long ago.

'That's probably a strategic method,' Spencer said. 'It's what many opium dens in Shanghai used to do back in the 1920s to avoid law enforcement suspicion. Of course, brothels and even opium dens are legal today, but they now act as the fronts for more illicit dealings.'

'Right,' Derek said, reaching out for the door handle tentatively. 'Let's just hope that isn't the case today. We've got enough to worry about with four dead girls let alone some underground, black market bullshit.'

Derek wasted no more time in opening the door and stepping inside, Spencer right on his heels. But as soon as the daylight faded and their eyes readjusted, they both gaped at what met them inside.

Lavish gold and black velvet carpet lined the floors, swirling in intricate, flowery designs that made Spencer feel dizzy for a second. A settee sat to their left in a small alcove where gold curtains were pulled back, but Spencer took a guess as to why they would be closed at certain points. All the furniture were beautifully crafted pieces with a black gloss layer and gold lining certain edges that sparkled in the low light from the victorian style lamps hanging on the walls.

It scared Spencer how accurate he had sort of been. It felt like he was in a 1920s film noir club where gangsters met up to make and complete deals. Where they smoked cigars, and the showgirls wore sparkly, frilly, feathery dresses and patterned pantyhose. In the back of his mind, Spencer knew it was a brothel, that the gold and sparkles were just a front, but he couldn't help but be impressed by the attention to detail. Right down to the artwork that hung on the walls, all of which were from famous painters from the time period.

'They're amazing, aren't they?'

Spencer spun alongside Derek at the new, commanding voice that entered the room, and found a woman in her late forties to early fifties standing by a podium where the registry would no doubt sit each night for customers to sign in and out of. He had to give it to the establishment, it was committed to the act.

'Y-Yes,' he stuttered an answer, looking back at the painting in front of him. 'It looks like- I'm sorry, but are these the real thing?'

She laughed heartily as she sashayed over to them, the bellowing arms of her white, silk sleeves flowing gracefully with her movements. 'Goodness, no. The real ones are more than likely in a museum somewhere or hanging above the bed of some rich bimbo who doesn't understand what it is or who even painted it.' Despite the malice in her words, her red lips parted in a sultry grin. 'But alas, these do just fine. As do you, might I say.'

Spencer didn't like how her eyes raked over him and Derek ever so slowly, like she was some predator contemplating what part of her prey she should consume first. This is what JJ, Kate and Penelope must feel most of the time, he thought, averting his eyes as best as possible from the woman's snake-like ones.

He decidedly did not like the feeling it gave him.

Sensing his partner's discomfort, Derek reached into his jean pocket and pulled out his badge. 'Thank you, but we're here on official business only today.'

Those snake-eyes latched onto the badge, and it only took her half a second for her sultry smile to drop and to cross her arms. But not out of embarrassment, more like how a child did when they didn't get what they want. 'So you're the FBI agents I was told was visiting me today. How charming.' She held out hand to Derek, and Spencer couldn't help but notice how bare it was compared to rest of her. Long dangling emeralds hung from her ears, matching the beautiful emerald necklace around her neck. But no rings, or bracelets.

Odd.

'I'm Madame Lacroix,' she said, Derek finally taking her hand. 'I am the manager of The Chateau.'

She held her hand out to Spencer, to which he awkwardly splayed his hands up by his chest in a mock surrender. 'I, uh, actually don't do handshakes, sorry. Just a personal thing.'

Madame Lacroix looked him up and down from over her nose, which was an impressive act as she stood a good head shorter than him. After a moment, she dropped her hand and the matter, turning back to Derek once more.

'Madame,' Derek started. 'We just want to ask a few questions about Roxy Vega. We understand she was... one of your own for a while now. Is that correct?'

'Yes,' she answered, her painted face taking on a contemplative, even fond expression at the mention of Roxy. 'She'd been with us around eleven months. Some of the girls were supposed to take her out this coming weekend to celebrate. Geez, did those girls love partying.'

'How so?' Spencer inquired.

That snake-like gaze whipped back to him in an instant. 'They would have weekends away once every couple of months. Fancy yachts, expensive clothes, gourmet restaurants. One time, they went to the Greek Isles for a week.' She shrugged nonchalantly. 'But they could always pay for it. My girls are the best at what they do. So much so they are able to pay me and keep a good amount of earnings for themselves. And before you ask, everything is perfectly legal here, I have papers.'

'We're not really interested in that, Madame Lacroix,' Derek continued. 'You say Roxy was part of a, shall we say, an exclusive group in your establishment.'

'If you're implying that I play favourites, I don't, agent,' Madame Lacroix said, her tone dancing with silent threat. 'All my girls work the same hours, and relatively earn the same amount. It's completely on them if they decide to form friendships or alliances wth one another.'

'Was the girl who found her in that group too?' Spencer asked for Derek.

She nodded. 'Usually, Roxy and her girls don't let newcomers into their group. And if they do, it's not until they're a few months into working here. But yeah, Serena was pulled into that group from the moment she got here only three months ago.'

'Do you know where she was before The Chateau?' Derek asked.

'Yeah, she was uptown at a strip club, Guilty Pleasure. I know the guy who runs the place, and I don't blame her for leaving.'

Guilty Pleasure. The name rung familiar with Spencer, and so he pulled Derek away a little to whisper in his ear. 'That's the club Larissa used to work at.'

'And what are the odds that Larissa is now dead?' Derek added, eyes lighting with recognition. He quickly turned back to Madame Lacroix, urgency written on his face. 'Madame, there have been three other girls found in similar fashions to Roxy.'

For the first time since she entered the room, she didn't appear in control of everything happening. Her face dropped and a look of confusion and shock reflected in her eyes. 'Three other girls? Oh my goodness...'

'If you'd like, we can continue this talk in your office?' Derek offered, to which she nodded and began walking towards the podium, which Spencer now realised was in front of twin staircases heading downwards either side.

'I usually conduct private business at night, so my office is down in the Pit where I can make sure my girls are okay,' she explained as they descended into the a dimly lit bar reminiscent of the roaring 20s.

A giant glass chandelier hung in the middle of the ceiling, providing enough light to see the retro bar to the left, the cabaret setup of chairs and tables that faced the small stage at the far end of the room, and the empty booths where more settees and lounges sat with curtains drawn back for now. Again, Spencer was struck by how much it felt like stepping back in time. It was truly impressive.

Spencer halted, however, when Madame Lacroix stopped and turned back to face them, genuine concern furrowing her perfectly plucked brows. 'You don't think Serena has anything to do with this. Do you?' she asked.

'We don't know that for certain,' Derek answered. 'But we would like to have a talk with her so we can start clearing up this mess. Do you know where we can find her?'

She nodded, then pointed to a door over their shoulders. 'She's here doing stocktake for me today, actually. She does so on occasion when my workmen are busy with other jobs. A load just came in this morning. You can found her sorting through it out back in the loading bay.'

'Thank you,' Spencer said before turning to speak with Derek. 'I'll go talk with her while you finish here.'

'Shout if something goes wrong, okay?' Derek warned, to which Spencer agreed and made his way to the back door.

He couldn't stop his nose from scrunching as the scent of rotten food and heavy alcohol wafted up it. Giant bins were pressed against the far corner of the loading bay, but it wasn't a very big room, so the smell was easily detected.

Looks like the stocktake room doubles as the bin room, he thought as he stepped further into the bay, where crates were stacked taller than him with food, glassware, alcohol. Amongst the stacks was a shuffling of feet, then a hard thud that resulted in a harsh cry and an 'Ouch!'

'Hello?' Spencer called out while searching his way through the stacks. What did a brothel need with so much stuff anyways? 'Serena?'

'Over here!' a heavy Brooklyn accent replied. Spencer followed the voice, finding a hunched over woman cradling her exposed toe. She wore burnt orange platform wedges with jeans and a white tank top that left little to the imagination of a one Dr. Spencer Reid. Her hair was a puffy mess of curls like the blowouts back in the 80s, and it was so big he couldn't see her face.

'Are you okay,' he said, rushing over to help, but she just held up a hand, her face still covered.

'Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, doll,' she replied hastily, shakily. 'Just hit my toe, is all.'

'Well, here, let me get you some ice-'

'That's not necessary, hun. Really.'

'Well, at least let me have a look at it. You might've gotten a splinter in it or-'

'Stop.'

He was already bending down when the word hit him. But not just the word, but the voice that came with it. It was different to the Brooklyn accent now. It was... familiar.

The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as familiarity turned into recognition; and when he looked up from his half-squat position, he froze where he was and stared. Because the woman he saw wasn't an unrecognisable face of some girl called Serena.

His mouth had gone dry at the shock, and so he gulped a few times, trying to find the words he'd been holding back for months. But instead, only one word came to the surface.

'Y/N?'

198 notes · View notes

palaceofpassion · 22 days

Note

What if both of their teams are after something similar? Maybe JNPR is sent to deal with Roman and his cronies, who happen to have something that Nicole wants, an heirloom perhaps.

They split up with Jaune teaming with Billy. It will be just two bros talking about their favorite heroes.

//Spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen Billy's trust event yet.

TW: Graphic violence.

BANG

The bandit went down without much of a fight, despite gods knows where he was, it seemed that humans were still humans. The android's yellow visual sensors continued to scan the area, no longer picking up any other life forms. Well other than the several dead bandits with holes in their heads. Though he'd hardly call them life forms anymore.

"This place is weird..." For some reason, he knew that this wasn't anywhere on his planet. As odd as that sounded, when he and the other Hares had entered that last companion Hollow, they'd found themselves separated from Phaethon, Eous was nowhere in sight, and somehow they'd ended up in a lush green mountain range. Something that was... unlike anything they'd been around before. Anby suggested it was another world, like her movies.

They were definitely not in the outlands, and the people here seemed different. It took them a while to realize that they all had some form of barrier over them, nothing the skilled Gentle House couldn't overcome. But it was still a strange phenomena. Unfortunately for Billy, somewhere along the way he'd gotten separated from Nicole, Anby, and Nekomata... leaving him alone and cornered.

Though, cornered wasn't exactly what he'd called it. Originally he'd shot their strange and overly complicated weapons out of their hands, and had requested they surrender. When they opted to laugh at his silly charade, well... he didn't like giving second chances.

"Shit." he muttered to himself, having slipped back into his olden days. Gone for a brief moment was the silly goofy Starlight Knight wannabe, and back was the red devil from the Outlands. "Didn't... want to do that." He hated who he was, hated how he used to be.

Though he could remember only so far, when Big Sis' predecessor had picked him off the scrap yard, he could clearly see everything after. Still remember the scent of blood, the feeling of it corroding his metallic parts... so all of him.

God he missed the others, hopefully he'd be able to find them.

Though, while meandering in his thoughts, he'd failed to notice, at least at first, the hulking black bear charging at him. The blood and negative feelings had lured in a rather large Ursa Major, not that he'd know what that is of course.

The beast's claws roared back as it prepared to strike him down. Only for a shout to come in the distance, "Watch out!"

Though it was hardly needed. Billy was far too quick on his feet, and his finger was always itching against the trigger. BANG

Before it could even strike him, the extremely heavy bullet pierced through its white plated skull, leaving a rather large gaping hole that dust rounds could only dream of doing. "Tch, easy~" The sound of another person had pulled him back from his dilemma. "Though hopefully I'll have enough rounds while I'm here."

Thankfully they'd prepared plenty, on a rare occasion, they actually had the money. So Nicole had decided to splurge, like she always did, and well they prepared some high quality ammo and polishes in high amounts!

"Phew, thanks kid." He called out to the young blonde man making his way over. Though perhaps blonde wasn't right? His hair seemed faded, almost a ghostly white, and he sure as heck did have a strand of white hair down the center of his slicked back do.

"Ah, yeah, no problem."

His voice also felt... tired, fatigued. And for some reason, the kid title didn't seem to fit, though Billy couldn't quite put his finger on it as to why not.

Though, for a split second, he saw something. A glint of happiness, of excitement as he looked at Billy carefully, "Whoa, wait a moment."

Jaune didn't really recognize what Billy was at first, but he did notice that he was garbed in a rather familiar get up. Though not exactly, he looked like a hero from one of his favorite comics, one he hadn't been able to keep up with in a long time.

"Are you a hero fan?!"

Billy blinked, somehow, before smiling, somehow. "You know it! I'm the Starlight Knight! Billy Kid!" Of course he went to make his makeshift poses, spinning his twin ladies around. "Pleasure to meet you."

Jaune smiled, "That's so cool, the name is Jaune, Jaune Arc."

Though it wasn't just Jaune that felt something of a sense of kinship, "Yo! Are you a knight?! ARE there knights here?!"

That would be super cool! Maybe Anby wasn't wrong! Maybe they really DID end up in another world, or maybe this was the past! Though... those guys had guns, really ineffective guns, but they were guns!

"Ah, haha, no, I... don't think I could ever be a knight."

The two of them stared in silence, though Jaune couldn't help but eye the scene before him. A small grimace overcoming his face as the bloodshed... though even he noticed how precise and evenly done every shot was, right between the eyes, not a single miss. That was... some scary accuracy. Even more since he was JUST using guns... and the fact that he took how that Ursa Major in one shot, whatever those bullets were, they were some seriously dangerous stuff.

Hopefully this guy wasn't an enemy.

"So uh... what are you doing all the way out here." He questioned, unsure of where to go. By himself, he doubted he'd stand much of a chance against this stranger if things came down to it. But... he couldn't help but feel like things wouldn't go that way.

"Lost." Was a simple answer, but hey it was true! "Got separated from my teammates. No idea where they are, or where here is, if I'm being honest. We were in a Hollow, got lost from our Proxy, and ended up... here? We got jumped by bandits, got separated, and uh you found me here, told me about that ethereal... odd looking one though, and well now here we are."

"Proxy, Hollow? What are those?" He'd never heard of those before. "And that was a Grimm, not an ethereal. Whatever that is."

"Oh, joy. Anby was right..." Oh god, Anby was right, she wasn't going to let him live this one down. "Ah crud."

Jaune wasn't sure what an Anby was, but hey, he could at least offer him a place for now. Hopefully they could find his friends soon.

#billy kid #Zenless Zone Zero #jaune Arc #Rwby

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weenwrites · 2 years

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Megatron, Soundwave, and Breakdown(all platonic) watching their charge get clipped into the Backrooms? Maybe how they’d react when their charge clips back like a month later and just clings to them out of fear they might fall through the floor again?

Kinda random ik but I’ve been on a Backrooms phase for a min XD have a wonderful day/night!

TFP Megatron, Soundwave, & Breakdown W/ A Charge Who Gets Stuck in the Backrooms

Pairing - Platonic Category - Headcanons Trigger Warnings - Unreality

Megatron

He's left bewildered the instant he watched you disappear beneath the floor. He hesitates for a moment to call your name—he's witnessed many strange and horrible things during the war, but even he's not sure that what he saw really happened. After he receives no reply, he makes his way to one of the ship's security monitors and demands to review the security footage, to see whether that really happened to you or not.

Now, if this was someone else's human charge, he wouldn't have even bothered with reviewing the security cameras. But since he chose to act as your guardian, then he views you as something with the slightest degree of worth or value. So he continues trying to search for you. He dispatches a couple vehicons to look through the ship for you, and when their searches prove fruitless, he orders a small team to conduct some research to discover what exactly happened to you. No human can... Sink into the floor like that. Nothing can. Not by any natural or normal means anyway.

However the only thing his research team finds are some scraps of information regarding another plane of existence known as the "backrooms." To which he disregards this as another piece of useless human fiction. Humans are barely capable of space-travel, and traveling to other realities is out of the question, so there's nothing to make him believe that the backrooms genuinely exist. And with no other lead as to where you've went, and no idea whether you're alive or not, he's ultimately given up on searching for you.

In your absence he continues on as normal, but even he can't help but miss your company even a bit. On the days that he'd normally expect your visits he finds them rather empty and quiet without you there. Initially, he found your presence annoying and irritating regardless of how you acted, and it was all because he thought that you humans were lowly vermin. And while your time with him has all but changed his mind about humans, the most you've done is gotten him to except you from the masses he plans on wiping out once he takes over the world.

Whenever he passes by the spot you disappeared, he feels greatly unnerved, but he doesn't avoid the area at all. Rather, he tends to rush through it whenever he happens to be around there. He doesn't understand why that part of the ship unsettles him so much, and he thinks that it's very stupid and embarrassing that he does, so he pushes these feelings down and attempts to overcome them by not avoiding the area.

But when he's around to witness you return, he's just as confounded as he was you disappeared—so much so in fact, that he hesitates to move for a moment. If other decepticons were around, he wouldn't have let you cling to him, and he would've pushed you away. But if no one else was around, he wouldn't stop you. Once he brings you to someplace private he'll question where you've been for the past month. Or if you happened to be injured in any way, he would've brought you to the medibay to be treated.

He listens as you describe what sounds like a human mall, the only difference was that there was no end to it. It kept going, and going, and going, and there seemed to be no exit in sight, neither were there any people. The further you ventured the more corroded and worn the building became, and the more creatures you encountered.

Unfortunately he isn't too good at comforting people, but he tries to assure you that he'll ensure that you'll never return to that place, not while he's your guardian. With second-hand evidence that the backrooms exists, it's only then that he resumes the research. After some time, he's pleased that his team was able to find any useful information around the backrooms. But even with all they've found, they still aren't able to find a way to prevent this from happening again.

But through all this conducted research, he does find himself growing more fascinated with the notion of noclipping, and he ponders the idea of setting up a trap of sorts around it. Not for you, of course, but instead for the autobots. If you hardly made it out alive, then surely the autobots would suffer the same. It's unfortunate that the chances of noclipping are very slim, so while the idea of catching his enemies in a noclip trap sounds very promising, it's unlikely to happen.

Soundwave

Soundwave didn't hesitate to reach out and grab you as soon as he saw you choppily lurch into the floor, but he was too late. Their fingers hit the empty space you left behind and they were left baffled at what happened. On the outside they still look relatively calm, but the only giveaway to the fact they're panicking is how their movements become hurried and rushed.

Their attempts to remain calm in this situation are falling flat on the ground after they receive no response after calling your number for the 5th time. Even as he reviews the security footage, there's no denying that what he saw didn't happen. Right then and there on the screen he's re-watching as you clip straight through the floor over, and over, and over, and over again in some sort of attempt to understand what happened to you.

He's even searched through the room beneath the floor you clipped through, but he can't find you there. Even after a thorough search through the entire Nemesis he can't find you anywhere. But all the while they've been searching the ship, they've been attempting to trace their latest phone call in hopes to find where you've been taken to. But with the lack of a clear set of coordinates, the idea that you weren't the one answering comes into mind.

Without any lead on where you could've went, or any way to contact you, Soundwave's next course of action was research. Whenever he could multi-task, he would do as much research as he could in hopes to find what happened to you. They'd look through every article, every video, every paper, they'd review and scrutinize anything they believe could be remotely helpful. Though even with all the time and dedication they poured into their research, they yielded minimal results. But even with that information they were able to deduct one thing: you were taken to the backrooms.

However, it initially sounded like a completely implausible idea to them, and they doubted that it actually existed, but given the fact they witnessed you disappear out of nowhere, they suppose that things like that might exist. But now that they had a clearer idea of where you went, they were able to conduct more research on the backrooms and learned as much as they could about it. The levels, the denizens, recorded experiences—he read and studied it all in hopes to discover a way—any way to help you escape. But every piece of information he read lead him to the same conclusion: there is no way that he can help you escape if he is not there with you. You're on your own.

But not only has he learned of a way to exit the backrooms, but he has learned of a way to enter them as well. However, they don't believe that noclipping themselves into the backrooms to save you will work, not to mention it is extremely risky if they succeed. From their understanding of it, the backrooms is a vast labyrinth of levels, so the chances of finding you are slim to none. And not to mention the fact that dangerous creatures exist and the lack of resources dramatically lower your chances of survival. There are hardly any records of people escaping the backrooms. Once you enter them, there's an extremely slim chance that you'll return back to this world. So with that in mind, Soundwave comes to the conclusion that you'll never come back.

They may be an extremely loyal friend, yes, but entering the backrooms just to save you is a risk they aren't willing to take. So at the end of it, he comes to the conclusion that you're gone. He's upset over your loss, of course, and he does hope that you're still alive, but he quickly comes to terms with the fact he may never see you again.

Over the next few weeks, he goes about his days as he normally does. Of course he catches little bits of the news, and he notices all the missing posters in the area you used to live in, but he doesn't do anything about it. They do inform Megatron of the backrooms, but only as a means to get rid of the autobots.

And then you suddenly return. He was there to witness as you wrested yourself from the floor and completely returned to this plane, the frontrooms. He's surprised, yes, but not so much so that he finds himself rooted to the floor. As you cling to him, he kneels down to comfort you, to brush his long, spindly fingers against your shaking body. He momentarily pauses his work to bring you to his habsuite, and within moments he's already prepared a little blanket nest for you to rest in. They assure you that they'll return once they finish their work. But depending on the work they've been assigned to do, they may allow you to join them if you really don't want to be left alone.

Once you're ready enough to talk about what happened, he'll take you to his habsuite so the two of you can keep this private. He listens intently all the while you describe the long, endless rooms and corridors covered in yellowing wallpaper, coupled with old, polyester carpets. They quietly remark that the description you've provided sounds exactly like what one of the backrooms levels look like. Once you've told them all you could, they explain what happened to you—that is if you don't know already. He tells you of all the research he's done on the backrooms—but if you don't want to talk about that, he'll instead tell you of what happened while you were missing. He'll tell you about the missing posters, the news,

Breakdown

Breakdown has to do a double-take and feel around where you used to stand in order to fully realize that you just straight up disappeared to who-knows-where. He tries calling you out, in hopes that he's just seeing things, and that hearing you speak back to him will break him out of whatever funk he's in, but he gets no reply. Well of course he isn't going to get a response from you, he saw you disappear—so then he gets the idea to call you.

He rings your phone, and waits for what hardly seems like 5 seconds before you pick up. The instant he's through, he starts bombarding you with questions like—where are you? Are you alright? What happened? But the only answer he receives is static. He's left dumbfounded, and hearing the hissing static on the other end isn't making his wrenching anxiety go away, it's only making it worse. He just tells himself that perhaps his comm's just bugged, so he tries contacting you through one of the Nemesis's computers, only to no avail. He tries, and tries, and tries again, and again, and again until he's ordered to get off the computers and do something useful.

At which point he's completely lost on what to do. There's no other way for him to contact you, he doesn't know where you've gone, and there's really nothing that he can do. With great reluctance, Breakdown gives up on trying to find you, for now, but the following day he tries calling you again, only for the same hissing static to reply.

A week later, and he's driving around the area you live. He sees missing posters up and he's reminded that you just vanished right in front of him into thin air. 2 weeks later and he's already given up on calling you every now and then. Whenever he walks by the spot you disappeared, he swerves right by it, as if there's something in his way even when there isn't. The spot you disappeared at unnerves him greatly. Whenever he thinks of you he wonders if you died, or if you're still alive but... Elsewhere.

He's had one nightmare about watching you clip through he floor again. He still remembers the uncanny way you suddenly sank into the ground at waist-level before disappearing completely. Part of him feels like that really wasn't real, and he has gone to review security footage only to be proven wrong. Thinking about you and what could've happened to you tends to stress him out way too much, so he tries avoiding the topic the best he can.

So he goes on as normal, trying to avoid anything about you—but he can't help but look at the news in the area you used to live in, hoping that the authorities found you or something. But with the way things are going, he doubts that you'll ever be found. But one day while he's walking through the halls, he stumbles upon a small figure rising up from the ground in choppy, erratic movements. And the instant the figure's out, he instantly knows who that is. It's you.

He doesn't believe his eyes one bit, and honestly he's beginning to think he's loosing it. But with each shaky step that you take closer to him, he can't even bring himself to move. The moment you clasp onto his leg, the horrifying realization that everything that happened really was real hits him like a truck. Of course he knew that you disappeared and it really happened but he still doubted whether it was real or not—whether you were real or not. And now that he knows that you are... And that you disappeared to who knows where for a month...

He's overwhelmed with shock. He can't bring himself to move. He can't bring himself to act. It's all so overwhelming and confusing and frightening and—and—he falls to his knees. You were lucky enough to catch him beginning to wobble before he collapsed, so you had moved out of the way. It takes him a moment to recover from the shock of it all, but when he does he immediately rushes the both of you to his habsuite, not wanting to be seen like this out in the halls.

