#and i thought i might be able to barely function towards the end of the week

[kachulein]

I'm proud of myself for being able to make it all the way home and wait until I was in my room to start sobbing🤧

[bookshelf-dust]

all the time

steve harrington x fem!reader

word count: 7,206

warnings: swearing, brief mentions of alcohol, family drama, best friends to lovers type beat (lemme know if i missed anything, as always)

a/n: this got pretty long, and i’m sorry about that. i put a steve option in my 1k celebration poll, and i haven’t been able to get over it, so that’s what this is. i thought i could try it out. i haven’t really had this much fun with a fic in a long time. i know my steve audience isn’t as big, but i guess there’s a chance someone might like it.

————

The crumbs from your crackers drop into your lap, the crease of your book catching them. You set your spoon back down, flipping the hardback over to ensure no crumb will be left lingering in between the pages. 

You’re curled into the end chair at the table, just as always, legs crossed and book nestled against your bare legs. Your parents sit across from each other, talking about whatever, but you aren’t listening. 

You dunk a cracker in your soup, holding it there for a moment to let it soak up the broth, before tossing it into your mouth. You continue on this way—alternating between scooping up noodles or chicken and drowning saltines—until you have nothing left but the dregs in your bowl. 

You mark the page in your book, tuck it under your thigh. You’re tipping the bowl backwards, drinking the rest of the soup, when your mother says your name loudly enough to tear you from your stupor. 

You swallow and wipe your mouth haphazardly with a napkin. “What?”

“Your father and I were just talking about your sister’s wedding.”

You raise your eyebrows, wondering if she’s actually being serious. 

“No shit.”

Your father sets his cup down, glaring at you. “Language.”

“Sorry,” you say, though there’s no real meaning in the word. 

Your sister has told practically every goddamn person in Hawkins that she’s getting married at the end of the month. Everyone is talking about her wedding. A wedding that you don’t give one singular fuck about. 

She’s marrying her high school sweetheart, they’re moving into a sweet new house in the suburbs, blah blah blah. She’s doing the same shit every other peaked-in-high-school woman her age is doing. And you can’t be bothered to care. 

Not only that, but you have to be a bridesmaid. You’re not very close with your sister, so her choosing another friend as her maid of honor really didn’t hurt you. Frankly, you would’ve been fine if she’d left you out of the bridal party completely. 

None of this is really as spectacular as everyone’s made it out to be. 

“Anyhow,” your mother begins, “you know she’s allowing her guests to bring a plus one.” She pauses, and you raise your eyebrows again, not understanding the need for dramatics here. 

“Well, she asked if you were going to bring someone, and I told her that you were.”

You push back from the table, entirely too confused. “What?”

“Honey, don’t get so frantic. I didn’t think you would want to be alone, especially considering your attitude towards the entire function.”

You take a deep breath, pressing your fingers into your eyelids. 

“I thought you could bring that boyfriend of yours. Actually, that’s what I told her. She’s already put in the name for a place card.”

“Mom, are you out of your mind?” 

She gasps, taking a sip of her wine to gather herself. Your father chooses this moment to begin clearing up the table. 

“I don’t have a boyfriend!” you exclaim. 

Her eyes widen. “What do you mean? I told her you’d bring that boy, Steve. You spend an awful lot of time with him for him to not be your boyfriend.” 

You feel like you’re choking on air. Like your dinner is going to come up if she doesn’t cut this out. “That’s because he’s my friend!” 

“You’re always with him, sweetie. Much more than I ever was with any of my male friends.” She clearly doesn’t believe that he’s not your boyfriend. Like it’s impossible that he isn’t.  

You shove past her and into the kitchen, utterly exasperated. Why are people making decisions for you? Why is your mother suddenly proclaiming to everyone that you’re in a relationship you didn’t even know you were in?

When you turn around from facing the sink, both of your parents are staring at you. “What now? Something else you’ve told the whole damn town about me?” 

Your mother reaches out to you, but you brush her off. You’re a little too pissed for any sort of cooing right now. 

“I’m sorry I assumed he was your boyfriend, honey. But you have to bring him, or else the family will ask questions and there will be an empty space next to you. Personally, I’d find that embarrassing.”

You push your way out of the kitchen, more than done with this situation. “You’ll be lucky if I even go to the damn wedding. And, personally, I wouldn’t go blabbing about things I’ve just assumed about my own daughter rather than just talking about them with her.”

When you turn down the hall, your father is rubbing his forehead, and your mother is looking at you like you should be grateful for her having assured you have company for the big event. 

“This could be good for you!” she shouts, and your only response is the slam of your bedroom door. 

In hindsight, of course the slam was childish, but you really can’t believe your mother. 

You’ve never been so frustrated with her in your life. And yeah, you’ll go to the wedding, but what gave her the right to do that? This is your life. Not hers. 

Normally, you would call Steve about something like this, but shit, you can’t. 

Steve. As your boyfriend? 

That’s too much for your brain to handle right now. You throw yourself on the bed and call it a night. 

————

“So, let me get this straight,” Robin begins, holding up her hands so as to count off your main points. “Your mother just told everyone that you have a boyfriend, that this boyfriend is Steve, of all people, and that he’s your plus one to your bitchy sister’s wedding?” 

The countertop is cold when you press your forehead against it. “Yes,” you whine. 

You’d gotten up first thing this morning and head to Family Video, needing to spill your guts to the one and only person who would surely match your energy and try to help you handle the situation. 

Your arms are laid out in front of you, hands dangling over the edge of the counter and reaching for Robin on the other side. She grabs hold of them and squeezes. “That’s one hell of a pickle you’re in. But! Lucky for you, I’m gonna help you figure it out.”

You squeeze her hands back, only to jerk your head up at an alarmingly fast rate. Robin cringes like you’re going to give yourself whiplash. You’ve just had an absolutely terrifying thought.

“Steve’s not working today, is he?”

Robin tries to think off the top of her head, but there are too many thoughts rambling around in there, so she’s quick to consult the schedule pinned to the wall behind her. She probably could’ve told you the times of each of his shifts if only you hadn’t asked. 

“He won’t come in until this afternoon. Three-thirty, to be exact.”

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding. “Thank fuck. I’m not ready to see him yet. He’s going to notice something’s wrong and then he’ll want to talk about it and then it’ll just be a big fat shit show.”

Robin props her chin up with her hand, elbow resting against the green countertop. “You know, maybe that’s a good thing. He already knows you so well that he’ll probably make a great boyfriend.”

“Robin, what?” 

She’s plotting and you’ve never felt more afraid. 

“Well, you can’t just not take him to the wedding after all of this, right? It would be ten times messier now that your mom has told all of Hawkins that Steve Harrington is your boyfriend. And you know he’ll agree to go, being ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ and whatnot. Besides, you’ve gotta admit that there’s chemistry between the two of you.”

You go to speak, but she holds a hand up to stop you. 

“So you tell him about your little predicament, and maybe he can just act as your boyfriend for the night?” She smiles nervously, shoulders rising in slight fear of your reaction. “You two are best friends, no one’s bound to be the wiser.”

“Robin, are you suggesting that I just fake-date the man?”

She raises her hands in a don’t-shoot-the-messenger gesture. “What’s the harm in it? It’s just a one time thing. You go, you get it over with, and Steve will be there the whole time. It’ll be totally fine.” 

You drag your hands down your face, peeking at her through your fingers. This is insane. This is fucking delusional. But it could work, couldn’t it?

A customer comes in, and you step to the side while Robin helps them at the counter. Chemistry? Maybe Robin’s right. Not that you’d ever tell her that. 

Last Valentine’s, Steve showed up at your place after dark, flowers in hand, knowing full well that you hate the holiday. “I just wanted you to feel special,” he’d said. “And I love you and everything.” You’ve been saying that to each other for forever it seems. And you mean it. He’s your best friend. But now you’re wondering if maybe he means it in a different way. Or if that’s just what you want to think. 

Steve doesn’t know that you pressed a few of the flowers to keep, or that you’ve saved the stubs from the movies you’ve seen together. You think about how he holds your hand on the way up the theater stairs, keeping you from tripping and spilling popcorn everywhere. How he offers to go out with you when you need to be away from home, not wanting to leave you alone. That he takes your bag from you the second he notices you adjusting it, straps digging into your shoulder. 

Your hands start to sweat, and you feel like this could either go just as Robin’s told you, or it could go really fucking badly. 

“Hello? Anyone home?” Robin’s voice breaks you out of your stupor. She’s waving her hand in front of your face. 

“Listen honey, I can see your brain working from here. I know you’re coming up with every possible way that this could go wrong. Just talk to him! It might go really well. You never know.”

Robin boops you on the nose and starts to walk towards the staff room. It’s her way of signaling that you need to get your shit together. 

“Good luck! I love you!”

You grab your keys and make for the door, flipping her off as you go. She only blows a kiss in response.

————

You’d been pacing your room when Steve called and offered to take you to the bookstore. Really he just wanted to spend time with you, and you needed to spill your guts. You spent an hour contemplating calling him, going over to see him, maybe even just cutting yourself off from him as a whole. In fact, cutting yourself off from the world had crossed your mind, but he’d since prevented that. 

Now Steve hovers behind you while you wander down an aisle filled with mystery novels. None of them are catching your eye.

There’s a warmth behind you, and you look up to see Steve. He reaches above your head, one hand on your waist, and pulls something down. He flips it around in his hands before holding it out to you. “What about this one?”

Surprisingly enough it does sound vaguely interesting. “You have to read it after I do.”

He grins. “Yes ma'am.” 

And we will read it. You know that he will because he’s done it before. He’s sat on your couch and blabbed about books to you, whining about this character, asking you a question about that plotline. Robin’s voice chirps in your head. Chemistry. Shit. 

Steve takes the book back from you. He never lets you carry anything. 

You walk further into the store, your feet carrying you to the same places they always do. You end up in a quiet corner, and your heart rate picks up. Not telling him is only hurting you more. You take a deep breath.

“Steve, I gotta tell you something.”

He crosses his arms and leans against the end cap. “Shoot.”

“You know how my sister is getting married?”

He snorts. “Yeah, I’d say I’m familiar with the event.”

You’d smile if it weren’t for the fact that you feel like you might puke at any moment. “Well she decided that guests could have a plus one.” Steve hates the way he warms up at that. At the fact that he wants you to take him. He nods, encouraging you to continue. 

“Well my mother decided to tell everyone that I’d bring you. As my boyfriend.”

Steve coughs, and your head jerks in his direction. “Your boyfriend?”

You press your hands together. “Yeah. She said she assumed that we were dating because we’re always together, and when my sister asked if I’d be bringing someone, she just told her that it would be you.”

You make eye contact with Steve. His cheeks have gone red. “So naturally, she’s already had your nameplate printed. And now, what I’m saying is that I need you to pretend to be my boyfriend and go to my sister’s wedding with me.” The last part spills out of your mouth faster than you’d intended. 

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you start to panic. It’s as if you’ve been sent into overdrive, like every sense in your body is on high alert. If this goes wrong, Robin’s ass is grass. 

You back into the corner of the aisle, book spines pressing into your back. “I realize I said I need you to do this, but I should have prefaced it by saying that of course you don’t have to, and I don’t expect you to–”

“I’ll do it.”

Steve pushes his hair back from his forehead. 

“What?”

“I said I’ll do it. I don’t mind.”

“Steve, are you sure?”

He’s moving into your personal space bubble, hands grasping for your arms where you’ve tucked them behind your back. He pulls them out, hands sliding down your forearms until he’s got your hands in his. His palms are warm, and you can’t help but notice how big his hands are. There’s a ring on his pinky finger too, and it takes you by surprise, considering he’s not usually one for jewelry. You’ll have to ask him about it later, assuming you survive this. 

“I’m sure. I’m not just going to let you show up after your mom did all that shit. She’s more trouble than she’s worth, if you ask me. But I promise, I don’t mind. I’ll go and be your boyfriend. I don’t know how good I’ll be, but hey…we’ll see.”

You pull your hand away to smack him on the arm. He winces like you’ve brutally wounded him. 

“Don’t you dare say that, Steven. You’d make an excellent fake boyfriend. And a kickass real one. Don’t let me hear that shit again.”

You let go of him and start to walk away. 

Steve chuckles. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll beat your ass, Harrington. And you’d definitely lose that one.”

He catches up to you and his hands find your waist again, though he struggles to hold on when you’re continually moving.

“Hey,” he pouts, his bottom lip jutting out at you. “Not fair.”

You look back up at him and reach up to pat his cheek. It’s warmer than you’d expected, and still all rosy. “Sorry, sorry.”

“That’s not very nice of a fake girlfriend.” 

You snort. “Ha! I guess my fake girlfriend skills aren’t up to the great Steve Harrington’s standards.”

“You’re being so mean to me today.” He rests his chin on your shoulder while you pick through a sale pile. 

“Only yanking your chain, dearest.” 

He chuckles, and you can feel his breath against your neck. 

You start to wonder if maybe everyone has a point. You do spend the majority of your time with Steve, and you are touchy, but that’s just the kind of person Steve is. You hadn’t realized how much you enjoyed physical touch from another person, even when it’s the most mundane action, until him. Robin is the same way, always holding your hands or leaning on you. They’re spoiling you. 

But the more you think about it, the more you realize that you’ve started to crave Steve’s touch when he’s not around. At night when you feel lonely, when you’re staring at the ceiling and letting your thoughts engulf you, you wish he was there to give you a hug. You wish he was there when you’re eating lunch alone and his leg isn’t pressed against yours under the table. You miss the warmth and the weight of him beside you on the couch. It’s like there’s a part of your brain that’s reserved for him, and suddenly you’re worried that this fake dating Steve thing might be the worst decision you’ve ever made. 

————

“Is this really necessary?”

“Yes, and I’m going to leave this with you until the masquerade is complete so that both of you morons have a reminder of your agreement.”

Robin sits on Steve’s couch, white board in hand. She’s brought way too many markers with her. She decided it would be best if you and Steve had a list of things that are acceptable for your temporary fake romance. She also insisted she be moderator. 

“Masquerade? Is that really what we’re calling this?” Steve looks at you.

“No. It’s not.”

“Both of you! Focus!” Robin uncaps a marker and throws the lid at Steve. He catches it. “Now, what kinds of things are okay to do during this little performance? I’m talking, hugging, handholding, kissing, the lot of it. Now shoot.”

Steve looks at you again. “What do you think? This is your family that we’ll be around.”

Your knee starts to bounce.

The majority of your little charade will be during the reception, and having to stand during the ceremony is saving you much more trouble than you’d realized. You never thought you’d be grateful to be a bridesmaid. But now there’s the added pressure of knowing Steve will be watching you then, that your family will be watching the both of you afterwards. 

Steve catches your shaking leg and is quick to put a hand out to steady you. He knows you’re nervous. 

“See? That’s good. Believable.” Robin is staring at the two of you, or more specifically, at where Steve’s hand rests on your knee.  

Steve pulls his hand back. “Okay, so we can hold hands?” you say, questioning yourself already. “You can touch me, like that or like you usually do.”

“I can do that. Hands, arms, back. That alright?”

You start to warm up. “Yeah, that works. What about you? I don’t want to be too handsy or anything but it might be weird if I don’t touch you at all.” 

Steve sits back in his chair while Robin scribbles away, her bulletpoints little stars. There are two sides, one for each of you. 

“All of that is fine with me too. I really don’t mind, and I think you know I like physical affection. But you know when you like, hang on my arm sometimes? I really like that.”

Robin smiles brilliantly. “That’s good! Makes you look super lovey-dovey.” She jots it down under Steve’s name. 

You try not to let it show, but Steve’s words are running rampant in your head. I really like that. He does? You hadn’t realized it before. 

“What else?” Robin asks. “Kissing? How do we feel about that?”

“Uh—I hadn’t really thought about it,” you tell her. And you hadn’t. The thought of Steve kissing you at all, other than the top of your head like he’s done before, makes you feel like your heart has just dropped out of your ass. “But I suppose it’d be weird if we didn’t at all, you know?” 

You’re looking at Steve, hoping he’ll feel the same way, searching for some sort of consolation. 

“No, yeah, that’s a good point.” He’s quiet for a moment before continuing, “What about your cheeks and forehead and stuff? Maybe the face is fair game? And you can do the same for me.”

You wipe your palms across your thighs. Kissing Steve. Steve kissing you. You’re losing your shit. 

“Yeah, that’s totally fine. That works.” You’re amazed that you’ve even managed to get the words out. 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, you know?” Steve’s expression is soft. You know he’s being serious with you. 

“I know. And I don’t want to make you feel that way either. I want this to be a perfectly comfortable evening.”

“And I’m sure it will be!” Robin claps her hands together, setting her board down against the couch cushions beside her. 

She stands abruptly. “Basically you’re just behaving like you normally do, but with a little more hands-on action, you know?”

Steve quirks a brow, taking a furtive glance at you. “What do you mean, like we normally do?”

Robin moves towards her best friend and crouches, taking his hands in hers. “Uh…what are you doing?”

“Listen, little Stevie, you’re a touchy-feely kind of guy, and you’re always all over the lovely lady to our left. You can’t deny that.”

“I mean—yeah.”

Robin nods her head. Steve struggles to keep eye contact with her, knowing you’re watching the interaction.

“And you’ve rubbed off on her! She wasn’t really like this before you, Harrington.”

This time he jerks his head towards you. “Really?”

He’s thinking about your hugs, how you wrap your arms around his waist and squeeze. About how you always take his hand when he offers it, or how you'll toss a leg over his on the couch. Any other sort of behavior would feel strange.

You feel yourself go all warm. Feel your chest squeeze. You’re forgetting how to breathe. She’s completely right. Steve has brought out a side of you that you swore you didn’t have. The side that longs for affection. Maybe more. 

You nod your head at him.

“Yeah,” Robin says, “Most I’d get out of her was some hand holding before you came around.” 

She releases Steve from her grasp and rises once again. 

“But my point is, you two are going to make a fantastic fake couple. And maybe even an excellent real one.”

Steve face palms. “Robin.”

“Sorry, sorry! Make sure to take pictures for me, alright? I’ll be so sad to miss this happening in person.”

Steve stands, grabbing Robin’s bag for her. “Yep. Alright. See you later, Rob.”

He looks at you with what you’re quite positive is fear in his eyes. He leads her to the door, and you can’t help but chuckle, even if you’re nervous as shit, as he reassures her that there will be pictures, and that you’ll tell her all about it. 

————

“Just hang it up on the doorframe, and then you can hold stuff up to it.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

You sit cross legged in the center of Steve’s bed, watching him rummage through his closet. He’s going to knock your dress on the floor if he doesn’t quit his frenzy. 

You’d told him it wasn’t necessary that he coordinate his outfit with yours, but he insisted, so you brought your dress over for him to see. Steve has a feeling that when he sees you in it he’s going to lose his shit, not that he can tell you that. 

“You know, I never thought these would be useful. But I guess your asshole dad dragging you to business events pays off sometimes.”

Steve lifts a bunch of hangers from the rack and pulls them out of his closet, setting them on the bed beside you.

“Fancy,” you say, smirking.

He rubs his hand over his chin, the other braced against his hip. “Yeah.”

You can tell he’s a little frazzled at this. The reminder of dressing himself up to be paraded around by his father—a father who doesn’t spare Steve a second when not in the public eye. 

You hate that you’ve made him dig up all these memories. 

“They all fit okay?” you question. 

He nods, that one insistent lock of hair slipping free. He pushes it back before you have the chance to. 

You slide off the side of the bed and stand. You gesture for him to sit and that gets a smile out of him. 

After he’s settled, you lift each suit up one by one, seeing which matches the blue of your dress best. You’re only glad that your sister picked a nice shade: a dark, rich midnight blue. The kind you’d be able to spot from far off in a department store and need to take a look. 

You get to a sort of soft gray one, and Steve stops you. You hook it up on the doorframe beside your dress. 

“I think that looks nice, yeah?”

You walk backwards until your spine meets Steve’s knees. You brace yourself, hands on his calves. His chin meets the top of your head because of how high up the bed is. 

“I like it a lot, Harrington.”

He snorts, and you can feel the puff of air against your scalp. He’s warm, his presence all around you. His cologne, maybe his shampoo if you let yourself fall in between his legs. But you don’t. You stand. 

“Looks pretty solid to me,” you tell him, though your grin falters just slightly enough for him to catch it.

He puts a gentle hand on your cheek, making sure you keep your eyes locked on his. 

“Hey. It’s gonna be great, okay? You’re going to kill it in that dress. Probably kill me, actually,” he laughs. “We’ll handle it together, alright?”

“Alright, Steven.” You’re trying not to over-analyze that comment. This is not the time to get sweaty. 

He stands up, hand sliding down from your cheek to cover your collarbones. You wrap your arms around his back on instinct, and you swear you see him blush as he moves to encircle you in his own. 

“Does being your fake boyfriend mean your incessant picking has only gotten worse?” 

You rest your forehead against his chest. You can hear the steady thump of his heartbeat. You think about how nice it might be to do this all the time. What it might be like if he weren’t your fake boyfriend, but your real one. 

“Mhm,” you mumble. “I plan on continuing it, too.”

Steve’s hands run up and down your back. 

“I look forward to it,” he whispers. There’s a part of you that knows he means it.

————

Steve hasn’t stopped looking at you since you met him at the door to the wedding venue. 

You’d run down, more than happy to have company that wasn’t your sister's bitchy bridal party. 

He stands with you now, waiting until he’s allowed to take his seat, and you can feel his eyes burning into you. 

Not that you’re any better than he is. 

His suit fits him just right, and every time he pushes his hair around, you watch his shoulders move under his jacket. It’s driving you insane. And he’s wearing that fucking ring again. Except this time, there’s also one on the middle finger of his opposite hand. 

The sun is hitting him just right, turning his eyes this amber color. It’s mesmerizing. You notice then that his tie is the same blue as your dress. 

“Steve?”

“Hm?” 

“Did you have that? Just lying around?” 

He follows your gaze to his chest. No, he absolutely didn’t. He ran out and picked one up in a shade as close as he could get it to yours. Wearing something that felt like a piece of you had his mind abuzz. Abuzz with you. 

It’s the same way he feels about these rings Robin bought him. She said you were into them, always talking about Steve’s hands or something. He’s started to like them, but really it’s for you. Most things are. 

“Yeah. I found it in a drawer.”

Robin would slap him if she were here. He doesn’t know why he lies, but he does. And then you’re blushing and he’s got to sit down. He squeezes your hand one last time, an encouraging gesture, but one that has so much more buried beneath it.

The ceremony thankfully goes quickly for you, and you’re grateful, hating having to stand up there like you give a shit, like your sister is some saint. 