Once the two of you are in private, he starts asking you question after question, asking you about what happened or if you were alright, where you went or how you returned—but the instant he gets the slightest clue that you aren't ready to talk about all of that yet, he promptly shuts up, deciding to save all of his questions for later. He offers you a hug, and when you accept and cling to his hand, he reluctantly returns it. His reluctance comes from the fact he still can't quite believe all of this is happening. It seems so fake to him.

When you feel like you're ready to talk, he starts asking you each question he had one at a time, much more slowly and calmly than he did initially, but still with the same concern in his voice. When you start describing some strange place—the poolrooms as you call it—and the strange labyrinth of tilled walls and rooms, half-filled with pool water, he's... He promises he believes you, of course, but even as someone who's seen the worst of war, he finds himself legitimately afraid.

Afraid of the fact that somewhere out there... This place exists. And it dragged you into it. And trapped you in it. And you were stuck in this horrible place all by yourself for a month. And what makes it worse for him, is how it could happen to anyone at any time.

He isn't big on books or researching, but he'll try to help you do some research on the poolrooms to see if anyone else has been there before. For the next couple of days he's very skeptical to let you get around on your own. He'll always escort you somewhere and he'll always carry you there instead. Any attempt you make at getting an answer out of him doesn't even work. He usually just pretends like he didn't hear you, or he brushes your question off. He'll doesn't want to admit it, but he's worried that you might clip into the ground again, and this time you might not return at all.

#tfp imagnes #tfp headcanons #tfp x reader #tfp megatron #megatron x reader #tfp soundwave #soundwave x reader #tfp breakdown #breakdown x reader #unreality #unreality tw #[ i had SO much fun with this request! ]#x reader #reader insert #self insert #weenwrites

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icy-watch · 5 months

Text

So, Mei's getting fire training from Red Son. Pigsy, Sandy, Tang, and Mo are on their way to find her and bring her back. Well, both of them back, I'm thinking.

Wukong's headed off into battle, and Ne Zhe and MK are on his tail to try and stop him.

Macaque just noped out of there after he was freed and subsequently threatened by Wukong.

I'm thinking that the special is going to be about bring down the Lady Bone Demon. And a new enemy will rise up right at the end

The plan for tomorrow is to watch the entire special. I should have plenty of time to do that. Until then!

Correct and incorrect predictions below the cut.

Correct

Ne Zha will be less than happy about the map being stolen by Wukong. And boy was he! He did come around, in the end.

Lady Bone Demon wants Wukong and MK back to drain their powers. I mean, this was pretty obvious.

MK is going to get his powers back. This was pretty obvious too.

Macaque will be trying to break free for the rest of the season. Another prediction that was pretty obvious.

Red Son will return Mei's stuffie to her. They did!

Mei was in the vision she shared with Ao Guang. Something will happen with her, the Samadhi Fire, and the rings. Oooooo boy. She was. And something did happen to her.

Ne Zha will be less than happy about the map being stolen by Wukong. And boy was he! He did come around, in the end.

Lady Bone Demon wants Wukong and MK back to drain their powers. I mean, this was pretty obvious.

MK is going to get his powers back. This was pretty obvious too.

Macaque will be trying to break free for the rest of the season. Another prediction that was pretty obvious.

Red Son will return Mei's stuffie to her. They did!

Macaboo will try and stop Team Monkie if he wants to live. He won't succeed in that goal. He did succeed in his own personal goal, however. He got the chains burned off.

Incorrect

Red Son will come back and help them forge the rings. Honestly, if he'd been there, a lot of things could have been avoided.

Mei will get possessed by the Samadhi Fire. Thank goodness she didn't.

Ne Zha and Wukong can break free if they work together. Ne Zha had it.

Partial

The TEA will be how they get to the moon. Plus some Monkey Magic.

Mei has easy access to the fourth ring. Well, she has access to it. It wasn't easy, tho. Genuinely, I was originally thinking it was locked away somewhere in her family's home. I wasn't expecting it to be in her when I originally made this prediction, and then as the season wore on...

They will get the third ring and it'll be revealed that there is a fourth ring in the next episode (episode 8). Well, they got the third ring.

The fourth ring will be activated in the last episode, and Macdonalds will get burned. It was activated, but he wasn't burned.

Unconfirmed

Macaque's character arc this season will be to overcome his anger and hurt from the past and starting to move on. I was a naive summer child.

MK is not human. He's a monkey demon. I'm still feeling strong on this prediction.

Mei's powers are connected to the Samadhi Fire somehow. I'm feeling this might be an incorrect prediction, however it wasn't confirmed or denied in this season, so it's down here

#liveblogging #lego monkie kid #season 3 #episode 10 #the samadhi fire #lmk s03e10 #lmk predictions

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ana-lora-rein · 1 year

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𝘌𝘺𝘬𝘵𝘢𝘯 𝘛𝘴𝘢𝘩𝘦𝘺𝘭𝘶 ܟ 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 1 ܟ Broken Wings

Amateur translation. Postcanon.

Fandom Avatar.

Marines don't die, they go to hell...

His ears were ringing endlessly, and his heart, pounding frantically in his chest, seemed about to burst out. The only thing that cooled off was the tailwind, which kept from passing out. If he had lowered his eyelids for even a second, in a fainting state, he would have fallen from the flying banshee straight into the rocky abyss of the soaring mountains. Miles felt warm trickles of blood rolling down his temples. He had to overcome the stabbing pain in his body to brush it away with his hand.

— Bitch... — Quoritch cursed, spitting up the clots. He gripped his fingers tightly on the collar straps of the winged beast, guiding it toward the base.

The flight wasn't long, but all the way there, Miles had only one thought: Why didn't his son stay with him? Little Spider, struggling with conflicting feelings, did not let him die: pulled from the bottom of the wreckage of the sinking shuttle, growled one last word and fled away. Maybe the kid did it out of the compassion he'd inherited from Sally? Or out of a sense of indebtedness to the one who had brought him into the world? In any case, the colonel was left confused. And in the back of his mind, two very different beginnings were struggling. They, like cats, were gnawing at him from inside, reminding him that sooner or later he would have to choose. One was demanding to turn around, to find that scoundrel Sully and take out the wretched gang for the damage they'd done, and the other was wanting to forget, to tell everyone to go to hell. His jaw clenched in irritation, and Miles clenched his teeth. He promised himself he'd figure it out. But there was no way to undo what had happened. His team, his loyal comrades-all of them dead at the hands of the blue apes. What a shame for him as commander! Poor Lyle. He wanted to go to the makeshift sauna at the bottom of the hill just outside the town. And the Reaper... She'd still be alive and well, even if she was blue in the body. Mansk had intended to ask the beastie out on a date. And though all the boys knew how foolish his idea was, he couldn't ask anyone else out.

«Scumbag Sully and his cum wife!»

A gagging interrupted Miles' thoughts. Rekom crouched on his side, spitting out blood. A stinging, biting pain squeezed under his ribs. He mentally counted the damage his enemy had done: a punctured shoulder, something like a lung wound, a concussion that made him dizzy and his eyes swim. All this he had felt once before. On Earth War, it was like déjà vu, a memory that came back to him. The pain was the same, but the motivation was different.

Hear that, Sally, how does it feel to betray your country?

The Winged Beast. Banshee. It suddenly nervously fluttered its wings, screaming as if distraught. The animal sensed everything the rider was experiencing. The colonel remembered the connection (tsaheylu). This connection seemed too strong, too obscene and too explicit. Gathering his will into a fist, Miles took a deep breath and exhaled, placing his palm against the banshee's head. He stroked the beast, tried to calm it down, because we don't need the bird to get nervous and send it into the abyss. The colonel understood that he had to get to know his new friend better, to learn the subtleties of communication.

Like a thunderclap, the wireless rattled loudly in his ear. He still had the earpiece with the microphone in his ear.

— Quaritch! Can you hear me? General Ardmore calling!

— Shit... — Miles sighed heavily, coughing and coughing up, — Yes, I'm on the line, General! The mission failed, there were too many of them! Back to base!

— Why haven't you been in contact for two hours?! What happened?! What happened to Dr. Ian Garvin?!

— Missing or dead.

— And Captain Mick Scoresby?

Miles crouched in pain and wrapped his arm around himself, trying to answer as calmly as possible. He never liked to report, especially to women, and the worst thing for him was when it was a woman who turned out to be the boss. The colonel could only respect the generaless for the first half of the day he met her before she got under his skin with arrogance and prejudice.

«Fucking bitch...»

He had to unfasten the Velcro vest and throw it off his bloody body: even the clothes squeezing his chest prevented him from speaking.

— Missing or dead, — the Colonel repeated.

— Go immediately back to the scene and find the doctor! Can you hear me?

— I hear you. — Miles's breathing quickened and his eyelids seemed too heavy.

He wanted to finish, but the shroud that fell over his eyes and the ringing in his ears plunged him into darkness. His hands slid down, and recom fell chest-to-chest on the banshee's neck, finally losing his composure and his equilibrium.

***

Laura Asadi always loved weekends. Even though the sun was beating down like never before, illuminating the city streets with its scorching rays and casting glares on the glass panoramas of the buildings, she went to the park for a long-awaited jog. Nothing could have made her happier than the mesmerizing nature of Pandora. Unless it was music on her headphones and a desire to pursue dancing, singing, photography, or maybe even writing a novel. But as much as a young soul's heart tugged at creativity, it was her profession as a therapist that allowed Laura to leave a dying planet and find herself in the most influential organization. The RDA appreciated her abilities and welcomed her into their ranks. They gave her a new life that she longed to share with her family. Happy for their daughter's fate, her parents remained on Earth. Laura could only arrange their move to Pandora by working off her first contract, and she humbly awaited that day.

The week flew by unnoticed. Every day she had to work late with patients caught up in the maelstrom of events. People couldn't find common ground with the local tribes: A prolonged war had broken out. Diversion after diversion claimed more and more victims. Few survived the battle with the Na'vi. Lora understood that they were fighting for their territories, and were not at all happy to have unexpected visitors from space. Any attempt to negotiate between the two parties to the conflict was backfiring. Too different lives, too different species, too different view of the world.

Laura admired the philosophy of the Na'vi. Before going to bed, she read books about this amazing species, their culture and everyday life. She especially liked the works of the once popular scientist Grace Augustine. Fifteen years ago this woman had managed to make contact with the Omatikaya forest clan. They even built a school for children, where Miss Augustine taught earthly lessons and shared her knowledge. But, unfortunately, her efforts were wasted. There was a conflict that remained the subject of numerous theories. Laura heard only one truth: A certain Marine Jake Sully, an Avatar member, sided with the Na'vi during the first war, gathered the clans into an army, and prevailed by expelling the humans from Pandora. This precedent has remained on everyone's lips to this day. After all, from time to time Sully would sabotage military depots and blow up cargo trains. Some considered him a collaborator, a traitor to the motherland, and some quietly admired him and wished him victory. Laura, on the other hand, always found it difficult to choose. She tried to stay out of the fuss and do her job - to heal the wounded, to save lives. After all, working off her contract to get her family back from a dying, poisoned Earth.

Gathering her long dark hair into a ponytail, Laura stepped into the thicket of the park, breathing in the scents of the local flora through the transparent oxygen mask. She liked to come here in the mornings when she got up early: she enjoyed nature, and fed the funny prolemurs with bananas before exercising. Some animals began to recognize her, came down from the trees and unceremoniously stretched out their paws in the hope of getting a treat. This time red apples were waiting for them. No sooner had the girl rustled her backpack than twigs rattled around her. On all sides there were those who wanted to eat them. They wiggled their ears, curiously waiting and looking at the guest with interest.

— Guys, not all at once, you do remember to be able to share, don't you? — Laura laughed as she handed out the apples. One of the cubs, begging for attention, climbed down from his mother and brazenly climbed onto the girl's shoulder, wrapping one pair of long paws around her and tugging at the strap of her top with the other. — Oh, is that you, buddy? I remember you, you're growing up fast...

She quickly got used to and grew to love the animals here. Her acquaintances and colleagues always wondered how these animals let her in so quickly. After all, usually prolemurs tried to stay away from people, and if they approached, it was only for a moment. Inadvertently, Laura thought she loved animals more than people, and she should have gone to the veterinary department. If it weren't for her promise to her dad and her love of the arts, she would have. Born into a family of the medical generation, she hadn't found the courage to break a long-standing tradition. Even though she felt out of place, she was one of the best in the department.

Asadi didn't have time to finish feeding the prolemur pack. Suddenly the roar, so wild and piercing to the core, made the beasts scream and scatter in panic in the bushes. The girl shuddered, clutching her heart in terror. The sweep of bright blue wings that came down on the ground, crushing the bushes, shocked and stunned her. Laura had never seen a mountain banshee this close. From something screaming in panic and shaking her head. The girl opened her eyes in wild amazement. A bloodied, unconscious Na'vi had fallen from the winged animal's back. A tall blue body in military gear fell between two prickly bushes. The banshee flapped its wings and rose into the air, disappearing into the sky.

«Oh my God, it's an avatar!»

Laura dropped to her knees and crawled toward the man. The long thorns of the bushes touched her tanned skin, scratching her to the point of pain. The girl clenched her teeth from the unpleasant thrill, but, holding herself together, approached the victim. Streams of blood trickled from his wide nose, mingling with the profuse sweat on his blue skin. The avatar furrowed his dark eyebrows and lowered his pointed ears in pain and agony, but he did not regain consciousness. He only opened his mouth, breathing heavily in the air he needed.

Laura caught her breath. She stared in shock at the three-meter-tall humanoid she was seeing for the first time in her life. Her hands were shaking with excitement. She hadn't had to deal with avatars yet. The therapist wasn't sure she could give first aid to this creature properly, because she didn't know how much their anatomy matched that of a human. But despite her fear and uncertainty, her therapist habit was to go nowhere. With feverish movements, she began to check for a pulse and determine the damage to her body. The girl also fleetingly noticed the long tail she had accidentally sat on. She hesitantly put her palms to the humanoid's chest, probing for numerous cuts. Blood was flowing from the punctured shoulder. She had to act immediately. The purple insignia of skulls and a snake on the victim's clothing suggested that this was someone very important to the RDA. A recombinant organism. Back from the dead, he risked ending up on the other side of the world again.

The therapist gathered her senses and was vigilant. She grabbed the edges of her cotton T-shirt, tearing the white fabric in two halves. A few moments more, and the punctured shoulder was carefully bandaged. The girl couldn't let it die. Quickly she took the smartphone out of her backpack with her bloodstained fingers and dialed the right number. The beeps were excruciatingly long. Laura was shaking with fear for the creature's life. She gently wiped the blood from under his nose, checked his pupils, and lifted her eyelids. Rekom was on the verge of life and death. Laura swallowed the lump in her throat. Emotions were running wild.

«God, I hope you don't die!» — Laura thought, and a shuddering veil covered her eyes.

— Emergency service. What's wrong? — The operator's long-awaited voice came through the smartphone like a breath of oxygen.

Laura perked up, holding reckom's bandaged shoulder with her free hand. He hissed desperately, like a roadkill cat, remaining unconscious with only one twitch of his tail.

— Therapist Laura-Anastasia Asadi speaks! Suburban Park sixth district, thirteenth precinct on the south gate side, a recombinant has been found in critical condition! Send a car immediately, he has lost a lot of blood, punctured shoulder! Also suspected second-degree concussion!

The wounded man moved his ear. He tried to catch every word, tried to come to his senses, but all he could do was open his blood-glued lips and whisper faintly:

— I must... I must...

— What? — Laura leaned toward his face. She excitedly contemplated every inch of smooth blue skin with smooth "tiger" stripes, and her hand gently slid down the long neck of the amazing creature, where the pulse beat faintly.

— Miss Asadi, five minutes, the brigade is on its way, wait!

***

At the end of the long, bright tunnel, flooded with blinding light, Miles saw the outlines of people. They were calling his name and rank, asking him to return. Somewhere he'd heard those voices before, painfully familiar, but no image had ever emerged in his mind.

«Who are they? And what do they want?»

As if he were weightless, light as a feather, he floated and felt absolute serenity. He did not want to fly to the sound of the voices. He wished he could stay. This strange place of walls of bright white light engulfed him with every second and distanced him from human silhouettes. It seemed so familiar, so quiet and safe. There was no noise, no one was giving orders. And there was no pain.

«It's so good here» — Miles thought, but the bliss was short-lived. An invisible force, like a magnet, pulled him forward along the tunnel. A sense of excitement and fear made his heart beat fast. Now he heard not only people's voices, but also the pounding of his own heart. Something squeezed his lungs. The feeling of his body returned. And the pain returned. The heaviness in his right shoulder was accompanied by a groan. Miles opened his eyes.

— Finally! We thought we'd lost you, Colonel, — said the man in the big round glasses and white coat. The nurses, standing on either side of the patient, shined flashlights directly into his eyes, testing the response of his pupils. Miles exhaled irritably. He wanted to raise his hand and shove the pesky medics away, but the straps of sturdy material prevented him from even moving.

— What the hell? — the recom stared at the restraints that held him in one position, overcoming the stabbing pain in his ribs.

— I'm sorry, sir, this is an involuntary measure. Do you remember what happened to the previous shift of doctors? Your violent reaction sent them to the ICU.

— I'll put you in the ICU if you don't take off those fucking bracelets right now. Now!

— Sir, no, I can't, I'm sorry, that's an order... — the doctor smiled tensely, adjusting his glasses on his thin humped nose.

— I order you! — growled grudgingly Miles, emphasizing the pronoun.

— Please, sir, calm down, you can't be nervous, you've been injected with a double dose of antibiotics...

The doctor's speech of trembling, uncertain words was interrupted by an electronic beep. The massive doors parted to the sides, opening to the visitors. General Ardmore appeared in the ICU in the company of several guards and with a man in a black business suit. When Miles saw people in such suits in front of him, he was knowingly preparing for something unpleasant. These well-dressed rats always demanded too much and gave nothing in return. The first thing he would remove from his memories of his past life was service to such chumps.

— You have no right to give orders if you can't handle even a simple task,— the general said, and walked over to the wounded man, looking at his injuries from head to toe with a look of frustration, — report what happened. And where's Dr. Ian Garvin?

Miles pressed his lips together, holding back the urge to curse, and, clenching his fists, obediently answered:

— The ship sank. The crew, the doctor, and the captain are probably dead. So were my men. Sully attacked from several flanks. There were more of them than we thought, there was little chance of winning.

— But those chances were there? — the man in the suit asked.

Miles glanced at the stranger, thinking only of how nice it would be to take a cool shower now, but instead he had to lie in the medication-soaked room and report back.

— That's right. If it hadn't been for their tame whale with amrita in its head, I'd have executed the scumbag Sally.

A tense feeling arose in his mind. He remembered how the blue savage, Sally's wife, had put a dagger to Spider's throat, intending to avenge her son's death. But was Miles guilty of that? Jake, as a father, had failed. The inevitable war, one way or another, would have touched everyone anyway, and the family leader could have ensured that the children would not be involved. But he himself gave the trump cards to the enemy and was punished by fate.

— Are you going to write in your report that the whale is to blame for your failure, too? Or maybe you screwed up strategically after all? — The generaless folded her arms across her chest in displeasure, glaring at recom with her penetrating eyes from beneath her camouflage cap.

Miles turned his head away, looking out the ajar window, and for a few seconds there was silence in the ICU. There, on the base grounds, right on the roof of the warehouse, sat his dark blue banshee. The celestial predator spread her broad wings that dangled gracefully on either side of the roof and brushed out her feathers. Military onlookers passed by, darting away as if she were a demon, but the bird was strikingly calm.

«What devotion» — still marveled the recom.

The irritation was replaced by an unpleasant longing somewhere in the depths of soul. Son. He came to mind again. The boy had chosen to stay with the one who had raised him since he was a baby, even after the demon stepmother had nearly slit his throat. Miles tried to understand his own feelings and inadvertently imagined two different beings struggling inside him.

«You little bugger, all because of you!» — thought the colonel, remembering the face of the furiously snarling Spider.

— I'll make the report very honestly, don't worry, General,— he said, looking at his boss again with a calm look.

— It's not the report I'm worried about, it's your recklessness and stupidity! You've been dragging around with that wild boy and you've let your guard down.

— You're looking in the wrong direction, General. I took Sully by surprise, killed his son. He'll come. He'll want revenge. Then it'll be over quickly.

— Oh, so the result of the defeat is the future? — The man in the suit came back into the conversation. He kept writing something down in a folder. — You sacrificed an entire fleet to eliminate one saboteur? Then how many souls do you need to take out the others? Particularly the leader.

— I don't like the way he looks at me," Miles blurted out, trying to lie down more comfortably, but the pain in his shoulder made him moan painfully.

— Meet the chief administrator, Mr. Jonathan Bryce, — the general waved to the doctor, pointing to the medicines, and he obediently administered a recurrent dose of painkillers.

Miles shook his head hopelessly and closed his eyelids tiredly. The voices ringing in his head were getting tiresome.

— The last thing I need here is another Selfridge...

— Don't be sarcastic, Colonel. Do you realize why you were sent here again? — asked the man named Bryce, — because I got the impression that you had lost the thread of the narrative in the cases.

— You can't judge a war that isn't over by one lost battle,— Miles immediately retorted, — Sully will come back himself, and this will be our chance to eliminate the bastard.

General Ardmore's face stretched an ironic smile. She spread her arms to her sides and replied:

— You have lost twice, Colonel. Once in that life. The second time in this life.

— Honestly, I don't quite understand what happened in that life, — recom frowned unhappily, shaking his head, — everything seems like some kind of deja vu and only, with some sense of the past. Bryce, tell upstairs that I've been sold a blue marriage.

— And it isn't a marriage at all, Colonel, — the man smiled haughtily, as if hiding something important, and then slammed the file shut.

Miles opened his yellow eyes in bewilderment, and even the general looked questioningly at the RDA representative.

— What does that mean? What do you mean?

— Tell me, Doctor, how long will the recombinant have to be serviced? — Bryce ignored the colonel's questions.

— With injuries like that it will take at least a week, — replied the medic and scratched the back of his head, unsure of his patient, — sir, it is advisable not to disturb him even now...

Bryce squinted, tapping his fingers on his folder, then looked at the general and said confidently:

— We need him tomorrow.

— Tomorrow?! — The doctor's jaw dropped, — but, sir, it's highly irrational, he... He needs rest and treatment...

— Well, now I know why they tied me up! — Miles laughed out loud, — Doc, you didn't want me to blow somebody's face off, did you?

— You have some special remedy for our colonel, don't you? — Bryce went on asking questions, insisting on his point.

— Yes, but you don't understand...

— Wonderful! - he interrupted the doctor with a satisfied smile on his lips," Then you know how to get him back on his feet.

«What are these bitches hiding?».

***

Time was nearing sunset when Laura took off her disposable work robe and tossed it into a small recycling chamber. At the push of a button, not a trace of the artificially created used fabric was left. The day had been impossibly boring, except for a failed morning jog. Couldn't get that wounded recombinant out of my mind. Big and blue and so adorable that Laura couldn't help but worry about him. Every now and then she wondered if he had survived. She hoped for the best, and didn't have the courage to call the Center. And who on earth would report the well-being of an important RDA recom to an ordinary GP? Laura was sure that even such information remained a secret within the walls of the organization. The recombinant program remained inaccessible to most of the staff: none of the rank-and-file knew about its details, only the creators themselves and the upper ranks of specialists. Laura had heard that every employee touched by the program signed a nondisclosure agreement, and leaking information threatened huge fines and prison. But there were even crazier rumors: a rumor had circulated among a large group that one of the scientists had gone missing after management learned of his entries in a personal diary. He was writing down what he was obliged to keep only in his head, and the RDA thought he might have been passing secret information to the ranks of the enemy. When Laura first heard this story, she only wondered to whom this scientist could have revealed secrets if the RDA had no competitors on Earth for thirty years? They were absolute monopolists. Could the scientist be revealing secrets to the Na'vi clans? But what could they possibly know about it? Or perhaps he was secretly collaborating with Jake Sully himself? Whatever the truth was, Laura didn't believe these tales, and only smiled at such stories.

With an unpleasant heavy weight on her soul due to not knowing the fate of the recom, Laura was about to leave the infirmary, but then she was called at the guardhouse. The operator behind the monitors, named Sam, waved, and the therapist immediately walked over to the counter.

— Let me guess, you mean I'm being left on the night shift again? — Laura leaned her head on her side tiredly.

— Pumpkin, what do you think of me! — laughed the red-haired operator in the black uniform, — Do you really think I only intend to bring you bad news?

— Why? — Asadi stretched out and laughed in response, — it's not bad news at all, I love my job and my patients, it's just that only robots can have no rest.

— I know, I know, you try harder than anyone else, — Sam said as he patted the girl's hair, which fell in a wavy mop of long dark strands to one side as Laura habitually tucked it back and to the side.

— Oh, you sly fox,— she scowled playfully, — just to flatter.

— And you're wrong, not flattery at all, — the guy pulled out of his jacket pocket almost transparent card, handing it directly into the hands of his partner — a name pass of the first level. Passed a few minutes ago. But don't flatter yourself, it's disposable.

Laura opened her eyes in amazement. She twirled the card several times, as if to verify its authenticity. Such passes were issued only to personnel from the RDA Center: scientists, engineers, programmers, elite military and directors. She looked questioningly at Sam, who was smiling, genuinely pleased with her reaction.

— Yeah, yeah, it's right up there. They said the management wants to see you today.

— They did? But... why? — Laura panicked, feeling her cheeks redden as her blood pressure soared — oh God, did I do something wrong? Did I kill the patient? That's right, I killed him!

Sam laughed, throwing his head back and grabbing his stomach.

— Baby, come on, calm down! It's just a request to appear in front of your superiors. Maybe they want to promote you.

— Sam! Promotion? You... — Laura looked at the chart, — Jonathan Bryce? That's the kind of authority given to our chief medical officer so he doesn't have to bother the top for no reason.

— Well, then the head doctor can fire you too, why would Bryce have to write you a pass like that and call you in to see him? — The guard barely calmed down, wiping away the tears that came out of laughter, — God, pumpkin, you're just a miracle, you made my day more fun, I love you...

Laura put her palm to her forehead, herself barely restraining a laugh from her silly reaction. But at times like this, when excitement overwhelmed her, she couldn't help herself. Laura possessed concentration and vigilance only in her work, because she understood that she could not make mistakes as a professional. But in life, this philosophy did not apply.

— I'm sorry, Sam, I... I sometimes lose control... — the therapist took a deep breath and exhaled, looking at the pass again. — It says the time. That's in about twenty minutes. I wonder why I'm being summoned.

— Let's go for a ride, and we'll find out together? — Sam smiled slyly, taking the backpack from the girl and slinging it over his shoulder.

— Are you on a motorcycle? — Laura pressed the pass to her chest.

— That's right, miss!

— That's good, sir! I love the speed!

***

The tailwind blew Laura's curls as she made her way to the main RDA building. Sam was accelerating faster and faster on his motorcycle, and she held him tightly by the waist as she watched the neon lights of the city. On the road, she only wondered why this building was farther away than the others. Almost at the edge of the city towered a tall gate of solid steel, shutting out whatever was going on there from the gawkers. The area looked more like a secret military training ground than a haven for scientists and business directors: endless hangars, armored vehicles, men in uniform, and fighter planes on the roofs. The area was constantly patrolled by guards armed to the teeth. No one could enter the area without a pass, which made Laura uncomfortable. She, a rank-and-file general practitioner, was suddenly given that pass.

«I hope me don't get fired» — the girl thought, resting her chin on Sam's shoulder and looking hopefully ahead at the road. And when the gates of the main building appeared on the horizon, she craned her neck in curiosity and felt her knees tremble.

Sam stopped the motorcycle just inside the security barrier that separated them from the entrance to the compound, ten meters away. The automatic metal detector emitted a distinctive beep, scanning the arrivals with a bright red stripe from bottom to top. Laura pressed her lips together uncertainly, pulling out her precious security badge. Several guards approached with machine guns. One, pointing a machine gun, walked around the arrivals as if looking for something suspicious.

— Good evening, what can we do for you? — one of the men asked, tall, pumped up and tattooed.

— Hello, delivering a guest to Mr. Jonathan Bryce, — Sam smiled friendly, nodding at the passenger in the back.

Laura felt a little uncomfortable holding out her pass to the guard. The man looked at the card, then at her, twisting it in his fingers with disbelief.

— Laura-Anastasia Asadi? — he asked in a clarifying manner to

— Yes, sir...

The second gunman's walkie-talkie crackled and he asked into the microphone:

— This is the central station speaking. Requesting validity of badge twelve thirty — two for time twenty-one zero zero. Do you copy?

— I confirm it's up to date, — a soft, female voice answered, — Let through.

Laura bit her lip with the excitement that overwhelmed her trembling soul. She looked ahead at the massive gate, imagining what everything looked like there, for she had never had to be here before. Curiosity scrambled like cats. And the guard lowered his weapon and only nodded his head forward, letting his guest through. Sam wanted to follow, leaving the bike with the guard, but he was immediately stopped by a hand.

— You can't. No pass, — the tattooed man said.

— And who's going to show her where to go? — Sam with a wave of his hands.

— Go to the gate, miss, — the guard turned to Laura, — they'll meet you there and escort you to your office.

Asadi nodded obediently and, after saying goodbye to Sam who winked at her, moved toward the gate. There she was met by a second group of guards and a screening system. She was asked to have her fingerprints and retina scanned. The access card was told to be kept until she left the building, and after that it would no longer be valid.

Laura was finally led onto the grounds. She opened her mouth in amazement, convinced she was right. A veritable military training ground. Armored vehicles, fighters, robot mechanics, and people in uniform. Several soldiers passed by in three-meter-long exoskeleton suits, raising a column of gravel dust into the air. The therapist coughed, brushing the dust off her face.

«Wow!» — she wondered.

— Miss Asadi? — A woman's voice was heard from behind, and the girl turned around to see a servicewoman in outfit.

— Huh? Yes, it's me... — Laura was confused.

— Come on, I'll accompany you to the boss's office. He's already waiting for you. Is this your first time here?

— Yes, I've never visited this building before. Tell me, why are there so many military men here? — Laura was curious, looking around with the gaze of a keen tourist.

— The war, — answered the girl briefly. — Several new regiments and units have arrived.

— Is it really that bad?

— Miss Asadie, the military is not just here to perform its direct tasks. We employ hundreds of men every day for various jobs. You don't have to worry, everything's under control.

«I want to believe it» — Laura thought, wrapping her arm tentatively around herself.

It was harder to breathe in here. There was so much dust and mechanical odor in the air that her throat became dry. With every step she took, she swallowed a lump across her throat and coughed. It seemed that the mask wasn't enough. But once inside, Asadi forgot all about air: the mask could finally be removed. Bright holograms dazzled her eyes. A group of operators was working on something, even though there were many people in military uniforms in the main hall. The monitors glowed with numerous scans of the terrain: soaring mountains, the sea, and some parts of the forested area. Laura turned her attention to the image of fallen centuries-old trees engulfed in flames. They must have been blown down quite recently by volleys of missiles. The girl casually shuddered.

— Sector Five, attention, deal with a herd of direhorse. The distance is six meters, we need a clear path to the mines, — one of the operators muttered lazily into his earpiece.

— They're really close, — the other smiled and shook his head, — I guess they're used to it.

— If the second shift stops feeding them, there won't be a problem.

— We'd better put it in the report, see if it helps.

Laura, stopping behind the cameramen, stared into the monitor where the image of the horses was transmitted and smiled as she watched several cubs frolicking beside the road. She didn't even notice the servicewoman walk to the elevator and call out to her several times.

— Please keep up, Miss Asadi, it's easy to get lost here, — the uniformed conductor warned as she pressed the button for the top floor.

Laura felt the familiar excitement again, only now, on top of everything else, her heart was jumping out of her chest: she could hear it pounding in her ears. To calm herself down, she had to take a bottle of water out of her backpack and take a few sips, but it was in vain - the water had time to heat up and was not tasty. Laura relied on her self-control, so as not to look like a pathetic, intimidated rabbit to her superiors. A long corridor, wide windows of offices and people in business clothes. Now she felt herself outside the military training ground. The top floor turned out to be exactly what she imagined the entire building to be.

— We're here, Miss Asadi, Mr. Bryce is waiting for you, — the girl guide stopped at the main translucent door, where you could see several people: one in a black suit, another in a military uniform.

Laura straightened her back and cleared her throat, nervously adjusting her loose curls. Her cheeks lit up with a treacherous blush. She couldn't hide her excitement; she always had a hard time with any lie.

— Thank you for seeing her off, — the therapist said.

— You're welcome. Come in, don't be shy, — the military woman opened the door, inviting her guest in.

Laura entered the office. Attention was immediately drawn to her. Jonathan Bryce turned around at the sound of the doors opening and immediately smiled when he saw the girl. Standing next to him, General Ardmore folded her arms across her chest.

— So you are Miss Asadi? — asked the head administrator and invited the guest to sit down.

— Yes, Mr. Bryce, I'm a general practitioner, I work in the city clinic, — Laura modestly squared her shoulders and sat down in a cushioned chair. She suddenly felt dirty and clumsy, as if a homeless person had been brought into a rich house.

— I remember you on the first day of your stay, you arrived as part of the third crew, didn't you? Serviced the frozen staff? — The Generaless stepped back to the window, observing what was going on outside.

— That's right, — Laura quickly mumbled with excitement and only then realized that this was the answer of the soldiers, but the generaless apparently found it amusing: she smiled at her succinct military answer along with Bryce. — I was twenty when I was accepted into the program, and I was twenty-five when the ship arrived on Pandora.

— I'm still new here and had no idea there were precious diamonds on the staff. A young beautiful girl, and a talented therapist too! — Jonathan splashed his hands in admiration and went to the coffee machine with three cups. — Not many people at such a young age are able to achieve intergalactic flight... Tell me, what is your secret?

Laura was confused at the question, ran her eyes around and answered tensely:

— I just got lucky... When I applied, I didn't count on anything at all, but I heard that the RDAs prefer young professionals, those who can work hard and diligently, and those who are far away from retirement...

— You really are a long way from her, — laughed the General, and Laura smiled modestly, dropping her gaze to the floor. — You're good. Mr. Bryce, you don't know yet, but this girl has already proved herself. When there was an accident on board, thanks to Miss Asadi's ingenuity, she managed to keep the frozen in their original state. She manually kept the capsules at the correct temperature for several hours while the damage was repaired. Had it not been for her idea with the tubes and the pump, we would have lost people.

— Thanks, but I was just doing my duty and listening to the head doctor, — Laura couldn't hold back a modest smile, she wasn't often praised by such big men as four-star General Francis Ardmore.

— Look at you, shy, too! — Bryce put a cup of hot coffee on the table in front of the guests. — Miss Asadi, you shouldn't be modest, you should be proud of your success and talent! After all, we invited you to express our sincere gratitude to you personally for not allowing our recombinant to perish.

Laura looked up, full of hope at the chief administrator.

— Had he survived? Is he all right?

— Thanks to your vigilance. A few more minutes and we would have lost him.

— Wow... — Laura whispered faintly to herself, tucking the unruly curls behind her ears and sighing in relief. — And I thought you were going to fire me...

— No, miss, — Bryce shook his head, taking a sip from his mug of coffee drink, — it's specialists like you that the RDA needs. Right now the ten-mile bridgehead has two million inhabitants. Most of them are military personnel, medics, scientists and engineers. But very soon, thanks to people like you and me, the city will blossom.

— You will help us to do it, won't you? - The general winked at the visitor from under her cap.

Laura smiled:

— With what I can, of course...

— Sure you can, — Bryce reached into his desk locker, pulled out another pass card, and placed it in front of the therapist. — To thank you for saving our precious recombinant, I invite you to a business dinner. There won't be many guests, but I'll introduce you to our leading scientists and specialists. We will decide where to place you, closer to the main control center.

Asadi's jaw dropped. She took the ID card with trembling fingers and clapped her eyes in amazement. It was too sudden. The unexpectedness struck at the heart, making her mentally tremble and rejoice, and outwardly just sit in a stupor at such a generous invitation from the chief administrator. She had never been to a social event before, especially to meet the cream of society. And the cream of society on Pandora was considered to be the famous talented scientists, military men, and engineers. It was an honor for Laura to meet them. It seemed as if a captivating dream had plunged her into a reverie.

— Mr. Bryce, thank you, that's... Thank you, Mr. Bryce, I would be honored to accept such an invitation... — ...Laura repeated the boss's name several times with excitement.

— We'll bring the car to your place of residence. And to make it less exciting for you, this pass can be used by two people, take someone with you to make it safer, — said General Ardmore, putting a reassuring hand on the girl's shoulder.

Laura smiled through tears of undisguised joy.

— Thank you, thank you very much...

***

— Not a bad girl, — the general stated as she and the administrator descended into the catacomb system beneath the RDA main building. A spiral metal staircase stretched down four meters, illuminated by wall-mounted neon lights. The air here was cold and musty, with a touch of medication: an unpleasant but harmless bitterness lodged in my throat.

Bryce followed the general downstairs, grabbing a protective, see-through jumpsuit with black gloves from a rack and pulling it over his business suit.

— Funny, it made me smile. I can't remember the last time someone lifted my spirits...

— Is that why you invited her to dinner, so she could keep... to keep you amused?

— I just wanted to thank for saving the colonel, that's all. I didn't expect to see such a pretty girl in the GP ranks. I'd have to go to that clinic and see if I'd be surprised.

— You can't put your finger in your mouth, Jonathan...

— I can't resist a young exotic! — Bryce laughed as he followed the general down the narrow corridor.

At the end was a massive iron door, more like a bank vault door. Inside, under the bright lights, among the chemicals and medical equipment, a group of scientists in protective, see-through jumpsuits and masks labored, observing the subjects and their reactions. Desperate cries echoed through the lab from the sealed chamber. Jonathan opened his mouth in amazement as he walked around the side of the chamber, standing in front of a thick armored window in the floor.

— Is this exactly what you told me about? — the receptionist asked with admiration.

— Yes, sir. We're still just at the beginning stage, but I think by the end of the week we'll have a result that will satisfy us.

— And we can start the cleanup as early as next week? Are you sure about that?

— Absolutely, — said one of the scientists, who approached the administrator and extended his hand in a friendly black rubber glove.

Jonathan shook the man's hand and, clearing his throat, asked:

— What exactly did you come up with? So far all I can see is a squirming blue primate. And, I don't get it, is that our recom?

— Retired, sir, — the general clarified. — One of the surviving recoms from Quaritch's group. Arrived at the base a couple of hours before the colonel. Failed, but will be able to serve in a different way now.

— On the basis of a neurotoxin, which is used by local humanoids, we managed to develop a unique powder mixture, — began to explain the scientist, not paying attention to the cries of the experimenter. — The spraying range of this crystalline substance may be small — five meters, if you wish — but the result will not disappoint you. Besides, the poisoning affects not only the fauna, but also the flora, which is consumed by the na'vi.

Lieutenant Lyle Wainfleet clenched his fists to the point of pain, trying to break free of the steel shackles. The collars around his ankles, hands, and neck squeezed his flesh tightly, preventing him from moving even a couple of centimeters. His blue naked body shuddered now and then in spasms of unbearable pain. The only thing left was to cry out desperately, hoping that at least someone would hear him from above and help him out of his torment. But the torture continued. The white gas came from the pipe every five minutes with an increased dosage.

— I'll kill you scum! I'll kill you! — Lyle screamed, baring bloody fangs like a hunted predator.

#avatar #james cameron avatar #fanfic #recom #recom quaritch #avatar recoms #recom lyle wainfleet #recom mansk #colonel quaritch #avatar the way of water #avatar2 #the way of water #avatar oc

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tuiccim · 1 year

Text

A Scarred Enigma - Alternate Ending

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x OC Lexa Green

Word Count: 3.3k

Trigger Warnings: Depression, anxiety, fear of touch.

Summary: Fellow Avenger Lexa Green is an enigma that intrigues Bucky to no end, but a painful past has left her scarred, both physically and mentally. Will she be able to overcome her past to find love in the future?

Beta read by the lovely @whisperlullaby

A Scarred Enigma Masterlist

Upon their return, the team is surprised to see Maria Hill at the end of the ramp.

"Agent Green," Maria says as she makes eye contact with Lex.

"Agent Hill," Lex nods to her.

"Lantern is on fire. I need you to join me in the conference room."

Lex goes cold hearing the coded message.

"Lex?" Bucky says from beside her.

"It's the compound I grew up in. They're in a standoff most likely. I have to go. I'll let you know what I can," Lex squeezes his hand.

"I'll come with you," Bucky says.

"Alexandria Naomi Cole."

"Who's that?" Bucky asks.

"Me. Lexa Green was the name I chose when I became an agent. Alexandria Naomi Cole is my real name and I think it's time I buried her once and for all. But I need to do it alone, Bucky. Do you understand?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I'm here if you need me."

"I love you," Lexa says it for the first time without qualification.

"I love you, too. Can I kiss you?" Bucky smiles.

"Yes, always yes," Lexa leans into him as he kisses her. After a moment, they separate and Lex turns to Maria, "Ready."

Maria smirks, "Let's go."

In the conference room are agents from both the FBI and ATF. They grill Lex for any information on the compound, cult beliefs, and members. Sliding a photo across the table, FBI Agent Birch asks, "Do you know this person?"

Lex's stomach churns as she recognizes the face, "Levi Michael Walsh. He was my stepbrother."

"He's now the leader of the cult and is threatening deadly force if anyone attempts to enter the compound. We'd like you to try to talk to him. You know him and understand their ways."

"I don't think he'd take kindly to that," Lex counters.

"Why is that?" Agent Birch asks, curiously.

"I killed his father and escaped the compound. I'm probably the last person he'll speak to," she explains.

"I see," Birch raises his eyebrow, "We'd still like you to join us. Your insight could be invaluable."

Lex gives a curt nod.

"Can you be ready in ten minutes?"

"I'm ready now," Lex lifts her go bag onto her shoulder.

"Great. Helicopter's on the roof," Birch leads the way out.

"Good luck," Maria says as Lex passes her.

"Thanks," Lex follows the other agents out, heading back to the one place she dreaded most in this world.

–

Standing on a ridge overlooking the compound, Lex pulls out her binoculars and surveys the area.

"What are you doing?" Birch asks.

"Looking," Lex says.

"For what?"

"Activity. Has there been any communication with them?"

"He accepted a walkie-talkie but has been very curt answering any questions.

"Can you take a look at this, please?" Birch's voice has a slight edge to it as he rolls out a large sheet of paper.

Lex looks over the map of the compound and begins pointing things out, "This is all housing. This is the school. This is the chapel. There is a bunker underneath for the women and children and a tunnel that leads out to the southwest. There were plans to add more when I left."

"What kind of firepower are we looking at?"

"I wasn't privy to much of that but a lot."

"Is there any chance this could turn into a mass casualty event?"

Lex stares at Birch for a second, "It's possible but it would be a last resort. Levi is despot. He wants all of the power and control he can have. He won't give it up but if he's backed into a corner, I wouldn't put anything past him."

"Alexandria?" The radio crackles to life, "Alexandria, is that you? Have you finally come home?"

The voice causes a chill down Lex's spine. She immediately feels nauseated.

"Talk to him!" Birch points to the radio.

"No," Lex balks.

"This is the first time he has reached out. If you can get him to talk, maybe we can end this."

Lex puts her head in her hands and takes a deep breath, "Fine."

"Stay calm with him. Don't let him goad you. Ask if they need anything. Try to get us an in."

Lex nods and picks up the walkie-talkie, "Hello Levi."

"Alexandria! My long lost sister. Have you come back to rejoin us?" Levi's malevolence seeps through the radio.

"Is everyone okay, Levi? Do you need anything for your people?"

"We're all just fine here. Our only problem is these feds thinking they should be able to change our way of life. Are you trying to help them? Things have changed here since you ran away, Alexandria. I should be thanking you."

"For what?"

"For killing our father. It allowed us to finally move past the old ways and into the full light of God. It called forth the true leadership."

Lex goes cold, "That being you?"

"Yes, dear sister. Had you stayed, you would have seen."

"Is there anything we can provide you with? Food? Medical supplies? Anything?” Lex pushes.

“And what would you want in exchange for this generous offer?” Levi practically growls.

“Some of the children are sick,” whispers Birch.

“We understand that the children are ill,” Lex says.

“The children are taken care of,” Levi says.

“We can help them, Levi. Please.”

“I’ll give you the children.”

“What can we give you?” Lex asks.

“You.”

“What?”

“You in exchange for the children. You can come in and negotiate for us,” Levi says.

Lex feels sick. The thought of going anywhere near Levi was sickening but knowing the needs of the children, Lex knew there was only one answer, “Done.”

“Agent Green! He might only be inviting you in to kill you!” Birch exclaims.

“Am I worth more than, how many children?” Lex argues.

“At least 20.”

“It’s done,” Lex removes her utility belt and weapons. When the line of children begins to march towards the gate accompanied by a woman, Lex advances. Some of the older children carried the babies and smaller children. As they get closer, Lex recognizes the woman accompanying them. Sarah was her closest friend as she grew up. The gates open and the children walk out as Lex walks in.

“Hello Alexandria,” Sarah nods at her. “If you will follow me I will take you to Levi.”

“Hello Sarah. How are you?”

“I am very well. I was sad when you left but I see now that it was to help me fulfill my purpose.”

“Your purpose?” Lex asks carefully.

“As the wife of our leader. He took me as his first wife. It is the honor of my life to be by his side,” Sarah smiles.

“I see,” Lex says.

“No, you don’t. But you will, you will.”

Lex was led into the chapel where the entire commune sat as Levi stood before them.

“Here she is! My lambs, here is the woman who killed my father, one of our great leaders. And now, she returns with those who would force us from our home, take our God-given right to bear arms, and who will always persecute us for our beliefs. We will not stand for it!” Levi shouts.

Lex stared at the man who had abused her for years and knew nothing she said would calm him.

“Come along, Alexandria,” Sarah takes Lex’s arm and drags her up the aisle. Murmurings of murderer and traitor follow Lex as she approaches Levi.

“On your knees,” Levi says to her, “beg for your life.”

“No,” Lex says clearly.

“On your knees, now,” Levi holds up a detonator, “beg for your life and the lives of everyone here.”

Lex knows that whether or not she gives in, Levi has no plan to get out of here alive. She assesses the situation and makes the only call she can. Pulling the one knife she had kept on her person, Lex lunges for Levi and manages to get him to drop the detonator. A tussle ensues and after only a few seconds, the knife slides into Levi’s carotid and he falls to the floor.

“NO!” screams Sarah as she kneels next to him and watches her husband bleed out. “NO! LEVI!”

“Finish it,” Levi whispers to her with his last breath. Sarah and Lex lock eyes for a moment before they both lunge for the detonator.

–

Bucky paces his room. It had been 24 hours since Lex had been called away and he was irritable with the lack of information he had received. The TV in his room was tuned to the national news channel that was covering the standoff. He was kicking himself for not having gone with you. He should have insisted but he understood the need to face your past.

“There is movement here at the compound. It looks like the children are coming out! This is breaking right now. We are at the Torchlight Compound in New Mexico where the FBI and ATF have been in a three day standoff. It appears that the compound is releasing the children to authorities. And wait- an agent is entering the compound! It looks as if the compound is finally allowing law enforcement in to negotiate…”

Bucky’s eyes glue to the tv where he watches as Lex enters the gates, speaks to another woman, and then follows her into one of the buildings. His gut clenches knowing what you must be going through as she enters. She’s strong enough for this, he reassures himself, repeating the words as a mantra.

“Bucky!” Steve comes through his door with Nat and Sam on his heels.

“You saw?” Bucky asks.

“Yes. She’ll be okay,” Steve says.

“I know, I know. She’s strong enough for this,” Bucky says again. “Right?” His voice strains out the last word.

“Yes. She is,” Nat says, “Because of you.”

“Because of all of us,” Bucky says, his eyes glued to the tc.

They watched the tv, their only lifeline to Lex at the moment. The reporter droned on, repeating information from earlier and occasionally showing clips from the last few days. She breaks in announcing that while she can’t reveal the name of the agent who entered, they were getting reports that the agent had close ties to the cult. It was as she was announcing this that people began streaming out of the chapel and gunshots began ringing out. The reporter ran and it was obvious the cameraman was hit as he screamed and the camera hit the ground. Just before the feed cut, they watched in horror as the building Lex had entered, exploded.

“No!” Bucky screams.

Steve puts a hand on his shoulder, “She got out, Bucky. I’m sure of it.”

“How? How are you so sure?” Bucky yells.

“Let’s assume she did until we know any different,” Nat says.

“We gotta go. Let’s go!” Bucky stumbles towards the door.

“We can’t, Buck. We can’t bring more attention to this,” Sam says as he blocks the door.

“Move,” Bucky growls.

“I can’t let you go, Buck,” Steve joins Sam.

“Steve, Sam, get out of my way!” Bucky's voice rises.

“You can’t fight all of us,” Nat says gently.

Bucky clenches his fists, anger at his friends for holding him back quickly gives way to his fear, “What if she’s gone?”

“I’ll find out. Just give me some time,” Natasha begs.