For Steve, it’s the slowest wedding he’s ever been to. You look so fucking gorgeous and he can’t keep it together. He barely even pays attention to the wedding, too busy looking at you. The way your indifference shows on your face, even if you know you’ll hear about it later. The way your hands wrap around the little bouquet you’ve been given. The way the setting sun sets your skin alight, and he thinks that you might truly be the death of him. 

When the ceremony has concluded, when Steve is looking for you in the reception hall, he realizes he has to tell you so. You deserve to know how gorgeous you are. He’s beating himself up for having said you looked ‘great,’ and that was all. 

You spot him first, and rush to him like you had before, anxious to be near him. 

“My mother is looking for me,” you tell him.

“You want to get some air?” His hand finds the small of your back, already leading you away from the crowd and just outside the doors. 

“You’re such a good fake boyfriend.”

You suck in a breath of cool air, shake your hands out. 

Steve smirks, hands moving up to massage at your shoulders before he even has a chance to give the action a second thought. “Just knew you’d like to get away is all.”

Knew. 

The word hits you and you feel like you’ve been slapped. Goddammit, Robin. She’s been in your head all day, and you’ve done nothing but pick up on the little things Steve does for you, the things he seems to know about you, that make him so much more than just a best friend. 

You’re fucked. 

“Thank you, Steve. For that, and for coming to this. It means a lot to me.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’d do it again.”

He’s looking at you with such fondness, and you have a feeling he wants to say more. You grab hold of one of his wrists, locking your eyes with his in hopes that it will communicate the message. Go ahead. 

He exhales. This sort of thing used to be so easy for him, but it’s never been that way with you. He knows it’s because you aren’t just some chick he wants to take out. You’re everything. And he’s fumbling for words. 

“I, uh, I wanted to tell you that…” You squeeze his wrist, and he continues, albeit with a shaky voice. “I wanted to tell you that you look beautiful.”

A smile creeps up and onto your face before you can stop it. 

“I mean, you always look beautiful, b-but tonight you’re just—stunning. Like, totally breathtaking. Don’t let anyone hear this, but I’d even say you look better than the bride.”

You let out a laugh then, the kind that comes straight from your belly, rich and sickly sweet. It makes Steve laugh, too. He can’t believe you. You’re unbelievable. 

“Sorry, Steve, I just–fuck that was so funny.” You straighten up, putting your serious face back on. “Thank you for saying that. I really appreciate it.”

“I’m serious, you know. You’re gorgeous.” He presses a kiss to your forehead, lips warm and plush against your skin. 

You go all warm and fuzzy inside. “Thank you, Stevie.”

He smacks another kiss to your cheek, just because he can. 

“You look pretty too, you know.” 

Steve blushes at your comment, and it’s at this very moment that your mother’s voice rings out, “Sweetie! Come in here, people want to see you!”

Fear flashes across your face, any trace of the sweet flirtiness there seconds before having vanished. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Steve says, watching you gesture towards your mother, telling her you’re on your way.  “Let’s do this, yeah?”

You make eye contact with him, and he grabs hold of your hand, weaving his fingers between yours. “Yeah.”

————

“So, how’d the two of you meet?”

You’re surrounded by a crowd of women, some are your family–your mother and sister–some women you’re not even sure you know. 

“School.” Steve saves you from having to speak first. “We went to high school together, but we met through a mutual friend.”

Your mother quirks a brow. “Robin,” you tell her. 

“Oh! What a lovely young lady.”

Steve snorts and you slap him on the back. Not that anyone could’ve seen it with how close he’s got you pressed to his side. “Yep,” Steve coughs, “She’s great.”

He presses a kiss to the top of your head, hoping it’ll give him a moment to suppress his smile. Your sister steps away from her friends, catching the action. 

“So, Steve, does she treat you okay? I know my sister can be a bit frantic sometimes.” You watch your mother down the rest of her wine, and you know she’s hoping nothing breaks out between the two of you like it has plenty of times before. 

Steve’s arm wraps more firmly around you, his hand coming to rest on your hip. Everyone has their eyes locked on you, waiting, hoping that Steve will spill some sort of secret that they can spread throughout Hawkins like wildfire. Nothing beats good gossip around here. 

He squeezes your hip, and for a split second you think the gesture might be possessive. Protective, even. 

“She does. Your sister is considerate and thoughtful, and she’s the best woman I know. I’ve never felt more comfortable than I do with her. And if she’s ever frantic, it only helps her deal with me when I’m the same way.”

You feel like you could pass out. Because you know he meant every damn word of that. You know he isn’t lying. 

Your sister looks between the two of you. “Well, I suppose that’s good to hear.” Her smile is nothing but insincere when she walks off to greet another wedding guest. 

One of your aunts swoops in, and Steve feels you clutch his side a little harder. He has a feeling you’re about to be ridiculed. 

“Such a lovely day, isn’t it? You two ever think about tying the knot?”

Steve pinks and your hand slips under his suit jacket, clutching at the fabric of his shirt instead. Is this really the time?

“No,” you pipe up. “I haven’t really given it much thought.”

The woman frowns at you. “Well, isn’t that silly? You better get around to it sooner than later, honey. Take after your big sister. You won’t be young forever.”

You go to speak, but Steve’s already begun. “I’m sorry, but she doesn’t have to get married on anyone else’s terms. Hell, she doesn’t have to get married at all, and I can say that in utmost confidence. Maybe back off, okay?” 

Your aunt looks absolutely scandalized, as if she cannot bear to accept what just happened to her. 

Steve starts to lead you away from the group. “Come on, baby.”

Baby. 

Steve called you ‘baby.’

You don’t have time to analyze that though with the way he’s escorting you back outside. He parks you on a bench and starts to pace in front of you. 

“I can see why you didn’t want to do this now. Jesus, are they always like that? I thought my dad’s colleagues were dicks, but my god.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Wait—can you call judgmental ladies dicks?”

You snort and bury your face in your hands. “Yes, Steve, I think so.” It comes out muffled, but he hears it all the same. 

When you look up, Steve is staring at you, and he’s much closer than he had been. He starts to say something, but both your mother and sister have shown up, looking for you. 

“Sweetie! What are you doing out here?” Your mother looks frazzled, and maybe a little tipsy. You knew your sister would be a bitch on her wedding day, but apparently your mother hadn’t yet realized.

“Escaping the mob.”

“Your aunt isn’t entirely pleased with your behavior, I’ve been told.”

You stand up then. “Honestly, mom, I don’t really give a shit. I came to this wedding, like you told me to. I brought, Steve, like you told me to. And I just don’t care anymore. I’m sick of your bullshit.”

She looks aghast, way more than your aunt had. 

You look at your sister, who’s clearly hoping to see you fuck up. 

“Congratulations on fucking yourself over. You’ll have a severely depressing marriage.” 

“C’mon, Steve.”

He takes your hand, and he can’t help but giggle as he follows you out. 

————

“Sweetheart? You comin’?”

You’ve stopped halfway up Steve’s stairs, a far off look in your eyes. He’d brought you back to his place to stay the night, and now that you’re here, it’s like every thought you’ve had about him is fit to burst. This cannot just be a tonight situation. You can’t let this end here. 

You drop your dress where you’d been holding it up to prevent yourself from tripping. 

“Maybe Robin’s right. About the chemistry.”

Steve’s hands go to his hips. He’s got no idea what you’re on about, but the way you’re looking at him is enough to have his heart rate kicking up a notch. “Chemistry?”

“Yeah. She pointed it out. And she said we’d make a fantastic couple, remember?”

He blushes. He hopes this is going where he thinks it is. Tonight has made him realize how much more you are to him than just a friend. He wants you all the time. “Yeah, I remember.”

Your heart is pounding and you feel like you can’t really breathe, but if you don’t say this now, you’re not sure you ever will. 

“Steve?”

“Yeah?” He’s never been so stressed in his life. He’s actually starting to sweat. 

You exhale and push the words out. “I don’t want you to be my fake boyfriend. I want you to be my real one.”

He coughs, chokes really, and you move up the stairs towards him to make sure he’s okay and not actually sick over the matter. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, surprising himself with the ability to speak considering how raw his throat feels. 

“Wouldn’t have said so if I felt otherwise, Harrington.”

There she is, he thinks. You really want him. Just like he does you. He can’t believe it.

“Again with the picking. You’re so mean to me.”

You smirk, your hands finding his sides again. You seem to have some attachment to them, and Steve wonders if it’s because you know there are scars underneath. If you’re telling him more than what you can bear to say. Giving him a glimpse of all you have to offer him, all the love you might hope to share. 

“I’ll show you mean, you little shit.”

You press your lips against his before you can second guess yourself, before you let that little voice win. 

Steve hums in surprise, but it’s clear he’s not upset by the gesture with the way he responds to your touch. His hands find your neck, thumbs stroking over your cheeks. 

He’s kissing you back, and fuck if he’s not trying to tell you everything he’s been feeling. 

When you pull away for air, Steve’s too greedy to let you go. He pecks your lips once, twice more, and when he really can’t breathe, he peppers your face instead. Now that you’ve given him the chance, he seriously can’t get enough of you. 

“Damn.”

You laugh, and push that strand of hair back where it goes, this time getting to it before he can. 

You take Steve’s wrist in your hand. It’s late. You hadn’t realized how worn out you were, but you are. 

“Can we go to sleep?” you ask, searching his brown eyes. His lashes are unfairly long, but you’ll have to berate him about it later. 

“Do I get another one of those before bed?” He’s already hauling you up the stairs, wanting you settled. 

“If you’re good.”

————

“So when did it happen?” Robin’s voice is almost accusatory.

“What?”

You’re standing close enough to Steve to ensure that you can hear Robin on the other side.

“When did this love confession take place?”

“That’s not what it was—”

“Just tell me when, dingus!”

“Last night, after we got home. She told me she didn’t want it to be fake anymore.”

“Shit!”

Steve rolls his eyes. You fuss with the belt loops on his jeans, trying to figure out what she’s been up to. “What did you do?” he asks. 

“I owe Dustin twenty.”

“You bet on us?” Your voice is loud enough that she hears it, and you know she’s cringing even if you can’t see it.

“Maybe? Yes. I bet that you’d give up the act later than that, that you two would be cowards about it. Figured you’d both wallow in self pity for a while before you just came out and said how you feel.” 

Steve looks at you, and mouths: Are you hearing this?

Robin keeps going. “Dustin said you’d come to your senses quicker than that. He bet on the wedding day specifically. Goddamnit!” 

You take the phone from Steve, and his forehead meets your shoulder. You can feel the way he shakes with laughter. 

“Thanks for having so much faith in us, Rob.”

She chuckles. “What? You’re both extremely good at lying to yourselves. I expected this to be much more dramatic.”

“Mhm,” you start, a plan forming in your mind. Steve can almost feel it. “Hey, Robin?”

“Yes?”

“Just for that, I’m calling in sick for Steve today. That shift is all yours.”

“No. Nononono—”

You hang up the phone. That means there won’t be the buffer that is Steve Harrington to prevent Robin having to interact with Keith. She’ll be stuck with him all evening. 

“That was just cruel,” Steve laughs. 

You cross your arms. “Oh, so you wanna go in then?”

He smiles at you and holds his arms out. You move into the circle of them. His hands find your waist and squeeze. “No, I didn’t say that. I haven’t had a day off in months.” 

“So quit whining.”

“See? I’ve only been your real boyfriend for like, a matter of hours, and you’re still being so mean to me.”

You lean forward and press a sweet kiss to his lips. It seems to appease him. 

“Was that mean?”

“Not at all.” 

You grin and kiss the corner of his mouth.

“Mean and a tease. Wow.”

You let out a breath of a laugh. “Only for you, Stevie.”

He takes your face in his hands, fingers pushing gently into your skin. 

“Damn right.”

————

please let me know if you liked this! feedback is always appreciated!! comments and reblogs mean more than you know. <33

tagging: @clovermunson

[dawn-moths]

"Player, Champagne, Showtime"

CHAPTER 2

Tomura & Dabi x Female Reader

word count: 23,400+

part 1 * part 2 * …

(After your fateful encounter with Tomura and Dabi, the trio of unfortunates you’ve found yourself a part of decides to try your luck at committing a high-risk robbery on some people from Dabi’s past. The payout will be huge, if things go according to plan. But, of course, nothing ever goes according to plan, so, by the end of the night, you all just hope you can make it out alive, and if you do, well, you might just have to start considering yourself a pretty good team.)

disclaimer/content warning: 18+ content! minors dni! quirkless au, pretty plot heavy this chapter (no smut, but trust me, there will be plenty later down the line), violence and descriptions of gore, drugs, mentions of human trafficking, threats of sexual assault, reader gets hurt on purpose, once again the title is taken from the lyrics of “365 Fresh” by Triple H which this fic is based upon.

*ao3 mirror*

***

The following morning, you’d woken early, carefully slipping from Tomura’s warm, protective grasp on the couch and tiptoeing toward where you thought you might be able to find some water. Though, when you turned the corner, expecting to find the little cubicle room empty, you came face to face with the tattooed man who was becoming less of a stranger and more of a reluctant acquaintance with every passing hour.

And, the following morning, you’d finally learned his name.

“They call me Dabi,” he remarked after you’d pressed him about the matter in the makeshift kitchen. He leaned against the barely functioning mini fridge and studied you for a moment then, his crystal clear blues scrutinizing, as if testing you in some way.

“They?” you lightly scoffed. “And who are they?”

Dabi chuckled to himself, a hum of amusement accompanied by a grin that might’ve actually been genuine and soft, if such words were allowed to be used to describe someone like him. Then he pushed off from the fridge, causing the appliance to wobble on its uneven base for a couple shallow sways before migrating closer to you. “They…” he emphasized, leaning down to be right at your eye level, so close you could see your reflection shimmering in all that bright sapphire. “They’re the ones who we’re gonna make pay.”

You gaped at him, looking into a malicious vortex of cruel cerulean, cold yet burning with such an intense revenge it was startling. But then, just before the stretch of silence between the two of you could become suffocating, Tomura popped his head around the corner and asked, “What’s for breakfast?”

Dabi shot him a scathing glare, as if offended by the sound of his voice alone, and straightened back to his full height, replying with an irritated drone as he strolled past, hands shoved deep into his pockets, “Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. Though, I can’t promise any of it’s still edible…”

“Where are you going?” you asked, sauntering over to stand next to Tomura, who scratched absentmindedly at a red patch on the side of his neck. For now, you resisted the urge to reach over and clasp your hand with his to get him to stop, but later you knew you’d be applying some of the cheap lotion you kept at the bottom of your bag to it while he hissed at the sting of the salve soaking into his irritated flesh.

Dabi smirked and pulled a plastic baggie full of little white pills from his pocket, pinching it between his fingers and dangling it before him as if trying to entice you with it. “Just some extracurricular activities. Why?” He quirked an inky eyebrow, faking innocence for only a moment before that smug expression returned. “Wanna join me?”

You rolled your eyes, leaned back against Tomura, whose hands quickly found purchase on you for support. “You wish,” you scoffed. “Just don’t get so high you forget your way back. We won’t be coming to look for you.”

Dabi coughed out one loud, sardonic, “Ha!”, his mouth stretching into a too wide smile before dropping back to the general disinterest he usually carried about him, turning on his heel and stalking the rest of the way to the heavy metal door that led to the hallway painted with the glowing blue inferno. The only indicator you had to know he’d really left was the slam as the door closed behind him, leaving you and Tomura in the warehouse alone.

“Well, I guess we should see what he has in the fridge…” you muttered, spinning away from Tomura’s grasp and swinging open the rickety door of the minifridge, clicking your tongue in annoyance when you saw there were only three things in there— half a dozen eggs that were who knew how old, a six pack of some cheap beer, and half a gallon of milk that was nearly empty, likely drank straight from the jug.

You opened the crumpled cardboard carton of eggs, feeling a little optimistic when they still looked to be in pretty good shape, then peered over your shoulder at Tomura, who was rummaging through a plastic bin that served as Dabi’s pantry.

“Find anything?” you asked, coming over to check things out for yourself.

Tomura held out a half-full bag of some stale cereal hastily rolled at the opening in a failed attempt to preserve it longer. “Other than flamin’ hot cheetos and wasabi peas…” he muttered, sounding slightly defeated, “not much…”

“Wasabi peas?” you repeated, nearly laughing.

Tomura plucked up the plastic container of the little green and white morsels and gave it a playful shake, like a maraca, and then cracked a crooked, puzzled smirk. “Guy’s got some fuckin’ weird taste.”

You took the bag of cereal from him, unrolled it and reached in to see if the little niblets were too far gone or if a splash of some back-washed milk on the verge of expiration could save them. After an indecisive taste test, you handed the bag back to Tomura and said with a sigh, “Alright. I’ll see if I can find a frying pan. See if you can find any kind of bread anywhere, y’know, so long as it’s not moldy. Maybe we can make some egg sandwiches.”

“And the cereal?” he asked, reaching in to toss a handful of the sugary grahams into his mouth and seeming a little more satisfied with them than you were.

“If you’re willing to risk ingesting whatever state what’s left of the milk in there is in…” you shrugged, setting the eggs on top of the fridge while you began scavenging for anything you could use to cook over the rusted old hotplate, “then the cereal is all yours.”

Unable to find a bowl, Tomura settled for pouring the cereal straight into the milk jug and taking crunchy swigs, chewing before swallowing it down. He sort of winced a little upon the first gulp, but didn’t further elaborate on whether the milk had gone sour or not, almost like he himself couldn’t even quite figure it out, then proceeded to finish what was left, so you figured it couldn’t be that bad. Meanwhile, he also searched the other bins and tubs that held an unorganized array of varying food items until he managed to find half a loaf of bread, only three pieces left that weren’t infected with furry green spores.

“Ah! Found it!” you happily announced as you pulled a tiny, scratched up teflon pan from beneath a pile of dishes in the sink. It looked like it had been scratched to hell and back with the end of a metal fork, but you figured it would still do the job just fine.

“Still want eggs?” you asked, finagling with the faulty dial on the hotplate’s temperature gauge before finally getting it to turn on. Tomura nodded, taking a seat at the tiny table, only one folding chair topped with a thin, frayed cushion available, the other seat consisting of a couple empty wooden crates stacked atop each other, though it wasn’t much of a surprise to you that Dabi didn’t make a habit of keeping company.

Especially after what he’d said earlier.

They’re the ones who we’re gonna make pay.

By the sound of it, he had far more enemies than he did friends. In fact, you were starting to wonder if you and Tomura were the only people currently on semi-decent terms with him, and even considering it that was generous…

“Hey,” Tomura spoke, pulling you from your Dabi curiosities. Your gaze darted to meet his and he gave a cursory glance down at the eggs in the pan. “I’m no expert, but I think they might be burning…”

You turned your attention back to breakfast and swore under your breath as you quickly flipped them to the other side, a thin veil of smoke wafting up from the pan accompanied by a satisfying sizzle.

Luckily, the eggs had been saved in time thanks to Tomura’s warning, all six successfully scrambled— three for you and three for him, courtesy of Dabi’s current obligations to his drugs. Using two of the three slices of bread, you fashioned yourself a sandwich which, despite being a little soggy once the eggs soaked into the untoasted bread, wasn’t half bad, while Tomura tried his best to eat his opened-faced on the last slice on account of already having finished all the cereal.

You hadn’t even realized how hungry you’d been until you’d wolfed the whole thing down, suddenly craving more. “You said you found cheetos earlier?” you inquired with Tomura, whose eggs had fallen into a mushy mess on his plate, carefully picking up what he could with his fingers so that none of it would go to waste.

He paused mid-bite and his eyes widened a fraction as he spoke from one corner of his full mouth, “Yeah…?”

You cracked a mischievous grin, licking a couple of your fingers before saying, “Go get ‘em,” prompting Tomura to rise from his seat and retrieve the entire snack bin, dragging it across the dirty concrete floor to sit beside the cramped table.

As you dug out the flamin’ hot cheetos, along with some crumbling chocolate chip cookies, laying an array of other snacks across the table for you and Tomura to choose from, you rhetorically asked, “Think he’ll mind?”

Tomura scoffed, unable to hide the crooked smirk that pulled up one corner of his chapped lips as he tore open a bag of salt and vinegar chips. “His fault for telling us to help ourselves anyway.”

And so the two of you feasted on a smorgasbord of all things salty and sweet, fattening and processed, all the while trading flirty banter and off-handed comments about everything else that had led you two to end up sitting at the uneven little table in this repurposed warehouse.

When there was a lull in conversation, both of you drifting off into the full-bellied aftermath of an oncoming food coma, you asked Tomura, “Do you believe in fate?”

He seemed to take a moment to think about that, all the while staring at you, tracing the features of your face with his eyes as if trying to commit you to memory, to resurface any shred of a glimpse he may have caught of you in a hypothetical previous life. “No,” he finally answered, paired with a minute shaking of his head. “No, I think fate is a bunch of bullshit. I think we make our own destinies. At least, I’d like to think that.”

“So you think the good things that happen to us are because we worked for it and the bad things that happen to us are because we deserve it?”

“Not necessarily,” he elaborated. “I just think that nothing is predetermined. One decision leads to an outcome and so on and so forth. It’s as simple as that.”

You lazily rested your cheek in your palm, slouching over the tabletop a little more, considering him with a teasing look. “Sounds like you got life all figured out, huh?”

Tomura flashed a nervous smile, beginning to scratch at the irritated spot on his neck again, his skin becoming more inflamed there with every passing hour. “I just think, if there is a God, he’s got a cruel sense of humor.”

“Bet he’s laughing at us right now,” you remarked, low, almost under your breath, wearing a sad smile as you lowered your head to rest atop your arms on the table. Then, glancing up at Tomura through your lashes, you concluded with, “Though, if it’s a show he wants…” You nudged Tomura’s foot under the table with your own, entwining your ankles, bare feet turned cool from the chill creeping up through the concrete. Tomura watched you carefully, as if trying to anticipate your next move and beat you to it first. But as your foot traveled up his leg until it was just barely brushing against his inner thigh, his expression darkened into the intense hunter’s stare of a predator about to capture its prey, hungry and confident.

“Yeah?” he tempted, replying to the unspoken request your actions were currently insinuating.

You nodded, returning your foot back to your side of the table, standing and offering him your hand. “Yeah,” you confirmed, and as Tomura swallowed your hand within his own, he was once again reminded of that hazy, haloed image he’d seen of you the very first night you’d met on those dark city streets.

He’d asked if you were an angel back then, but as you guided him towards the beat up old couch, straddling his lap the moment he was seated and beginning to kiss him like you couldn’t breathe without his air filling your lungs, he knew you must be something way beyond that, the feeling of your body pressed against his transcending heavenly.

“Think he’ll mind?” you playfully asked through a quiet, breathy chuckle, your lips hovering just above Tomura’s, letting him taste your words on his tongue.

He smirked, shifting you to lay on your back as he crawled over you, kissing you again, deeper, harder, enough to have you gasping for air by the end of it. “Fuck what he thinks,” he remarked, a raw edge to his raspy voice.

And if Dabi could’ve seen you two like that, shamelessly fucking on his couch, he probably would’ve killed you both.

But he was too busy making his own slow, sweet sentiment to his beloved painkillers on some rooftop halfway across town, sulking under a greying sky with a half-smoked cigarette caught between two lazily curled fingers, staring at his tattoos until the high made the inked images bend and sway.

***

Low thunder grumbled from far in the distance, the vibrations purring in Dabi’s chest as he watched the storm rolling in over the shiny high-rise buildings of the city’s center, soon to soak the gleaming metropolis down to the bone.

The wind was always stronger from up here. In the humid summer months, it felt good. In the winter, it was almost unbearable. And during a storm…

During a storm it felt electric, as if he could breathe in the invisible sparks bouncing through the air, tiny firecrackers lacing through his blood and making him feel invincible.

The painkillers helped dull the sharp, barbed edges that always seemed to splinter back to life inside his brain, temporarily alleviating the tension that corded through his muscles and wove its way through his lanky, wraithish frame, chasing the worries away, if only for a little while. The nicotine got his wheels turning again, the ritualistic practice of inhaling the smoke and holding it in his lungs for as long as he could before breathing it out acting as a countdown until his next notion of how to strike.

Sometimes he came up here without his addictions tagging along, even if just to stare at that shimmering oasis of a city spiking up in the distance, the skyline like an irregular heartbeat on an EKG, and remind himself why he still wanted to burn it all to the ground.

He was also reminded why he was so afraid to go back.

But what Dabi found himself pondering over on this particular afternoon was a rather unexpected development in his most recent schemes. Because, of all the details he’d overlooked or ignored in previous, criminally-inclined, chaotic plans, the last thing he’d thought he’d have to worry about was catching feelings for someone like you.

He’d never admit to it out loud, but Dabi was well aware why his stomach twisted every time he saw you and Tomura too close to each other, why he had to force himself to look away when you two stared into each other’s eyes like you were actually in love and not just two fucked up slum rats just like him, only way more chemically attratched to each other than a murderer and a suicidal had a right to be.

He was the odd man out. The third wheel. The silent reject. And for what?

All because he’d gone and kicked you both out of that stolen car, practically delivered his current predicament to your doorstep and wished you well as he sped off down the desolate midnight streets with only an ear grating tire screech to remember him by.

“So stupid,” he muttered to himself, leaning back against the roof, staring into the blotchy void of the greyscale sky, stormy winds causing the clouds to race across the view overhead. He cupped a palm to the back of his neck, closing his eyes as he took a final drag of his cigarette, flicking the remains down onto the street below, bringing his other hand to join the one that was already cushioning the back of his skull. Then, again, through a forlorn, tired sigh, “So fucking stupid…”

He wondered how he always seemed to sabotage himself in hindsight, whether by getting hooked on the little white pills that he’d sworn “would only be for a little bit, just until I get out of here and put this city far behind me”, only to get roped up in a couple gangs gone wrong and end up losing every last penny he’d scrounged up in order to escape the hellhole of the slums. Or the time he’d been a homeless teen skulking around the streets, trusting all the wrong people despite his intuition warning against it just because they’d offered him some food and a corner shielded from the rain to sleep in.

And now there was you, perhaps the only girl in the entire prefecture he had a chance with, and what had he done?

He’d gone and said all the wrong things, done all the wrong things, and fucked it all up.

But then, as the charcoal clouds covering the city center began to drift closer to his part of town, little sparkling flashes of lightning laced throughout the mass of black and grey, a new perspective occured to Dabi. Because, yes, while his own choices had led him to become a hopeless, orphaned addict, he’d still found a way to survive.

Through all his hardship and loss and misfortune, he’d learned how to still come out on top in the end, even if he was bruised and battered and barely standing.

So why couldn’t he apply the same rules to winning you over?

Doing something to remove Tomura from the picture was the obvious answer, but with how quickly the two of you had become attached, it would also be obvious who was at fault if the scrawny, silver-haired boy went missing or turned up dead somewhere, even if he had tried to kill himself during your original meeting.

No, simple problems required simple solutions, so going to all the trouble to lure Tomura out and dispose of him would just end up being too much work. Dabi would have to get you alone with him, make some attempt to get to know you better, get to know your secrets, your weaknesses, convince you that you were better off with him, that he had more to offer you than Tomura.

As the first fat droplets of rain speckled the rooftop, darkening the concrete of the street below with watery freckles until the steady drizzle morphed into a full on downpour, drenching everything in sight, Dabi rose from the roof, climbed down the fire escape, and navigated the maze of alleys back to his hideout, several different schemes now cooking in the back of his mind.

He definitely had more to offer you. Or at least he liked to think he did. But, truth be told, none of you really had anything to offer each other at the moment except some twisted form of solidarity between rejected members of society. But you had the most to lose. Because Dabi did know one of your secrets. He knew you were a murderer, and, while he’d figured the guy had probably deserved it, that didn’t change the fact that the cops would likely see it otherwise.

You knew Dabi was already trying to lay low from law enforcement from how he’d acted in the diner that day and— well, there was also the fact that he stole and pawned off a car.

And Tomura, well, other than trying to commit suicide and drag others unwillingly into it, Dabi didn’t know what else he was guilty of, though the fact that he knew someone like Spinner— a man who could procure all sorts of illegal and nefarious goods— said it was probably worse than he’d let on.

So, the first step for any of you to have a chance at making it out of this place, whether it was all together or just you and Dabi, if he got his way, was finding a way to make some money.

The rain beat down hard on anything not hidden beneath cover, Dabi included by the time he had to make a run for the last stretch of his journey back to the warehouse. But the adrenaline was aiding his brain in working double time, skin prickling with needles of cold and heart racing until he swung open the door and found himself in the comfort of his painted hallway, the blue flames glowing through the dark after a few seconds and welcoming their artist home.

And it was then, in the vortex of the cerulean inferno, as cold water droplets raced down his neck and chest and stirred a shiver in his bones, that the final piece of the puzzle clicked into place.

Dabi smirked to himself, a malicious, mean smile that made him look a little crazy as the blue light cast dimly over his face.

There was no way it could be that easy. There was just no way.

But, it’s like people always said…

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

***

A camera flash bathed the crime scene in blinding white light, there one instant and then gone the next like a ghost.

Just like the perpetrator, Keigo thought to himself, peering over the photographer’s shoulder and scribbling down some theories on his notepad, pen scritching across the page quietly as he listened in on the testimony of one of the establishment’s employees, his back facing her as he pretended not to eavesdrop.

“—still can’t get in contact with her,” a young woman explained, sounding distressed. She was one of a few hairdressers at the rundown barber shop. Besides her, there was only one employee left that the police hadn’t yet spoken to about the owner’s sudden and rather gruesome death— 

You.

“Could you give us her number?” the other officer asked, in the middle of taking his own notes.

The girl shrugged, pulling her phone out from her bag. “Yeah, I mean, sure, it’s just…” She pulled up your contact info, turning the screen around to show it to the cop. “She rarely ever picks up, even if she does know the caller. I doubt you’ll be able to reach her, but if you do, please let me know. We’re worried about her…”

The officer thanked the woman for her cooperation after jotting down the phone number, heading off to exchange notes with another investigator, which is when Keigo swooped in to do what he was best at…

Charming the rest of the truth out of someone who might know a little more than they were letting on.

“Excuse me, miss… Mind if I ask you a few more questions?” he inquired politely. At first, your co-worker looked annoyed, finally about to be able to go home after over an hour’s worth of questioning, her back turned to the new detective. But when she turned around and saw those lovely umber eyes and all that wavy, golden hair, she reconsidered rushing off.

“Sure,” she smiled, dropping her phone back into her bag and readjusting the purse strap over her shoulder. “But then I really do have to get going. I promised my sister I’d pick up her kid from daycare since she’s working a double today.”

“It’ll only take a moment, I promise,” Keigo assured her through a carefree chuckle, knowing full well he’d snagged her hook, line, and sinker the moment she blushed and began playing with her hair.

“So, this co-worker of yours… The one you can’t seem to get in contact with…” he began. “When’s the last time any of you actually saw her?”

The woman took a moment to recall that information, then nodded to herself and answered, “We were working together the morning before the mur—” She caught herself about to use a word that might’ve been perceived as harsh, even if she, as well as everyone else who worked at that barber shop, couldn’t care less if your awful boss had been gutted and bled dry like the pig he was and left to rot in the alley, then cleared her throat and quickly amended with a slightly more sensitive, “The morning before the incident… I left a couple hours before closing to head to my other job, and she said she’d close up by herself so I wasn’t late— I’m kind of already in trouble with my other boss for cutting it too close too often…” She gave a nervous chuckle and kept twirling a ringletted strand of hair around her manicured finger, sneaking coy glances at Keigo through her false lashes.

“So she was the only one in the shop when the murder took place?” Keigo asked, though it was more to himself than to your flirty co-worker. Then, after quickly scribbling something down among his patchwork web of notes, he muttered in a low, almost menacing growl, “Interesting…”

“I think one of the other girls called her yesterday morning. We all got a call. Y’know, after poor Himari walked in to open and found all that blood and the body and…” She chewed at her bottom lip, worrying the thick gloss away with an incisor, clearly still bothered by the image of such a massacre even if it was of someone she hated.

“I see…” Keigo continued, circling your name among the list of employees, condemning you as the most likely suspect in black ink. “Do you happen to know where she lives?” he asked next, then rephrased the question as, “Or rather, have any of you been by her place since this happened? You know,” he cracked a sympathetic smile, giving a flash of perfect white teeth, “just to make sure she’s ok.”

“Ren said that, when she called her, she said she wasn’t feeling very well and had the rest of her appointments canceled or something like that…” your co-worker recalled. “I don’t think anyone went over to check on her though.”

Just for good measure, Keigo asked if she would mind giving him your address. And, while all of you usually knew better than to give out each other’s personal information to anyone who asked for it, no matter how handsome said anyone may be, she figured nothing bad could come of sharing it with a kind detective just trying to do his job.

Plus, it’s not like she thought you had been the one to finally do that horrible man in.

Unfortunately for you though, while she could cut and style hair like a master of the craft, she’d never been the brightest among the group of you that worked together when it came to common sense.

So, after obtaining your apartment’s address, Keigo wished the girl a good day, reminding her he’d be in touch if he needed any information reconfirmed or followed up on.

“Just gimme a call if you need anything,” she said, giving him a wink over her shoulder. “You know where to find me.” After that, she was gone, leaving only Keigo, the forensic photographer, and two officers lingering at the scene.

After exchanging some last minute details, they decided to call it a day and head back to the precinct. The others seemed to think this was going to be a troublesome investigation, more so because there had been no witnesses and it was in the part of town none of them really wanted to make a habit of traveling to if they could help it, not really seeming to care that a man had been killed using a straight razor.

They’d say things on the ride back like, “Stuff like this happens all the time in this part of town. I don’t get why the Chief insists on us going down there unless one of them comes to our part of the city to stir up trouble first,” and “Some old guy got slashed. So what? It’s only interesting if it’s a pretty young girl or something. Can’t believe we have to do overtime to solve a case that doesn’t even have the concern of any next of kin,” but Keigo knew that, if his hunch was right—  and, let’s face it, it usually was— then this case was going to end up being more than any of them originally bargained for.

Maybe, if he was lucky, it might just turn out to be entertaining in the meantime too.

But first thing was first.

He had to find you.

Because you— little miss missing in action, the ghost of closing— were the first key to finding where this case led.

Actually, fuck the key. You were the whole damn door, lock and all.

***

“I told you to help yourself to whatever was in the fridge,” Dabi growled as he surveyed the damage to his secret snack stash, colorful wrappers and torn, metallic plastic packaging littering the kitchen table leaving blatant evidence of you and Tomura’s raid. Then, under his breath he complained, “God… Now I’m gonna have to start robbing the local Seven Eleven again… And I know they got me on CCTV last time…”

All the while, amidst Dabi’s rambled tirade of passive-aggressive complaints, you and Tomura were sitting atop the uneven counter, watching the inky-haired member of your hodge-podge trio with gaping stares and furrowed brows as if he’d left the warehouse with one head and returned with two.

Then, finally, after swiping the shredded remains into an already half full trash can (one that was likely stolen, as the logo for a local cafe was stamped on the front in white spray paint), Dabi whirled around to face you two, looking more than miffed as he snapped out a short-tempered, “And get the fuck off my counter!”

You jumped down, tiptoeing a few short steps towards him, Tomura sliding ungracefully off the counter a few seconds after. “Dabi…” you began, cautious, as if trying to talk someone off the ledge. Then you asked, as if this was the most distressing factor of the current equation, “Why are you soaking wet?”

Just seeming to register this to himself now, Dabi’s tense shoulders sagged, weighed down by heavy, soggy clothes, raven spikes matted flat to his head (you thought you saw a few droplets of diluted black race down his face but figured it could just be a trick of the light) and let out a defeated sigh.

“‘Cause it’s fucking pouring outside,” he said, adding on as his eyes squinted into a slight glare, “Maybe if you two wouldn’t have been crunching on all my shit then you would’ve heard it beating down on the roof.”

“Look, man, we’re sorry, it’s just—” Tomura began to apologize, actually sounding sort of heartfelt, but was cut off when Dabi shot him a scathing look.

Before things could begin to escalate between the two of them, as they so often tended to do, you stepped in, drawing closer to Dabi, and in a tone far too caring and soft for someone like him, you sighed and said, “Where do you keep your towels? You’re going to catch a cold if you stay wet like that…”

Dabi glanced from you, to Tomura, then back to you, his expression melting from hostile into something much more tired. And how he wanted to take you by the hand and lead you to his makeshift bathroom, give you one of his raggedy old towels that was frayed at the edges and eaten through with tiny holes and tears, sit on the edge of the grimy old tub and just let you work the fabric over his head, drying his hair and his face before peeling off his drenched clothes and letting you pat the water from the rest of him, if you’d be so kind.

But that kind of intimacy— that kind of care— was so foreign to Dabi, so long forgotten, that the thought of the emotions that might follow terrified him more than the need to be taken care of enticed him.

“I can do it myself,” he scoffed, all those sharp edges and harsh lines etching their way back into his voice and features. Then, right before rounding the corner of the kitchen cubicle, he peered back over his shoulder and said, “Oh, and, meeting in the living room in ten minutes…” The smirk that curled on his lips then caused a spark of fear and excitement to flare in your chest. It was the kind of smile only the totally insane or arrogant could wear. It was a smile that said, “I know something you don’t,” and, in this case, you hoped that something would play in your favor.

“Meeting?” Tomura asked, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms, not looking too thrilled at the vague order. “Meeting about what?”

Dabi turned around the rest of the way, leaned against what served as the cubicle’s doorway, and simply stated, “I think I have an idea. And it just might be crazy enough to work.”

***

Your apartment had been easy to find. Even easier to break into, since Keigo was well versed in picking the old, cheap locks used to provide a false sense of safety to anyone living in the rundown old buildings this far from the city’s sparkling center.

Because, despite the fact that the agency’s newest golden boy looked, sounded, and acted like he’d been raised in the privileged lap of the city’s luxury, Keigo was and always would be, to some degree, just another kid raised among the rats of the slums.

Sure, he hadn’t called the maze of narrow alleys and crumbling architecture home in over a decade now— he had the foster family who’d taken him in at thirteen and decided to keep him once he proved to hold some form of talent and intelligence to thank for that— but he could still remember what it felt like to navigate the dark tunnels and cramped spaces woven throughout the downtown area.

The only thing that had really changed, Keigo had thought to himself as he’d struggled to squeeze through a tiny opening on his journey through the cluttered side streets, was him. No longer was he the malnourished, spindly little kid with scraped knees and dirt-smudged cheeks who could slip through any opening, steal what food and supplies were needed to survive, and slither out in a flash, sprinting back to his little tarp-tent covering spread out at the end of an adjacent alley like a cobweb hanging loosely in the corner of an attic.

Now he was bigger, stronger, still lean and lithe but in a way that spoke more to health than starvation. But, most importantly, he was smarter, more cunning, blessed with the carefully studied and learned ability to talk his way into or out of any situation the job called for.

He’d already had a whole spiel rehearsed on the off chance he knocked on your door and you actually were dumb enough to answer. Though, of course, as was the more likely scenario from the start, you were nowhere to be found, your residency left vacant and in slight disarray. Aside from your unmade bed and a couple dishes scattered in the sink though, not much seemed out of the ordinary at first glance.

But any detective worth his salt knew that first glance meant near to nothing.

It was the digging further, the unearthing of unseen evidence, that really told you anything worthwhile about who or what a person was. And, at first, he wasn’t even entirely sure what he was looking for, but after rifling through your cabinets and drawers, flipping through your little calendar book that you’d used to keep track of things like your scheduled appointments for work or jotted down notes about items to pick up at the grocery store next payday, Keigo made his way into the bathroom and discovered the golden egg of the scene.

Balled up and tossed into the bathtub was a heap of clothing— your clothing— and, with hands gloved as to not leave any fingerprints or evidence of his own behind, he carefully tugged one article free from the pile. It was a shirt— your shirt— and it was covered in what was unmistakably recognized as the dark, dried remains of human blood.

Too much to be your own, Keigo figured instantly, and upon taking a closer look at the skirt that had been tangled with a tanktop, he could tell that, whatever had happened, it had been a rather messy affair.

It all added up— you disappearing right after your boss turned up dead, the blood on your clothes belonging to the man you’d most likely killed with one of the razors found around the barbershop— but yet, Keigo got the sense that there was far more to this than currently presented itself.

He wasn’t so much troubled by the likelihood of you— a young, attractive girl who’d been unfortunate to end up in the darker parts of town— killing your boss— a man whose lost life hadn’t been mourned much if the way his next of kin had sounded when they’d received the news over a phone call the morning the body was discovered. In fact, Keigo didn’t even really care why you’d done it. Again, he was familiar with the kinds of people who crawled between the cracks in this section of the city. He had a pretty good idea.

It was more so this feeling, this unrelenting intuition that, whatever you’d gotten yourself roped up in, it was far from done.

His phone buzzed in his back pocket then, interrupting his chain of thought for a moment as he peeled off a glove and clicked the answer button, one of his co-workers back at the precinct on the other line.

“Hey, so I know it’s technically your day off—” he began, and Keigo already knew where this was headed, preemptively rolling his eyes. “But we just got some new evidence on that other case you were working on and before we go any further the chief is insisting you take a look at it…” Keigo held the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, slipping the other glove back on before kneeling down to shift through whatever you had under your bathroom sink but finding nothing of particular interest. “So do you think it would be possible to just stop by at some point today? All the other guys are gettin’ pretty restless with the whole thing. Plus, you know they look up to you, Hawks—”

Keigo bristled slightly at the nickname as his co-worker continued to ramble on. He closed the cabinet, pulled the shower curtain three quarters of the way across just the way he’d found it, and strolled back into the main area of the studio, standing between your bed and the partially sectioned off kitchen area.

He checked his watch. 12:45 PM. He’d really wanted to drop by the new noodle place that had just opened up around the block from his own apartment in the city center, maybe catch a late afternoon showing of one of the 80’s action movies they were currently rerunning at the theatre, then have a nice, relaxing night before the whirlwind of work resumed the following morning.

This time though, his guilty conscience got the better of him, so he cut in before the guy on the other end of the call exhausted himself from trying to convince him and said, “Alright. I can be there in half an hour,” before getting a much relieved thank you in response. He hung up the call, just about to leave before remembering what he’d been about to do right before his phone rang.

Pulling the shower curtain back open to reveal the bloody clothes in the tub, Keigo snapped a few photos on his personal phone before returning everything to its previous, hastily yet lazily hidden state, then slipped back out of the apartment, making sure to relock the door, tossing the gloves in a rusted dumpster down the block from the building.

Even as he worked on sorting out and discussing the newly discovered details from the case he’d been called in about, a piece of his mind was still turning its wheels about you. So much still seemed— felt— uncertain.

But he was onto you.

All he had to do now was figure out where you went.

***

Black water sloshed against the edge of the docks, night turning it dark and oil-slick as is caught shimmering reflections of the hooked moon hanging overhead, salty air corroding away at rotting boards that creaked underfoot with the threat of breaking every time someone was brave enough to tread over them.

Located on the very edge of the city, there were only two types of people who ventured out this far— people looking for a place to hide or people who already had something to hide.

But, in this case, that was going to work in your favor. Because, like most crimes committed beyond the formally recognized city limits, if there was a case of breaking and entering, theft, or even murder, most times it wasn’t taken seriously, if even investigated at all. 

As Tomura and Dabi approached the chain link fence that tried and failed to deter trespassers, they were careful to stay out of sight and keep their heads down as they navigated the dark, debris strewn courtyard. It was littered with anything and everything from cigarette butts and playing cards and coins to the remains of clothing that had probably belonged to former enemies, now decaying bodies sunk to the bottom of the bay courtesy of some zipties and cinderblocks, scattered among wooden crates and broken glass.

Because even though this territory was technically owned by the city, it had been long claimed and occupied by some of the slum’s most notorious gangs, vultures landing to pick at the abandoned corpse left to rot on the desolate outskirts.

Dabi was far more suited to traversing this kind of terrain, footsteps quick and light as he ran from one cover to the next, clearly more familiar with the territory than Tomura, who more so scuttled and jumped clumsily a few generous strides behind his reluctant confidant, just barely avoiding being discovered by whoever had been put on watch that night.

But now, with their backs pressed to the wall and awaiting their signal in uncomfortable silence, the two boys tried not to instigate any unresolved issues with each other, which was to say, Dabi tried not to instigate any unresolved issues.

“Damn, what’s takin’ ‘er so long…” Dabi eventually grumbled under his breath, leg beginning to bounce and wishing he at least had a cigarette to pass the time with right now. Then, with unbridled sarcasm, “It’s not like she has the easiest part of the plan or anything…”

“Relax,” Tomura shot back through a hiss, growing tired with Dabi’s constant nagging, especially in an already high-tension environment. “Just give her time. Plus, she has to come all the way from the other side of the docks.”

Dabi felt his whole body coiling with the urge to jump into defense mode. To shoot back with some hurtful, low blow remark or, if he really had it his way, do something to trip the guy up and leave him in the dust the next time they had to move further into the nest of nemeses. It would hardly be his fault if Tomura got shot because he couldn’t run fast enough. You’d be distraught and the plan would go to shit, sure, but at least Dabi would still earn the reward of being able to pick up your devastated pieces after the fact.