Bucky nods, dropping down to sit on his bed and cradling his head as his worst fears play over and over.

Nat returned an hour later, “Everything is crazy down there .There are several people hurt. A lot of people didn’t make it out of the chapel. They don’t have word on Lex, yet. I’ll keep trying.”

She quietly slips out again while Steve and Sam stay, waiting with him. When Nat returns later, Bucky jumps up, “Anything?”

Natasha nods, “She’s injured but she’s alive. Tony’s prepping the quinjet. Let’s go,” Nat leads the way out.

–

“Agent Green?”

“Agent Birch, come in,” Lex invites the man standing in the sliver of open curtain of the emergency department.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Birch smiles as he enters.

“Thank you. I’m sure you have some questions. Take a seat,” Lex motions to the chair beside her hospital bed.

“I just need your statement,” Birch takes out his notebook and pen.

Lex relates everything that occurred since she entered the compound up until her disarming of Levi and then explains, “Sarah and I locked eyes and then went for the detonator. I got to it first and disarmed it. Sarah got away from me and I knew she was going to the bomb to set it off. I got as many people out as I could. When Levi pulled out the detonator, some of their faces told me they had no idea but some wouldn’t budge. I ran out the side door and made it maybe fifteen feet before I was shot in the shoulder, then the building exploded and I was thrown. I woke up here.” Lex paused for a moment before asking the question she dreaded, “How many did we lose?”

“We’re still sifting through the rubble. So far it’s forty-three dead but you saved twenty-nine children and more than a dozen members who did escape the chapel. Remember those.”

Lex nods, “Do the other statements corroborate mine?”

“I’m not really supposed to say but, the hell with it, some do and some don’t. Don’t worry about it,” Birch gives a small smile as he stands up. When the curtain flies wide open a second later, Birch has his hand on his gun as he takes a stance to fight.

Bucky stops suddenly seeing the man in a threatening pose.

“Bucky!” Lex smiles, amused at his clamorous entrance. “It’s okay, Birch. Stand down. This is my friend, Bucky.”

“Hi,” Birch looks over the Winter Soldier. Certainly not who he would have expected her to be with but he glad she had someone.

“Hi,” Bucky says but his attention is on Lex as he makes his way to the side of her bed. “You’re okay?”

“Yeah. I’m okay,” Lex smiles at the beautiful face she wondered if she’d ever get to see again as she ran from the chapel.

“Well, thank you for everything,” Birch’s voice said from the doorway. “I’ll, uh, leave you two alone.”

“Good luck with everything, Birch,” Lex said, never breaking eye contact with Bucky.

The curtain squeaked as it pulled closed and Bucky reached to touch Lex’s face. It was littered with tiny cuts, her arm was in a sling, and she seemed to be holding herself rigid.

“You’re hurt. Tell me,” Bucky looks over her with concern.

"Don't worry. It's nothing terrible. Just a through and through to the shoulder, a concussion, a couple of broken ribs, and some bumps and bruises."

Bucky nods, tears in his eyes, "Well, you know I'll be here to take care of you until you're healed."

"You have been since I met you," Lex says as she reaches for his hand.

Bucky stares down at her hand in his before lifting it to his lips for a kiss and his heart nearly bursts at the tender look Lex gave. Only a few weeks ago, she would have quelled at the touch and run away from affection. Now, she accepted and returned it. The other night they had kissed, her sitting on his lap for what seemed like hours, before falling asleep together.

"I'm sorry it took me so long to get here. The, uh, team held me back until we knew something," Bucky says.

"That was probably best," Lex pauses.

Bucky picks up on her hesitation, "What is it, doll?"

"Are they here?"

"Yeah, they'll be here any minute."

"Then I have two requests before we’re interrupted. First, kiss me, please," Lex bites her lips as she watches a grin spread across his face as he leans forward. It's as perfect as she remembers when his lips meet hers. When they finally part, they sit smiling at each other for a minute.

"And your second request?" Bucky asks.

"Take me home. I want out of here."

"You got it." Bucky barely gets the words out before the rest of the team is clamoring around.

Lex finds herself laughing as they all speak at once but then winces at the pain in her ribs. Finally, Tony raises his hands and declares, "Alright, enough. You ready to get out of here, kid?"

"Yeah," Lex nods enthusiastically.

"I'll go wrangle a nurse," he winks as he heads out the door.

Lex is grateful when a couple of hours later, she is sitting gingerly in the quinjet headed for home. Home with Bucky.

–

Over the next few weeks, Bucky watched over Lex as she healed and, this time, she welcomed his presence. Lex’s shoulder healed up pretty quickly but the broken ribs took a while. Bucky was always gentle and treated her as if she was fragile until Lex had told him enough. They’re relationship continued with the physical part growing each day. Lex still shied away at times, overwhelmed and overstimulated by something that was still so foreign to her, and Bucky was more kind and gentle than she ever thought a human, especially a man, could be. It had any apprehension, all of her fears, melting away. Or, perhaps, morphing into the love that seemed to grow with each passing day.

One night as Lex and Bucky were wrapped up in their weekly movie night, she made a decision. Lex rested her head on his chest, his arm around her as they watched. When the movie reached its conclusion, Bucky turned the tv off and kissed the top of her head, “Do you want to get some ice cream or something, doll?”

“No. I, um… I want to go to bed,” Lex answered.

“Oh, okay-”

“With you,” Lex interrupted.

“Lex?” Bucky stared at her as he tried to make sense of the statement.

“Will you make love to me, Bucky? Please?”

“But, you… your ribs- You’re still healing,” Bucky stuttered.

Lex smiled and bit her lip, “I’m fine, baby, really. I love you and I’m ready. I want this, I want you. Unless… Unless you don’t want me, that, anymore-”

“No! I mean, yes! I mean- I want to be with you. I just want you to be sure.”

Lex smiled brightly and nudged his nose with hers, “I’m sure.”

Their lips met and Bucky was sure his heart was going to beat out of his chest. He had imagined this moment a thousand times. Even when he was unsure if she would ever be able to handle his touch, he had hoped, even pleaded with whatever god would listen, that this beautiful, amazing woman would one day be able to accept, not just his touch, but his love. He had placed his heart squarely in her hands from the first moment his eyes had met hers. She had looked away quickly, withdrawing into herself, but Bucky had known, somehow in that moment, that they were kindred spirits and soulmates.

Pulling back for a moment, he looks deep into Lex’s eyes, desperate for her to understand everything he was feeling, “I love you. I love you so much more than I can explain. I don’t have the words.”

Lex smiles, her eyes luminous, “Then show me.”

Bucky could barely hold himself back as he entered her body for the first time. Their fingers intertwined and foreheads pressed together as they both sighed with pleasure and fulfillment. When he looked down at her, his breath caught at the sight of tears.

“Did I hurt you?” Bucky questioned gently.

“No, no. I didn’t know it could be like this. I love you, Bucky,” Lex shuddered as the words left her.

“I love you,” he whispered as he kissed away the tears.

“Bucky,” Lex moaned. She never imagined that the physical could be like this. It was as if their souls had connected and her world had finally set itself right. Her scars would always be there, but with Bucky’s help, they had become just a part of the story instead of her whole story. She would be scarred always, an enigma sometimes, but now, her whole self. A whole person, loved and loving. The way it should be.

Updates and taglist: My taglist is closed. Please follow my sideblog @tuiccimfanfiction for update notifications. All series and new stories will be reblogged to it. You will only receive notifications when a new part or story is out! Nothing else will be blogged to the page. I can’t thank you enough for your support!

#bucky barnes #bucky #marvel #avengers #bucky fanfic #captain america #bucky x oc #oc #the winter soldier #winter soldier #a scarred enigma

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bionicle-ramblings · 1 year

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I've been thinking about a post I made a little while back, specifically the one where, theoretically, Teridax took over the body of Mata Nui and exacted his revenge on Vakama by killing him over and over all over again, essentially making his own time loop to trap Vakama in, one Teridax has full control of; he'd have Vakama be a Toa so he doesn't die or break easily, and the transformation probably hurts a lot

I thought about something else: what else would he do? The Toa Haga already get taken out of commission almost as soon as Teridax takes over, and I'm pretty sure something happens to the Toa Nuva and Mahri in canon, but I'm not 100% sure, but imagine if Teridax saw everyone realize what's happened to Vakama and why and decides to twist the knife further for all of them; he's essentially God now, so what's stopping him?

For instance, the Toa Mahri and Takanuva are forced to remember Metru Nui, that they had whole lives before Mata Nui and don't remember because of the sleeping containers. Teridax mocks them when they say they were forced to their slumber and he tricked them, thought Takanuva gets a heavier dose of "remember juice" because he also remembers further back, that he was an Av-Matoran that went into hiding and had his memory wiped

With the Toa Metru back, they get some surprises as well:

Nuju has been speaking in a way no one else can really understand, so it's only fair that he get to experience what that feels like, so he is left unable to understand what anyone is saying to him regardless of what language they speak to him with

Nokama, the teacher and most knowledgeable of her team, with her translation power, has not only her speech taken from her, but also loses the ability to read anything she sees; her speech will prevent her feom properly communicating with anyone about anything

Whenua, who has the ability to read and knows damn near everything because he's an archivist, is challenged to FIND anything because Teridax takes his ability to see anything

Onewa, strong-willed and brash, Teridax has a surprise for: driving him batshit insane until Onewa's left staring at nothing and simply being dead weight

Matau, who was someone who helped Vakama overcome his fears and the horkida venom, gets the honor of seeing and experiencing what happens to his brother and leader, getting a clear first-person POV shot of whatever happens to Vakama, so if Vakama is being burned alive, Matau will see and feel it

And does Vakama know about it all? Maybe. Solid maybe because as good as it would be to have him feel guilty for the damage of so many people he cares about, he won't exactly be able to focus on it because he's busy dying repeatedly

Bit of an upside, though:

Takanuva, using the vents, saves Vakama once more and the two slip away; the Great Spirit robot is essentially a giant Bionicle body, and most are aware of what goes on in their body, but they can miss stuff in the inner workings like veins, or vents

It's a half-baked idea, but they manage to get away, barely, and regroup with the others, where Vakama sees what's become of his team and the Toa Mahri

I will make a follow-up post to this one day, but I'm going to stop here before I make this too long

#bionicle #ramblings #vakama #nokama #matau #onewa #whenua #nuju #jaller #takua #takanuva #tw slight violence #tw brutality #tw torture #teridax #sort of a rewrite at this point #long post #there will be more to come

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delkios · 1 year

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As I put at the end of the fic, here's the Tie a Knife with a Ribbon Commentary post

I don't think I've ever actually done a commentary thing for a fic before. But I had a lot of thoughts, headcanons and worldbuilding while making this that wouldn't fit as well as some things that I wanted to put in there but couldn't for one reason or another.

I might have one more fic in me for this 'verse but after that, who knows.

After weeks of ambushes, they’d finally managed to turn the tables on the commandos that had been chasing them.

So ever since Scorch's cameo in the first season of The Bad Batch I've had ideas about Delta Squad having to hunt the Batch down, how they'd go about doing it and how well they'd match up. The biggest question, of course, is why is (the remainder of) Delta Squad separated in the first place? I originally thought that maybe they had ulterior motives- mostly using the Empire's resources to get a lead on Sev among other things -and splitting up would make it easier to achieve. Recently I've been leaning a bit more into the idea that the Empire split them up, as well as any of the remaining first gen commandos, essentially holding them hostage in order to ensure they cooperated.

Basically I just want a reason other than 'because loyalty/the chip made them' because that would be boring. But when Scorch was sent to hunt down the Batch none of the crosstrained commandos could keep up with him so he pestered his CO into letting him bring in the other Deltas.

Also, I know everyone wants Vode An to play when Delta Squad shows up but I propose something different: if Delta starts off as antagonists, I say the song that should play is Rage of the Shadow Warriors. Then, after the two groups ally up and the Batch get in over their heads and Delta comes in as the cavalry

THEN Vode An can play.

They knew how to use Clone Force 99’s abilities and knowledge against them... the best way to counteract that would’ve been to stay together.

I know there's at least one video floating around that pits the two teams together but I haven't watched it so I don't know what their conclusion was but this is mine:

Due to the difference (that I headcanon) in their training, I think Delta Squad would have better teamwork and, knowing who they're up against, would be bettered prepared for the fight, especially if they're able to get the Batch into an area they've prepped. Both advantages the Batch could overcome eventually. I think Delta's best bet would be to isolate one of the Batch from the others and find ways to neutralize their abilities. For instance get Hunter in a place that would overwhelm his senses, rendering them useless. For Wrecker, get him in a situation where his instinct is to build an IED and booby trap the materials he'd use. And so on.

Hunter had closed the distance... opting for hand to hand combat rather than ranged.

Knowing Fixer's favorite weapon is the Katarn gauntlet vibroblade, this match up is about half the reason I wrote this fic. The other half is the idea of them bonding over knives.

These commandos weren’t to be taken lightly... how easy it was to lose sight of them even with glowing visors.

I love the commando visors but I have to admit that giving a unit whose job is to infiltrate armor with a distinctive glow seems silly.

...it wasn’t until the commando fell back into an attack stance that Hunter realize he’d stolen the knife right out of Hunter’s hand.

The idea of Fixer (accidentally) stealing Hunter's knife didn't come to me until I started thinking up scenarios for this fic but once it did I knew there was no other way for this fight to go. I like to imagine that when he regroups with the rest of Delta the conversation would go something like: Scorch: Did you steal a knife? Fixer: No... Scorch: What, he just gave you his weapon? Fixer: I didn't steal it intentionally. Scorch: So you're borrowing it? Fixer: (looking the knife over) ...it's a really good knife. Boss: Do I really have to go over the 'don't take other people's things just because you like them' rule with everyone again? Scorch: Yeah. Our thefts are purposeful!

“/Yes. I’m heading his way right now. The commandos seemed to have fallen back./”

Even though I like the idea of Delta Squad hunting down the Batch, in every scenario, Delta isn't doing it with the intent of beating them. They're making a good show of it but always leave the Batch at least one out and so long as the Batch keeps finding those outs or make their own, Delta won't bring them in. Either because having the Batch running wild figures into their own plans or because they're failing out of spite.

None of them were exactly happy with the situation. Certainly they were glad for the return of their missing teammates...

The very first scenarios I thought up way back in season one all had to do with Delta Squad giving the Batch an ultimatum: Delta would pass along all the information they had on leads to Sev to the Batch (some scenarios included Rex) and once Sev was found, either alive or dead so long as there was proof, they'd bust out Crosshair (and, in the Rex scenarios, Cody).

They'd been in high demand ... Only a fraction of the original generation of commandos survived and the three remaining Deltas were among them.

In the Legends books the commando's numbers were cut nearly in half in the first battle of Geonosis due to mishandling by the Jedi: being thrown into the battlefield instead of what they were actually trained for, infiltration and sabotage. After, some clone troopers were picked to crosstrain as commandos.

Given the kind of time crunch there must have been to try to fill out the commando ranks, I find it doubtful the crosstrained ones were as good as the first gen commandos. Not a diss, just pointing out the difference in what was likely a few months of additional training verses several years worth. Crosstrained ARCs likely weren't as good as first gen ARCs, either. For the record, I consider Gregor to be crosstrained as a commando as, in Legends, commandos were given RC prefixes while Gregor is a CC which has already been used by other non-commandos.

Also, fun game to play: how many missions in Clone Wars would've gone better if they'd used commandos?

Hunter didn’t know how it went down behind the scenes but it didn’t feel right leaving without thanking Rex for his part in this.

I thought about going into detail about how Rex brokered this deal but then decided I didn't actually want to figure all that out.

Chiding himself for the foolish thought, Hunter took it and slide his knife back in its sheath.

Look, let's just pretend that Tech isn't the only one that actually has gear and weapons as part of their model and everyone else pulls their stuff out of nowhere.

As much as he hated to admit it, Delta Squad was trying to survive this mess as best they could... he couldn't blame them anymore than he did Crosshair.

Look, I understand why the inhibitor chip had to exist but I think it's ridiculous that people push it as the reason clones worked for the Empire. They're slaves that were created and taught only one thing: to wage war. The Republic didn't look out for them. In Legends they originally weren't even paid for the work they did. They weren't seen as people, they were considered property and the civilians certainly didn't think much of them and many probably thought they were basically droids themselves. Clones would've had no where to go, no money with which to leave and most of them wouldn't have employable skills to fall back on. That uncertainty versus something they know they can do and know they'll at least have food and shelter, it's no wonder they'd stay with the Empire, even if it meant doing things they didn't like. They were essentially raised to be as dependent on the Republic (and Empire) as the Republic was made dependent on them.

“If anyone could survive this long, it would be Sev.”

For a while I've considered Sev not surviving. But then, after a few years away from the fandom, I decided I preferred him being alive. It helped that the game devs were considering a sequel in which he did survive and fell in with the fledgling rebellion before it was canceled.

And, even with Scorch potentially about to be an important character in the Batch, there isn't a guarantee that particular cliffhanger will be addressed (for the third time) so I'll do what I want.

“Some of our training sergeants set up a place for commandos to retire to, but…”

In Legends, some of the commando's training sergeants- a hundred people, mostly Mandalorian, hand picked by Jango called the Cuy'val Dar -set up a colony for clones (mostly their commandos but also any other clones than found them) at Kyrimorut on Mandalor. Delta's trainer, Walon Vau, was among those that helped set it up. They also researched how to stop the clones' advanced aging.

Even in their isolated corner of Tipoca City, they’d heard horror stories about what the commando trainers put their men through.

From a young age commandos were trained in live-fire exercises (meaning using actual ammunition and not simulation rounds), interrogation resistance (i.e. torture), etc. Fatalities sometimes occurred during training and Vau was considered one of the more brutal trainers. He treated his commandos as soldiers from the beginning and was determined to push them to be the best of the best even if he had to thrash them to do it. If memory serves, he was the only on that didn't lose any commandos on Geonosis.

When Hunter inspected his knife... he found it had been newly sharpened, the blade cleaned and oiled until it gleamed.

Fixer, 1000%, always intended to give Hunter's knife back even if it took years to do so. He always kept it on him, never used it and did his best to ensure it was in the best condition possible. Boss and Scorch might've thought he was being ridiculous but when Fixer commits ain't nothing swaying him.

“He seemed confident you’d get out of whatever trouble you might’ve got into on your own.” Boss had also sounded a little hesitant, like he was forcing himself to believe that...

I imagine, after losing Sev and the rift it caused and getting split up on top of that, Boss got overprotective when they were all back together again. He'd always been a little overprotective though that was mainly in things like taking responsibility for the squad and chaffing whenever control of them was taken out of his hands (Boss has control issues, fight me). But he'd always had faith that his squad could handle anything thrown at them. So having him be suddenly overprotective about everything grated with the others, especially in the beginning and Boss had to relearn how to let them out of his sight all over again.

“You’ll have to get them out of my pack, then. They should be in the left side, grab two just in case.”

How do these packs work? Are there divided sections like a backpack? How do they attach? What do they do? Why won't the game devs return my calls? I need answers, people!

Stealth had always been one of Hunter’s strengths, his enhanced senses locating any nearby guards before he was ever in danger of being spotted.

Man, how I wish the show actually utilized Hunter's enhanced senses in a consistent manner.

Hunter abruptly realized that this was the first time he’d seen Fixer- or any Delta -without a helmet

I haven't really put all that much thought into how much older I think Delta Squad is verses the 99, anywhere between two to four years old. Which would, biologically, make them about four to eight years older but I imagine Delta looks older than they are due to how hard they've been worked and the stress of their missions. They probably wouldn't look as old if they got a healthy amount of sleep on a consistent basis. Someone get these boys a vacation.

...new blood on his lip partially covering up an old scar and a long healed notch at the rim of his right ear, like something sharp had taken a slice out of it.

The scar and notch he got during training: Fixer has a tendency of biting his lip when he's stressed and, during interrogation training when one of his squad mates was being tortured next to him in order to get Fixer to break, he damn near bit through his lip to keep quiet. The notch he got while fighting another commando during knife training. They took a slice of his ear, he sent them to the infirmary. Vau was both mildly irritated and grudgingly impressed that Fixer made no move to deal with the injury until Vau told him to.

Also Fixer's nose had been broken when Scorch punched him in a fit of anger after they were sent away from Kashyyk without getting the chance to look for Sev. Fixer didn't bother getting it set properly, he claims because it didn't affect his performance but it was also due to guilt.

“People don’t usually notice me.” Fixer eventually said.

This is totally not me calling out fandom (and the books) for the tendency of pushing Fixer into the background at best or completely ignoring him at worst. It's fine that he's not people's favorite- he isn't my favorite, either -but he's not just a bland stick in the mud. I don't know why people think he would be when he's had to deal with Scorch and Sev every day for his entire life and was part of one of Vau's best squads. Fixer is just as ruthless and capable of getting into just as much trouble, he just hides it better.

That got him that soft almost-laugh again

I imagine Fixer's most common laugh is more of a huff that could easily be passed off as a sigh. It's a defense mechanism because Scorch knows Sev and Boss find him funnier than they let on and if Scorch knew Fixer did too, he would become insufferable.

(Spoiler: Scorch knows but is trying to get Fixer to admit it first)

The shield in the first gen commandos’ armor was good for dissipating the kinetic force from energy bolts but a powerful enough electric blast could shred right through it.

I know it didn't show up in the episode but I imagine the shield is why Scorch was able to tank so many stun bolts before going down. In the game there's no real pattern with the types of weapons that can shred through the shields- Geonosian beam weapons, scav droids' lightning, Trandoshian mini gun -and they don't come up in the books. My take is that they're like a weaker version of a droideka's shield. They're mostly made to hold up against blaster bolts while the armor itself deals with physical attacks. A strong electric current can overload that shields and while their blacks insulate them from weaker surges, EMP grenades or a shock stick can still leave them vulnerable to follow up attacks.

Despite their usefulness they weren't put in later iterations of the Katarn armor, probably because they weren't expecting to replace as many commandos as they had to after Geonosis and couldn't manufacture enough shields to keep up.

Hunter didn’t know when or why they’d stopped being integrated into the Katarn armor...

I haven't figured out a reason for that, though. Or why they don't show up anywhere outside of games.

...he realized very suddenly that he practically had his fingers intertwined with the commando’s.

I'll admit, that's for me. Give me all the hand holding and fingers tangling together.

“It won’t take long and it just needs some common supplies... it’d be easy for you to install once you find a compatible one.”

Even though Fixer is explicitly stated to be a tech aficionado, between it making sense that commandos would be able to maintain their armor themselves in case of damage or malfunction while in the field and Fixer's preference for the gauntlet blade, I don't doubt he'd be able to take apart and reassemble it. Whether the mechanism is easy to build from scratch, I have no idea.

Fixer finally seemed to get annoyed... “If you don’t want it-”

When Fixer offers you something, take it. He's absolutely not the type that will put up with hemming and hawing or play the polite back-and-forth game.

He was fairly ambidextrous with both pistols and knives so he supposed it didn’t really matter. “Left.”

I don't recall if he tended to use a knife in a particular hand and didn't feel like combing through episodes to find out. So ambidextrous he is.

Tech hated people touching his armor- his helmet, especially -without his permission. Fixer must be the same way.

I don't think it'd be common for clones to swap their helmets around and I'd bet some are very particular about others putting their helmet on. Fixer is definitely going to give his helmet a thorough cleaning. Also I'd bet he's done unauthorized modifications to his helmet, another reason he doesn't want people getting too close a look at it.

Sev had been trying very hard to pass off any responsibilities he’d been given during the forming of the rebellion to Boss who repeatedly declined.

I'm a firm believer that half the reason Sev stayed with the rebellion is because he was so offended by their lack of tactics and by the time he'd realized he'd become a trainer it was far too late for him to back out. When he reunited with his brothers, they all agreed that Sev called the shots for the squad which is why they also joined the rebellion. The one exception to that is Boss refusing to take over Sev's position both as a trainer and part of the rebellion's hierarchy. Partly because Boss was amused that Sev got himself in this position despite how much he complains about it and also because he's really come into his own in that time. In the field, they still fall into the habit of Boss taking the lead (and Fixer his second) unless other circumstances requires Sev doing so.

The commandos’ attitudes had changed drastically since reuniting with their lost brother.

I feel like it shouldn't need to be said that Delta's bond was irrevocably damaged after they left Sev behind. Reuniting with him helped to heal the rift but it'll never be the same way it used to be. Ironically I think Sev was the one least affected. Were he in the same position, he couldn't say what he'd do so while there is some resentment due to what he'd suffered in his time alone, he doesn't blame them for following orders like they were trained to. It probably helped that he was so shocked at how that decision hurt his brothers that, even if he didn't realize it, he was quick to forgive them.

“Because he’s used to doing things his way, he hates the idea of someone else coming along and taking over,” Crosshair once observed before turning a lazy, sideways look to Hunter, “just like you.”

Again, Boss has control issues. He's perfectly deferential when dealing with someone that outranks him, it was usually because when out on missions there was very little oversight and Boss still made most of the decisions. He tends to be more abrasive, competitive and arrogant when dealing with peers, subconsciously seeing them as a threat to his position. In Legends he nearly came to blows with another commando sergeant in part due to his attitude.

I'd imagine Hunter is much the same, especially with the tenuous position the 99 would've been in. The Kaminoans made them as an experiment but they also had no qualms with reconditioning or decommissioning clones that weren't up to their standards so Hunter would've had to simultaneously push his brothers while protecting them. It's no wonder he doesn't trust others to have his team's back.

Childhood trauma is a bitch.

Maybe it was the way Fixer seemed to prefer to fade into the background, letting his more gregarious brothers draw all the attention... Hunter couldn’t help taking great pleasure in bringing Fixer to the forefront whenever possible...

It's probably because Fixer's armor is my favorite but I tend to think he has an understated vanity, not just in terms of looks but also in his skills. He doesn't need people to acknowledge it, he already knows he's good at what he doese. That doesn't mean he won't flaunt it on occasion. In terms of teamwork, Boss and Scorch tend to draw attention while Fixer and Sev hit where the enemy isn't expecting them and, when something needs to be sliced in the heat of battle, that's usually Fixer's job so he tries not to draw attention. Staying in the background is kind of his thing, so having someone consistently noticing him, going out of their way to acknowledge him is something he isn't used to dealing with. He's very much an introvert.

Hunter could feel Fixer watching him afterward, as if Hunter was a great mystery he hadn’t been able to puzzle out.

When this first started happening, Fixer was just confused but he'd respond promptly. As he started getting more flummoxed with Hunter's behavior, he'd take longer to respond, trying to figure out what was happening. That would be the point that Scorch and Boss, who had found it hilarious in the beginning, would start redirecting attention to themselves and Fixer would stew over the interaction for sometimes days. It got him out of his comfort zone, forced him to figure out things like what about it made him uncomfortable, if he actually was uncomfortable or just not used to it, if he didn't mind the attention, if he was okay with Hunter closing that distance, and so on. Once he got all those questions sorted, Fixer began replying promptly again though not as clipped and impersonally as before. When he realized he actually looked forward to those interactions, his replies- though still always professional -were warmer and he relaxed enough to throw in a dry joke or tease in there occasionally. His brothers definitely noticed this but were so caught off guard they never brought it up with each other.

In any case, whenever a mission required them splitting into two groups, Boss always lead one and Hunter the other... they were joined by Crosshair, Scorch and Omega...

This is actually based off an old scenario I had long ago using almost the exact same teams though back then it was Echo instead of Crosshair with Tech on the other team. I thought it would be fun to mix up the two groups because I wanted to imagine how Boss and Hunter specifically dealt with the other squad's eccentricities and how well their leadership styles would allow them to work around those difficulties. But I had no idea why they were working together, what they were doing or who they were dealing with so it never got further than a vague idea. But it was where I first got the idea of Hunter throwing his knife for Fixer to use and the first time I considered the two could possibly get along.

Fixer grabbed the hilt, ripping the blade through the side of the neck. From there the commando was a whirl of movement and Hunter was transfixed.

Is this maybe me projecting onto Hunter? Maybe. Action scenes full of flashy attacks requiring lots of space to do large movements like flips and spins are all well and good but I prefer my action sequences to be full of quick, sharp movements. Where attacks are meant to either be lethal or create an opening for a lethal follow-up attack. I think there can be beauty in brutality and that needs to be embraced more in media.

“It’s a quality knife,” Fixer said. “Good weight, well balanced.” ... His voice dropped, turning something dark and silky...

This was a bit of an odd scenario because I'd had it in mind since I first imagined Fixer using Hunter's knife and it kind of went back and forth between how flirty it would be. I'd probably say this scene was what made me go from "Oh, Hunter and Fixer connecting over knives, how fun," to "What about exploring how their relationship changes using knives as a mirror". So, really, I blame all of this on this one scene.

“You are not flirting right now,” Scorch cut in. “Stop it. Sev’ll never believe me.”

That is, honestly, how I kind of feel about this entire relationship. In all my headcanons Fixer was the most insular one in the group. He was always the one most resistant to socializing outside of the squad and had the hardest time wrapping his head around why his squadmates might want romantic relationships, struggling to understand what was lacking in their fraternal one. Of all the Deltas, Fixer was the one I never saw getting into a relationship, either long term or casual. So, when this idea hit, I kind of had to sit with it, puzzle it out. Figure out how Fixer would react to it: the things that would get his attention, the things that made him want to be intimate, the things he wouldn't like, etc. It was enlightening.

I figured, as far as physical intimacy is concerned, that Fixer is more on the asexual end of the scale. He doesn't care much for sex mainly because he's repulsed by all the mess and stickiness involved. He's not above masturbation, he has an interest in toys and things like gloves, condoms, whatever will keep fluids from getting everywhere is appreciated. But, if he's in the right mood- and that seems to be following a good sparring session -he could be more receptive to something hot and sloppy.

The four of them reminded Hunter more of Fennec Shand than they did a reg, moving more with a hunter’s glide than they did a trooper’s march.

I think about clones a lot. I'll be honest, I'm not sure how much I'd care about Star Wars were it not for them. I liked the original trilogy alright but the rest is.... eh. But I have so many thoughts about clones, clone culture and the ways they differentiate themselves. To an average person there'd be very little difference between commandos and troopers. To clones, who developed the ability to easily spot differences between each other, commandos and troopers are nothing alike. The way a small group who grew up trained by a mercenary would move and act would naturally be different from a massive group who grew up trained for large-scale military maneuvers. I wish the media we're given would focus on that kind of minutia more because I don't want to be the only one that spends their time thinking about these sorts of things.

He composed himself as he’d been taught, putting on an air of confidence he absolutely did not feel and approached Fixer, pulling his knife- sheath and all -from his belt. “Here. Keep it.”

When I decided that this relationship was going to be romantic, this was obviously going to be the next step. Knives are a love language. There are few gifts more romantic than knives. And I'm not just talking about me. For a group that deals with practical and life-threatening situations regularly, one giving another a weapon they very clearly cherish is probably THE most courting gift possible.

...he said with a wink and much more bravado than his nerves were currently capable of.

One of the secrets I learned while in the military: it doesn't matter what you say, just say it with conviction. Even when asked questions during an inspection, even if you know your answer is obviously wrong, say it with your whole chest.

Fake it 'till you make it, baby.

Fixer just stared at him, looking dumbfounded and if it weren’t for the subtle shift in his scent or the rise of color in his cheeks, Hunter would’ve thought he’d made a fool of himself.

The moment Fixer realized his feelings shifted from "I'm curious as to where this goes" to "...oh".

Boss shook his head before following- Hunter could’ve sworn he chuckled as he did so...

I debated on how I'd write Boss's reaction because while he's mildly annoyed by it, it's only because it's Hunter but, 1) Boss is aware enough to realize there's not actually anything wrong with Hunter, and 2) Fixer having an interest in someone is such a surprise occurrence that he's not going to ruin Fixer's happiness by what Boss recognizes as a him-problem.

And then I was amused to because Boss is on the other end of that same situation in regards to my preferred ship for him.

Days later Omega was happily updating Tech on what they’d been up to on their weekly check-in call

I debated about being vague about Tech surviving and leaving that up for the readers to decide but what the hell. Not like this is going to be canon compliant once the next season drops in any case. So he's alive and still very much a part of the crew despite essentially being forced to retire due to injuries.

As far as canon goes, personally I don’t believe he’s dead. We watched Gregor and Echo get blown up and they inexplicably survived, Ashoka literally died fighting Vader and was saved via space-time portal. Even if he doesn't show up next season Ashoka was brought back after being missing for a season and the other two came back after even longer. If this were Clone Wars I might feel differently but it’s not like Bad Batch has issue showing dead bodies on screen so. We’ll see, I guess.

As far as Tech's state goes, he was obviously badly injured in the fall, broken bones, punctured organs, severe brain damage. Hemlock's forces found him fast enough to stabilize him- though I imagine there were periods in which he was technically dead before they managed it -and gave him enough bacta treatments to heal the worst of his brain damage but left his body badly broken. By the time he'd been rescued his body's natural healing caused a lot of that damage to become permanent, even if he was willing to get surgery (he wasn't because of the time and money that would take, finding a reputable hospital capable of doing all that surgery would mean a higher risk of the Empire finding him and, even if he got the surgery, he wouldn't be able to keep up with the Batch and would be sitting out missions anyway). I haven't thought what the exact nature of his injuries may be but it would be some amount of paralysis, chronic pain and some permanent side effects from traumatic brain injury. At least.

“He knows how to handle my knife.”

I struggled with finding a response that I liked until I decided "What would be the most innuendo" and finally liked what I wrote.

Tech’s voice was far too amused, “/I’m sure he does./”

Did Tech, despite not being there to witness it himself, deduce just from talking to the others that Hunter had a crush on Fixer before anyone else? Absolutely. Well, Phee probably figured it out first because she's very emotionally intelligent, but Tech can catch patterns quicker than most anyone.

Echo’s digestion was permanently karked from his time as a Separatists prisoner.

I firmly believe Echo has to deal with chronic pain and internal issues. I don't know if this is common in the BB fandom as I haven't done any real delving into it but I kind of hope so. The details canon doesn't give to me, I can only hope that fandom picks up the slack.

“Hey, we came bearing gifts for our poor, malnourished vode!”

I had wanted to put in a scene somewhat early on where it was discovered that the Batch don't know Mando'a. In my head, they were trained after all the Mandalorian trainers left and they didn't spend enough time with any one company to pick it up from them and Nala Se certainly wouldn't have bothered teaching Omega any Mandalorian culture. Upon learning this, Echo would've been abashed. He'd assumed, because the 99 were a later addition, that they'd refused their Mandalorian heritage like many clones did near the end of the war. He hadn't realized it was because they were never given the choice and was determined to teach them everything he knew.

Whenever he or Fixer shifted or anything happened to make him aware of Fixer’s leg against his- and he was incredibly aware of it -Hunter seemed to forget that anything else existed.

I don't know if it would be considered in character for Hunter to be this flustered but, in my defense, nothing like this occurs in canon so you can't say he absolutely wouldn't. Besides, between this probably being his first (serious) infatuation, being in close proximity with the person he's infatuated with who he doesn't really get to be with all that often and senses that can zero in on the tiniest thing, I feel justified in saying he wouldn't be able to help hyperfocusing on Fixer.

This, meanwhile, is quite a bold move on Fixer's part as he's neither a big toucher, sometimes even where his brothers are concerned, and is the least likely to socialize with non-Deltas, let alone share his space with them.

The 99’s trainers were only there for training, outside of that they only dealt with the Kaminoam scientists... and, on occasion, Shaak Ti.

This is probably going to be a hot take but I don't consider the Batch to be commandos (obviously not Echo, who's an ARC and Omega, who was meant to be a non-combatant). I certainly believe the 99 have some amount of commando training but, given they were specifically created with genetic mutations in mind, their training would most likely focus on developing and exploring those limits more than anything else. In fact, in an alternate universe where Delta and the Batch are more teeth-clenched allies, Fixer disparages the fact their commando training was a secondary concern at best.

Of course the knowledge that the Kaminoans made the 99 the way they are is hilarious when held up to Legends in which the Kaminoans' first attempts at fulfilling Jango's request for special forces clones resulted in the Null Class ARCs that were deemed too willful and unpredictable and were slated to be decommissioned if not for the intervention of one of the commando trainers. The succeeding ARCs were less independent but made to Jango's specifications while the commandos were created to the Kaminoans' specifications and were made more obedient than the ARCs.

And then with the 99 it's like coming full circle.

Hunter kind of liked the flash of warmth he felt whenever he became aware of the empty space on his belt and knowing Fixer held the missing piece.

This part was one of the first sections written and in the back of my head I kept going "oh god why is this so cute".

“One of the commando training sergeants had one like that...”

This is a reference to Kal Skirata, one of the main POV characters in the Republic Commando novels who was the trainer Delta Squad probably had most contact with outside of Vau. It was often mentioned that Skirata favored a three-bladed knife that he inherited from his father and while I don't think it was ever brought up in the books, I'd imagine someone that could appreciate a fine knife like Fixer would find that style of blade intriguing.

“This must’ve cost you a fortune!”

I don't know if this was ever addressed in the new canon but in Legends there were zero systems in place for the Republic to offer any support or compensation when they suddenly found themselves in possession of a clone army. And it didn't improve that much over the course of the war given the absence of any kind of retirement benefits and that clones who were too injured to fight would sometimes be euthanized in order to free up resources.

Vau was born into a rich, influential family before he was disowned and became a Mandalorian. At one point, enlisting Delta Squad's help to get him inside, Vau staged a bank robbery to take what he felt his inheritance from his birth family and to cover his tracks, stole millions from the vault. Everything, save for his inheritance, he put toward gene therapy research to slow the clone's aging. For all his brutality and cruelty- and one could argue he was perpetuating the cycle of child abuse he went through but I argue absolutely everyone that had anything to do with clones committed child abuse even if they tried to be nice about it -Vau cares for the clones and his men and was not happy with the Republic's lack of care for them. Therefore I believe he split his inheritance among his surviving commandos, giving them the means to be independent from the Empire and even from himself if they wanted. And, since Delta likely wouldn't have much need for the finer things in life, with some shrewd investing they probably don't worry much about money.

Looking back at Fixer’s face, Hunter could see a tightness in his brow and the corner of his lips, something shuttering behind his eyes like he was preparing to be hurt.

If you guessed that Fixer believed he was being rejected and Hunter nearly inadvertently broke his heart, congratulations on leasing a spot in my head. Rent is $5 a month or talking to me about clones.

...he saw Fixer’s helmet tilt and Hunter desperately wanted to know what that meant, if he was smiling underneath it.

In all my time in various fandoms I've come to realize there's something I enjoy about faceless or near-faceless characters and how they- and, subsequently, the people writing/drawing/depicting them -need to move or stand or gesture to get their feelings across. How does the angle of the head change how the audience reads their emotions, what's the difference in movement between a hand gesturing with emphasis versus gesturing with apathy. Seeing the character's romantic interest noticing those differences, learning the subtleties been their moods and how they hold themselves makes it even better.

...long enough to stop Wrecker from trying to sneak a pack of ryshcate into a purchase...

Hunter pays attention when it counts. Mostly.

Stealing shuttles seemed to be a habit of theirs.

Okay, I think that only happened once in the books but I enjoy the idea that Delta doesn't need their own dedicated shuttle, they'll just steal it from whatever asshole is in their area.

They said they knew some people that would strip the shuttle of anything trackable...

This is another reference to the clone colony at Kyrimorut. Assuming I'm remembering correctly and not attributing this to some fic I read, they started amassing a collection of different ships, some imperial ones to help with infiltration and information gathering. I like the idea of Delta passing some of their more useful, ill-gotten shuttles off to the Nulls to make use of.

Unfortunately for them the vessel they chose to sack happened to have Delta Squad on it... then took over their ship for good measure.

One of my favorite things is having some fools busting in some place, talking a big game and making demands, only to find themselves thoroughly outclassed by someone who was there merely by chance. And then the person in question taking the fools' stuff because they started it so why not?

As the knife felt more and more like an extension of his arm, Hunter began to move faster, the rounds getting longer until they were nearly dueling.

As opposed to the ruthless efficiency of the earlier fights, this I picture more like the sword fights from old movies like The Princess Bride or Errol Flynn/Basil Rathbone duels. Testing each other's guard, not aiming to hurt but willing to take the opening if it presents itself. It's about finding each other's rhythm and matching it, like a song, like a dance, like a heartbeat. Even though Hunter could see beauty in Fixer's brutality, the beauty in this is how in sync they are.

(oh my god they're drift compatible)

...just wanted to stay in that patch of the docking bay with Fixer in front of him and all the people he cared about around him.

These boys been through a lot, they all need hugs and drinks and a therapist.

“Sooooo?” Omega drawled out before Hunter even acknowledged her. “When are you going to tell him you like him?"

Omega had been lightly grilling Fixer every time they've met because she's been on board this ship for months. He's nice, patient, has an answer for nearly any question she's had, he's a little awkward at socializing but he doesn't treat her like a child (which is probably because he's never been around a child before). So while nearly everyone else is willing to spoil Omega with things like sweets or gifts, Fixer is the one that will let her do to more adult things like explaining to her how different firearms work and being able to tell when an explosive device has been armed. No shying away from the grislier side of what they do just because she's young. She's old enough that if she wants to know, she should know. Also he seems just as invested in Hunter's well being as she is and Hunter is always happier when they see each other. If Hunter hadn't decided to make a move, she was about ready to make one for them.

Because there wasn’t much else to do when flying through hyperspace for hours on end. He and Crosshair would bitch at each other over the characters’ idiocy afterward.

Though Crosshair was able to get back on good terms with the others and Hunter was understanding of his reasons, they had a difficult time trying to get back on an even keel with each other. Complaining about those soap operas helped them to bond again and they'll deny it to the heat death of the universe but they've gotten invested in the story. Echo may or may not have been the one to encourage those discussions between them.

“Guess we’ll swing by Pabu when we get some free time.”

I really like the idea that Pabu and the people there being a sort of sanctuary for the Batch. A place to go when they need to lay low or take a break and people who are willing to explain things natborns consider second nature but was considered unnecessary for clones without judging them for it. And that's before they settled Tech there, knowing he'd have a place to recuperate as best he can with people that will give him the best possible care.

He wasn’t sure any clone did though whether that was genetic or a result of their upbringing was unclear.

Clones have a very distinct love language that a lot of other people would just pass off as them being nice. No, my dudes. When a clone shares their food, that means something. If they allow you to take care of their gear, it means they trust you with their lives. Should they give you one of their very few possessions, you're basically part of their family. And being gifted a neigh indestructible weapon is all but a proposal.

“Just do stuff for him. Take care of him.”

The unfortunate part about being aware of the differences between clone culture and natborn culture (among many things) is the subconscious worry that the way clones do things is the 'wrong' way. Clones weren't taught to be paternal, therefore they don't know how to properly care for children. Clones were never taught to be romantic, therefore their ways of showing affection that's more than platonic isn't good enough. All clones need non-clone friends to explain there is never just one proper way to do things.

...friends that aren't Jedi because by the end of the Order they were kinda yikes.

When they reached out to Sev, he grumbled and made a show of being far too busy to deal with them before transmitting a passcode to land.

Sev tries so hard to keep up a persona of being too hardcore and angry to be nice these days. Only the newbies fall for it, everyone else goes along with it just to make him happy.

“You kidding? We were about to start making bets on you two!”

I assure you that bets had already been placed but if Hunter knew that then he'd want to know how long that had been going for and would probably be mortified at the answer. Wrecker is just being a good brother by lying and making sure payments are dolled out when Hunter isn't around.

“We’ve taken to using voice changers to make it easier for the natborn to differentiate between us.”

I know why and fully expected Delta Squad to be given the same voice as everyone else but I still write them with their original voices in my head. So any scenario in which I can give them voice changers so they'll have those voices, I'm doing it.

“They can make their own excuses... I don’t know the reason behind every time they get weird.”

Boss says a very similar thing whenever his squad gets into trouble because he just needed to take a goddamn nap.

...but with the blaster holstered on one side and knife on the other, he was still framed quite nicely.

Tangentially: I never really cared for Bo-Katan as a character but in The Mandalorian, her dual pistols and the nice little box they make? Wow.

...the town was built on a combination of rock and giant mangrove roots which essentially divided the town into two levels... here the trees had been dug into and, in some cases, straight through.

I originally had zero intention of describing this outpost but this 'mini date' section, as I think of it, was the second to last thing I had to write and realizing I had to have them moving through a space in order to get the moments that I wanted out of it, I ended up making a sort loose amalgamation of two video game locations: The Grove from Guild Wars 2 and Torigoth from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, specifically the area with the suspended bridges.

“It’s a wedding boat.”

Originally it was just going to be a fishing vessel making a lot of noise as they brought up a huge haul but that seemed too mundane, too uninspired. I'd recently watched a documentary that featured ethnic groups in the Philippines and some of the nomadic people's transition to a stationary lifestyle. They spotlighted a wedding and one of the traditions was the bridal party traveling on a boat in a similar manner. This wasn't meant to be a 'nudgenudge you boys getting any ideas nudge' kind of thing, it's just that that portion of the documentary really stuck in my mind.

“You’ll have to show me that some time.” Fixer’s hand squeezed his. “Of course.”

Fixer took him out that night, after Hunter finished making dinner and they ate under the stars with the crashing waves glowing blue and soft green and orange lights around them because this was a date and Hunter deserved better than to spend it in a cramped, ramshackled room filled with random junk.

Hunter began to tense from the overwhelming sounds and smells...

Again, don't know how fandom does it, but I imagine Hunter tends to suffer from migraines, especially in places with lots of strong smells and constant loud, overlapping noises. He can- and has -suffered through it for the sake of missions or to get tasks done but it sucks and he tries to avoid crowds when he can. If he can't, he'll wear his helmet if possible so he can shut off necessary filters if it starts to get too much.

“It’s more for my peace of mind- our peace of mind.”

Fixer may treat Omega most like an adult but that doesn't stop his instincts from pinging whenever he sees her. He can't stop thinking about things like "You need more weapons than just an energy bow" and "Why do you have a helmet but no chest plate, torso shots are more common than head shots". But, as someone who is 1) not part of her family, and 2) has not been part of any discussions regarding what kind of protection she has, and 3) knows the Batch are the most invested in her safety so they'd already cover that sort of stuff, he knows it's not his place to get into that. But he'll make her that knife because, c'mon, whose gonna turn down a concealed blade?

And to find whoever made Fixer doubt his capacity for kindness and beat them to within an inch of their life.

It's not so much that Delta Squad are surprised that they're able to be kind as it is they're surprised that they'll extend that kindness to others without thinking about it. Vau was a very pragmatic and blunt trainer. He made sure, given the things commandos were expected to do, that his trainees understood that, behind enemy lines, they'll only be able to depend on themselves and if anything were to happen to them, no one would help them, the only ones that would ever look out for them are each other. Even if he didn't say it outright, he implied that offering a kindness to people that wouldn't offer it back was nothing but wasted energy. So whenever they realize they're doing so- especially when people show appreciate or give kindness back -it kinda shorts out their brains a little. They'll get used to it, though. Eventually.

“In case someone needs some space.”

That's a bit of a deflection as much as it is an answer. As stated before, leaving Sev behind caused a rift and things were said and done that Sev's return wouldn't be able to heal over. It was worst between Scorch and Fixer and, even still, if both happen to be having bad days at the same time, neither wants to look at the other be it out of resentment or guilt. Boss did his best to keep the three of them together and maybe his responsibilities now aren't as numerous or stressful or demanding but some times he just needs to get away from everyone and recenter himself. Often when there are bad days, Sev gets the brunt of it because his brothers need reassurance that he's there, that he doesn't hate them and he tries to be as patient and understanding as they need but if he couldn't get away from their smothering he would explode at them. And then there are times when they just don't want to be cuddled because it's too hot or they're feeling restless or maybe someone is too gassy and needs to be exiled from the pile.

“Didn’t realize I missed being able to pile up with my brothers until I saw that.”

Poor Omega never got to be part of a cuddle puddle. Once Hunter realizes that, he'll rectify that the next time they're on Pabu. There will be tons of cushioning for Tech and Crosshair may be skittish at the start but Hunter and Wrecker and Echo will show her how it's done and afterward Omega will demand they make it mandatory every so often.

There was a long stretch of silence and then Fixer asked uncertainly, “Is this a date?”

The thought occurred to him after everyone else made themselves scarce. It just took him this long to get the courage to ask.

“I’d like to, if you don’t mind. I like watching you handle a knife.”

And, of course, it all comes back to knives.

#republic commando #bad batch #fic #fic meta #still can't believe i wrote that #and am impressed that some people actually read it and liked it enough to tell me

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electrasev5nwrites · 1 year

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Ninja Daily: AIC 11

"I don't really see the problem either," Sakura admitted. She hated to agree with Naruto, but… "If the Hokage let Haku in to the village, he might admit Hikari-san as well." She splayed her fingers out. "Probably with similar restrictions and screenings. If she's not a missing nin, I mean."