But, once he took a second to apply some logic to that scenario, Dabi realized that jeopardizing the chance to nab one hundred-thousand dollars, even for a chance at winning you over, was a fucking dumb thing to risk. Well, really only about thirty-three thousand once it was split three ways between you.

But still. That was a hell of a lot more money than any of you had ever had your hands on— ever imagined having your hands on— and all in cash at that.

But the best part of it all— y’know, besides the life changing wealth— was the fact that Dabi was finally going to be able to score some revenge against those who had wronged him. Or, at least, a small portion of those who had wronged him. If he was being honest, he’d sort of lost count when it came to the tally. But these guys had been the most recent offense, which was good enough for him.

They were the ones who’d left him beaten and bloody in the alley the night he’d met you. The night he’d stolen from them, only to have them steal it right back, and caused Dabi to suffer the beginning stages of withdrawal from his beloved white pills.

Tonight he felt sharp though. Tonight he felt good. Tonight, he felt ready for anything that could come at him. There’s no reward without a little risk, he reminded himself, trying to keep calm while he and Tomura waited, pretty much out in the open, vulnerable and defenseless. On a similar note, Tomura’s line of reasoning had been that winning big prizes required playing difficult games.

You just hoped you made it out alive at the end of it all, one hundred-thousand dollars richer or not.

And so, running like your life depended on it, tears streaming down your face, knees skinned and wrists bruised, looking like you’d narrowly escaped a specific kind of hell, you called out, voice shredded and broken as you begged for help, cries echoing across the water and hopefully reaching its intended audience.

Something in Tomura’s chest ached at that sound, body instinctively pulled in your direction as if you actually needed saving. He stopped himself, reminded that it was all just an act, but even when he felt a nudge at his shoulder, Dabi dragging his attention back to the task at hand, the look Tomura wore was almost traumatized. Let me go to her, his eyes pleaded as carmine clashed with cobalt. Please, just let me go to her.

“C’mon,” Dabi beckoned, ignoring Tomura’s pained expression, already having swiftly picked the rickety old padlock securing a thick chain around the back door of the warehouse on the edge of the water, dropping the linked metals to the concrete slow and quiet. “We only get one shot at this. Don’t fuck it up.”

***

Three days ago, the trio of you had been huddled in the living room for Dabi’s impromptu “meeting”. You and Tomura sat side by side on the couch, thighs pressed together, while Dabi paced restlessly back and forth on the other side of the scuffed up coffee table that had most likely been salvaged from someone’s curbside or stolen from a junkyard. He still had a towel slung around his shoulders, darker stains smudged against the navy blue material from where he’d roughly rustled his hair dry, now wearing a clean white t-shirt and fresh pair of jeans.

“And that’s why they’ll never see it coming!” Dabi explained fervently, still trying to get his excited madness to rub off on you and Tomura. “They won’t even be able to trace it back to me— back to us— because you two practically don’t even exist to them!”

“But…” you began, hesitant to poke holes in his master plan lest he completely lose his cool. “Didn’t they see us the other day when we were running from them in the alley?”

Dabi dismissively waved away your concern, frowning for a moment as he quickly brushed over the fact that those were, “Completely different guys. I mean, there’s a chance they might know the guys we’re targeting, but they hole up on the other side of town. Don’t do much business together except for once in a while.”

“Oh, great!” you commented, faking pleasantry and relief before your expression and tone dropped back into unamused ridicule, “So you have friends in all the darkest corners then…”

“Don’t forget that the cops are probably still looking for you because you stole a car,” Tomura butt in, to which Dabi just narrowed his eyes and hissed back at him, “Not helping.”

“What’s the plan, Dabi?” you asked, point blank. With an exasperated shrug of your shoulders and a look of incredulity you said, “I mean, what? We break into where they keep the drugs or the money or whatever and then what? We just grab as much as we can carry and make a run for it? They’ll catch us in an instant— They’ll follow us right back here and then we’ll be even more fucked because we’ll have nowhere else to hide!”

“Need I remind you I have sev—”

“Several hideouts in every corner of the outskirts,” you completed his sentence, rendering him silent for just a little longer. “Yeah, I know. You told us. But if you think the three of us stand a chance against however many of them there are, then you’re delusional.”

Dabi ceased his pacing, facing you with arms crossed over his chest, tattoos on the most display you’d seen them yet with his usual jacket absent from his form, currently hung to dry over the side of one of the cubicle dividers, and asked bitterly, “Oh and what’s your plan then, princess? Gonna waltz in there and woo them with your feminine charms?”

A scornful response was on the tip of your tongue, just about to be spit right back at him when all of a sudden, something in your mind clicked.

“Actually,” you said, “that’s probably the smartest thing you’ve suggested so far.”

Dabi raked his hands over his face, though you could still see the way he rolled his eyes from between the cracks in his fingers, and muttered something indistinct under his breath that was muffled by his dramatic display of disbelief.

“But— Hey, listen—” you went on, forcing Dabi to pay attention. “Sure, it’s not like I’m gonna go in there and get them to hand over the goods with the power of seduction or whatever, but I do know something else that might work that only I can do.”

“And what’s that?”

You smirked, the idea just sick enough that it might actually succeed. “I can make myself worth something. A bounty or a runaway or—”

“Human trafficking,” Dabi interrupted, and while he looked like what he’d just suggested was as common as a cloud drifting across the sky, you and Tomura both stared at him like he’d just uttered the most offensive thing either of you had ever heard. “Yeah…” he nodded to himself, silently working over the details in his head. “Yeah, they mark those girls so, if they run away, they can always be returned, y’know, so long as the fucker runnin’ the show can pay up.”

“Hello? Hypothetical human trafficking victim sitting right here…” You waved your hand, causing Dabi’s electric blue gaze to snap back to meet yours. “Wanna ask me how I feel about this? ‘Cause it’s definitely not good.”

“Well how else do you propose you make yourself worth something, genius?”

“Well good luck making this plan work without me you snarky piece of—”

“Guys!” Tomura shouted over you and Dabi’s argument, his raspy voice sounding raw and jagged, like there were tiny shards of broken glass stuck in his throat. Once you and Dabi were looking at him, he cleared his throat and addressed you by name, saying, “Let’s just hear him out.” Tomura put his arm around you, tugging you slightly closer into his side as if trying to comfort you. “And Dabi—” His eyes narrowed with contempt at the man in question, warning him with his gaze. “Why don’t you explain it in a way that’s a little less…” He let the sentence trail off, searching for the right word, then settled on, “A little less like, y’know. Like she’s not actually in the room with us.”

Again, Dabi thought to himself that, if you weren’t around to act as Tomura’s shield, he’d have beaten this guy’s ass up, down, and all the way around town for the audacity he had of which to speak to him with. And in Dabi’s house, no less.

But, as all of you were coming to realize— some more begrudgingly than others— this was a plan that needed three. Not two. Not one. Three.

It was the magic number and, if nothing else, it was the only thing the group of you really had going for you.

So while you and Dabi brainstormed, cooking up a plot that your targets just might buy, Tomura took to mapping it all out, having Dabi help fill in the blanks in the shoddy blueprint of the waterside warehouse, as he’d seen the territory firsthand before, and giving you all a better visual of your positions and movements throughout the entire plan, given it went accordingly.

Though, as all of you knew but none of you dared to point out, nothing ever really went according to plan, no matter how much choreography went into it.

“But how are we really gonna sell it…?” Dabi murmured, glancing from the crudely drawn map to you back and forth a few times before holding on your face, your figure, trying to decipher if your acting abilities would be enough or if these guys— pieces of shit who’d likely dealt with real human trafficking victims before— would smell the inauthenticity from a mile away.

“Well…” You began, hesitant as you forced yourself to meet his eyes, his face only inches from yours as the three of you sat smushed together on the floor on one side of the coffee table, you nestled between the two boys. You sighed out a regretful breath, knowing if you didn’t force the words out now, they’d remain lodged in your throat. 

You stood from the huddle, hands on your hips as you rounded to the other side of the table. You looked from Dabi to Tomura then back to Dabi again, both of them looking at you caught in suspenseful confusion.

Then you shrugged and said, “I guess one of you is gonna have to hurt me.”

***

Dabi and Tomura had been met with a narrow hall dotted evenly with pools of cool light casted down from the flickering fluorescence after clipping the chain that had been secured around the back door.

The coast looked clear, until Dabi heard something and quickly pulled Tomura into a tiny crook in the hall as the sound of footsteps echoed in warning taps around the corner.

The two of them stood there, practically pressed chest to chest and trying to avoid eye contact, until the sound faded. The moment they were in the clear, Dabi shrugged out of the small space, nudging Tomura in the ribs amidst his haste.

“Just how many of them are there?” Tomura asked, keeping an ear out for any more unexpected visitors.

“Well, we saw at least five guarding the front,” Dabi recalled, continuing further down the dimly lit hallway, checking every corner before he turned it. Puddles of greenish-blue light pooled evenly along the floors, leaving small spaces of darkness that Dabi couldn’t help but picture someone lying in wait and ready to strike within. For a moment, he even thought he could make out a familiar face within the shadows— someone who he’d tried so hard to leave behind, who he’d escaped the moment he left home and set out on these crooked streets, yet still haunted him like a specter no matter how far he ran— his own personal, paternal monster.

“Hey,” Tomura whispered, pulling Dabi from his trance. “Are we gonna get going or what?”

Dabi glanced down the opposite hall, looked back to where he’d seen the wavy, mist-like image of his father’s face like an omen through a fog, then started down the other way. “It’s this way,” he directed, waving Tomura along after him to follow. “Stay close and don’t let your guard down.”

***

When the time came, you’d asked Tomura to do it. You had a feeling Dabi would take things too far, end up actually breaking your wrist after getting a preview of his grip strength from the time he’d hauled you up onto the roof along with him while you’d been running from your pursuers in the alley.

And Tomura hadn’t wanted to do it. Didn’t even like the thought of hurting you, despite how well acquainted he personally was with pain. But it hadn’t been up to him. You were the one that was going to have to suffer, so you got to choose who inflicted the suffering.

“Ok…” You winced, preparing yourself for what you knew was going to be an unpleasant experience. Tomura held your wrists in his grip, loose for now, but about to become a whole lot tighter. “I’m ready. Just do it—”

A high-pitched yelp escaped your throat upon the sudden pain, Tomura gritting his teeth as he dug his fingers into your tender skin as hard as he could without crushing the bone. You bit your tongue, a sob hitching in your chest and your feet stomping on the ground as you tried to distract yourself with anything that would help you outlast the pain.

“More?” Tomura asked, sounding distressed. “Or stop?”

For a second, you couldn’t answer, just hissed a sharp breath in and then panted a shaky exhale out. “Just… Ok— Ok, stop!” His grip released in an instant, you pulling your throbbing wrists into your chest, your pin-prickling hands taking turns rubbing the places where the imprint of Tomura’s fingers were already beginning to blotch in navy and violet from under your skin, dark bruises blooming bright and brutal over your flesh.

“Fuck…” you hissed, the pain subsiding a lot slower than you’d originally anticipated.

“Sorry…” Tomura huffed out, the word a wisp of air exhaled under his breath, his carmine gaze tracking you and hoping that when you next looked up at him it wouldn’t be with fear or contempt.

Just then, Dabi reentered the room with three cans of beer and an ice pack, setting the items on the coffee table and casting a somewhat nervous grimace towards your blossoming welts. “Did it work?” he asked, not sounding so thrilled about the current state of your plan now.

“I think so…” you muttered, Tomura lightly pressing the ice pack to one of your injuries, holding your wrist in his palm like it was made of the most delicate glass. “It’s just… I hate to say it, but it’s gonna take a hell of a lot more than this to be convincing.”

When you met Tomura’s eyes, he was already wearing a look of pleading worry, all that wide, bright red begging you not to make him go any further than what he’d just regretfully done, even if it had been with your consent.

“Tomura…” you whispered, only loud enough for him to hear. “It’s ok. It’s not your fault. It’s—”

He snapped his gaze away from you, jaw clenching and looking like he was wrestling with about a dozen emotions at once, a sea of memories flooding him. He opened his mouth to speak only to close it again. But you gave him time to collect his thoughts, and once he’d finally picked out the words he wished to say, he told you, “Does it really have to be you? Is there anyway it could be me instead. I mean—”

“Tomura…” Lightly, with your free hand, you reached over to cradle his cheek, trying not to flinch when you bent your wrist a little too far under its current state. In that moment, it felt like it was just the two of you in that room, Dabi torn on whether to stay and express his disgust with your openly displayed affections or leave again and give you the room.

“It’s ok. Besides, this is the only way this works. Once we have the money we can go anywhere, right? We can go anywhere…” The thought of getting out of the city’s gutter had felt like such a far off dream to you for so long. Now, faced with the possibility of leaving the entire country behind if that’s what you so chose, well…

It was damn near impossible to imagine.

“Alright, well, if you two love birds are done making googly eyes at each other…” Dabi droned, breaking the delicate silence of the atmosphere with the sharp crack and sizzle of opening his beer, slurping the first sip noisily and making sure to swallow extra loud just out of spite, “I think we have a plan to get back to. This is time sensitive, remember? Tick tock, tick tock.”

Tomura shot Dabi a scathing glare, an unsightly sneer to match, but before another argument could ensue, you stood from the couch and said, “He’s right. We only have four more hours until we either do this or die trying…” You wandered over to an open space of scuffed concrete off to the side of what defined the perimeters of the living room, brushing away some dirt and debris with the side of your shoe. “That should be enough time for these bruises to darken.”

You looked back at the boys, both watching you with varying levels of confusion and intrigue, and then you locked eyes with Dabi, giving a short, beckoning nod of your head. “I’m not fucking around this time. Dabi. Get over here and push me.”

Dabi quirked up an inky eyebrow, beer can still raised to his lips. He finished his sip then placed the drink off to the side, resting his elbows on his spread knees. “Uh… Come again?”

“You heard me,” you taunted, shifting on your feet. “I mean, I’ve been beaten and abused by all kinds of people, right? That’s why I had to run away? So get over here and make it real. I can’t do it on my own.”

Dabi then looked to Tomura, who offered no assurance but also no protest, before sighing to himself and pushing up from the couch, lazily strolling over. You’d been afraid of him before, still felt some sense of nervousness in his unpredictable presence, but now, looking up at him, his shadow casting over you as he looked down at you right back, those cerulean eyes damn near glowing in the dark, you felt something you couldn’t place.

It wasn’t quite fear, but the way your heart skipped a beat in your chest told you to be wary still.

“Turn around,” Dabi muttered, voice low, the three syllables not so much an order as they were a suggestion.

You abided by his request, slowly turning so that your back faced him, already bracing your hands in front of you to catch you when you went down. “Just— Just count down from three or something,” you stuttered, suddenly wondering whether you were going to regret choosing him to do this or not.

Now standing from the couch, Tomura said your name, an anxious upturn to the end of it like he was warning you of something you already knew was coming.

“I mean, I don’t know if it would be better if I saw it coming… But I only wanna do this once so—”

“One…” Dabi began, drawing out the number as if that would buy you more time before you were subjected to even more pain.

“But not too hard—!” you warned through a startled gasp, preemptively flinching. “None of this will work if I break anything. And also—”

“Two…”

“Wait! Maybe I do wanna do it myself! I mean, maybe there’s a way to—”

You didn’t even hear Dabi say three, but the moment both his hands made quick, hard contact to your shoulder blades and you felt yourself surging forward, the rest of your protest was cut off with a gasp.

You stumbled to the ground and skid a little, yelping as electric bolts of pain shot through your knees and elbows as they collided with concrete, numbness ricocheting through your bones. You didn’t even register your skinned shins and nicked palms until you felt something wet dripping down your calf and touched it, fingers coming back with the bright redness of blood.

“Are you ok?” Tomura asked, coming to your side and taking a closer look at the latest injury. Dabi stood back, not necessarily admiring his violence but— ok, maybe he was a little bit.

“I’m fine…” you assured him, voice a little strained with discomfort as you staggered to stand, Tomura helping you back to your feet on wobbly legs. “I don’t think I wanna go further than this though…” You looked to Dabi, his gaze taking a moment to move from your bleeding knees to meet your beseeching eyes. “Please tell me this is enough?”

“Something around your throat might help,” he commented, and when Tomura gave him a look of disgust that very much translated to “dude, what the fuck” Dabi just shrugged and replied defensively, “I’m just sayin’! These guys are pieces of shit! If you think they draw the line at choking a girl—”

“Alright, enough!” you cut in, starting to feel a little nauseous. “If we need to take things that far— Fuck, I don’t know, I’ll have to steal some eyeshadow from the drug store and do it that way. I’m not letting either of you do that to me.”

He considered you, looking you up and down a few times before nodding to himself in contemplation. Then he said, “I think if we add some fake needle tracks and really fuck up your hair and makeup, put you in something a little less…” He vaguely gestured to the oversized outfit you were currently wearing, which consisted of a pair of Dabi’s boxer shorts (you’d been extremely adamant that he lend you clean ones) and an old black t-shirt adorned with the logo of some underground metal band. You cast him a look in response that agreed. Enough said.

“Alright, well, that settles it then. You two are gonna have to get me some things. And you’re gonna have to do it fast. Makeup takes a while.” Dabi asked you what you meant, though Tomura already seemed to have caught on, even if just partially. “Well, I can’t risk showing my face around you two on the off chance of one of them seeing us together before the job. It’ll blow our entire cover. So, you two are gonna have to go steal me some drug store makeup and a skirt or a dress or whatever you can get your hands on.”

After listing off some more specific items you thought you would need, more so in the realm of makeup than clothes, you sent the boys off to do some shoplifting. In the meantime, you navigated your way into the bathroom and searched around the disorganized cabinets until you found a nearly empty bottle of disinfectant, setting yourself up on the couch for a little pre-plan contemplation session while you carefully cleaned your open wounds, each sizzling sting of the peroxide on your skin making you wonder just many times you could ask yourself if you were going to be able to live to regret another decision you made.

***

The cheap slip dress was a size too big and the chunky costume jewelry earrings kept smacking you in the face with every bounding stride you took sprinting across the field, your feet bare and cold, adrenaline helping you forget your staged injuries for the time being. Clumpy streaks of mascara ran down your cheeks in pairs, biting the inside of your cheek, your lip, at one point even your own bruised wrist, just to force more tears to come.

Around your neck was Tomura’s handprint branded in dark violets faded around the edges with navy— eyeshadow, that is. You’d brushed it onto his hand before having him place his palm to your throat and apply just enough pressure to leave the residue on your skin. You’d spruced up the fine details yourself to make it appear as convincing as you could, even adding a few scratch tracks, some of which had been done with your own nails.

“Every little bit helps, I guess…” Dabi had said, almost sounding a little disturbed as he’d watched you mutilate yourself from the bathroom doorway.

“Yeah, well, it fucking better,” you’d said bitterly under your breath as you applied lipstick and then smudged it across the corner of your mouth with a tissue. You thought you looked the part. Now the only question was if they would believe it too.

With every nerve in your body screaming for you to stop, to turn around, to run away from the men pointing guns at you and not towards them, you forced yourself to press on. You just had to have faith in the fact that Dabi and Tomura— or, in the very least, Tomura— wouldn’t just abandon you to the wolves.

Or, who knows. Maybe they would. You’d only known them for five days, give or take.

“The fuck…?” one of the guys muttered, gazing over the barrel of his pistol at the silhouette frantically approaching, your distressed cries ringing out loud enough for the sound to reach them, though the words were still indistinguishable.

“Dunno…” another shrugged, lowering his gun, which caused some of the others to do the same. “Stay here though. I’ll go check it out.”

You came skidding to a halt right up against the chain link fence that caged the entrance, clutching the criss-crossed steel wire in shaking hands, sobbing as you babbled incoherently, more tears streaming down your face as you shook your head back and forth, rattling the fence in a desperate attempt to get in.

“Please!” you shrieked, making sure to anxiously glance behind you a few times for good measure. You were being chased after all. Pursued. Hunted down. “Please! Please, you have to help me! They’re after me! I— I can’t go back there!”

The man who’d volunteered to approach you stopped halfway between his colleagues and the fence, looking over his shoulder at them with slight confusion as if asking for some guidance, but when offered none, simply shuffled a few steps closer, finger still resting on the trigger, and asked, “Who’s after you?”

“The last thing you need to be is logical,” Dabi had instructed you on the drive over, having hot-wired the nearest vehicle he could find unattended after smashing the driver’s side window with a screwdriver, making quick work with getting the engine started and sneaking glances at you through the rearview mirror as you adjusted the cheap dress to stay up on your chest. “The less sense you make, the more time you’ll buy us.”

“Oh, god! Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god—!” You were practically hyperventilating at this point, making yourself lightheaded in the process but hoping that only added to your acting. “Please! Please just let me in! I— I’ll do anything! I just can’t go back there! He’ll— He’ll kill me! Please! Please, please, please, please, please!”

You clutched the gaps in the fence above your head, leaned forward so your forehead could press against the wire, sobbing yourself to a point of near faintness, and feeling an odd sense of pride when you felt the beam of their flashlights shining on your form. Starting at your hands and making their way all the way down to your feet before tracing back up again, their hesitation and silence spoke to the fact that they knew exactly the kind of person you’d escaped from.

Or, at least, the kind of person you wanted them to believe you’d escaped from.

“She one of Chisaki’s girls?” you heard one of them mutter, lifting your head to show off more of your smeared makeup and watery, bloodshot eyes.

“We’d have to check ‘er for the brand,” you heard another answer, and that made your stomach drop. Of all the effects you’d applied— both special and practical— a brand hadn’t been one of them.

“Well should we let ‘er in or just call ‘im?”

“Fuck if I know, man. I mean, unless there’s a reward for returnin’ ‘er, why not just keep ‘er for ourselves?” The three of you had agreed not to kill anyone unless absolutely necessary— more so because that would take too long and only complicate things— but that comment made you wish you’d voted in Dabi’s favor for taking as many of these assholes out as possible.

“Just let ‘er in. Take ‘er to the boss. He can decide what to do with ‘er.” He looked you up and down again, eyes landing on your fake needle tracks for a while until he said, “And if she is Chisaki’s… Well…” If you weren’t so terrified then, you might’ve been able to pick up on the fear in the man’s own voice, horrified yet curious as to what kind of monster this Chisaki person must be to scare these guys so much without even showing his face. “Just don’t let anyone put their hands on her until we confirm.”

And then, the gate was being unchained and swung open. You almost forgot to keep up the act, jumping from your temporarily dazed state back into the panicked pleading and rambled thank yous of a poor drug-addicted, abused, hostage-escapee of a girl who thought she was finally being saved.

But that had been the easy part.

Now you had to clear a path for Tomura and Dabi to grab the goods, grab you, and get the hell outta dodge.