'Would she want to come here? Haku is still in the security building, and it's been days.'

"Of course she's not a missing nin," Naruto said. He kicked at the legs of his chair and leaned back, letting it balance on two legs. "She didn't look like a criminal."

Privately, Sakura thought that he might be trying to convince himself more than anyone else.

Sasuke-kun huffed. "Don't get cocky, idiot." His arms were folded on the ramen counter, arm protectors pushed up to his elbows. He had nice forearms.

Naruto turned pink, all the way to his ears. "You shut up, teme. You're just mad because you were wrong."

"You weren't right either, Naruto," Sakura pointed out. She sniffed. "Come on, boys. Let's not do this. We have work to do."

Naruto groaned and let his face fall to the counter, even as Sasuke looked away. But Sasuke opened the folder he'd been entrusted with.

Well. Actually, he'd picked that one and left Sakura with the other. She didn't mind. It was more interesting to read about Hikari-san's encounter with another team.

"Did you find anything out from reading all of our notes together, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura consciously worked not to nibble on her lip. "Kakashi-sensei said some things that made me wonder."

Sasuke moved sharply, like he'd been about to shrug and thought better of it. "Taijutsu specialist." He gave the folder a dark look. "According to Kakashi, anyway. He didn't write much about the attack he recognized her by, or the person she supposedly looks like." Something in his jaw twitched. "Useless."

"Oh." Sakura coughed into her fist. "I see. I do have some new information!"

She sounded stupid. Of course she had new information, she had the folder no one else had read. She looked down at the counter to hide the flush on her cheeks. "The team she met was another genin team, led by a jounin taijutsu specialist. The team encountered Hikari-san and her partner after they had finished some kind of retrieval mission, illegally operating within Fire Country's borders."

She cleared her throat, a little confused by the next part. But when she glanced over at her teammates, they both looked interested. She swallowed.

"The report gets really excitable after this, but I think Hikari-san challenged the jounin to a footrace?" Sakura shrugged one shoulder helplessly. "The reasoning isn't explained, but the jounin accepted. Hikari-san sped away, possibly cheating."

Naruto snickered.

Sakura shot him a stern look, even though it was kind of funny. "She reappeared about an hour later, apologized to the group at large, and disappeared with her partner, who the team had been transporting back to Konoha for processing." She tapped a finger to her lips. "Oddly, the other nin didn't fight them. Unless 'being overcome by youth' is some kind of euphemism that I'm not familiar with."

Sasuke-kun raised his eyebrows at that.

"It's not," Kakashi-sensei said dryly.

Naruto squawked and fell backwards. Kakashi-sensei stepped to the side to let him. Naruto hit the dirt with a pained oof and a dusty cloud.

Sakura covered her bowl with a hand and twisted to watch her teammate clutch at his head. She gave her sensei an unimpressed look.

He met her with one of his own as he sat in the seat Naruto had recently vacated. "What do you think is the most telling part of that report?" Kakashi-sensei asked in a bored tone. "Anyone?" His fingers tapped against the side of Naruto's empty bowl.

"She came back for her teammate." Naruto clambered back up onto a more distant seat, scowling at sensei. "She can't be that bad." He rubbed at his head.

Kakashi-sensei pulled out his book. "That's not it."

"Her partner didn't fight." Sasuke-kun laid his elbows on the counter, chin going the slightest bit up.

"What?" Naruto gave him a skeptical look. "That's stupid. What does that have to do with Hikari-san?"

"Sasuke's right, Naruto." Kakashi didn't look up from his book. "We don't know why Hikari-san returned for her partner. It could have been pragmatism, blackmail, anything. That doesn't tell us about her character."

Sakura smacked a fist into her palm. "But the fact that he didn't resist capture before she came back means that he trusts her. Right, sensei?"

He deigned to look at her over his book, eye-smiling. "Yes, but more specifically?"

"He trusted her to return, and he trusted that she would be strong enough to extract him," Sakura realized. "I mean- either she came back because they have a good relationship, or she came back because she needed him safe. But in either case, it would make sense for him to be nervous. If he liked her, he would be nervous that she could get hurt, and probably try to escape on his own. If he didn't like his partner, he would at least be worried about the possibility that he might not get away."

"And when would he get a better chance?" Sasuke commented. "Hikari-san drew off the jounin." His eyes were glittering. "If he didn't run them, he wasn't going to."

Sasuke-kun had always liked thought exercises in the academy.

"So, they're either really strong, or really cocky?" Naruto asked. He scratched at the back of his neck.. "That's what you mean. Right?"

"Partially." Kakashi-sensei shrugged. "Hikari-san more specifically. We already know that Utakata-san is dangerous. He's one of a very small group of shinobi who are uniquely powerful." He gave Naruto a strange look, like he thought Naruto might bound off to fight this Utakata-san. Naruto made a face in return, but it wasn't as light-hearted as she would have predicted.

Sakura tried not to contemplate that scenario too deeply. Naruto probably would go after a really strong ninja unless someone told him not to. Maybe even then.

Sensei was still talking. "If he'd fought, Gai would have had to withdraw to keep his team safe. But we're not talking about that! So. What do we know about Hikari-san from that incident?"

Sakura bit her lip, searching for the right words. "She's the kind of person that her partners trust?" It didn't sound right. Didn't everyone trust their partners? She felt stupid, and in front of her whole team, too. "Ano… I mean…" She fidgeted.

"No, you're right." Kakashi-sensei smooshed his hand down on her head, ruffling her hair.

Sakura squawked under the sudden heat of his palm and the darkness of her bangs over her face. She squirmed out of the way, flailing at his arm. "Sensei!" She pushed his arm away and scowled up at him.

"So!" Kakashi-sensei clapped his hands together, looking perfectly innocent. His book was nowhere to be seen. "We need to know one thing to continue this thought experiment. What data do we need, to make reasonably accurate conjecture about this aspect of Hikari-san's personality?"

Um.

Sakura met Naruto's eyes. He shrugged. She looked at Sasuke. He was staring determinedly off into the middle distance.

Um.

Sensei sighed. "We need to know how long ago they met. If Utakata-san and Hikari-san go way back, that trust is unremarkable." He pulled a folder out of his flak jacket. "If they are only recently, acquainted, on the other hand, something more is going on." The folder made a satisfying slap when he let it fall to the countertop. "If that's true, either they've bonded through extraordinary circumstances, or they simply identify with the other very well. I'll leave it to you to figure out what they might have in common-" His gray eyes flicked over the team theatrically. "-Naruto! That's your job, since your teammates had more input today."

Sakura turned to her blonde teammate, already expecting a groan that didn't come. Naruto hated being assigned schoolwork. But he was narrowing his eyes at sensei, clearly working over something that she'd missed. After a long moment, Naruto looked away. "Whatever you say, old man."

'What? Naruto doesn't give up that easily.'

The interaction was strange enough that Sakura filed it away for a time when Kakashi-sensei wasn't around. Naruto would probably tell her if she asked, wouldn't he?

"I believe our companion think that you could stand to take this a little more seriously." Utakata's chin was propped on laced fingers, dark eyes fixed on Aiko's fingers. She was fiddling with the set menu, internally debating the pros and cons of having a drink before they left. Was there even time? Zabuza had been gone for at least an hour. Surely he'd be back any minute.

She shrugged, kicking her heels against the chair legs. "What do you think?"

The ghost of a smile washed over his face. "I would hate to inflate your head. It is already of unflattering proportions."

Aiko batted her eyes. "You almost said something nice, didn't you? Don't be coy."

"No flirting." Zabuza blocked out the light, arms crossed. "Are you princesses ready to go?"

"Ready if you are." Aiko stood and stretched, smiling as she followed her companions out of the cafe. A fight would be good. Zabuza wanted to kill the Mizukage himself, but-

'I half expect him to need help. That's fine by me. I haven't had a challenge in a while.'

and anyway, what would it really matter if she poached a kill from Zabuza? No one would know. And even if they did, she'd just defer to Zabuza.

She valiantly ignored the small voice of reason that asked if she was hoping to impress Obito. That was ridiculous. He didn't even know her.

'Which would make it even easier to impress him. I know how he thinks, how he fights. If I wanted to… It'd be a bad idea, but I could throw him off.'

Aiko took a moment to imagine waving at the Mizukage and chirping, 'Yo, Obito!' He'd probably wet his pants. She wanted to. It would probably cause trouble down the line, though. He wouldn't be able to let that go.

'Ha. It'd be fun to shock him like that, but nope. I need to be serious. Gonna kick some ass today.'

She was all but humming as the three did final checks of their equipment and ran through optimal objectives.

"The Mizukage is mine." Zabuza looked sternly over at the two of them. "He'll probably have guards. Uzumaki, you-"

"Uzumaki-san," Utakata corrected. He didn't raise his voice, but Zabuza gave him a wary look.

"Uzumaki-san." Zabuza narrowed his eyes. "Will take us directly to the Mizukage. He will almost certainly be in his office. He doesn't spend a shit ton of time out with the people. We'll only have minutes before people in the lower levels realize that this isn't the Mizukage throwing another fit and act. Keep 'em out until I'm done." He unsheathed his sword, hefting it over his right shoulder. "It shouldn't take long, either way."

'He's not wrong.'

Aiko shrugged, mind wandering to the seal in Mist. It hadn't moved- at all, actually. Did Obito just have the Mizukage sitting at his desk all day? That didn't seem very interesting. "Alright. Are you both ready?"

Instead of answering, Utakata heaved a put-upon sigh and held his arm out. Bemused, Aiko hesitated a moment before slipping hers on top delicately.

'We all need to touch, but that's kind of a weird way to do it.'

Zabuza snorted. He might have been smiling under the bandages. He mimicked Utakata's gesture with exaggerated gentleness, cruelly intent eye contact with the other man the whole time. When no one moved, he fluttered his fingers and made a motion that might have been a hair flip.

Aiko pretended not to notice that Utakata's face was darkening in a scowl. She pressed her lips together to hide her own snicker as she put her right arm on Zabuza's with equal flourish.

He was kind of right. The body language was dead-on. But they didn't really have time to bicker- there was a murder scheduled for the middle of the midday break, when most of the Mist administration building would be emptied.

She took all three of them directly to the seal she felt. Zabuza tore out of her grip as soon as he saw the office, striding forward. Maybe he didn't want to be seen holding her arm.

The Mizukage stood smoothly, pushing away his desk. The expected bodyguard melted out of genjutsu against the wall. Just one? Piece of cake. She'd let Utakata have him, and play second for Zabuza. That way, she'd be ready to interfere if he struggled.

"Stand down!" Zabuza snarled, not bothering to really look at the masked operative. "This fight is between me and the Mizukage."

The Mizukage blinked. His pale, childish face did not otherwise react.

'Creepy, dude.'

"That is acceptable."

Aiko froze.

That low rumble was very familiar. And it wasn't coming from the Mizukage's closed lips.

"I am not interested in a fight, Zabuza-san. I was waiting for someone to show up."

Aiko didn't breathe.

Utakata moved ever so slightly in front of her, sliding his right foot between her body and Obito. Like, Obito. Who was here in person. Himself. Not really far away where he couldn't hurt anything. Not that distance really meant anything when it came to Obito. But it sure seemed a lot safer.

'Fuuuuck. Fuck, alright. I didn't expect him to actually be here. That doesn't have to ruin anything. Keep calm. I can do this.'

And then he looked right at her. "Yo, Aiko."

'He stole my joke,' she thought in disbelief, before it really sunk in.

Her soul leapt out of her feet, leaving them heavy and wooden on the ground. At least, that was what it felt like. She couldn't move. She couldn't pretend not to understand.

'I can't. Even. What?'

Aiko shook her head, disbelieving. "That doesn't make any sense." But in a way, it felt like she'd been expecting this. Of course he was here. Obito was preternaturally good at being where he had no business being. That was, like, his thing.

'It's really him. The same him. The him that shouldn't be here. Why? Why is this?'

Her head was full of question marks and incoherent sputtering. She opened her mouth to ask a question. She had a dozen. She couldn't think of one. She left her mouth open.

Classic Obito. Not being dead when he should be and wandering in and out of secured villages and god, Obito, what was even happening? Okay, she was kind of a jerk sometimes, but did she really deserve this?

He seemed to shrug. "I was rather disoriented to find myself in Mizugakure some time earlier than I recalled. When I saw you set explosives on that fruit cart and run off, I assumed it was somehow your fault," Obito mused. She didn't see red glinting in the eyeholes of his mask, but that didn't mean anything. "Was I correct?"

'Yes.'

Aiko shut her mouth and resisted the impulse to cross her arms and look away. "No," she lied sullenly.

'Well. I was trying to bring a seal to me in the original experiment. I just also did another thing. As a bonus. I brought Obito to me at the same time that I brought me to a different Obito with a similar mark. A rousing technical success.'

Being right wasn't bringing her the warm fuzzies that it usually did, for some reason. Maybe it was because she was about to have to fight one of the few people who could really hand her ass to her. The last time they'd fought, she'd betrayed him, dug out his eyes with her thumbs, and forcibly incarcerated him in a mental health facility where he couldn't hurt anyone. He'd been there for… kind of a long time. He probably hadn't appreciated that.

Aiko's mouth was dry. She licked her lips, but it didn't help.

'He's going to kill me.'

Wait.

'Is he still blind? I can probably win that fight.'

She'd found that her situation was different in this world. Either she hadn't been born here, or she was…uh, probably dead, to be honest. Was the same true for Obito? If so, she could reasonably assume that he'd come exactly as he was. That would mean blind.

But he couldn't control the Mizukage without his sharingan. So either the Mizukage was acting of his own volition, or Obito somehow had his eyes again. Or still. It was a little confusing. She needed more information.

"I don't suppose you feel like taking off your mask so we can have a heart-to-heart?" Aiko tried, cocking her head to the side. Her heart was pounding. It needed to calm down. It was going to give away that she was panicking.

"Not really," Obito said flatly. He crossed his arms. "I'd say nice try, but that was actually pretty pathetic."

"Uzumaki?" Zabuza's eyes tracked between Obito and the Mizukage, not letting either of them out of his sight. "The hell are you on about?"

She'd forgotten there were other people in the room.

Maybe Obito had, too. His head turned slightly, mask pointing towards the head of the room.

The Mizukage leapt at Zabuza. Zabuza cursed, barely swinging to the side in time. Foul, furious chakra burst into the air with enough force to rattle Aiko's teeth and sting like acid in her gums.

'Time to not be in this room.'

Aiko lunged at Utakata, grasping his robes. He threw his arms out in reflex, but restrained from attacking her at the last moment.

The three-tailed bijuu roared, swinging a tail downward. It connected with the floor, tearing away wood and evaporating the goddamn carpet, leaving only a broken rafter separating them from the room below. The spiked trail of chakra behind the tail gouged a line in the ceiling and left plaster drifting. The beast was still growing, swelling grotesque bubbles of flesh up on the Mizukage's face and out in lumps from his limbs, while the chakra flooded out of his mouth and eyes.

Someone shouted below.

She moved, dragging Utakata out of the building with her, concentrating more on 'up' than 'away'. They landed on the roof. Obito was already dissolving into place, arms still crossed. He seemed politely interested in the goings-on.

'He's just going to watch?'

Glass shattered. The window? The window and the wall, apparently. Zabuza came swinging up, Yagura's bijuu ridden body right behind him. It brought with it a hot wave of the smell of bloated corpses rotting in a river. Also, a fishy scent.

For one strange, delirious moment, Aiko remembered that she'd felt sorry for the three-tailed bijuu when she'd sealed it.

That had been a bad decision. Nope, squishy feelings rescinded. It could suffer in a box forever. Who had a box?

Aiko halted. She forgot how to breathe.

'I don't know how to put it in a box.'

She didn't know how to seal a bijuu in anything other than a person. The seal she'd learned had relied on an active chakra system.

'That was a really big problem to forget about.'

She didn't know who had sealed the beast after Yagura's defeat. She'd known that he was a jinchuuriki, and she'd known that his bijuu had been imprisoned after his death. But she hadn't quite made the connection there.

Those two facts didn't make sense together. When a jinchuuriki was killed, their bijuu was supposed to go with them, at least temporarily. How would you even begin to design a seal that released a bijuu when the jinchuuriki died? What kind of jackass would do th-

'Obito. God, does anyone else ever do anything? It's always Obito.'

"Don't kill him!" Aiko struggled to be heard over roaring, eventually pitching her voice into a shrill scream. "Don't kill Yagura!"

Zabuza gave her an incredulous look. That was all he had time for before Yagura-bijuu tore across the roof at him, pulling up tile and shedding sharp slivers of shells, white and iridescent on one side. He was getting bigger. A lot bigger. Yagura's body was mostly obscured by a cloud of solid chakra, dotted with shells and sand and ominous red bits that looked suspiciously like innards where they glinted soggily in the light. And the cloud was growing thicker.

'It might not matter if we don't kill Yagura. The bijuu is on the verge of taking over his body.'

She'd come prepared to fight a jinchuuriki. A jinchuuriki could be neutralized by killing them. A bijuu couldn't be killed. It could only be reasoned with -unlikely- physically moved -it'd just kill other people where she left it- or sealed.

The nay-saying voice in her head was silent at that option. Which sucked, because she really did not want to do that, it was unethical and horrible and difficult and it didn't really matter what she wanted, did it?

It needed to be sealed, or a lot of people were going to die. She needed to do something. She needed-

"Ink."

And she didn't know where to get it.

Utakata didn't look at her, so she pulled on his arm urgently.

"What?" His voice was low and sharp. He still didn't look at her.

A horrible feeling rolled in her gut. She leaned forward. Her partner's pupils were blown wide open. He was inhumanly pale and beginning to sweat.

'His bijuu is very interested in this.'

"Oh, hell." Aiko physically shook her partner as hard as she could, fisting her hands in his robes and rocking with her whole body weight. "Snap out of it!"

He shook her off, letting her fall back and rip his outer robe. He didn't even react to the damage, which was not like him at all. Shit, he was far gone. She dropped the fabric and lunged back at him, desperate to shake the person back to the surface.

It was not a wise decision. The only thing she really saw was distended, swollen knuckles steaming with demonic energy as he backhanded her away. She was too shocked to evade the blow. She was aware of a horrible crack in her cheekbone and white flashing across her vision and then she was tumbling, streaks of bloody pain down her arms and legs where she hadn't broken her fall against the tile roof and she was tumbling down the side, how tall was the building again-

She pulled away, reluctant to leave Mist but needing some amount of space from danger. She wasn't exactly sure where she was. Probably still in city limits. She was aware of screaming in the distance and the crash of debris. A roar tore out of a throat as wide as a full-grown man's waist. The sound shook the ground. But it was nothing compared to the thunder of two bijuu meeting. Her head echoed with the sound, around and around.

'Zabuza's probably dead. Yagura is definitely dead. The plan is shot.'

Aiko forced her body up. She opened her eyes. It hurt like utter hell, but other than that, she seemed alright. Her vision wasn't any worse than it had been for the last week, at least. She swallowed.

'I need ink. A brush. And a sacrifice.'

The two bijuu in the distance were enormous. If she squinted, she saw a lump that might have been Utakata's body melding into his bijuu's bulk. A small group of Mist-nin were already attacking the two bijuu. Was that lava? Mei?

Mei didn't look like she had things under control, if Aiko were to be brutally honest.

Aiko took a moment to pray that the seven-tails would release Utakata once it realized it wasn't in mortal danger from the three-tails, because she didn't know how to seal that one.

Some coward sprinted past her, running for the mainland. They hit the harbor with a splash and kept going for safety.

"Wait!"

They didn't. She couldn't blame them.

'How am I going to do this?'

She needed to calm down. She had to think. Aiko swallowed. What exactly did she need?

'Time to make the seal, without getting attacked while I work. To get close enough to force it into the seal. Ink. Brush. Sacrifice.'

Hiraishin. She'd make the seal while she was at a distance, and then hiraishin close enough to pull the beast in. Of course, she'd need to not get killed while doing that. Chakra chains would hopefully hold one bijuu and keep it immobilized while she dealt with it, but she definitely couldn't handle two at once. So she'd have to grab the three-tailed beast, hiraishin away with it and her jinchuuriki, and hope to god that Utakata didn't kill too many people while she was busy.

She ran down a street that looked like a business area, desperately checking over every building that she passed for something remotely likely. Homes would have ink, offices would too, but she might waste precious minutes searching. A store- she crashed in through the large window, barely avoiding knocking over a shelving unit. She found what she needed and ripped open packages with her teeth. Her hands were shaking too much for anything else.

That, too, was unacceptable. The realization hit her with a shock.

Something rocked the village. No- it rocked the island. There was an impossible boom, and then the ocean spilled over the island, a wave that crested in the distance and swept through. Aiko leapt to a high spot before the wave reached her. She closed her ears to the screaming. She closed her eyes to the sight of a dog pulled away into the ocean, yipping piteously and struggling for life. She breathed. Slowly. In. Out. Someone screamed nearby and her heart jumped again. She forced it to calm. In. Out. She centered herself.

When she opened her eyes, her hands didn't shake. She wasn't thinking about people dying around her. She was only thinking about what she should do next. Her eyes tracked impassively over the village. She saw plenty of people now, clinging to rubble or running away into an ocean that they couldn't cross now, or trying to attack the bijuu. None of them stood out as likely candidates.

'A suitable host will have compatible chakra or be able to accommodate the influx.'

She didn't have time to go run tests on chakra to determine compatability. That left her with the second option. That left her with the option of finding an infant, the younger the better, or-

an Uzumaki. Aiko breathed out. You don't exactly find those under every rock. Not many options. She did not let her fingers tremble, with fear or anything else. She drew a kunai down the front of her shirt to cut it in half, baring her canvas. It had to be her. The alternative was too ghoulish. She could do it, she could find an infant, but she wouldn't.

It required concentration. Her angle was different than she remembered. She struggled to keep her lines perfect. Since she wasn't laying down, the drip pattern would be different. She compensated by keeping her brush as dry as possible, not allowing any extra ink to pool or slip. Circle. Whorl. Twist. Gate here. Whorl. Anchor it. Anchor. Gate. Flick.

She had absolutely no idea how long it took. She kept her torso perfectly straight, because bending would ruin everything. She turned away from the fighting and let the wind dry her paint, flapping her hands at her gut like she was trying to dry nail polish. She waited. It had to dry. People were dying behind her, and she had to wait.

It dried.

Aiko looked over to the bijuu. The three-tailed bijuu was flailing, venting fury on the other bijuu. The seven-tail might have just been defending herself.

Good. She was taking the more aggressive one away. Where to? Far away would be good. But away from people.

'Sorry, Suna. You're probably not going to appreciate this, but it worked out okay last time. As far as these things go, anyway.'

Aiko took a deep breath. She let the ink bottle slip from her fingers, shattering into the rocky torrent working down the street. She bit her lip and readied her chakra, feeling her chakra chains shudder at the edge of being. Then she re-positioned herself behind the three-tailed beast, forcing the chains out at the same instant. They rocketed up and out, coiling and grabbing at the turtle before it knew to resist. It bellowed, rearing up. Utakata darted forward and scored a painful blow against its soft underside, but Aiko wasn't paying any attention to that. She was wrapping the beast as tightly as she could, trying to catch and trap every tail and she had two pinned but the last was evading her and the turtle demon was teetering on the edge of falling back onto her-

She screamed with the effort of moving all that chaotic, struggling chakra. It wasn't like slipping through dimensions to Suna. It was more like tearing through reality with her fingernails, ripping her fingers to the bone to do it. But it worked.

Sand flew, pelting her with a painful shards of heat, but at least she'd avoided the worst of the cascade resulting from the bijuu's fall. When it bellowed, it sounded more like a wounded cow than anything else.

Aiko chanced a glance and forced down the insane urge to sink into the burning sand and let hysteria take over. It was trapped on its back. Like a real turtle.

She was tempted- like, really tempted, to sit back and watch it struggle.

Instead, she made a seal. Just for focus. She closed her eyes. And she started to pull on the turtle's chakra. It went utterly silent. Shock? The first tendrils of chakra hit her skin, began to burn and sizzle, and resisted her pull. She forced the fire into her belly and groaned in pain. It felt like being bored open, like slowly pressing her body into an enormous blade.

All was still.

And then it wasn't. The seal hooked hungrily onto the chakra it had been fed, pulling on the source. The turtle bijuu shrieked, seagulls and crashing waves and something angry and incomprehensibly ancient in the deep. It thrashed, kicking up sand.

She didn't let go.

It began to convulse, leaking boiling water. Some caught Aiko, but most splashed harmlessly onto the sand, rolling away and beginning to seep into the desert.

She didn't let go.

The demon roared. The sky itself shook. It was raining- not just rain, but acid. It was raining acid. Aiko turned her face down and threw her free hand above her head. She felt the water run down her back, along with blood and oh god, was that clump of hair?

Somehow, that was the most disturbing part. Her hair. She could feel her hair pulling out of her scalp and falling down her back. She bent over further, forgetting the fear that covering the seal on her belly would prevent it from working. The seal didn't seem to care, tugging greedily on the bijuu. The bijuu was screaming now. Like a child. It sounded like a frightened child. One last claw struggled for purchase in the desert, losing grip and sending sand flying. It sucked into her skin just as the upset sand rattled her body and threw her to her back, partially submerged in a dune.

It wasn't even a pretty day. Aiko frowned up at the grey sky, feeling cheated. It wasn't even a blue sky.

That was the last thing she thought before darkness took her.

She woke up to a peeling sunburn from her neck to her hipbones and manacles around her wrists. Someone gasped. Heels clicked against linoleum.

Aiko peeled one eye open, noted the aghast Suna medic holding her clipboard up like a shield against her pale face, and groaned.

'I was captured? Of course I was. I gave off a ton of chakra and then passed out. I didn't even think to move. Embarrassing.'

She pulled herself far away. Like, really far away, where sand wouldn't get in the peeling burns on her chest. She sat up. Only then did she feel a spark of self-consciousness over her bared front. Where was her kit? Without her kit… she had no money. No medicine, or clothes, or weapons.

She didn't remember putting it down. It should have still been strapped to her back.

'They confiscated my things when they brought me in. It'll be long gone. Probably being processed.'

Aiko snorted. There was absolutely nothing useful or incriminating in her bags, with the exception of three stolen kunai and Jiraiya's complete works. Damnit. How many times was she going to have to replace that collection?

"Suna probably won't even enjoy it. Assholes." The raspy, ugly quality of her voice startled her for a moment. She sounded like she'd been screaming. Had she? She didn't remember that.

She leveraged her body up. Her muscles pulled and ached. The bones in her knees creaked. For a moment, Aiko stood still, trembling with effort. Then she put one foot in front of another.

'Sun is almost down.'

Maybe it was the same day. Maybe it wasn't. Did it really matter?

'Businesses will be closing soon.'

She'd find a place. Break in, get dressed. Then she'd see what, if anything, was left of Mizugakure.

Her hopes weren't high.

#vapors #uzumaki aiko #electrasev5n #ninja daily #fanfiction #naruto fanfiction #clarity #AIC #Aiko in Canon

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what-if-i-just-did · 1 year

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Destiel Prompt List, 1. Inner monologue of a classic Destiel scene.

Trigger Warnings: Severe Feels, Co-dependency, mentions of clinical insanity and being in a constant state of anxiety

I'm not leaving without you

Cas throws the water over his face, eyes shifting again between all the most likely places for a Leviathan to pop up, all the best tactical positions for starting a fight with him right now. Still, he's gratefull for this momentary pause, this small piece of calm without fighting, even if it is just the calm before the storm, even if it is riddled with the anxiety of knowing he could and would be under attack again any second. Then he hears rustling. He just has time to figure the thought that he should leave before a voice, a very, very familliar voice calls out his name. "Cas!" "Dean."

Cas is overcome with longing, even more so than every time Dean prayed, because Dean is right there. But he needs to focus. He stays still for a second, fighting for his lucidity, fighting the urge to get up and hold Dean close. He knows he can't be near Dean. Why did Dean come find me? Did he try to find me? That's not logical why would he do that. But, why would he be here otherwise? How did he find me? He gets up, looking to his side for possible exits. He doesn't know why Dean is here, what Dean could want. He does know he needs to get away from Dean again as fast as possible. He cannot, will not endanger Dean. Not again, his mind supplies.

"Cas." Dean repeats, and walks closer. Cas has the urge to walk away now, to flinch back. Dean laughs, as if Cas isn't confused enough, and... embraces him. Exactly what Cas had been trying not to do before. Why did Dean do that? Cas lets himself be grabbed, and... Dean really does grab onto his outer layer of clothing. "Damn it's good to see you. Nice peach fuzz." Dean leans back again. Dean, you can't be here. You're not safe with me. "Thank you" His mouth mindlessly supplies. Huh? Oh right, his the human had complimented him. Not relevant. He needed to leave.

"Want you to meet somebody. This is Benny- Benny, this is Cas." Cas hadn't properly realised there was another person with them. "Hola.", Benny added, looking at Cas the way you do in Purgatory. Cas returned the favor. He was a vampire, that much was obvious- there was still some Angel left in him, at least. Just enough to endanger Dean, he thought bitterly. Why Dean was teaming up with a vampire was another discussion, however. "How did you find me?" Cas asks instead, turning his eyes back to the only thing he actually cares about. And did you try to. He's fairly sure that even with his back turned, he can protect Dean from the vampire, and it also doesn't seem like he needs protecting from this vampire (or any vampire in general, Dean can take care of himself), and this is more important right now.

Dean looks at Cas for a second. How would he even answer that? Because it's not exactly like he can say I tracked, tortured and killed so many different things all over this freakin' hellspawned place just because they might have half a clue of where your holy ass has been hanging out all this time that I can't even count them anymore. Well. "The bloody way. You feelin' okay?" Cas was... well he looked like he'd gone to Hell and back, but Dean's pretty sure he wasn't looking any different. (They had both gone to Hell and back, but this was a different trip.) Cas keeps looking around them though, and Dean can't tell if he's looking out for a fight, if he's lookin' for a way to leave, or if he's... still seeing things that aren't, well, there.

"You mean, am I still..." Cas does the 'finger going in circles besides your head' thing that generally means 'crazy' and raises an eyebrow. It feels just a little too human, but Dean's glad Cas's melon is at least okay enough to read between some lines. He almost smiles. Almost. "Yeah, if you wanna be on the nose about it, sure." Dean wants to smile. Please give me a reason to smile here, Cas. "No, I'm perfectly sane." Comes the immidiate reply, and Dean almost does smile before it turns out that that wasn't the end of the sentence. "But then, 94% of psychotics think they're perfectly sane, so I guess we have to ask ourselves, 'What is sane?'." And that is... right. That is precisely something that both Cas, old Cas, would have said, and exactly the type of thing that koo-kuck bee-loving Cas would rant on about, like asking him about lipstick, or bees. Cas is still looking shifty. Well, that didn't answer the question. "Yeah, good question." He says instead. Because it is. It's the type of thing you can drive yourself crazy over, and exactly the type of thing Dean doesn't have time for here.

"Why'd ya bail on Dean?" Because of course that would be the first thing Benny asked Cas. "-Dude." "The way I hear it, you two hit Monsterland, and hot wings here, took off... I figure he owes you some backstory." Really, Benny? I just got my angel back, lay off 'im. Dean tries to explain what happened, the story he's been telling himself at least, because Cas would abandon him, right, not if he didn't need to.

He yells at Cas. He's actually really sorry about that. Especially when Cas's voice wavers, or breaks- who the fuck is paying attention- as he says, "- to keep them away from you." Because of course Cas, self-sacrificing son of a bitch, only ever left to try to protect Dean. So, of course Dean won't just leave him now. Just got him back. "I'm not leaving without you."

#destiel #destiel fic #fanfiction #dean winchester #castiel #deancas

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downthe-f4ndom-rabbith0le · 1 year

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The Way Back Home (Spencer Reid x Reader) - Chapter Six

The Way Back Home (Spencer Reid x Reader) - Chapter Six Reader Insert: she/her pronouns Word Count: 6407 Warnings: major angst, major fluff, mentions of murder, graphic descriptions of dead bodies, crime scenes, near-death experiences, slow-burnish romance, death, canon violence, rape, swearing, guns, knives, prostitution, canon cuteness of the team. Spoilers: Maeve's death, mentions of previous cases or canon events from seasons 1-10.

Will you and Spencer be able to find the way back home this time?

~~~

Spencer stared at the blank screen, mortification petrifying him in place. He was unable to tear his eyes away from where'd he'd last seen your face just before Walter Khan's boot crushed their feed.

Him, Hotch and Kate had arrived back at the station by the time you'd been placed in the car. The further you were driven, the more glitchy the feed became. Some words didn't come through, images flickered every now and again. The camera wasn't able to catch all of what went down during the meeting, but you'd made sure to get a good look at the big seller, knowing your team would use his image to find out who he was and find out where he would be hiding out.

Spencer had to hold back vomit whenever Khan went close to you, no doubt putting his disgusting, murderous hands all over you. Even more so when you'd been taken to the Warehouse and saw the girls, saw the torture display in the middle of the room. How many girls had dangled in the middle of that room and suffered his torture? How young had they been?

When you began walking to the meeting room, Spencer had thought you'd made it out of there. That you were finally coming home.

But you had turned around, ran back for those innocent girls. You had been caught, your pained cries whenever Walter punched you still ringing in Spencer's ears.

The worst part, though, was Khan had known the whole time.

'Did you guys hear that? You think you outsmarted me? Think again.'

That's when the line went dead, squashed under Khan's boot. But not before he caught a glimpse of your face. Blood gushing from your nose down your chin, hand clutching at your ribs where you'd been punched. However, a fire of defiance burned bright in your E/C eyes, visible even from the low angle.

But that did nothing to quell the rising wave of anger and fear in Spencer, raging like a tsunami higher and higher with each passing second the screen remained dead.

Where you had disappeared from in the blink of an eye; and there was nothing Spencer could do about it.

'Get it back up,' Spencer found himself demanding. To who, he really didn't know. When no one answered, the wave rose higher. 'Get it back up!'

'I-I'm trying!" Penelope cried over the speaker phone. 'Wherever they took her, they did well to make sure no cell towers were near it. Or they have really good cell blocks that pretty much render them invisible. That's what made the feed so glitchy, they're like in the middle of nowhere.'

'What about the camera? Can you track it?'

'Yes, but again, the cell blocks blocked that signal too. I can't tell you where they went outside of lower Manhattan.'

The urge to scream was almost unbearable. Instead, Spencer drove his fingers through his unruly hair, pulling at longer strands harshly to get his mind to focus on something else momentarily. This couldn't be happening. You were safe, you were home free. Damnit, why did you have to go back?

'Alert train stations south bound that drivers and passengers should keep their eyes out for those girls along any tracks,' Hotch commanded to Holt. 'Send as many officers out along those tracks from the nearest stations. Those girls are the key to finding L/N, but they're being hunted so we need to find them first.'

'Of course,' Holt managed to get out, his face pale with terror. Good, Spencer thought. Holt at least had half a mind to look guilty, considering he was the one that put you there.

'I'll go with you, we'll need as many people on the ground as we can,' Derek offered, to which Hotch nodded his approval and Derek jogged after Holt as he ran back into the office.

Spencer's feet moved before his mouth did, halfway to the door before he said, 'I'm going, too.'

'No,' Hotch said. 'I need you to stay here and work with Garcia on a geographical profile on Walter Khan. Find out everything about him, more importantly whether he has any major properties south of Manhattan he could be operating out of.'

Spencer opened his mouth to argue. How could Hotch expect him to sit idly by a map while you were with the unsub being beaten or worse...

A gentle hand gripped his shoulder, forcing him to look down at a concerned-looking JJ. 'Don't worry, Spence,' she said softly. 'Kate and I will go help as well. You and Pen are the only ones who can figure this out, so the sooner you do that, the quicker we can bring Y/N home, okay?'

Usually, the logical answer presented itself in Spencer's mind first. What JJ said was the most logical explanation, he knew. Even so, his heart yearned to find Walter Khan and wring his neck for all he was worth. It was an overwhelming urge, similar to the one he had when on his dilaudid addiction many years ago.

The memories of what that addiction did to him - how it almost destroyed his life - was what brought him back to his logical conclusion.

He nodded at JJ and stepped aside so her and Kate could follow Derek. Kate gave him a sympathetic smile and a gentle squeeze of his upper arm, then her and JJ were gone. That left himself, Rossi, Penelope on the phone, and Hotch.

'Dave,' Hotch said, 'You and I are going down to the Chateau and questioning Madame Lacroix. She's got to be back there by now. And she's going to tell us everything she knows about the operation this time.'

'Whether she likes it or not,' Rossi added, nodding at Hotch in agreement as he made to pick up his coat from the chair he'd previously been sitting on.

'Waitwaitwaitwait!' The high pitch urgency of Penelope's voice halted Hotch and Rossi's movements as her face appeared on the huge screen, scrunched with worry.

'What is it, Garcia?' Hotch asked.

'I've been trying to track Y/N's camera location since she got to wherever they're holding her,' she explained, her voice a little high-pitched in desperation. She continued typing furiously on her keyboard as she did.

'You found her?' Spencer asked, his voice desperate, hopeful.

'I wish I could say yes, boy wonder,' she apologised. 'However, while tracking, an unknown window popped up. Check this out...'

Another few clicks on her end and a window - the one she found - popped up beside Penelope's face. The image in that window, however, had Spencer's stomach plummeting through the ground.

You hung with your hands above your head by a chain in the middle of a room, your now bare feet just scraping along the hay that lay all around the floor. You were back in the Warehouse, in the place where you'd shown Spencer and the team where the girls were held and-

'Oh my God,' Penelope breathed out, voice trembling with horror at your beaten state. The camera appeared to be setup on a tripod, keeping your entire body in frame. They'd all seen you fight, but only now could they see the damage you'd taken.

Blood dripped from your nose, down your chin and had already stained the front of your dress a deeper scarlet. Your breaths were laboured, as if you were concentrating on keeping yourself from passing out. You were too far away to make out any other injuries, but Spencer had no doubt the bruises hadn't come out just yet.

'Garcia,' Hotch began, but even in her shocked state, Penelope answered.

'Already on it, sir,' she said, ignoring the tears running down her cheeks to type into her keyboard. 'Triangulating where the feed is coming from.'

It was like the world was slowing down for Spencer the longer he looked at you hanging there. The team had always joked that his IQ always slashed in half whenever he was around you. But that was usually because he couldn't find the words to talk to you properly, how to articulate in the right words just exactly how you made him feel.

In a way, the same thing was happening to him right now, but he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't think because of terror. Because of Walter Khan, who finally strolled into frame, suit jacket discarded and the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up. His rings glinted under the fluorescent lights as he waved at the camera, a smug grin on his face.

'Hi there, FBI,' he said in a sing-song voice. He looked over his shoulder, shuffled so the camera could see you again. 'Say hi to your friends, Y/N. I'm sure they're just... so happy to see you.'

You didn't respond, keeping your gaze just south of the camera, barely blinking. 'She's disassociating,' Rossi stated, recognising like Spencer, that far away look in your eyes. 'She's preparing for torture.'

Spencer gulped as Khan walked over to you slowly, prowling around you like a predator admiring his catch for the night. He remained silent as he did, and Spencer wondered for a moment if that was all he was going to do.

With the speed of a striking snake, however, he gripped your chin with one hand, the chain holding you rattling as you tried and failed to pull away. Grunts of effort escaped you as he forced you to look at the camera.

'Now, now, Y/N,' he cooed, brushing your loose hair away from your face with his free hand. 'There's no need to be shy. Say something.'

Before you could even react, he slammed his fist into your stomach, ripping a pained groan from you. But not a scream. You bit your lip hard. You probably didn't want to give Khan the satisfaction of hearing your pain. A small, hopeful part inside Spencer warmed with pride at your resilience.

Khan let go of your face and took a step back, eyes raking you up and down with a sick, sadistic admiration. 'So you think you're tough, huh?' he challenged, walking to stand behind you and place both hands on your right shoulder. 'Come on, don't hold back those beautiful sounds, baby.'

In one sharp motion, he pressed either side of your shoulder in opposite directions, causing a loud pop to echo through the room. A sharp squeak escaped your lips, but you bit down on your lip again, allowing nothing else out. The light glinted off the tears that brimmed your E/C eyes, but they did not fall. You would not let them, Spencer realised.

Khan's lips split into a sadistic grin, one that clearly revelled in the pain he brought to you. Fire stirred in the pit of Spencer's stomach, which then spread through his limbs, to the tips of his fingers, toes and head.

Never in his life had he had the greater urge to physically harm someone than Walter Khan in that moment.

'So beautiful,' Khan continued, his gentle strokes across your bloodied chin a stark contrast to his previous harsh movement. 'I knew you'd be my favourite the moment you walked through the door. You're not like other girls...'

Bile rose in Spencer's throat when Khan leaned in close to you and tried to kiss you on the lips. You still had enough strength in you to turn away so he brushed your cheek instead. When Khan tried to tilt your head to kiss you properly, you lashed out with your teeth, catching his upper lip and yanking on it. Hard.

Khan pulled back at the sudden attack with an agonised cry, clasping both hands on his lip. Blood seeped through his hands, and when he pulled away, Spencer saw that Khan's teeth and chin were covered in blood.

'Bitch,' he swore, slamming a fist a little higher than your stomach this time, no doubt breaking some ribs. You sucked in air loudly, your gasp masking the cry that Spencer could tell wanted to come out. God, she must be in so much pain. It sickened Spencer knowing what was happening to you and not being able to do anything about it.

'Garcia, anything?' Hotch asked, his usually steady voice cracking with worry as he continued to look at the screen.

'I'm trying, sir. I'm trying!' she cried.

As if sensing their urgency, Khan looked back to the camera and walked back over until only he was in the frame. Drops of blood stained his white shirt, but he didn't seem to notice as he grinned maniacally into the camera. Although Spencer knew he couldn't see them, he felt like Khan was looking directly at him, taunting him, challenging him.

'By the time you find her,' he began, 'she'll be dead. And I'll be long gone. Until next time, FBI.'

Walter Khan's smile was the last thing Spencer saw before the screen went black and the window closed and now it was only him, Penelope, Hotch and Rossi again.

'I-I'm sorry, sir,' Penelope managed out, her voice barely higher than a whisper. 'I-I-I couldn't f-find her. The signal was being rerouted all across the world.'

'We've got to move fast,' Hotch said, and him and Rossi were gone.

Spencer didn't say a word to begin with, unable to get the image of you hanging in that torture chamber out of his head.

By the time you find her, she'll be dead.

He never thought anyone of his team mates would go out being killed in action. Plenty have come and gone from the team, but not been killed. In some naive way, he figured you all were invincible - that nothing would tear you apart.

But after discovering Gideon dead only a few weeks ago, that fantasy of the team staying together forever was cracked. With your life now on the line, too, the cracks were starting to get bigger, with some pieces falling away entirely.

'Spencer,' Penelope's gentle voice brought him out of his own bubble of despair. 'I'm so sorry.'

The overwhelming urge to scream welled up in him - he didn't quite know for who or for what he wanted to scream at, just that it sounded like a better action to take than punching someone. But he didn't scream.

Instead, he gathered himself and turned to look at Penelope, face steeled by sheer will because he had to keep it together if he wanted to bring you home. 'It's Khan who should be sorry,' he replied, voice steady with threat. 'Let's get to work.'

~~~

Pain. It's all you felt. Even three hours later after Khan's beating, you still felt the ghost of his fist pounding into your stomach, into your ribcage. A sharp, piercing pain ricocheted through them whenever you inhaled too quickly. Definitely two or three broken, you concluded.

You laid on the hay on the floor. Khan had lowered your chain which alleviated some pain and pressure from your dislocated shoulder and bruising wrists. But he hadn't done it to help you. 'Don't want you breaking too soon, Y/N,' he had whispered to you when he'd laid you gently to rest. And from his accompanying smile, you knew it was just all a game to him.

He'd been gone for three hours - counting the time helped you forget the pain and terror wracking your body. Despite that, you hadn't allowed yourself to sleep. Daylight seeped through the top windows, bathing you in a warm glow that made you shiver with momentary bliss. You didn't realise how cold you were until the rays hit you.

The metallic taste of blood still haunted your lips even now that your nose had stopped running with it. It still throbbed though, but it was a dull ache in comparison to your shoulder. You could only imagine how rough you looked, and not in a good way.

The thought made you smile, if only for a moment.

The soft patter of footsteps made you sit upright despite your pain, made you pull your hands close to your chest and look at the door as it opened. You kept your face neutral as you watched Walter Khan walk in alone. He wore a new suit today: navy blue with a lilac undershirt and a navy tie with lighter blue and purple flowers embroidered onto it randomly. God, he was pretentious in every manner of the word.

He didn't walk to you straight away as you expected. Instead, he walked over to the table of torture devices to a remote hanging from the ceiling just above it. He pressed the upper button and suddenly you were jerked upwards as the chain retracted higher. You couldn't contain the yelp of pain that escaped you as your arms were pulled harshly over your head once more, placing intense pressure on your throbbing shoulder once more. He let go of the button just before your feet left the ground entirely.

Satisfied, he grabbed a clean towel and a bucket that sat underneath the table. He picked them both up and walked over to you, placed them both on the ground as he continued to look you over. He did that for a minute in silence before you couldn't take it anymore.

'What?' you asked in mock confusion. 'Have I got something on my face?'

You hated how that brought a smile to his ugly face. 'You really should lay off on the moxie, sweetheart,' he said, crouching to wet the towel in the bucket before standing back up to continue talking. 'I really do like that in a girl.'

'Girl, huh? That your preferred age?'

He shrugged, bringing the towel up to your face. Before you could lean away, he used his free hand to grip your chin, keeping you with a firm hold in place as he dabbed the wet towel across your chin, around your nose, and across your lips.

He was cleaning you up.

You were more confused than disgusted. Perhaps a little relieved to be rid of the taste of blood finally, but you would never admit that. If his goal was to kill you, why bother cleaning you up?

His dabs at your face were uncharacteristically soft. 'You've done this before,' you said, only now realising how hoarse your throat was from dehydration and the cold air.

He nodded, his eyes never straying from his task. 'I prefer my girls to be... cleaner than other ones.' He meant other prostitutes, other establishments, you realised. It was a compulsion, even knowing you weren't one of his "girls".

'Would you have to clean Roxy and the others up, too?' you asked despite knowing the answer. 'You get off on seeing others bleed, don't you Khan. It wasn't enough that you would use them, strip them of their dignity, as if they were just toys.'

One second you were breathing air, the next you were choking underneath the crushing pressure that was Khan's grip. His hold was so strong it had you seeing stars in seconds.

'I would stop talking if I were you, bitch,' he hissed, venom dripping from every word. His calm demeanour remained intact, but even with your blurred vision you saw an animalistic rage burning in his eyes.

A caged animal just waiting to be unleashed.

'You don't know anything about me,' he continued. 'And you don't know the half of what I am capable of.'

His grip on you eased a little but not completely. However, it was enough for you to find your voice again. 'I know,' you started, voice slightly wheezy from the lack of air, 'you must have suffered under the hands of someone, probably a woman in the prostitution business, when you were younger. Otherwise... why would you hate women so much?'

He gave you a strange look, one that was sceptical, angry, and intrigued at the same time. Good, if he was off guard, he might slip up and give you something of value.

'Was it your mother?' you asked. 'A sister, aunt?' When he didn't answer you continued. 'Whoever it was must be the reason why you feel as if you've been let down your entire life. That's why you built this empire, isn't it? But even now, successful and thriving off others' pain... that person made you feel you are not enough, and so nothing ever will be. But that person is gone, and you can't show them how successful you've been. That's why you hurt others, right? Because, not only can't you hurt her, you refuse to hurt the one person you hate the most... yourself.'

He stepped back from you completely, and, for the first time, his calm facade breaks to show slivers of horror and shock at your observation. Looks like I hit the nail on the head.

He looked at you for a moment longer, that haunted expression on his face making him look more sick as he shadows of birds flew over his face. You became concerned when he suddenly ran out of the room, leaving you hanging with a clean face and more questions than answers.

You had gotten under his skin; he'd shown you a weak point in his life that you could use against him. He'd looked rattled, which made you more scared than when he was calm. Walter Khan didn't strike you as the kind of man that didn't always make sure he had the upper hand in every situation he walked into. But when he didn't, when he was backed into a corner...

Caged animal waiting to be unleashed.