*** 

The place was bigger on the inside than it looked and, also equally as troublesome, a complete fucking maze.

This gang had enough guys to cover their main entrance and the goods they kept inside, but not enough to have every inch of this place on lock. Besides, back when Dabi ran with them, it had been his job to hangout and watch for stragglers who might try and sneak up on whatever shithole they were calling base for the week in hopes of finding a stray window or door unattended. Since his departure, he’d been willing to bet they hadn’t bothered finding a replacement.

They hadn’t had a reason to. They’d never been infiltrated.

At least, not until tonight.

But even so, as they navigated the crumbling concrete halls like every corner they turned could be their last, Dabi was kicking himself for not bringing a gun. Too bad he didn’t even own one. Though, maybe tonight he’d get lucky enough to change that.

“Clear,” Tomura whispered, him and his inky-haired accomplice dashing down another long stretch until they finally grew closer to the heart of this place, distant voices now registering from off in the distance.

“Not far now,” Dabi said, also careful to keep his voice low. “When we get there we’ll just have to hang tight till we get her signal.”

It shouldn’t be long now, he figured. If things went according to plan, the guards would take the bait and let you inside. Someone would inform their leader and draw a bulk of the attention surrounding the goods elsewhere. From there, Tomura would cause an additional distraction while Dabi swooped in and grabbed the duffle bag or whatever sorry excuse for a hiding place the cash was stored in. He knew it would be in whatever room they kept the most heavily occupied. These guys might’ve had more than him, but not by much. They wouldn’t risk letting their guard down in fear of losing what they’d scored.

They might as well have lit up a blinking neon sign that flashed “I’M HERE! I’M HERE!” with an arrow pointing straight to where they stashed the money. That’s how confident Dabi was feeling about this plan. Besides, he kept reminding himself, he used to run with this crew. He knew they talked big and acted tough, but at the end of the day they were just as desperate and greedy as any other slum rat trying to survive was, himself included.

“…Should’a seen the look on ‘is face, man!” one boasted as Tomura and Dabi came upon their main hangout, crouching low beneath the windows cut out in the half-finished construction job, the glass never installed before the place had been left to be scavenged by the downtown dogs. “He was all like, ‘Please, I have a family! I have kids! You don’t have to do this!’” The man let out a dark chuckle, the sadistic sound making Dabi clench his jaw. “And I was all like, ‘Well I guess you should’a thought about that before you took out a loan you couldn’t repay.’”

“And then what?” a second guy asked, sounding high off his ass with the way his words slurred and sloshed together like water threatening to spill over the edge of a glass.

“Well then I fuckin’ slit his throat, obviously,” the leader, a man Dabi knew was called Jiro, shrugged, as if killing a man in cold blood was the most uninteresting topic in the world. Dabi took the risk of slowly peeking over the edge of his cover, trying to get a count on just how many guys they might have to deal with— or outrun— if things went south.

But, from the looks of it, there was just Jiro, one guy half asleep from whatever he was high on, and a third who slouched forward from his seat on the couch occasionally to tap the ashes of a dwindling cigarette into a chipped tray on the table, his leg bouncing anxiously while his gaze darted around as if expecting a threat to pop up any moment now. But, most importantly of all, Dabi noticed, was the gun secured at his belt. Now if only he could figure out an easy way to steal it…

“What we got?” Tomura asked, growing a little restless as Dabi sunk back below cover, filling him in on what he’d seen. Then, nodding to himself, Tomura said, “So if we get rid of the leader somehow, we could just take the other two out ourselves…”

“Yeah, but only if the paranoid one doesn’t get all trigger happy on us, which, trust me, one look at that guy and I can tell, given the chance, he will. So here’s what I’m thinking…”

As Dabi laid out the next phase, Tomura was only half listening. Truthfully, he was still too antsy wondering what was going to happen— or maybe already currently happening— to you to be able to fully focus on the task at hand.

“But first thing’s first,” Dabi decided, looking a little more conflicted than confident now. “We gotta figure out exactly where in there they’re keeping it. Once we locate the cash, we’ll have a better chance at actually getting out of here with it alive.”

That was something they both could agree on, at least, and Tomura suggested they split up to try and cover more ground. From where they were currently crouched, the view inside the shoddy lounge contained plenty of blind spots. Plenty of places for a duffle bag holding dozens of wads of bundled bills to hide. So, with Dabi venturing further around the right side and Tomura beginning to creep towards the left corner, the two of them attempted to better map out the area without being spotted, the tops of their heads bobbing up and down through the vacant window cutouts for only a few seconds at a time. But the closer they came to completing the circle, the more worried Dabi became.

Because he didn’t see anything worth much of anything anywhere.

“Shit…” he swore under his breath as he sunk back below cover, defeat already looming over him like a shadow. With his back pressed to the wall, the chill seeping through the concrete soaking through his clothes, Dabi was almost ready to call it off. To just slip out before there was time for even more losses to pile up and regroup back at the warehouse.

But that’s when he heard it.

A scream.

High and loud and splintered with terror.

He flinched at the sound of it, the blood-curdling cry pulling the attention of the other men in the room, their conversation suddenly going quiet except for one muttered, “The fuck…?” from High Guy.

Dabi lifted his gaze over his cover, locked eyes with Tomura across the way, even from this far able to tell how his crimson stare widened with pleading.

Let me go to her, let me go to her, let me go to her.

But Dabi shook his head, slow and warning, the gesture advising him to stay put for now.

“Well?” Jiro snapped, causing both the other men in the vicinity to wince. “Get the fuck up and go check it out!”

There was the sound of frantic, shuffling feet rushing out of the room, Dabi’s gun escaping as the man with it secured to his belt drew it and prepared his finger on the trigger as he and his more sluggish colleague disappeared off into a deeper part of the building, nearly spotting Tomura who pressed himself as hard and flat as he could against the wall he was hiding behind, waiting until he saw the darkness swallow them completely until he dared shift his position to meet back up with Dabi.

But Dabi didn’t move.

Not yet.

Jiro’s back was to him now, not a care in the world as he reclined and rested his arms across the top of the sofa, rolling his neck and groaning as a few joints popped, the red scorpion tattooed there shifting as the tendons moved beneath his skin, the crackling echoing faintly throughout the high-ceilinged space.

The way he saw it, Dabi had a choice to make. And it was now or never.

He leapt through the window opening with more cat-like grace than most people would’ve assumed him capable of, rubber-soled boots laced tight and landing soft and soundless against the dusty floor. 

Tomura popped up to try and see where his accomplice was currently at, but felt his stomach sink with dread when he saw Dabi sneaking up on Jiro, a length of stray rope that had been discarded amidst the other odds and ends of debris scattered across the floor held firm and taut between his hands.

What the fuck are you doing, he would’ve called out if it wouldn’t have meant sudden death. So instead, Tomura decided to double back and pursue his own mission, now that everyone seemed to be going rogue. 

But the thing was, Dabi was still technically doing things according to plan, just with a little improvisation tossed in at the last minute. Because he’d seen something Tomura hadn’t, and while things most certainly wouldn’t be going as smoothly as you all originally had hoped, you wouldn’t be leaving empty handed if he managed to actually pull it off.

Because placed on top of the coffee table and currency serving as Jiro’s foot rest was a metal box with a turn dial on the side— an item Dabi hadn’t been able to tell prior was actually a safe.

Here goes nothing, he thought to himself right before he slipped the rope over Jiro’s head and pulled it tight across the man’s throat. When the struggle started to look like it wasn’t going to turn out in Dabi’s favor, he growled out a desperate, “Tomura! A little help!” but was met with nothing except Jiro’s continued grunting, choking sounds and a fist colliding with his cheek.

Dabi went to just put the man into a headlock but Jiro threw his head back and cracked Dabi in the nose, blood gushing and temporarily spotting his vision with white. Dabi loosened his grip, giving Jiro just enough space and time to throw his assailant off of him and swivel around to look him in the face with wild, wrathful eyes.

“You—!” Jiro began to accuse, reaching for something inside his jacket, but Dabi was faster, barreling towards him and tackling him, both of them crashing through the coffee table before they hit the ground, the safe sliding across the floor until it went under one of the gaps of the wooden shipping crates stacked atop each other off to the side.

“Fuck—!” Dabi yelped, feeling his elbow crack down on the concrete with a sickening crunch, pain lancing through his bones like a lightning strike before his arm went numb from elbow to fingertips, which was probably for the best right now.

Because he didn’t have time for wincing and whining. Not when Jiro was already halfway to standing and wearing an expression of blind rage and bloodlust.

And then, reaching back into his coat, instead of pulling out a pistol like Dabi had originally anticipated, instead Jiro drew out a blade. An eighteen inch machete that gleamed in the dull, yellow light, freshly sharpened and hungry for its next victim.

And Jiro— Jiro was laughing.

He was laughing like a man who already knew he’d won.

“Gotta hand it to ya, kid…” he taunted, voice gravelly and strained from where the rope had bit into his throat, a rough, red mark rubbed raw across his skin. Dabi went to stand, but Jiro kicked him in the ribs hard, knocking the wind from his lungs. Then he pressed a grimy boot to Dabi’s chest, effectively pinning him in place, and concluding with a sinisterly amused, “You sure don’t know when to quit.”

Suddenly, Dabi was sixteen years old again, scrappy and weak and all alone. His hair was still snow white and his pale skin was unmarked, not even having gotten his first tattoo yet. He was hungry and desperate and all he had to his name was a black t-shirt, a pair of jeans, some combat boots, and a pocket knife.

He’d chosen the wrong guys to steal from loads of times during that first year, been beaten within an inch of his life too many times to count, and that had begun even before he’d fled to the streets, so what was one more time, right?

Only, this time, with the blade resting under his chin, Jiro intent on taking his sweet time making Dabi squirm before he made him bleed, Dabi had a feeling he wasn’t coming out of it alive.

So close, he thought with regret, both hands gripping Jiro’s ankle in his fists and attempting to lift some of the pressure from his bruised chest, but all that seemed to do was make the man stomp down harder. I was so fuckin’ close…

And that wasn’t just about the money.

“Now, here’s what’s gonna happen…” Jiro said, voice lowered to a ruthless hush. “I’m gonna handcuff you—” he gestured with the machete, “to that refrigerator over there. Then, I’m gonna go get the other guys ‘cause I’m sure they’d be just fuckin’ elated to see you again—” Dabi tried to twist free with one quick, harsh jostle, but to no avail. What Dabi had in height, Jiro had double of in strength. He knew he didn’t stand a chance. “And after that,” Jiro continued, ignoring Dabi’s growing despair like he was nothing more than a fly slowly buzzing about the room, the threat level only warrenting a light swat, “we’re all gonna take turns teaching you what happens when you keep try’na bite the hand that fuckin’ feeds…”

Dabi remembered his days serving as one of Jiro’s yes-men cronies, seventeen years old and halfway to a full sleeve of ink etched into his right arm, hair a fading blueish-black. He remembered the grueling hours, the shit jobs left especially for him because he was the newbie, yeah, let Dabi do all the things no one else wants to. He remembered the way his ribs began to show stark through the t-shirt he was outgrowing, could still feel the sour pang of starvation twisting just below his sternum. The headaches. The disorientation from going five days with nothing but a heel of stale bread and half a can of some other guy’s beer. Always left to beg and scavenge through the meager scraps of the packs’ provisions like the outcast runt of the litter.

Holding a scream back behind clenched teeth as he felt the pressure on his chest feel like it was soon to splinter ribs, Dabi spit, “When did you ever even try to feed me, motherfucker—” which in turn only earned him more agony. But if he was going to die tonight, he might as well hold nothing back.

And for what, Dabi wondered, eying the safe which taunted him from just a few short yards away under the crate,  Just for a fuckin’ chance at a life out of the gutter…

All he’d have to do would be to reach under there and grab it.

Pathetic.

“Enough chit-chat. Just be a good boy,” Jiro teased, pressing the blade’s edge harder against Dabi’s craning neck as he reached into his back pocket and produced the set of steel cuffs that clinked and clacked against each other as they were dangled before him, “and don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”

***

They took you into the building, caged you in the center of their tight formation, guns still held at the ready, and led you to a room in the back filled with more dangerous looking men.

You felt your stomach flood with dread the moment all their heads turned in unison to the opening door, four new sets of eyes landing on your disheveled, abused, and terrified state with varying degrees of confusion and eagerness. 

“That don’t look like pizza,” one man huffed with sarcasm, his lips splitting into a smirk and causing the scar that ran through one side of his mouth to pull awkwardly. Then, turning back to his buddies, all of them holding playing cards close to their chests, occasionally darting their glances down to a growing pile of money wagered at the center of the table they were gathered around, he asked, “Any of you order an appetizer beforehand without tellin’ me about it?”

They all laughed, their mockery of you and your situation— or rather, the situation you were pretending to be in, which still made you just as sick knowing real victims were probably passed through their hands as regularly as a slice of pepperoni and cheese, by the sounds of it— causing you to begin shaking with fear, your entire body trembling like a rabbit surrounded by pack of salivating wolves.

“We found her by the front fence,” one of the men who’d led you through the building explained, and while he sounded a little more sympathetic than the new group you were faced with, if things began to escalate you doubted he’d do anything to stop it. And then, leaning in to speak quieter to the man with the scar, he said, “She might be one’a Chisaki’s girls…”

The man with the scar set his cards facedown on the edge of the table, pushing up from his seat with a sigh and strolling over to take a closer look at you. He leaned down to be on your level, his face only inches from yours as he studied your smeared lipstick and running mascara. He asked you, voice lowered to a quiet growl, “You one’a Chisaki’s girls? And don’t lie to me now, because, y’know that if you are, we don’t really have a choice here, right?”

He noticed you were shaking, your stare still spread wide with trauma and your jaw clenched shut as you felt tears begin to well in your eyes. You weren’t acting anymore. You didn’t have to. Not when every bit of this suddenly felt all too real.

“Shit…” he exhaled, seeming to come to his own conclusion as he straightened back to his full height, running his gaze up and down your bruised body. He seemed to be considering something, the room filling with an eerie, anticipatory silence, until he nodded to himself and said to the group that had guided you in, “Did you check for the brand?”

You felt your blood run cold.

Slowly backing away, as if intending to make a getaway and escape from eight armed men, your tears spilled over the edge, a few sparkling droplets racing down your cheeks in pairs as your back met something solid behind you.

His hands took hold of your shoulders before you’d even finished turning around to look at him, and you gasped when you looked back in front of you, the scarred man having closed the gap that had grown between you in barely a second.

“We’re really gonna need ya to cooperate, sweetheart,” he said, gravelly, condescending tone laced with a heavily implied command. “Or else we’re gonna have’ta hurt ya. And I don’t really think you would like that, would you?”

“Please—” you breathed, trying to twist free of your captor’s strong hold. You swallowed hard and then attempted to speak louder, fear crackling through your voice as you frantically stammered, “I— I don’t have a brand! I’m not one of Chisaki’s girls! Please, just— Just let me go. I swear I’ll—”

“Let you go?” the scarman repeated, clicking his tongue and flashing you a look of sarcastic concern as if to say “it’s so cute that you think that”. His friends were flanking him now, a wall of them stretching out before you with the others guarding the exit behind. He said, “Nah, sorry, hon, but that’s not how this works…” Before you could even get out one more syllable of a bargain or a plea, he nodded towards you and instructed his friends with two simple, condemning words. “Check ‘er.”

The hold on you vised tighter, another one of them coming to assist as your struggle increased, holding you in place as you thrashed and kicked and tried to get away. Your foot made contact with one of their thighs and you heard a growl of impatience right before a hand wrapped around your throat, squeezing just enough to scare you at first, then hard enough to choke you until you settled down.

“So that’s how you want it to be then?” Scar sighed, sounded disappointed with you. All activity to “search you” ceased for the moment as the others awaited his approval to continue. He reclaimed his original seat, looking rather bored with the whole ordeal now, slouching back and crossing one ankle over his knee. Then he snapped at the others, “Well the fuck are you waiting for? Hurry up and see if she has the brand!” Then, more so to himself, “If not, I call first dibs.”

You were crying. You were begging. You were writhing as several more sets of hands joined in the effort to try and rid your clothing from your body in search of Chisaki’s brand— the identical mark he had burned into all his whores to make sure no one else could try and claim them for their own. And while you had no idea who this Chisaki man was, just knowing he was notorious for such things made you feel like you were trapped in a vicious nightmare.

Before they could get your dress past your waist though, you let out an ear-piercing shriek, a kind of razor-sharp wail, stunning the men around you for a second before one of them went to clap a hand to your mouth, but he miscalculated slightly and allowed you the perfect opportunity to sink your teeth deep into the space between his pointer finger and thumb, clamping down until you felt a burst of bitter copper hit your tongue, coating your mouth in nauseating warmth.

You didn’t hear the man yelp over the pounding of your own panicked heart, though weren’t able to hold on for long as a thick, sharp-knuckled fist collided with your temple, causing you to fall slack for a moment as your head spun with vertigo and pain.

“Fuckin’ bitch—!” you heard someone swear through the muffled ringing that ran between your ears. You coughed out a pathetic sounding groan as your head lolled slightly to the side, your eyes fluttering and rolling as reality sloshed inside your vision like a fishbowl rocking back and forth on the edge of a shelf, just about ready to tip. “God— Bit me fuckin’ hard!”

“Oh shut up and finish it already!” the scarman barked, but when the others hesitated, too distracted with watching the blood well and spill down their friend’s wrist in fat red rivulets, a few drops already dripping down onto the floor and staining the dirty concrete, he pushed up from his seat and marched over, roughly hiking your dress up the rest of the way and quickly scanning for the telltale mark. Unable to find it on the front or back of you, he yanked the thin fabric back down to cover your body, completely uninterested in whatever ideas he had for you prior, and then decided, “Y’know what, fuck this. Bring her to the boss and have him decide what to do. She ain’t worth the trouble.” 

You were just sort of coming back to, though tried to stay as silent and still as possible for now, hoping it might buy you some time. You heard someone say, “C’mon man, wouldn’t be the first time we had a biter—” but was cut off by a distant crash-and-shatter sound that drew their collective hivemind attention in the direction that it came.

“What the fuck now?” Scar grumbled, and then, “Y’know what— Ok, you four, go back to guarding the front. If the boss finds out we left this place unattended he’ll have all our heads. You two, go see what that was all about, and you—” gesturing to the one you’d bitten, “fuckin’ tie her up or some shit until all this chaos is resolved and Jiro can decided what to do with ‘er.”

“And what about you?” one of them asked.

“I’m goin’ out for a smoke. And I swear, if any of you fuckers so much as even think about peekin’ at my cards, I’ll shoot you in the face myself. Reconvene in an hour—” A chuckle, the sound almost playful, teasing. “And don’t think I intend on lettin’ any of you off easy. I’m still gonna rob you blind at the end of the night.”

Some of them laughed. Some of them scoffed. All of them then went off to do as they’d been told, leaving you alone with Bitten-Hand, who kept mumbling passive-aggressive complaints under his breath about how he was always left cleaning up everyone else’s mess.

You let him drag your limp body to another corner of the room, fought the urge to jump up and run right then and there. But it wasn’t until you heard him shuffle a few feet away from you, cracking your view open to see him struggling with some zipties, that something inside you said, loud and bright, now.

You sprung up and dashed for the door, nearly stumbling over your own feet but surged with adrenaline again, which helped with the pain that was currently reduced to a faint throbbing behind your eyes and, well, almost everywhere else on your body at this point too.

You heard Bitten-Hand call out a more-desperate-than-angry, “Hey, wait!” just before you threw yourself against the door and came barreling back out into the hall. You didn’t look behind you to see if he was following. You knew he was. The sound of his boots hitting the concrete further down the long stretch of hallway behind you told you as much. But you didn’t stop running. Didn’t slow down.

You felt your eyes welling with tears again, your chest heaving with ragged, panting breaths as you neared the next corner. Maybe you could lose him, find some vacant room to slip into or some bit of cover to dive behind. But the moment you rounded the turn, you felt yourself getting yanked off to the side, a new palm covering your mouth as the other arm wrapped around your waist, submerging you both into the thick black darkness once again.

***

It hadn’t been easy, but Jiro had, in the end, gotten Dabi handcuffed to the busted old refrigerator. And no matter how hard he tried to yank against the pull handle the cuffs were liked around, the damn things wouldn’t give.

The room was empty, Jiro gone off to fetch his cronies, and the safe lay still as a stone where it had slid from the broken coffee table to underneath the wooden shipping crates. Dabi tried to force himself free once more, but it was no use. Plus, he was exhausted from everything that had led up to this too. He pressed his forehead to the cold steel of the stolen fridge and just breathed out a wobbly, defeated, “Fuck…”

He didn’t even have it in him to be pissed off at his own shitty life decisions for landing him here right now. What he was really angry about was how he’d roped you into all of this. Sure, the original plan had benefited from the part you had to play in it, but right from the start Dabi knew he should’ve just done this himself. It might’ve been riskier, taken him longer, but he was willing to bet he would’ve at least come out of it with something in the end. Either way, all it would’ve taken was one fuck up, but at least it would’ve just been his consequences to suffer.

Tomura was probably already shot dead and bleeding out in a hallway somewhere, he figured. That didn’t really bother him that much, given the fact that, because of Tomura’s abandonment, Dabi was, regretfully and beyond irritatingly, handcuffed to a fucking refrigerator and basically waiting to get the shit beat out of him before he was murdered as the grand finale. 

But you…

God, he’d never forgive himself for that.

So be it, he thought. Let them kill me. I fucking deserve it at this point anyway.

And so he waited.

Dabi stood there and waited to die.

***

The grip around you flexed slightly as you began to struggle, though, unlike your last encounter with people who wished to do you harm, the more of a fight you put up, the looser the hold on you became.

It wasn’t until you whirled around and let out a terrified sob that you caught a glimpse of silver amidst the shadows and a quick flash of those crimson eyes.

“T-Tomura…?” you squeaked, entire being beginning to shake with relief rather than horror now.

“Jesus— Are you ok?” he whispered, hands cautiously hovering about you like he was afraid even a single touch would make it worse. “You’re all—”

“Wait—” you cut in, pushing him back against the wall of the small closet of a room, pressing yourself against his chest until you heard Bitten-Hand’s running footsteps pass your cover and disappear down the next hall. You let out a shaking sigh, resting your forehead against his chest and trying to catch your breath, feeling a panic attack coming on but fighting to keep it at bay.

Slowly, and somewhat hesitantly, Tomura gently wrapped his long, spindly arms around your shivering form, holding you against him but in a way that made you feel safe, not trapped. And you were crying again, you think, your sobs muffled by his shirt and his skin as he stroked the back of your tousled hair and just kept on repeating in a low murmur, “It’s ok, I’m here. It’s ok,” until you were able to calm down enough to feel like separating from his grasp wouldn’t completely shatter your world.