'What have I done?' you asked into the empty room, but you were still surprised when no one answered back.

~~~

When his vision began splitting in two, Spencer rubbed at his tired eyes. He'd been staring at the map the police station had provided for over five hours now. Him and Penelope had found nothing - no properties in his name, no previous history in the areas, nothing.

But Spencer had kept looking though, refusing to believe that Walter Khan's trail went cold here. Not when he was doing who knew what to you. It was the only thought that kept him motivated, kept his tired eyes from closing entirely on him despite their great protest.

The rising sun wasn't helping with his vision either. After being awake all night, the introduction to natural light and blue skies was a shock to the system he was still adjusting to.

'Any updates from Morgan, JJ or Kate?' he asked, his voice rumbling with exhaustion.

Penelope had remained on the video feed since the others had left, refusing to leave Spencer alone. Maybe she thought he would do something reckless without supervision. If he was being honest, he couldn't blame her for thinking that, not when the murderous urge to strangle Khan with all Spencer's might tingled the tips of his fingers.

Or maybe that was the twelve cups of coffee he'd had in the past five hours finally kicking in.

'Not yet, sorry.' Penelope said wistfully, blinking several times as she continued looking at a screen off to the side of the camera. Even in her tired state, she refused to rub at her face like Spencer in order to preserve her glorious makeup. Spencer had to admit it was impressive. She had a lot more self control than she gave herself credit for.

Just the thought alone had him rubbing his eyes again. 'Are you sure there isn't anything we've missed? What about Q25, Garcia? What's there?'

'Nothing but trees once more, boy wonder.' She heaved a sad, frustrated sigh. 'We've been looking at the same area for hours now and still nothing! What am I doing wrong?'

'It's not you, Garcia,' Spencer offered politely. Truthfully, he simultaneously felt no one was doing enough to find you, and yet they were exhausting everything they could to do so. But he was the one who promised to bring you home, who said it would all be over soon.

It was his fault you were still not found. There was something he wasn't seeing, and every second his supposedly big brain spent trying to figure it out was another second you could be being tortured.

He didn't let the thought that maybe you were already dead linger too long. Not when Hotch and Rossi stormed into the room, exhaustion and anger lining their weary faces. Spencer glanced behind them to see Madame Lacroix and two other men - one older with grey hair, the other much younger - being escorted into holding cells down the corridor.

'Madame Lacroix was a dead end,' Hotch explained before anyone could ask. 'But we managed to expose them for their involvement in Khan's business, and also the other illegal trades they've all been dealing with on the side. L/N's reports and photographs should be enough evidence to charge them on at least that.'

'But we can't bust them just yet on Khan,' Rossi added, his tone defeated. 'Any luck on the geo-profile?'

Spencer shook his head regrettably. 'There are no properties or anything that may indicate he has ties in the direction we think he's operating out of.'

'It's either just woodland or innocent estate living,' Penelope added. 'All names check out, they're not aliases.'

'Morgan, JJ, and Kate better find those girls soon then,' Rossi said. 'They seem to be our only guide to where Khan is hiding out.'

'The thing that is odd to me though,' Hotch started, 'is why he is hanging around. Why not kill L/N knowing she's an agent? Why not skip town or relocate as soon as possible?'

'Because it's a compulsion now,' Spencer found himself saying. He wasn't sure if it was from lack of sleep that he sounded delusional, but he kept talking. He needed to talk, anything to keep his mind off the alternatives. 'Y/N engrained herself so much into his operation that he may have deluded himself into thinking he can make her one of his girls for real.'

'So he'll keep her and use her just like the others,' Rossi said grimly. 'And when she eventually lets him down - as they all have - he'll kill her.'

'We'll find her before it gets to that point,' Hotch said so assuredly that Spencer almost believed it. But the odds were against them, and time was running out.

As if the universe was listening in, Penelope's gasp sent tremors of terror through Spencer as they all turned to her on the screen. 'Guys! The feed is back online!'

'Pull it up and start tracking it,' Hotch ordered, and Penelope didn't need telling twice as she did just that.

You were hanging again, but the blood that covered the lower half of your face was now gone. Your dress was ruffled and dirty in some places, and straws of hay were tangled in your messy hair. He must've lowered you for the remainder of the night, but from the dark circles under your weary eyes, Spencer guessed you hadn't slept.

'He cleaned her up,' Rossi noticed too.

'That's a good thing right?' Penelope said, pausing her tracking for a second.

'No,' Spencer replied. 'It means he's got more in store for her.'

'You were right, Reid. It's a compulsion,' Rossi added.

'Keep tracking, Garcia,' Hotch said.

And there he was.

Walter Khan entered the frame, but instead of taunting them through the camera like last time, he walked straight over to you as if the camera wasn't even on. He grasped your chin, causing you to jerk backwards with a gasp.

'How did you know that?' he asked, voice tight and restrained. When you didn't answer, he pulled you closer with a harsh tug that caused the chains to rattle. 'How did you know?!'

'Lucky... Lucky guess, I suppose,' you replied, eyes flicking from Khan to the camera and back. Something had happened between the last feed and now, Spencer concluded. Some interaction that has brought out the frantic Khan.

'No!' He slapped you, sending you spinning around on the chain. When you swung back towards the camera, the sun highlighted the blood on your lip, how it trembled as you did. 'You knew about my life! No one does! So how would an undercover agent of all people know?'

'Maybe you're just... not as slick as you think you are,' you said in between haggard breaths. Spencer could only imagine how much pain you were in. He was both extremely proud of and extremely terrified for you.

Khan let out a growl that rattled the conference room it was that loud. He lashed out with a hard punch to your gut, then a slanted punch on your knee, receiving a loud crunch and crack in return.

For the first time since being caught, you screamed. It was the most horrible sound Spencer had ever heard in his life - even worse than the gunshot that killed Maeve. It echoed through the Warehouse, a guttural, pained sound that would haunt not only Spencer's dreams but Hotch, Rossi, and Penelope's too.

You gathered yourself quickly and bit down on your lip, silencing your cries. Sunlight showed the tears that gathered at your eyes, still refusing to fall. But Spencer could tell it was taking all you had to keep it together. You knew they were watching. You probably were holding it together for them.

The pride and terror he felt for you was overwhelming to a point his knees almost buckled. But if you could keep it together while being tortured, he could do it too.

Once you'd calmed your breathing, you looked back at Khan, hate in your beautiful E/C eyes. 'Beating me... will get you nowhere... I refuse... to break to you.'

Everyone held their breaths as you held your stare with Khan, and Spencer realised it then.

It hit him in consistent waves that made it hard to catch his breath or even fully realise what was happening. It was how you stared down the crook man, unrelenting, unwavering, unbreakable. It was how, even at you most vulnerable, you made sure to put on a brave face for the team, for him. He hadn't dared think it before - not after Maeve. But the heavy thuds of his heart couldn't be mistaken.

Khan contemplated you for a moment, and then pulled out a pocket knife from his pants. He was calm again which Spencer didn't like one bit. 'Very well, then. You want to act tough?' He didn't wait for a reply as he sliced the top button of your dress off expertly. Then another and another, until almost the entirety of your bra showed. 'Let's see how tough you really are.'

Your eyes blew wide in terror finally realising what his intentions were. Spencer realised a second after, and his blood boiled painfully.

'Garcia,' Spencer managed out, unable to take his eyes off you as Khan sliced off another button and another. By the time he got to the last one, exposing your underwear too, Spencer was on the verge of a panic attack. 'Garcia!'

'I'm honing in on it now!' she called back, but it wasn't enough to quell his fear.

Khan slipped off the dress with a few more slices of the knife, then proceeded to pocket it and press himself against your back. You tried pulling away, but Khan's arms were around you already, feeling you everywhere, violating you.

That's when the tears finally fell. A broken sob escaped your bloodied, trembling lips as Khan's hands dragged all over you, brushing away the hair on your neck to press a sickeningly gentle kiss there.

But instead of completely crumbling, you looked directly into the camera and said, 'I would've said yes.'

For a moment it was just him and you. You words were so soft he almost didn't believe you said them. Spencer saw out of the corner of his eyes Hotch and Rossi didn't understand, but this wasn't about them. You were speaking directly to Spencer, probably with full faith that he was watching and that he was on his way to save you already.

Khan paused his ministrations at the odd statement, giving you a confused look. 'What?'

'I would've said yes,' you repeated, but this time there was a resignation to your words. As if you accepted that those would be the last words anyone would hear you speak. Spencer quickly realised that, as much as you believed he was coming, you didn't believe you would be alive when he finally did.

Khan followed your gaze to the camera, his expression changing as he realised you weren't talking to him.

'I would've said yes,' you said again, not once looking away from the camera.

Khan's hands retracted from you.

'I would've said yes.'

He walked over to the camera.

'I would've said yes.'

'You disappeared behind his huge frame.

'I would've said yes.'

He reached out to switch it off.

'I would've said-'

The feed went dark. The room fell silent, but only for a second. As Spencer stormed out of the room, slamming the door open as he did. He didn't know where he was going, just that he had to get out of that room.

I would've said yes.

The way you'd said it was like you were trying to make sure he heard you - that, as your last words to him, you wanted to let him know of what could've been.

He stormed into the break room where thankfully nobody resided in. He slammed his fist on one of the tables, and kicked at the chair residing at it. Anger coursed through every fibre in him, at Khan, at Holt, at himself.

I would've said yes.

'Reid.'

Spencer turned to find Rossi standing in the doorway, concern wrinkling his weathered features more. 'You okay?' he asked, slowly walking into the room fully then closing the door behind him. 'What was that about?'

'She would've said yes,' was all Spencer could manage out in his wild state of mind, finding it hard to breathe he was so wound up. 'She would've...'

'I heard that,' Rossi said gently. 'I don't know what that means. But you clearly do. So spill, boy genius. What did she mean by that?'

Spencer tugged at his hair in frustration. 'Before she left I asked her out,' he explained, voice rising as his worry did. 'She was never able to give me an answer because she was sworn to secrecy, and I thought that all this time she never liked me liked that because we've been friends for so long, but she would've said yes. You heard her! She would've said yes! And now she-'

'Okay, okay, okay,' Rossi interrupted, gently grabbing Spencer by his arms and guiding him to the chair he'd kicked just before. Spencer didn't have the strength to fight the older man, allowing himself to be guided into a seat.

Rossi crouched in front of Spencer, holding Spencer's shaking hands in his steady ones. 'Just breathe, Reid. Just breathe.'

Spencer followed Rossi' instructions as best as he could, but panic and despair had already crept in. 'Do you know,' he started, lips trembling, voice quaking with emotions he couldn't quite understand, 'that friendships that last longer than seven years... that they are meant to last for life? Y/N and I... we've been friends for a decade.'

'I know,' Rossi answered gently. 'You, JJ, Penelope and Y/N are quite close.'

'Yes, but,' Spencer continued through the sniffles, 'Y/N's always been there. Not just for me, but with me. I never realised how integral to my life she was until she left. I never realised that my love for her was something more until it was too late.'

'You love her?'

Only when Rossi pointed it out did Spencer realise what he'd admitted. But it wasn't a casual slip of the tongue - it was intentional, it was true, it was the only thing he wanted to say because he hated how long it took him to realise it for himself.

He nodded slowly, tears running down his cheeks. 'I didn't know it at first, but it didn't just happen overnight. Truth is... I think I've loved her from the day I met her. Platonically at first, but it's grown as we have, and she is so precious to me Rossi. I can't lose her. I can't.'

Sobs wracked his boney body as he broke down. Rossi pulled him into an awkward but comforting hug, and Spencer couldn't express how grateful he was for such comfort. Rossi had grown into the father figure he'd made Gideon out to be; and while Spencer had learnt to stand on his own two feet, it was reassuring knowing he had someone older and wiser to rely upon.

'It's like Maeve all over again,' Spencer found himself saying, still clinging onto Rossi like his life depended on it. 'Just when I glimpse happiness, it's snatched away. And there is nothing I can do about it.'

'No, no,' Rossi said, pulling back to look Spencer directly in his amber eyes. 'You listen to me, boy wonder. We are going to find her, and we're going to bring her home. And you are going to tell her how you feel and finally take her on a date. Is that understood?' When Spencer didn't answer, Rossi continued.

'Remember how when Maeve died, you holed yourself up in your apartment for weeks, and didn't talk to anyone?' Spencer nodded, but only because he didn't quite understand why Rossi was bringing it up. 'And remember how we all came by to visit, but mostly Y/N? That was because she believed you were strong enough to get through it. She never doubted you, never gave up on you, Spence. Are you really going to return the favour by giving up on her?'

Spencer stared at Rossi for a moment, perplexed that he even would suggest such a thing. He quickly wiped his tears away, though. 'No,' he answered, voice stern and hopeful.

'Good,' Rossi replied, standing back up. 'Now use that big brain of yours. There's got to be something that we missed.'

Before Spencer could answer, the door to the break room swung open to reveal a flustered Derek Morgan. 'We found them,' he said between heavy breaths. 'We found the girls.'

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dreamifics · 3 years

Text

James Potter x Reader

Oneshot

Warning:just angst and sad fluff ig

A letter for James Fleamont Potter

Dear James Potter,

Hey, what's up? That's a lousy letter starter after years of pretending you guys didn't exist.. This would be a rollercoaster of emotions, so try to keep up. Remember when we first met? You were in Ollivanders, buying a wand when you accidentaly almost killed me?

A little girl was walking pass a shop called Ollivanders, she was simply minding her own business when a ray of magic blast to her.. She fell on her butt first, her hair was a mess, she looked like she got burnt..

"Oh, dear godric!I'm very sorry!" A little boy about the same age as the girl came running out of the store.. He had a messy hair and thick glasses, he gave the girl an apologetic smile..

"What in the bloody hell are you doing?!" The girl was mad, who wouldn't? She was just simply having a great day when an idiot almost killed her..

"Buying wands?" He answered unsure. He was just shopping for wands when this very powerful surge made him lose control and it blast to her.

"I look like a mess, Mother would be infuriated..", The girl mumbles to herself as she stands up.. She huffs and glare at the boy.

"I'm James, by the way.."

"I'm Y---"

"Y/N L/N!!WHAT HAPPEND TO YOU?!" Her mother's voice boomed all throughout the alley causing some wizards to look at them..

"Goodbye, you bloody idiot.." Y/N mutters to herself.

"I heard that!"

"You were supposed to hear that!"

And that was the start of our friendship.. You little dim wit, but I'm thankful for that, because I got to meet you.. Did you know that I was not very fond of you? You just wore me down, you're a persistent arse.. But now, it all made sense to me..

What my gut was telling me about you.. You were-- no no, you're still my downfall, James.. I clearly remember when it all daunt to me, the how and why? I'm still unsure about the answer to those two questions. I'm guessing you know what I'm talking about, if you don't... I'll say it or write it now..

I'm hopelessly fucking in love with you, I realized that when you went and announced your relationship with Lily.. There was this painfully hurtful jealousy in my heart and brain.. And I couldn't get rid of those stupid feelings for you..

It was another dreary Sunday in Hogwarts, Y/N was with the Marauders except for James, they were eating at the great hall.. They were talking, teasing and annoying each other when James entered with Lily in his arms.. That image broke Y/N to thousands of little pieces, she suddenly became one with the universe.

"She finally said yes, mates!" James announced causing all of the students to cheer and screamed, obviously happy.

To Y/N, the news broke her.. She was fine with James crushing to Lily because she though Lily was not interested.. But after years of pining and persuasion, she finally said yes. Y/N should've seen it coming, she should be happy for them but why is she hurting?

"Aren't you happy for us, Y/N?"

Y/N was called back from her thoughts, the question echoed through her mind.. Oh dear Godric, she was not happy.. She wanted to be the one under James arms, or to be the one to kiss him in the lips.. She love James, not like platonic, this was so much more.. She wanted to be Lily so bad, ofcourse she's not bloody happy!

"Of course, I am!Congratulations, Prongs!"

But what could she do? Y/N would have lost that battle years ago, she was not James type.. What could she do but just pretend that she was happy and fine with them.. She was dead sure that she'll forget all about James someday.. So until that day comes, she needs to fake a smile and accept her fate.

Loving your bestfriend is the worst thing in the world, James.. I wanted to confess so bad, but the idea of losing you was a heavy baggage to carry.. So, I settled by just being your friend but you don't know how many times I've wanted to confess..

To go up to you and smashed my lips into yours but you were in a relationship with Lily, so I never did anything.. You were happy, and that was enough for me.. And don't get me wrong, I tried to find someone else but you were the best James..

It has been weeks since James and Lily got together, no one knew how she felt.. She was all alone, fighting her feelings from overcoming her. Y/N was sitting in the library, reading a muggle book called 'Wuthering Heights'..

However she hated it, she was bitter and had no time for lovey dovey books.. Y/N needed to move on, she shouldn't be stuck on James..

"Hey, Y/N!"

Y/N was startled by a Hufflepuff student, she smiled and laughed..

"I'm sorry if I startled you, I--I just have a question to ask you.."

Y/N squint her eyes, she doesn't even know this guy.. She rattled her brain for any recollection of this guy..The guy saw her confused face and chuckled.

"I'm Oliver Rigby, the captain of the Hufflepuff quidditch team.."

"Ohhh, yeah.." She just murmured but she had no idea who this guy is.

"I was just wondering if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade this weekend?"

Y/N was taken aback but she needed to move on, she can no longer be hung up on a guy that doesn't even loves her back.

"Sure.."

"Alright!I'll pick you up then!"

Y/N just smiled and walked away, she was reluctant to moved on.. Her heart was still beating for James, but she needs to move on.. For her own sake.

They were nothing compared to you, I tried to moved on.. But I always ended up to you, the same feelings always came rushing in when I see you.. Every guy seems horrible when compared to you.. The short period of time we spent together was wonderful, you gave me purpose when no one else did.

Y/N has just come back from a very horrible date, the guy did nothing but talk and brag about himself.. He was not like James who was funny and talks about entertaining stories.. The guy was not sweet nor kind, he was a bit of an ass.. That's the only thing he had in common with James, she sighs and sat in one of the sofa in the common room..

No one can beat James to Y/N, her standards were bloody high because of James.. She wanted to cry but that was stupid.. Crying over a guy who didn't even hurt her, she hates herself.

"Hey."

Y/N heart skipped a beat, she knows who's voice is that.. That voice gives her butterflies, she loves how that voice says her name..

"James.."

"Thought you had a date?Why are you back so early?" He questioned.

"O-Ohh.."

"Did he stood you up? I reckon he'd do that, he looked like a douche to me."

"Sure.." She answered not looking at him, James sits next to her and put her arms around Y/N.. She felt her body stiffen as his body made contact with her.. Y/N silently prayed that James wouldn't notice her increasing heartbeat, the stiffening of her body and the way her cheeks blush..

"Are you alright?" James seems to notice his bestfriend all red and she looked like very uncomfortable..

"What if I said no, what would you do?"

"Make you feel better, ofcourse!" His laughs echoed through the whole Gryffindor tower.. Y/N let out a dry laugh, she didn't mean that.. But her heart was breaking into thousands of pieces, she want this feeling out of her system.

"Are you really alright?"

"Yeah, maybe.."

"Want to talk---"

"Jameees!" Lily's voice called the attention of the messy-haired boy..

"I'll be right back, Lily needs me.."

"B-But what about me?" Y/N tried her very best to not choke up and crack.

"Later, Y/N.." James messed her hair, she didn't meant to be demanding however this was the sign she was looking for.. The sign that James doesn't feel anything special for her, she was just James very annoying friend..Y/N realized that with one call, Lily has James wrapped around her perfect fingers, with only one call from Lily, James was gone.. He just left her hurting friend for Lily, Y/N suddenly felt her heart was no longer there..

It was bruised and beated so many times, and now.. Y/N chest is nothing but a vacant lot, an empty hollow space.. The tiny little hope that maybe James likes her back can no longer be found.

That hope was now gone.

Y/N had reached her limit, it was truly over.. The love and jealousy she feels was a heavy baggage to carry. Y/N needed to avoid James, just until she was fully okay..

Y/N knew deep inside her that her love for James will never fully go away..

Avoiding you was the only reasonable thing to do, to be frank.. It was the only thing to do.. If I kept up that silly facade, I would ended up being mental.. You see James, jealousy is a monster that takes over your whole mind and body. It's a hideous monster you can't escape.. I do have a few questions, did you notice the not-so-subtle cold shoulder I gave you? Because back then it seems like you didn't, did you though? Did you cry every night like I did? Or did your heart break like mine did?

Y/N finally got out of her bed, she was in the great hall, hundreds of feet away from James.. But from the looks of it, he didn't really seem to mind.. He was too busy whispering sweet nothings to Lily's ear.

"If your glares could kill, Evans and Potter would be dead now.." Her friend intoned, she snapped her head away from the sight of James.

"I don't what your talking about.." Y/N denied..

"Of course, you don't.." Her friend tease.

"If my looks can kill, you will be the first one dead.." Y/N gave her friend a glare which her friends just brushed off.

"Blimey!No need to get mad, I was just stating facts.."

"Just sod off." Y/N just played with the food in her plate.

"If you told James about your feelings, he would've ask you out." Y/N's friend said in a teasing manner..

"No, he would never do that.."

"And how do you know that?" Y/n rolled her eyes at her friends question.

"Because I knew James, he was inlove with Lily since the start of our first year. "

"That's what you think.." Her friend crosses her arms and smirk at her.

"What?" She questioned confused.

"Nothing, idiot.. You won't understand.."

"O-kay?"

"Look Y/N, just move on.." Y/N scoffs at her friends genius idea.

"You make it sound like it's so bloody easy.."

"Is it not?You cry about it for a day then you find someone else.. " Y/N looked at her friend with a surprised gaze, is it that easy? How come it's so hard for her?

"See, easy.."

"Sod off.." She shut her friend down as thoughts occupied her mind..

Y/N was walking down the silent halls of Hogwarts alone, a frown in her face she hasn't been smiling this past few weeks.. Her back suddenly stood straight when the four familiar faces welcomed her when she entered an empty classroom.

"Oh, hello Y/N.." Sirius was the first to greet her with a big smile on his face but she didn't give the smile back.

"Y/N!I was wondering where you were these past few weeks.." Remus gave her a comforting smile.

"Yeah, I had no one to eat my sweets with!" Peter walked up to Y/N and offered her a chocolate which she didn't accept.

"I apologize, I have to go now.."

"But Y/N--" Peter didn't get to finish the sentence, she was gone, James didn't even look up from his seat.. Did he forgot all about Y/N? But Y/N didn't feel anything anymore.. Funny how numbness can have it's perks sometimes..

Maybe you didn't notice me because you were so inlove with pretty little Evans? That came out a little rude, I apologize for that, but I'm not sorry.. You see, I don't hate Lily, but then again kinda wish she were dead.. She was all you saw James, I was with you through your worst.. I gave you everything, but what do I get in return?

Just heartaches and neverending what-ifs.. You never saw me James.. Remember the day we graduated and left Hogwarts? You didn't even say goodbye to me, not even a single glance James.. I was not the only one who gave up on our friendship.. We both did, James..

Riding the Hogwarts train one last time was a bittersweet moment for others.. To Y/N, it was a relief.. She would finally get to leave the place that reminds her of James, every corner and walls was embedded with memories of Y/N and James having fun with each other.. It may sound nice but it only brought misery to her.

"Y/N!We're getting off now.." Y/N's friend broke her silent trance.. Y/N stands up and exits the train, her feet hit the platform floor, Y/N took a deep breath and wander her eyes to the sea of graduate students. Some were celebrating, some were crying and there Y/N saw him..

James had Lily under his arms as they talk with the rest of the Marauders.. Disappointment was written all over Y/N's face, this was the last day they would be able to see each other and James didn't even glance at her.. They were friends for years, she couldn't belive that their friendship was beyond repair..

"Quit staring at him, your looking pathetic." Y/N whispers under her breath, walking away without saying goodbye was not how she planned her last day in Hogwarts. Y/N was moving to America and will work in the Ministry of Magic there.. She does not want to work in the same place that James and Lily was going to work at..

Y/N needs to really move on, and America would be the place for it.. Atleast there, she's far away from any reminders of James or Lily.. Holding her trunk, she walks away from her old life.. No more heartaches, just miserable thoughts and lots of what ifs.

Moving here didn't even help, I'm still inlove with you.. You might be confused about why I'm just sending this letter to you now.. Well Mister Potter, I just got an invitation to your wedding and I'm very very drunk right now.. I didn't think you would really send me an invitation because you know were just strangers.. We spent years ignoring each other and now this bloody envelope shows up at my home..

How did you even knew my address? Were you keeping tabs on me? If that's the case then I'm very flattered and also a little bit creeped out but that's not the point! The point is, I'm not going to your wedding because I'm still fucking inlove with you.. I hope you enjoy the wedding though, also don't bother writing back.. I would never remember this anyway, so James.. Give Love, Peace, and Chicken Grease.

Sincerely,

Y/N L/N

If you guys have any request for imagines about ( marvel characters, DC characters, stranger things, game of thrones, brooklyn 99, friends, basically anything! I accept everything!)

#james potter x reader #imagines #james potter imagine #james+potter+x+reader #marauders #hogwarts #james potter #no voldemort au #oneshot #oneshots

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