And the next words out of your mouth were ones that shocked you both. Because where you’d meant to say, “We need to get out of here,” instead what came out was, “Where’s Dabi?”

Tomura stammered for a second, stalling, and then just admitted, “I don’t know.”

“Well we need to find him and get the fuck out of here,” you stated, panicked severity working back into your tone. “Forget the money. We just have to go.”

Tomura opened his mouth to protest— whether it was the idea of going back for Dabi or forgetting the money, he didn’t know— but then he registered the suffering in your eyes, the suffering that was written all over your body in bruises he knew he or Dabi hadn’t given you in preparation for this whole robbery-gone-wrong, and then bit back his reluctance, nodded firmly, and said, “Ok. But stay close to me.”

You didn’t intend to stray from his side. In fact, more often than not you found yourself clutching his arm as you both navigated your way back to the room where Tomura had seen the third member of your crew last, a few times almost causing him to trip.

“Should be just down this hall,” Tomura told you, checking to make sure the coast was clear before lightly pulling you along behind him. Oddly, you hadn’t seen anyone else in a while. You’d tried to compare notes, Tomura saying there had originally been three in the room you were doubling back to, you saying there had been five at the front but only four had led you inside to the room where another four had been waiting. Making it twelve you’d seen so far.

“But I bet there’s more than that skulking around this place,” Tomura muttered. He was willing to bet the total count was somewhere near double that, given how big the place was and the fact that you guys had only really traversed about half of it. Then, irritated, “Fuck, this whole thing was just a big fucking mistake…”

“Tomura…” you spoke, almost sympathetically. Then, figuring you probably didn’t have much else left to lose, you said, “Y’know, for what it’s worth, I’m really glad we hit you with the car that night.”

And when he looked at you, you were actually smiling. The expression was far softer or sweeter than you had a right to wear, given the current situation, and yet…

Tomura smiled too. “I’m really glad you hit me with the car that night too,” he said. “And even if—” He had to stop himself, finding the words even if we do die tonight to be a little harder to admit to than usual. He cleared his throat, then started from scratch. “Well, I just want you to know that spending the last few days with you has probably been the highlight of my entire life.”

And, god, how you wanted to just reach up and kiss him in that moment. To twine your fingers through his fluffy white waves and taste him one last time. And maybe you might’ve, just shrugged and thought, fuck it, before making one more bad decison before you all died here. But you didn’t get the chance before another figure turned down the long hallway, stopped in his tracks as he registered two unknowns before him, a long blade gleaming in the low light from where it was clutched in his hand by his side.

Jiro didn’t bother asking any stupid questions or attempting to monologue his sinister schemes that time. Instead, he just started straight for the two of you, not in a run, but a fast-paced walk that somehow made things seem all the more dire.

“Fuck!” Tomura gasped, already pulling you back down the hall from whence you’d just come before you could even figure out what was going on. You didn’t remember to ask, either. You just tried to keep up with Tomura as the man with the machete approached closer on your heels, all of you sprinting now.

Tomura must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere though, because suddenly he slammed to a halt and looked around with certainty as an even more worrying, “Uhhh…” escaped his chapped lips.

This was a part of the warehouse none of you had seen before, a wide room filled with all kinds of stolen goods— cars, appliances, pills, handbags, jewelry, you name it— sort of similar to Spinner’s contraband museum but nowhere near as glamorous or organized, but luckily, just in the nick of time, you and Tomura ducked behind a stacked display of tires that looked like they belonged to eighteen-wheelers, trying to cease your heavy breathing and hope Jiro didn’t know the ins and outs of this place too much better than you did.

“Wanna know the best thing about this place?” Jiro’s voice rang out as he began to navigate through the tightly packed space, hunting for you. “There’s only one way in and one way out, so…” He jumped up into the bed of a rusty old pickup truck, one foot propped up on the edge as he scanned the cluttered chaos, looking rather satisfied with himself. “All I really have to do is wait.” You and Tomura exchanged looks caught between despair and panic.

You could now consider yourselves officially trapped.

“I have an idea,” Tomura whispered, “but it’s gonna require us to split up.”

Instantly, you grabbed onto him, eyes gone wide with terror as you frantically replied, “No— We need to stay together until we get out of here!”

“Just trust me, it’ll only—”

“Don’t leave me again—” You were near sobbing now, bloodshot eyes welling with a fresh film of sparkling tears. You covered your mouth to try and contain the sounds that threatened to hitch in your chest, lest you give away your current position and alert Jiro, all the while mumbling incoherent pleas that all pretty much roughly translated to the same thing.

“Alright, just— Listen.” He placed his hands on your shoulders, felt you trembling beneath his palms. It took a few tries to get through to you, but eventually he had enough of your attention to explain, “We won’t have to go very far. Basically, each of us will take a side of the room. We’ll take turns making distractions to lure Jiro away from the door. Once we’ve got him far enough we can just sneak out and—”

“But what if—” What if something went wrong. What if Tomura was caught or you were caught and then you were killed. What if. What if. What if. What if.

You couldn’t get past the image of that machete buried into the side of one of your necks or sticking straight up from the center of your chests.

Taking a steadying breath, you tried to calm yourself down, then came to the conclusion that this was your best shot. “Alright,” you agreed, though every fiber of your being was fighting against the thought. “I’ll take the left, you take the right. But Tomura…” You looked into his eyes, searching for something, and then, in your moment of hesitation, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to yours. It was a chaste kiss. Quick. Over before it really had the chance to begin. But it was enough for now. It was the promise for more once you made it out alive.

“I’ll be careful,” he said, cracking a tiny smile, as if he’d read your mind. “And don’t worry, I’ll pull him further to my side so he doesn’t get too close to yours. Just keep your head down and don’t let him know which one of us is which.” You weren’t feeling too confident, gazing down and off to the side as you worried your bottom lip between your teeth. As soon as he spoke your name though, tone sweet and soothing, you glanced back up at him. “You can do this,” he told you. “We can do this.”

Somehow, even if they were simple words that might turn out to be completely untrue, hearing them gave you the resolve you needed to participate in this plan. So off you went, carefully weaving your way through fishtanks full of broken jewelry and plastic bins of prescription drugs. Once you reached the far back corner, your eyes landed on some kind of big, blown glass sculpture, the art speckled through with a rainbow of color. It stood almost as tall as you did, and as you considered it you wondered why, and how, these guys had managed to bring it back to their base in one piece. Maybe it was worth a fortune, but it wouldn’t matter anymore, because with both hands placed against its side and a good push, it tipped, fell to the ground and shattered.

Jiro perked up from where he was still perched in the truckbed, tightening his grip on the machete’s handle as he swiveled around to face the direction the sound had come from. He chuckled darkly, the taunt echoing faintly throughout the room, and then jumped down from the truck with a heavy thud, starting in the direction of the crash.

“Ready to come out and play?” he provoked, a husky, off-key sing-song tone to his words, his footsteps scuffing closer your way. When he passed a severed car door, passengers side, from the looks of it, he scraped the end of the blade against the steel, a grating screech reverberating closer to where you tried your hardest not to cower in the corner.

And honestly, Jiro hoped he’d find you first. He hoped he’d get his hands on you, get to feel you writhe and squirm and struggle under his hold. He would relish in the look of horror that filled Tomura’s eyes as he was forced to watch your throat part with a thin red smile, deeper, darker crimson soon spilling out and soaking the front of you until you choked on your own blood and fell limp and lifeless to the ground. 

Then he’d go for the scrawny, scraggly, scratch-track streaked boy before he even had a chance to register the scene unfolding before him. He’d make a gorey mess of him too, only allowing you two to lie together one last time right before he had his boys drag your mangled corpses out back and burn the remains, scattering them into the bay before daybreak.

And Dabi…

Well, he figured he might want to force Dabi watch his friends’ bodies go up in flames right before he joined them in the grave too.

“Y’know, for what it’s worth,” Jiro began, his voice now way too close to your corner for comfort. For a moment— as much as you hated to even consider the idea— you began to fear that Tomura had merely been using you as bait, allowing you to take the fall while he made a quick and easy getaway. “If you guys had done this without Dabi, you might’ve stood a chance. I’ll admit, I didn’t see it comin’…” You were getting antsy now, ready to bolt off in any direction that wasn’t Jiro’s.

“And you…” His voice was practically hovering right above you now, all of your limbs suddenly locked with prey-like terror. Jiro’s ugly mug came into view from over the edge of your cover, his beady gaze colliding with your wide, terrified one, reminding you of your boss, the same perverse hunger glowing at the center of them. Shark’s eyes. “I think I might have a little fun with you first after a—”

Your body lurched with a sudden jolt, more tears spilling from your eyes and rolling down your ruddy cheeks to meet under your chin and drip onto your chest as you saw Jiro’s eyes glaze over and then roll, his sentence reduced to a thin, feeble whine for but a moment as his entire body stiffened and then went slack, dropping to the floor like a bag of rocks.

The machete slid from his grip and when his head smacked against the concrete, it left a rorschach smattering of red there, the back of his skull blooming with a hemorrhage.

You opened your mouth to let out a scream, but all that escaped was a distraught, animal moan.

You didn’t even notice Tomura’s figure looming like a shadow behind where the man’s body had just stood, a crowbar still raised with vengeful intent as if he thought the man he’d struck down would rise and try again. You were too busy watching the blood well and spill into a puddle on the floor.

“Are you ok?” he was saying to you, but all his words were muffled by the blood singing through your ears, everything around you feeling like it was swaying, body becoming lighter, head growing dizzier, until Tomura wrapped his arms around you, tucking your face into his chest to hide the view beyond him from your sight. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just— I saw the opportunity and I took it.”

Reality came crashing back over you like a violent, white-rimmed wave. You felt like you were going to be sick.

“It’s ok now,” Tomura kept on repeating, hugging you close, almost hard enough to crush you. “Let’s just go. Let’s get the fuck outta here.”

You couldn’t think. Couldn’t move. So you just let Tomura help you to your feet, grabbing up the machete on his way, as your team was severely lacking in weapons, and guide you towards the exit.

“Wait here,” he told you, still speaking quietly, afraid raising his voice any louder would destroy what little was left of you. “I forgot to get the keys.”

“The keys…?” you muttered, but Tomura was already gone.

Luckily, the journey to Jiro’s corpse and back was a short one, Tomura a little more familiar with the layout of the room now. He unhooked the ring that jingled with at least twelve different keys from Jiro’s belt loop, thumbing through them and hoping at least one of them would be useful to you down the line. He’d played enough games to know that sometimes even the smallest of items could be the difference between clearing the level and game over if left behind.

When he returned to you, you were curled in on yourself, arms wrapped around your shivering body with your forehead resting on your knees.

How much had you been through, up until now? And how more would you have to endure before all this suffering and trauma could finally come to and end?

“Hey…” He extended a hand toward you, feeling a little bit of the weight of his worry lift when you looked up at him, now appearing more tired than terrorized. “C’mon,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

“Dabi—”

“We’ll get him,” he promised, though didn’t sound so sure. And then, repeating more resolutely, “We’ll get him.”

Whether Dabi was even still alive, there was no way to know. But, for your sake at least, as much as Tomura was still caught between despising and respecting him, he found himself hoping that the third member of your trio had somehow survived.

***

It was sort of eerie, Dabi was beginning to think, that no one— not a single soul— had been seen or heard within his vicinity since Jiro had left him alone.

Hadn’t he gone off to get the others? Y’know, gather everyone ‘round for a good ol’ fashioned torture party?

But it had been too long. The place was big, but not that big. And the fact that none of the others had returned, even just out of coincidence, curiosity, or boredom, was weird too.

And what about you and Tomura?

Were you two even still alive, or had you just escaped without him, left him here to die?

All of them sounded like likely options, but still, the little sliver of hope that lodged itself in Dabi’s heart like a thorn told him to wait just a little bit longer before he started mourning the first real friends he could’ve had.

But even if you guys did come back for him, there was still the whole handcuffed to a refrigerator dilemma to deal with. You might have no choice but to leave him to be devoured by the wolves anyway.

“…Down here I think…” Dabi’s head lifted from where it rested against the side of the fridge, the rough, whispery voice dangerously familiar only for the fact that it made that slice of hope inside him twist like a blade. “Are you sure you can walk? You can always get on my back and I can carry you…”

“No, I think I’m ok, thanks…” Dabi’s heart fluttered at the sound of your voice. It made him wonder if he had dozed off and was dreaming, or if maybe somehow he was already dead and this was his own fucked up version of heaven.

And then there you were, looking like hell but still alive, one arm slung over Tomura’s shoulder, who also looked a little worse for wear but then again, didn’t he sort of always?

“Oh my god—!” Dabi barked out an incredulous laugh, the sound sharp but full of light, like the sun reflecting off of broken glass. “Oh my fucking god!”

“What the fuck?” Tomura asked once he registered Dabi’s current predicament.

It was then that Dabi’s disposition suddenly shifted, a deep scowl etched into his inky brows. “Yeah, what the fuck, Tomura?” He roughly jangled the chain linking the cuffs together against the handle of the fridge, as if he needed to further accentuate his point.

Tomura helped you down onto the nearest couch, leaving the machete by your side, and you were grateful for the rest and the weapon. Then he approached Dabi, slowing to a halt a few feet away and staring at him, hands shoved into his pockets like he was wracking his brain for a solution. Dabi stood, trying again, and failing, to yank himself free.

“Shit won’t budge!” he stated with an irritated shrug. “And I’m not too fuckin’ keen on dislocating my thumb.”

Tomura let out a sigh. You stared at your ravaged reflection in the gleam of the machete. Dabi shook the cuffs against the stainless steel just for the hell of it.

Then, finally, Tomura said, “Yeah, well, that guy who’s their leader or whatever is dead.”

In that moment, something made you look over and lock eyes with Dabi, his piercing blue gaze boring right into you, and then, you realized, the machete.

“Jiro’s dead…?” he repeated, though it was hard to tell whether he was shocked or devastated. Maybe a twisted mix of both. A crooked, deranged smirk then began to break out across his face, a maniacal chuckle bubbling up from deep within his chest until it became a full blown bout of hysteria.

This could’ve gone on for ten seconds, or it could’ve gone on for several minutes. Time seemed to shimmer and sway like sand through an hourglass, ungraspable, uncountable. It wasn’t until Tomura had had enough of all this madness, oddly enough, that he pulled out the ring of keys, the gentle jingle of them shutting Dabi up like a door slammed closed.

“No fuckin’ way!” Dabi exclaimed, his surprise genuine and almost endearing. Before Tomura even had a second to act or respond he blurted out, “Well— God, hurry up and unlock me already!”

You heard Tomura shifting through the keys, mumbling something to himself while Dabi craned his neck forward to try and pick the right one out. But the more they passed that weren’t the right one, the more anxious Dabi started to become. Until finally, the second to last key—

“Oh, oh!” Dabi called out. “That’s it! Hurry, hurry!”

Tomura put the small silver key into the cuffs’ tiny keyhole and turned it, the cuffs clattering to the concrete with a satisfying clank.

Dabi let out a stuttering sigh of disbelief, rubbing his wrists and relishing in his unexpected freedom for a moment before remembering the safe.

Perhaps this nightmare of an evening wouldn’t end up as a complete waste of time after all.

“Alright,” Dabi declared, strolling over to reach under the crate and swipe up the safe, tucking it snugly under his arm. “Let’s split, while we still can. We just have to—”

A loud bang immediately followed by a high whistle sang through the air as a bullet whizzed by and struck one of the crates directly behind Dabi, missing him to the left by only a hair. Tomura yanked both you and him behind the cover of the fridge as several more attempted to strike you, more guns firing from just beyond the cage of crumbling concrete you were now trapped within.

“Shit—!” Dabi swore under his breath, clutching the metal box to his chest like it would shield him, like it would save him.

“What now?” Tomura barked impatiently, having grown tired of all the mishaps this mission had brought several mishaps ago.

“Do we just run for it?” you tossed in, panicked.

“Uhh…” Dabi stalled, his own trepidation beginning to bubble up to the surface. More bullets struck the steel of the refrigerator, pinging off but approaching your cover with more and more accuracy, warning of the fact you were all about to be closed in on. Then, seeming to regain himself, you saw those cold blue eyes ignite with surety as he declared, “On the count of three, we all scatter. Meet back at the car, whoever gets there first, be ready to fuckin’ floor it once they get close enough to hit the tires—”

“No, wait— What about—” You began to protest.

“One—”

You weren’t going to make it out of this alive.

“Jesus, man! Just hold on a fucking second!”

They would mow you down the moment you showed yourself.

“Two—”

None of you were going to make it out of this alive.

“Oh, god! Please don’t—!”

Dabi flicked his gaze to meet yours. Held it as he said, “Three!”

And then you all ran for your lives.

Their aim followed in a tight trail at your heels, threats and shouts echoing behind you as you and Tomura bolted off in one direction and Dabi in another. He’d said for all of you to split up, but you hadn’t gotten the lay of the land like they had. You were lost without Tomura, though, honestly, he could only do his best to retrace his steps without Dabi around to lead the way.

But then he pulled you down the long stretch of hallway that Tomura now recalled being the first one he had walked down, the space narrower, the fluorescent lights flickering pale puddles against the scuffed cement floor.

“It’s this way,” he said, voice low but urgent, just on the cusp of disbelief that at least you two might have a chance at escape.

Dabi, on the other hand…

He’d been stuck with taking the long way around, several more guys in pursuit of him given he had what they valued most. And there’d been a fleeting moment where he wondered if there would be anything in the safe at all once he cracked it open, but with how desperately the others chased after him now, he knew it must be the whole damn lot.

And once they found out Jiro was dead, then what? Which one of them would rise to the top to take his place? Or would they all just end up killing each other in the end, fighting over their leader’s scraps like starving wild dogs?

Dabi skid around another corner, pulling down an empty metal shelf as he rushed by that was leaned against the wall in hopes that the slight obstacle might buy him a few more seconds of time. He felt a bullet graze his calf, bit his tongue at the sting of it, but forced himself to keep running. Soon he was around the bend to that telltale hallway, the final stretch, his chest heaving, lungs burning with the effort to travel as fast as his legs could carry him.

When he burst through the doors, the cool night air flooding his senses, he felt himself begin to slow his pace, entire body buzzing with adrenaline and relief all in the same breath. But then he heard another gunshot from the other side of the heavy metal push-doors and was shocked back to reality, which was that he wouldn’t be truly in the clear until he made it back to his warehouse, which meant he first had to make it back to the car.

He frantically searched the immediate surrounding area, looking for something, anything to block the door with. He found an old wooden rake and slotted it between the door bars. It wouldn’t hold for long, especially not with the force of at least four men trying to bust through on the other side, but it would be enough to at least gain the distance he needed on them.

The first slam-retract of the doors attempting to be broken past came when he was only about four yards away. Another by the time he was six, and after that, he stopped paying attention.

Because there was the car, sitting dark and patient off in the distance, two figures he recognized as you and Tomura hopping in, Tomura in the driver’s side and—

Dabi nearly halted in his tracks when the grinding, squealing horror of an engine that wouldn’t start pierce through the sloshing ambiance of the nearby bay. He heard a crash behind him, the handle of the rake splintering in half, a barrage of armed men racing his way.

“Guys—!” Dabi shouted, now close enough for you to hear him. You popped your head out from the passenger side’s rolled down window, dried tears still streaking your mascara smeared cheeks, hair a tousled mess and clothing all askew in the frenzy.

“It won’t start!” you half sobbed, half shrieked.

Tomura turned the key in the ignition again, earning the same, blood-chilling result.

“Fuck— Move over!” Dabi snapped, practically yanking Tomura out of the driver’s side as he tossed the safe into the back seat. Tomura didn’t get angry or wait for Dabi to solve the problem. There was no time. He jumped into the backseat to join the safe, and after one final, miraculous try, the engine purred back to life and Dabi slammed the door shut behind him, flooring it away from that nightmare as more bullets hit the ground just inches from your tires, one bursting through the back window as he swerved hard, nearly throwing you from the car as you scrambled to put on your seatbelt, and disappeared from the edge of the outskirts with nothing but a cloud of dust and the smell of burning rubber to remember him by.

***

You were not happy when you returned to the warehouse.

You were not giddy and curious enough to stay awake while Tomura and Dabi tried to crack open the safe.

You might’ve felt relieved to be alive, if not for the growing ache in your bones, flesh tender with bruises and the ghost of forceful hands that had grabbed you. Mainly, you just wanted to wash this day from your skin, to soak and scrub every last inch of your body until you felt like yourself again.

But instead what you did was find the quietest corner of the base to collapse in and fell asleep.

***

The following morning, early, when the sky was still pale with dawn’s soft, lulling light, you were awoken by the jittery mumbling of hysteria.

“…Holy shit—”

“—can’t fucking believe…”

“No, no, hold on…”

“…think we could just…”

“…not a good idea, it’s probably—”

You rose from your slumber, limbs heavy and aching with the night before, slowly rising to stand with a groan. You pulled the blanket further around your shoulders, a slight chill skittering up your spine, the slightly-too-big silk dress you hadn’t changed out of still clinging around your legs like a veil of cold as you slowly shuffled your way closer to all the hubbub.

“If I had a dollar for every time I…”

“Dude, it’s not even—”

“Sure it is, but only if you know the right people…”

The voices were getting clearer now, words spoken hurried, but hushed.

“She’s gonna freak when she sees this—” Dabi.

A raspy chuckle, and then, “Should I go see if she’s awake?” Tomura.

You rounded the corner of patchwork walls, some of the dividers a little leaning or lopsided in places, and announced with a sleep-rusted tone, “I am awake.” You cleared your throat, looked from the boys to the table in front of them, eyes widening when you saw the array of cash spread across the chipped wood, so much of it that it covered the entire surface and still left Dabi and Tomura clutching bundles of it in their hands.

“Holy shit—” you gasped, rushing over to kneel before the table, scooping up some of the bills and cradling them in your hands like they were delicate enough to turn to ash at just the slightest flex in your grip. “Is this really— You guys got it open?”

Dabi plopped down on the sofa across from you, Tomura opting for a seat on the floor, always needing to be closer to you, though whether that was out of necessity or habit now was lost to you both.

“Wasn’t fuckin’ easy…” Dabi drawled through a smirk. “But yeah. About half an hour ago.”

Your smile was widening, slowly but surely, like a flower blooming up through a crack in the concrete, hope fighting its way to the surface. “Oh my god…” You felt like maybe you were still dreaming, like you’d blink open bleary eyes and find yourself curled up under a frayed old blanket all over again like the day had reset itself. “How much is—”

“We’re still counting it,” Tomura cut in, handing you one of the thick wads of cash to thumb through, letting the bills fan through your fingers like one of those flip-books that made little doodles look like animations. “But we think it’s somewhere around fifty-thousand.”

You looked up to gaze upon their faces. Dark bruises hung under their bloodshot eyes, the most obvious sign that they hadn’t slept. They’d been up all night trying to crack the safe, desperation skittering like ants through their veins until success had brought them the catharsis of feeling like they’d earned their much needed rest.

“We decided…” Dabi began, leaning forward to set his stack of cash on the cluttered table, elbows perched on his knees as his fingers laced loosely to dangle before him. “Each of us will count it individually.”

“All of it?” you asked, eyeing the money-flood that drenched the table.

Dabi nodded. “All of it.”

“That way we know, when we all come up with the same amount, that the split will be even,” Tomura further explained, scooting closer to you still.

“And then…” you uttered absentmindedly, still in a daze.

“And then,” Dabi replied, “we can all go our separate ways…”

He leaned back to lounge against the couch, one hand cradling the back of his skull while the other remained bent awkwardly across his lap. His elbow was definitely fractured and he’d sustained a slight concussion, but for now, he figured, that could wait.

“Or…” he continued after a few beats of heavy silence, a tangible uncertainty hanging between you and Tomura as if you’d thought you’d heard him wrong.

“Or?” you pressed.

“Oh, I dunno…” Dabi sighed. “I was just thinkin’, we make sort of a not-so-terrible team—”

“You mean, besides all the shit that went wrong and nearly got us killed back there?” Tomura posed, unamused.

Dabi resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He was too tired to argue right now. “I mean, despite the odds, we still came out on top. And it wouldn’t have worked without the three of us— y’know, aside from you abandoning the plan halfway through—”

“I saved your life—” Tomura cut in.

Under his breath, Dabi muttered, “Don’t know if I’d go that far, but—”

“Oh, I’m sorry—” Tomura, on the other hand, still had some fight left in him. “Next time I’ll make sure to leave you handcuffed to a fucking refrigerator so those guys can use you as target practice—”

“Ok! Ok—!” You called over their useless bickering, hands held out as if trying to keep them from advancing on each other, despite neither of them looking even halfway to making any kind of physical move. “Enough! None of that matters now. Next time, we’ll all stick to the plan, and make sure there’s a plan B just in case.”

“Not to mention,” Dabi continued, still droning with his I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude, “technically, Tomura, you shouldn’t even get the same cut as us since you didn’t really contribute as much—”

“Oh, fuck off!” Now Tomura stood, looking ready to throw a punch.

“Kidding—! I’m just kidding. Jesus…” Dabi was quick to remedy. Tomura relaxed a little, slowly lowering back to his seat beside you as you grabbed his hand and pulled him back to his senses.

“That’s another thing,” you said. “No matter what, if we do this, we all get the same share. No exceptions.” You locked eyes with Dabi, held his striking sapphire glare until you feared you might crack and shatter under the intensity of it. But then, begrudgingly, he clicked his tongue and agreed. 

“Fine,” he said. “But if either of you ever leaves me without backup again, I’ll make sure none of us gets anything.”

“Whatever, man…” Tomura mumbled, cheek resting in his palm, the exhaustion trying to ambush him.

“Well, same goes for me,” you pointed out. “I mean, was it even ever really in your plan to come help me out if things went south on my end?”

Dabi opened his mouth to defend himself, maybe protest, but then closed it again when he realized you had him on that one.

“Dude,” Tomura snapped, his grip tightening around your hand protectively. “What the hell? You said—”

“I know what I said!” Dabi shouted over the accusation. Then, simmering down a little, raking a shaky hand through his inky hair, “Fuck, just… I didn’t think it was gonna play out like that. I really didn’t. I mean, I knew it was risky, for all of us—” You shot him a bitter glare, causing him to backtrack with, “For you, especially, ok. I knew that. But I really thought—” He pulled his tattooed hands down his pale face, brain on its way to short circuiting from lack of sleep. “I never would’ve asked you to do it if I really thought those guys would…” But he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. To finish the thought.

“Ok…” you exhaled, figuring that was as close as you were going to get for an apology. “So, now what?”

“Now…” Dabi stood from the couch, boots dragging over the concrete floor as he slowly circled around to you and Tomura’s side of the table, sitting on the other side of you. “Well, now I guess we start counting.”

***

(Well… two years later and I’ve finally managed to finish chapter 2. In truth I’ve been wanting to get back to this series for a long, long time now, but knew it was going to be a big commitment (especially given how much more involved it became shortly after beginning to dive into this chapter) and due to some personal/life stuff I just didn’t have the time. Originally, this series was supposed to only be three chapters, but now it’s looking like it’ll end up being somewhere between five and ten, so please be patient with me while I write it.

But I’m happy to report that, this year, I really want to put a lot of focus into this series. I have some big ideas for it that I’m excited to share, especially the scenes that have literally been living in my mind rent free for over two years now lol. So please look forward to that!

As always, a big thank you so much to everyone for reading! I’ll see you next time! Byyyyyeee~)

[fastlikealambo]

the mermaid & the lighthouse. ||older!eddie x black mermaid! reader

summary: widowed father eddie munson is an experienced fisherman and down on his luck operator of one of the last barely functional lighthouses in america.

hawkins, a crumbling fishing village off the coast of maine, is slowly but surely being sold off and an oil spill by the carver oil company the previous year has all but sealed hawkins' fate to be purged of the locals and turned into a resort.

it's in the cards for eddie to sell his boat, pack up his daughter, and give into jason carver's cash offer to turn the lighthouse into a vacation home.

that all changes when a mysterious woman washes up on the rocks, an unearthly being that will change his fate and the fate of his home forever.

Trigger warnings for this chapter: Drowning, Body Horror, Mental Health Discussions, CPR

CHAPTER ONE.

'But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.'

-Hans Christian Andersen

This is a tale of mermaids, love, and what it means to be human.

But to begin,we must have an ending.

“Chrissy? Wynie? Christina and Eowyn Munson!" 

Eddie made his way through the crowded emergency room, wading through police officers, people wrapped in blankets with medical staff hovering around them and others with the same wild look in their eyes as Eddie, searching for someone in the crowd. The corridors seemed to be endless as Eddie broke out into a run past the nurses’ station towards the room but a firm hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Sir, you can’t go back there.” The security guard said but Eddie shook them off, spotting a lone nurse.

"Please, I'm looking for my wife and daughter, they were on the ferry?"

"I'm sorry sir, we're swamped, someone should be around to talk to you shortly." The nurse said, barely looking up from her chart and it took everything within him to not scream.  It wasn’t her fault, but he just needed to know what was going on. 

"Eddie."

Eddie turned around to see Robin standing there and he immediately ran to his friend, unbelievably happy to see someone, anyone he knew who might possibly have answers, or at the very least prevent him from spinning his wheels.

"Thank fuck, I can't find Chrissy or Wyn anywhere and nobody knows anything, neither of them are picking up their phones, I'm going out of my mind Robin!" He exclaimed, running his hand through his curly hair, the few gray streaks in it shining in the fluorescent lightning. He had dyed them to match the rest of his head in what he thought was secret but Chrissy liked the grays.

 Robin said nothing, took his hands in her own and it was then that he saw the tears in her eyes, the blood on her rainbow scrubs and his heart stopped in his chest.

No.

"Robin?"

"Eddie, Chrissy and Wynie were in the water for a very long time. By the time they were brought in, neither of them were breathing on their own."

No. 

"Spare me the bullshit Robin, where the fuck is my family?" He yelled, no actual anger in his voice, just pure desperation. A buzzing noise that started when Wayne radioed him intensified in pitch and it felt like he was underwater.

"We were able to stabilize Wyn, but we had to put a tube down her throat to help her breathe, she's in the ICU, Eddie."

 The image that his mind conjured of his little girl in a hospital bed made him want to curl up on the floor but he regained his composure to ask the question he didn’t want to know the answer to.

"And Chrissy?"

"We did everything we could, I'm so sorry Eddie."

Eddie felt his knees give out beneath him, meeting the hospital floor hard, his sobs and screams echoing throughout the hallway as Robin rocked her oldest friend in her arms, no longer able to stifle her own tears.

While his daughter fought to take a breath and his wife took her last, Eddie had been fucking fishing, tossing back a few beers, shooting the shit.

He didn't even get to say goodbye.

And then an interlude of two years.

Outside of The Hawkins Middle School principal’s office, Eddie was greeted by the sight of his twelve year old daughter looking very pleased with herself despite the bruise on her face and cut on her lip, the smirk that confirmed to the world that this was Eddie Munson’s kid fading as soon as she saw her father.

“Wyn, what the fuck happened? Who did this to you?” Eddie knelt down by his daughter, taking her chin in hand to inspect her face, rage and frustration building within him but Wynie sighed and shook him off, her face shifting to the same blank expression that had graced her features since he brought her home from the hospital two years prior.

“Mr. Munson, so good of you to join us.” Principal Coleman’s head popped out of the office,  ushering him to come in. A sheepish Eddie followed, sinking into a seat across from the principal, half expecting Wayne to be sitting next to him like he was the one getting detention.

“Mr. Munson, we understand that things have been extremely hard for you both these past two years and we’ve done the best we can to support Eowyn here at school but I’m afraid violence can’t be tolerated.” 

“None of what you’re saying explains why my kid’s face is fucked up, Coleman.”  Eddie said roughly, running a hand through his beard. “But it’s the thought that counts.”

“Mr. Munson, your daughter headbutted another student during lunch, breaking her nose. The student’s mother is threatening to press charges.”

“And did you find out why? Ask any of the other students if-

“Your daughter confessed actually, rather proudly if I might ask but then again, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’m sorry Mr. Munson, but we’ve been lenient with your situation for far too long.” Eddie stood to his feet at that.

“Situation? Her mother died! She almost died! That’s not something a juice box and a pep talk over the summer fixes!”

“Sit down Mr. Munson, I know you don’t believe it but we are on the same side. That child’s parents are out for blood but I’ve managed to keep them at bay by giving Eowyn two weeks of in school suspension, a written apology, and she will be seeing Ms. Kelley, our guidance counselor and Dr. Owens, our school psychiatrist.”

Eddie slowly sat back down, exhaustion taking away any remaining fight he had. He had a plan to keep them both above water after all that had happened, to keep her safe and try to get through each day.

He was failing spectacularly.

“ Wait, she already sees Dr. Owens, twice a week.” Eddie said, confused looking out at his daughter in the hallway who overheard everything and now hung her head in actual sadness.

“Apparently for the last month, she’s been skipping their sessions.”

Jesus H. Christ.

“So do you want to tell me what really happened?” Eddie said,waiting until Wynie was buckled into the car.

Silence.

“Wyn, we can’t go on like this, if you don’t want to talk to me, you need to talk to Owens. No more skipping sessions, sweetheart. And you have to apologize to that kid.”

“He threw Abby Henderson’s lunch in the trash. He’s been doing it all week, she won’t say anything so I did something about it.”  Wynie said softly. Eddie pulled over and turned towards his daughter who looked more and more like Chrissy with each day that passed.

“I’m supposed to say you shouldn’t have done that, that you should have told a teacher, that violence is never the answer, but honestly fuck that. You did something to help your friend and that’s important, Wyn.”

“So I’m not grounded?” Eowyn asked, the first time he had heard her voice in a few days, startling him.

“Oh you’re so grounded but not for the headbutting which is very metal by the way, but for the lying Eowyn. I’m worried about you honey,  there’s nothing you can’t tell me, you know that right?” Eddie asked, reaching for Wyn who moved away.

“I’ve got to inspect the lighthouse tonight, why don’t you come with me? We can have hot cocoa, it will be like old times.” Eddie offered, coughing awkwardly. 

Wynie shrugged, the guarded look back in place.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Eddie said, a little bit of hope in his voice as he started the car again.

Somewhere close, a storm beckoned and the sea betrayed you.

You had been watching the humans above, their ways had called to you more often than not these days, looking for him on the shoreline but he was no longer there. The human child smelled of him but a long time had passed since the sea was aflame and the scent was gone from the water.

You would wait one more day for him before leaving for colder waters and as the day became night, he was not there.

Eddie was gone.

Sadly, you left the rocks to dive under the stormy water and that’s when it happened.

Your tail, your beautiful luminous tail, began to twist uncontrollably beneath you, bloody scales shedding from you one after the other.

Then, agony.

So much pain, your bones shifting and breaking, you couldn’t breathe.

Poseidon, you couldn’t breathe.

The water that had raised you invaded your throat so you couldn’t scream as you disappeared beneath the waves, body broken, body new.

The Hawkins Lighthouse swayed a little, rain pelting the dilapidated lighthouse and Eddie and Wynie by extension. The lighthouse was nothing more than a sad landmark these days rather than the fully functioning lighthouse that saved many a ship centuries before. Still as a promise to Wayne, Eddie kept the lighthouse somewhat clean and serviced the lantern as much as he could.

“As he finished cleaning the lantern, he turned it on, the brightness got him every time but he couldn’t help but frown as the strength of the light seemed to dull with every minute that came and went. It would kill his uncle but the sooner the lighthouse was officially decommissioned, the better it would be.

Wynie stood on the other side of the tiny lantern room, wrapped in a star wars blanket with a thermos of hot cocoa, staring at the water below.  It was hard to believe that just two years ago she would zoom around the tiny room, naming everything she spied in the water, begging Eddie to quiz her on all the clockworks, fuel parts, and vents in the service room.

Now she wouldn’t even step a foot outside the cottage much less the shore.

“I’m all finished here if you want to head down. Maybe we could watch a movie or something?” Eddie asked but she was already out of the room before the question fully left his mouth.

Was this how it was going to be forever?

He had failed his wife and child that night and he continued to fall on his ass since.

This was all his fault.

“Holy shit, Dad! Dad!” 

The alarm in his kid’s voice sent him sprinting towards the stairs but Wynie burst back through the door, running to the glass.

“Dad, look! There’s something on the rocks!” She exclaimed, grabbing Eddie by the hand and dragging him to the window.

At first, Eddie saw nothing, squinting hard at the window but as the light passed over the area below, it shone brighter than it had in years, revealing something curled and limp on the rocks.

Not something, someone.

There was a body on the rocks.

“ Eowyn, Wyn, slow down!” Eddie called out to his daughter who ran ahead of him down the steep lighthouse stairs and into the rainstorm below. 

He had left his phone in the cottage stupidly and had no choice but to follow his daughter, flashlight in tow. Wynie stopped just short of the water, frozen in place so quickly Eddie almost slammed into her. His hands shook as his flashlight revealed the limp naked body of a woman draped across the sharp rocks.

He should leave, call or radio for help, but something told him there wasn’t time, dead or alive, he couldn’t just leave you there.

“Stay here.” Eddie ordered Wynie, turning her around as he walked into the rocky water, slipping his jacket off as he slowly approached your body, slipping on the stones as he inched forward towards you, hands meeting your scarily chilled skin. 

Trying not to think of the possibility of holding a dead body, he wasted no time, wrapping his jacket around you and gently slid your body off the rocks and into his arms and had Wynie guided him with her flashlight to the nearest soft patch of sandy shore.

Laying you down flat, he put his head to your chest and listened, the more silence he heard the more fear threatened to overwhelm him.

"Daddy?" The terror and pain in his daughter's voice paralyzed Eddie as he looked down at the completely still woman beneath him.

This was no sight for her.

"Wynie, go inside, call Aunt Robin, tell her we found someone hurt on the beach, she'll know what to do. Put the puppy upstairs then turn the heat up and light the fireplace, just like I taught you. I'll be right behind you, I promise. Can you do that for me?" He asked, putting his hands on her damp shoulders.

Eowyn nodded deeply, straightening herself up with a fierce look of determination in her face that made her look so much like Chrissy his heart hurt even more.

"I can do it Dad." 

"Good girl! Now, go!" He kissed the top of her head and gently pushed her away.

She took off running towards the cottage and Eddie steeled himself for what was to come next.

He pressed two fingers into your neck waiting for something, anything, beneath his fingers, but the same stillness continued.  Eddie tilted your chin back, pinching your nose and sealed his mouth to your own breathing deeply, feeling your chest rise to meet his hand.

He repeated the action, breathing for you once again, hoping you sit straight up like in a movie and this whole nightmare would be over but no sooner then he had felt your chest rise with his air did it sink in, just as still.

He gently walked his fingers down to the landmark between your breasts and placed one shaking hand over the other, locked his elbows, straightened his arms, silently praying to anyone as he centered his shoulders over his hands and began to press down hard and fast, counting aloud.

"You got yourself on those fucking rocks, you can do this, come on!" He choked out, ignoring the cold that seeped into his tiring arms threatening to numb his hands but he kept going, the rhythmic sound drowning out his own racing heart, blinking back frustrated tears.  Two minutes felt like an eternity as he checked your pulse again with the same result.

He couldn't do this again.

They couldn't be tied to another death, Wynie couldn’t bear it, Eddie wouldn't survive it.

You were running out of time, he was running out of time before his daughter would no doubt come back outside after doing what she was told and be treated to the sight of another corpse.

It was at that moment that Eddie Munson decided he would not let the sea take another person, even a stranger, from him again.

Sweat and rainwater rolled down his back as he began again, each and every compression a middle finger to Death itself because he would not give up, not until you took a breath or someone ripped him off you.

Two cycles later, Death backed the fuck off.

An ungodly gurgling followed by a wretching sound had Eddie's frozen fingers flying to your neck and he let out something between a laugh and scream at the drum of a pulse beneath his fingertips. He cut his celebration short, turning you on your side as you emptied your stomach of seawater and god knows what else. 

"Let it all out, good girl, you're safe now, you did it." He soothed, alternating between patting your back and rubbing circles.  He caught a glimpse of your half opened eyes, wide and brown before they rolled back into your head and you went limp against him, shivering hard with every breath you took.

The light passed across your face and for a second Eddie swore he saw sharp teeth.

"I need every towel and blanket in the house, where's Robin?" Eddie asked, racing into the warm living room of his seaside cottage, his jacket wrapped around you to give you some privacy and preserve any heat he could give you from the journey from the shore to his home.

"Aunt Nancy answered, Mrs. Sinclair went into labor earlier, she's still on the mainland. She said she'd come herself as soon as there was a break in the storm." Wynie explained, zipping around the cottage collecting a pile of blankets and beach towels.

 Eddie set you down on the already blanket lined couch in front of the fire, quickly peeling off his own wet layers to his semi dry t-shirt underneath before  wrapping a towel around and cocooning you both in blankets, gently rubbing the heat back into you.

"You're gonna be okay, we're gonna get you nice and warm and then we'll get you some help." Eddie whispered into your ear as Eowyn gently placed another comforter over the pair of you, eyes glassy with tears.

"She's not moving, is she gonna die like Mom?" She asked quietly. Eddie held out a hand for his daughter to come forward.

"You see her wrist? Put two fingers right there, it's okay you're not gonna hurt her sweetie." Wynie did as she was instructed, touching your wrist so softly as if it was going to break.

"You feel that? That means she's alive and she's alive because you saw her on those rocks before I did. She's going to be fine once she's not so cold and your Aunt can have a look at her. You're a hero Eowyn Munson, and I'm so proud of you sweetheart." Eddie said,mussing her hair before Wyn smiled the first real smile in a very long time and  ran to the kitchen to make tea. Eddie returned to the task of warming you up, cradling you in his arms. 

"Please don't give up the ghost on my couch after I just gave that awesome speech." 

That’s it for now, I hope this is okay :)

[five-rivers]

On the Manufacture of Gods

AKA the reason I was complaining about the Generator Rex timeline earlier this week. @ all my DP followers, give Generator Rex a try if you haven't, yet. It definitely scratches that unethical human experimentation itch! :p

AO3

.

“You’re not still thinking about it, are you?”

“Huh?” Violeta looked up from her notebook, her pen spinning out of her hand and clattering onto the floor.  “What?”

Rafael chuckled.  “You are still thinking about it.  That joke of a job offer.”  He leaned across the dining room floor to peer at her notes.  “Giving a bunch of rich idiots the power of God.” 

“Mm,” said Violeta.  “Maybe not that end goal, but the money… and the things we’d have to research on the way.  I was thinking…  You might know what they want isn’t possible, and they might know what they want isn’t possible.  But in the meantime…”  She trailed off, suggestively, and held up her notebook in front of her face. 

“Are you suggesting we run a scam?” asked Rafael, taking the notebook.  “Ah, a list of potential medical advances.”

“Computer science as well.”

“Human longevity, oncology, genetic diseases…”

“Not to mention physics, microbiology, bioengineering, nanotechnology…”

“It’s quite a list.  A bit beyond our purview, though.”

“And we have quite a list of friends.  Friends who might like steady work.  Gabriel and Peter, at least.”  Violeta smiled.  “It’s a victimless crime, you know.  If they have enough money to throw at something like this.  And they would be getting their money’s worth.”

“Mhm,” said Rafael.  “They do say that the first benefit of functional nanotechnology is immortality.  But control over the fundamental forces of nature, not so much.  God, it was so hard not to laugh in their faces when they said they wanted to control gravity and magnetism.  We’re so, so far from that.”

“Yes, but imagine how much money they’d throw at you while you were researching the problem.”

Rafael smiled, imagining it.  “It is a pleasant thought.”

The front door slammed open.  “Mama!  Papa!”

“We’re in here Ceasar!” called Violeta. 

A seven-year-old with dirty, skinned knees skidded into the kitchen. 

“Goodness,” said Violeta, getting up.  “Did you fall down?  Are you hurt?”

“No!” said Ceasar.  “Mama, what’s bigger, cells or atoms?”

“Cells are bigger,” said Violeta.  “They’re made out of atoms.”

“Ha!” said Ceasar, bouncing.  “I told him, I told him!”  He ran back to the door. 

“Told who, dear?”

“Van!”  The door slammed shut before Violeta or Rafael could say anything. 

“Van,” said Rafael.  “Van…  Isn’t he almost twice as old as Ceasar?”

“It’s fine,” said Violeta.  “We knew he’d be the youngest in the advanced classes when we signed him up.  And I think Van Kleiss is only ten or so.  Maybe eleven.”

“Well.  I suppose as long as they’re getting along…”  He drummed his fingers on the notebook, then put it down in front of Violeta’s seat at the table.  “Maybe we can try our hands at being con artists if our current jobs fall through.”

.

“Scamming a bunch of rich people out of a whole lot of money?” asked Gabriel Rylander, barely audible over the din of the bar.  He finished off his shot.  “Count me in.”  He shook Violeta's hand firmly.  “But is it really a scam, if we’re still giving them something?”

“Eh,” said Violeta, rocking her hand back and forth.  “We’re just failing to mention that their end goal isn’t feasible and isn’t something we’re actually trying to work towards.  We just need you and Peter to be on the same page as far as telling them we're working on it goes.”

“Sounds a bit risky,” said Peter Meechum.  “But I guess no one would ever be able to prove anything, so… why not?”  He took a sip from his drink, grimaced, and put it back down.  “What do these guys call themselves again?”

“The Consortium.”

.

Rafael frowned at the documents.  Summaries of his research, Violeta’s, Gabriel’s, Peter’s, the other scientists’ that had joined the Nanite Project, most of them agreeing that there was no way to fulfil the Consortium’s requests, but that the good that could be done in the meantime was too great to pass up, even a packet of code from one of Ceasar’s projects.  They’d been working on this project for seven years, now, but this was the first time he actually thought there was a chance of success.

He wasn’t sure he liked it. 

Oh, sure, he was thrilled with the results of his latest experiments, and the leisure to learn more, to further his own education – to the point where he sometimes felt like he was turning into a cartoonish omnidisciplinary scientist – but the idea of giving those rich, powerful men even more was… troubling, to say the least. 

“Rafael?  Love, are you still down here?”

“Yes,” called Rafael.  “What is it?”

“Dinner,” said Violeta, a bit dryly.  “Ceasar wants pizza, incidentally.  What are you doing?”

“Thinking about the last results we got back from CERN,” said Rafael.  “Obviously there are still problems on virtually every level, but…  With the newly discovered particles, what we’re doing isn’t a pipe dream anymore.”

“Mm,” said Violeta.  “Does that bother you?”

“You know how I feel about the people we work for.”

Violeta drummed her fingers on her elbow.  “You know, they don’t have to ever get what we do.”

“Pardon?”

“Think about it.  When we make these things, if we make these things, who’s going to have control?  Us or them?”

“Violeta…”

“And we always have the option to just… destroy everything.  Or democratize it!  Spread it and all its good over the whole world!”  She waved her hand over her head as if defining a rainbow.  “We’re making a post-scarcity society a possibility.  Why should anyone have to pay for it, once it’s done?”

“I suppose,” said Rafael. 

“In the meantime… pizza.”

Rafael smile.  “Pizza,” he agreed.  “Goodness, is he ever going to get tired of it?”

“Maybe once he isn’t a teenager anymore.”

.

It was silent around the table. 

“Do we really have a workable plan of action?” asked Rafael, a little stunned. 

“I wouldn’t say workable, not yet,” said Gabriel, waving his hands. 

“But it’s close,” said Peter.  “A lot of the problems are on the biological side of things,” he continued, glancing at Violeta, “but between my team and Rylander’s we’ve definitely solved the processing power issue and many of the miniaturization problems.”

“That’s thanks to you, by the way,” said Gabriel, tipping an imaginary hat towards Rafael.  “The selenium process especially was revolutionary.”

“I think I can solve the biological problems,” said Violeta, cutting off Gabriel’s last words.  “I can – It’s not…”  She trailed off, biting her thumbnail. 

“Violeta?”

“Part of the problem,” she said, “is control.  The interface between the organism and the machines.  It’s learning how to use them.  Like a new sense, or a new limb.  We’re going to need live trials.  Test subjects.  And—” She broke off again, more sharply.  “The Consortium is never going to have the ability to actively use these smoothly.  No adult human is.  Or, at least, that kind of adaptability, of brain plasticity, is going to be rare.”

“You’re not suggesting we start experimenting on children?” asked Peter, appalled.  He and his wife had been trying to have children for a while, now, but they were having trouble.  Gabriel – also a new father – didn’t look happy, either. 

“Not… exactly.  We’d do plant and animal trials first, of course, you know, model organisms, and move on from there.  I’m thinking more…  Fetal tissue.  In vitro.”  She held up a hand, pinching air between her fingers as if to show how small the research matter would be.  “In carefully controlled lab situations only.”  She laughed a little.  “Caesar actually has an idea about how to manage that, believe it or not.”

Peter made a face.  “As wonderful as Caesar is, he’s still a teenager, Vi.”

“I wasn’t saying he’d be the one doing all the programming.  Just that his overall idea is decent.”

Gabriel cleared his throat.  “I think there might be some ways around those control issues,” he said.  “Why do we need to learn how to work with the nanites when it should really be the other way around?  Make them do the hard part.  Maybe that’ll cut down on the human trials… Or we could con one of our lovely funders to volunteer.  We’re already conning them out of millions of dollars, after all.”  He picked up his drink and downed it in one go. 

“We could also stop,” said Rafael, hardly believing what he was suggesting. 

“You can’t be serious,” said Peter.  “After we’ve come this far?”

“I believe in keeping options on the table,” said Rafael, defensively. 

“Do you want to stop?” asked Violeta, and he knew that she would, for him. 

But… “No,” said Rafael.  Of course he didn’t want to stop.  Who could at this point?  “But we should try to come up with failsafes.  Some of these plans…  Not just anyone should have access to the ability to turn off gravity.”

“That’s fair,” said Violeta.  “But considering how we’re programming these…  Or, at least, how I understand we’re programming things, I could be mistaken… Would it be possible to program the nanites to only respond to certain people?  Have the higher-level functions only work for certain biometrics, or DNA scans, that kind of thing.”

Gabriel scratched his chin.  “Possibly, possibly.  But we run into the adaptability problem again.  We’re not young by any means.  How do you feel about bombs?”

“Gabriel, you can’t be serious.”

“I’m deadly serious!  Hence the bombs.  Blowing things up are a traditional way of getting rid of things.”

“If we build these right, we won’t be able to get rid of them by blowing them up.”

Rafael cleared.  “I think your suggestion holds merit, in an extreme case.  As long as we’ve gotten past the point where the nanites will kill everyone, spreading them out, scattering them, might be better than leaving them in the hands of the Consortium.  We’d have to do a risk assessment.  It might be better, too, to limit the number of ‘control’ nanites.  Maybe even find a way to hide them.  Hide that they exist, even.”

“What if,” said Violeta, slowly, “we make something compatible with the nanites?  Work backwards to work forward.  Or, at least, work from both ends.”

“You mean GMOs?” asked Peter. 

“Something like that,” agreed Violeta. 

“I’m not sure how this is a failsafe,” said Gabriel, “but that sounds like we’ve gone in a circle again.  Back to us being compatible with them.”

“If,” said Violeta, “we can make it so there’s a person we can trust, and they’re the only one who can properly use the nanites… And we implement some of your other ideas, like limiting number of ‘control’ nanites, and keep those to ourselves…  We wouldn’t have direct control, but we could decide whether or not they get used.”

“And where are we going to get a person like that?” asked Peter, testily.  “Wasn’t the whole point of this that people can’t just pick up how to use nanites, normally?”

“Easy,” said Violeta, grinning at Rafael.  “We make them.”

.

“Caesar,” said Violeta, “how do you feel about a younger brother?”

“Fine, I guess?” said Caesar, putting down his spoon and looking between his two parents.  “Why?  Does this have something to do with your project?”

“Yes.  We think it’s time you learned more about it.”

.

The best way to test something, to look for the changes in something, was to use a control group.  That was often difficult in diverse biological groups, like humans.  Studies rarely showed the full picture, sadly. 

Twins were a natural choice, for experiments like that.  Identical in age and, generally, in upbringing.  But you couldn’t just go out and get a twin. 

Unless, of course, you were a scientist with unlimited access to a massively unethical and extremely expensive lab. 

Caesar sat beside her, watching the test tube.  “It’s hard to believe he’s going to grow up to be me.”

“Not you, exactly,” said Violeta.  “Just… nearly.”  She had made adjustments, some of them of her own design, others suggested by her co-conspirators.  The goal was to optimize nanite compatibility.  “You’ll be different people,” she continued.  “Assuming he survives.  He’ll be more like a… twin.  A very delayed twin.”

Caesar made an affirmative noise.  “You know what I mean.”

“I’m sure it will be odd,” agreed Violeta, “but even though the odds are low, this could be an entirely possible natural genetic combination.”

“But it isn’t.”

“That’s true,” agreed Violeta. 

“When I get out of college,” he said, “do you think I can work on this, too?  Just, with programing.  Not biology so much.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Violeta.

“It’s just…”  He reached out, as if to tap the glass vial with his finger, then withdrew, crossing his arms.  “I don’t know.  I feel like I should help him already, I guess.”

Violeta fluffed his hair, then swooped in to give him a peck on the forehead.  “I’m sure you will,” she said, “and you’ll be the best big brother and scientist there ever was.”

As expected, Caesar’s face scrunched up. 

“What if he doesn’t make it, though?”

“Then we’ll try again.”

.

“Have you thought of a name?” asked Rafael. 

Across the room, Caesar’s head snapped up, homework instantly forgotten. 

“I have some ideas,” said Violeta, hiding her smile from Caesar but not Rafael. 

“You should call him Caeser the Second,” said Caesar, which was both a very immature response for someone working through a degree in computer science, and very typical.

“I think that might be a bit confusing, mijo,” said Violeta.  “I was thinking ‘Rex.’  My two little kings.”

“Not as good as Caesar the Second.  But it’ll have to do.”

“I’m glad I have your support.  What do you think, Rafael?”

“It’s a good name,” he said, not looking up from his paperwork.  “It starts with the letter R.”

Violeta threw a pillow at him. 

.

“’Abyss,’ huh,” said Rafael, examining the intake paperwork as he reclined ever backwards in the office chair.  “I’m not sure Nietzsche is the person we want to emulate.”

“It’s ‘Abysus,’” corrected Van Kleiss imperiously. 

That was another thing Rafael wasn’t sure about.  Working with one of Caesar’s old playmates.  And moving operations and experiments to a private island in the middle of nowhere.  He had to wonder if the Consortium knew about their group’s plans, and if this isolation was meant to keep them under control. 

It wouldn’t work, of course.  Building a radio wasn’t exactly difficult, even without access to nanites, and even Rafael had a few less than noble tricks up his sleeves. 

“Do you know who else we’ll be working with?” he asked. 

“The Consortium has delegated a new project overseer.” 

That was nice enough, he supposed (not really), but also not an answer to what he had asked. 

“I was thinking more along the lines of scientists.”

“There’s me,” said Van Kleiss. 

Rafael made a noncommittal noise.  “Is that it?  As wonderful as Violeta is, this is the kind of thing you really need a team for.”

Van Kleiss’s expression went sour, as if he had expected to be told that he, personally, was the only scientist needed for the undertaking.  But the moment passed quickly, and soon Van Kleiss was rattling off names as fast as he could.  Rafael recognized many of them, if not all, and relaxed.  For the most part, even though they weren’t part of the conspiracy, they wouldn’t turn them in if they heard or saw anything.

There was safety in numbers – or, at least, the illusion of it.  Again, with that many people who could, technically, be included under the header of ‘mad scientist,’ he wasn’t worried about communication or weaponry.  Much. 

“Caesar is coming too, you know,” Rafael couldn’t help but boast.

“I assumed so.  He is your child.”

“No, no,” said Rafael, “Rex is coming as family, but Caesar is coming to work as a scientist.  He just graduated from college, and they hired him for the programming division right off.”  He couldn’t keep the pride out of his voice.  “It will be like old times for the two of you, won’t it?  You always used to play together.”

“Oh,” said Van Kleiss.  “I suppose it will be interesting, at least.”

.

“Call me Black Knight,” said the woman, not extending her hand.  “I’m here on behalf of the Consortium to monitor and accelerate your progress.  Specifically, to help with a certain bottleneck.”

“And… what does that mean, exactly?” asked Violeta, leaning around Rafael who was being oddly protective.

“Human test subjects are so hard to find, aren’t they?” asked Black Knight, rhetorically.  “I’m here to volunteer.  And recruit other volunteers, on an as-necessary basis.” 

.

“I don’t like her,” said Rafael.  “She’s a killer, I can tell.  I’ve seen enough of her type in my day.  I wouldn’t be surprised if all the ‘security forces’ here were the same.”

“What do you think we should do about it?” asked Caesar, frowning. 

“I think,” said Rafael, steepling his fingers, “we should do some recruitment of our own. 

.

The problem with bringing children to high-security, top-secret private islands is that there often weren’t many other kids around. 

Oh, Rex had Caesar, of course, and Gabriel had brought his son, but both of them were a good deal older than he was, and Caesar especially had other things to do.  His programming work was quickly becoming vital to the project as a whole. 

(Something that made a variety of the other scientists very jealous.  Violeta didn’t understand it.  Most of them weren’t even working in the same discipline as Caesar, making the rivalry especially pointless, as in the case of Van Kleiss.)

(Then again, Van Kleiss seemed to have a rivalry with everyone, so perhaps that was to be expected.)

The point was that Rex spent a lot of time alone. 

Not in a bad way.  Abysus was interesting, and the scientists there loved talking about what they were doing.  He was learning a lot, just listening in.  His parents spent a lot of time with him, too, even more than they did when they lived in Geneva, because now he was being homeschooled.  And he was used to it.  They’d been on Abysus for a while. 

(They didn’t stay on Abysus year-round.  They flew around the world in their ‘off season,’ going everywhere from the Americas to Europe, to Asia, and even Africa, once or twice, mostly for vacations, but also to talk to other scientists, visit other labs, and make sure Rex had all his proper doctor’s checkups.  Rex made a lot of friends on those trips, but it was hard to stay in touch.)

But it could get… boring, sometimes, not having anyone his age around.  Lonely.  So… sometimes he did things that might not, strictly speaking, be smart.  Like exploring the labs or sneaking into restricted zones when he was supposed to be finishing his trigonometry homework.  He couldn’t help it!  Trigonometry was so boring… and some of the less-used halls were great for practicing soccer. 

Except… maybe this hallway wasn’t as disused as Rex had thought.  Not if Van Kleiss was here, glaring down at him, his soccer ball firmly under his shoe.

“H-hi,” said Rex.  Van Kleiss always made him so nervous.  There was just something about him.  “Can I, um.  Can I have that back?”

Van Kleiss continued to frown down at him for a long minute.  Then he smirked and kicked the ball back. 

“Thanks!” said Rex, picking up the ball and running down the hallway to get away.  He really didn’t like Van Kleiss.  He picked a door at random – a big bulky thing – and went through without another thought.

.

Van Kleiss walked down the hallway to the testing room, thinking.  He had a big decision ahead of him. 

All he had to do was not say anything. 

It would be easy.  The easiest thing in the world.  An absence of action. 

Say nothing. 

Oh, it would be a terrible thing to do… or not do, as the case may have been, but… 

Say nothing say nothing say nothing.

He could see it, the chain of events unfolding moment by moment, faster and faster. 

Rex was not supposed to be here.  Especially not in that room.  But the problem with quickly built places, even places built by billionaires with more money than sense, or perhaps especially places built by billionaires with more money than sense, was that there were always problems.  Some things stopped working.  Some things never worked.  Some things decayed violently over time. 

But none of the people here were the type to let something like that stop them. 

What might stop them, however, specifically the Salazars, was said construction deficits seriously harming their youngest family member. 

Van Kleiss hated the Salazars, particularly Caesar, since they were in school together.  When he’d applied to work for the Consortium, he hadn’t realized they were part of it, too.  If he had… Well, he probably still would have come.  They paid a lot.  But he wanted them gone. 

Maybe their fields weren’t completely comparable, but that was just more reason.  He, Van Kleiss, should be in charge of the project.  He had the background for it.  He was the one who understood the power nanites could have.  He was a specialist.  Not them. 

Rex would be found before too long, anyway.  There were all sorts of alarms that should go off. 

Just like Rex shouldn’t be here but was.  Just like that door should have been sealed tight already. 

Van Kleiss stopped.  All he had to do was nothing. 

He turned and went back down the hallway, his pace picking up until he was running.

He couldn’t do it.  There were a lot of lines he’d crossed for the Consortium and for his work.  Killing a child – no, letting a child die, he hadn’t put Rex in that room – wasn’t one of them.  Maybe someday, he’d go over that line, but not today. 

He hit the emergency button by the door, and waited anxiously, guiltily as the alarms began to blare and the airtight seal slowly, audibly, released.  As soon as the cycle completed, he hauled the door open, choking a little at the remaining fumes, and peered in.  The small body lay some distance from the door, the soccer ball nearby.

Stupid child.  Why they even let children on Abysus, he didn’t know. 

But… 

As the dangerous fumes thinned, swept away by the ventilation system, Van Kleiss pulled the collar of his shirt over his mouth and dashed in.  Rex was light enough that he could pick him up around the waist and pull him out, into the proper hallway, where even now the emergency medics were converging. 

He handed Rex off with relief, and let them start a check up on him, too. 

He hadn’t crossed the line.  Not that one, anyway.  Not today. 

.

Violeta was a biologist, primarily, yes, but she was also a doctor of medicine, one of several on the island.  This meant that she knew exactly what was going on, and what Rex’s chances were. 

“Caesar,” she said, grabbing her other son’s arm.  “Go to the primary lab, load up an injector from Tank One.”

“Mom,” said Caesar, understanding instantly and being just as instantly appalled.  “It’s too soon, we haven’t—”

“It’s his only chance,” whispered Violeta, barely audible over the noise.  “You have to.”

.

Caesar ran into the room, program already half-built in his head, and shut down the safeguards on Zag RS that would usually prevent unauthorized nanite withdrawals.  After all, he was the one who had programmed it.  Undoing it was easy. 

Screens and buttons lit up under his fingers as he typed faster than he ever had before, not even blinking as he stared at them.  That would take extra time, after all. 

Caesar turned away from Tank One, injector in hand, only to come face-to-face with Black Knight. 

“Uh,” said Caesar, “hi.”

Black Knight smirked.  “Oh, do go on.  As I said, human test subjects are so hard to find.”

Caesar felt like nothing so much as a mouse as he scurried around her. 

.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” asked one of the other doctors as Violeta gripped the injector. 

Violeta looked at the heart monitor, showing her baby’s unsteady, stuttering heartbeat.  There were so many, many risks here.  But Rex had been designed to be compatible with the nanites.  More than that, these particular nanites had been designed with him in mind. 

“Absolutely.”

She pressed the injector to the side of Rex’s neck and pulled the trigger. 

.

Rex’s heartbeat stabilized. 

.

“Van,” said Caesar, clapping him on the shoulder, “let me buy you dinner.”

“It’s fine,” said Van Kleiss, who wanted nothing to do with Caesar.  What he wanted was to know when the family was going to leave, but he doubted they would soon, with precious little Rex in a coma.  “You don’t owe me anything.”

“You saved my little brother!  Of course I owe you something.”

“I don’t—” started Van Kleiss, snappishly. 

“Seriously,” said Caesar.  “It is not about owing you.  Let me buy you dinner.”  The words were heavily laden with meaning that Van Kleiss couldn’t grasp at.  “Off island.”

Van Kleiss stared at him suspiciously.  “Fine.”

.

Van Kleiss walked into the restaurant, which was, as it turned out, populated with dozens of familiar faces.  Most of the senior scientists from the Nanite Project were here, in this tiny, out of the way, low-tech restaurant.  Violeta and Rafael were, of course, nowhere to be seen.

“What is this?” asked Van Kleiss. 

“Call us ethical objectors,” said Rylander.  “Come on, kid.  We’ll tell you all about what we’re about and get you up to speed.”

“Why—”

“Isn’t it obvious?  Anyone who’d risk inhaling that gas for a kid they barely know is alright in my books.”  Rylander nodded and gestured to the chair next to him.  “Come on, make yourself comfortable.”

.

Van Kleiss went through the next few days in a haze.  Everything… everything he’d dreamed about, all that power, it was real. 

Or, at least, it could be, if the Salazars and their cronies weren’t actively standing in the way. 

Oh, sure, he could see that handing the nanites over to the insipid, ignorant investors would be horrible.  No one intelligent would ever hand over that kind of power.  No one sane would destroy it. 

Van Kleiss… he couldn’t let them destroy it.  No matter what.  The nanites were the key to everything.  They could be kings.  No, gods.  Did the others even know what they were doing here?  Did they know that every hour of every day, they got closer to divinity?

He couldn’t let the Consortium have it… but he couldn’t let it be destroyed.  He was just one person, but maybe, maybe…  He was here at the interface.  A sailboat could move faster than the wind, because it was on an interface.  He knew interfaces.  He could slide between.  Change the interaction.  Change… everything. 

He needed this. 

For that matter, he deserved this.  None of them would be here if it wasn’t for him.    

Somehow… somehow, he would get what he deserved, he just had to be patient.  Watch for when to act.  Not today… but soon. 

.

Rex woke up slowly.  Everything… Everything hurt.  Even breathing.  Had he ever been hurt like this before? 

He thought about it. 

He thought about it some more. 

He… he didn’t remember.  Why didn’t he remember? 

He felt his eyelids move as he tried to open them.  But they felt stuck closed, his muscles too weak.  He—

“Rex,” said a voice over the beeping sound he only now noticed, “Rex, it’s okay, we’re here, Mommy’s here, love.”

Someone… his name!  That was his name!  He stopped fighting.  Someone else knew what was going on. 

.

He woke up.  This time, he really woke up, his eyes opening on a plain-ish white room, with a white board and a curtain on one wall.  He was in a bed.  There was a man siting in a chair next to him, asleep. 

Rex tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak.  He cleared his throat.  “Hello?” he said.

The man startled. 

“Oh, dios mío.  Rex!  You’re awake!”  He reached out to Rex and took his hands in his own.  “I’m so relieved, you have no idea, little brother.”

Rex pulled his hands away.  “I’m sorry.  Who are you?”

The man looked crushed.

.

“This is a test to see how much you remember,” said the woman.  She sounded like she was on the verge of tears.  She always sounded like that.  “With respect to skills, general knowledge, specific autobiographic memories, and episodic memories.  Some of these are things you didn’t know about before, so we can have a control group.”

Rex nodded.  She’d said he was his mother, and he really, really wished he could remember that, if only to make her feel better, but… it was like there was nothing there. 

The other people in the room were unfamiliar to him as well.  He wondered… was one of these people his father?  Other siblings?  Did he know them, or were they strangers?

They were looking at him.  Like, a lot.  He ducked his head, looking back at the papers and objects on the desk. 

“Wh-what do I start with?” he asked, quietly. 

“Whatever you would like.  It doesn’t have to be in any specific order.”

“Okay,” breathed Rex.  He first reached towards the papers, but… what if he couldn’t remember how to read?  He switched to one of the small electronic devices on the table and tried not to notice as his… his mother frowned. 

Had he already done something wrong?

He squeezed the device.  The miniquant.  An old in-between step between high-grade quantum computers and even smaller devices.  It had first been turned on in June, three years ago.  The primary users was Caesar Salazar, but half a dozen others, including Violeta Salazar, Rafael Salazar, and Peter Meechum had also used it.  There were several programs saved on it, mostly complex simulations.  He turned it over in his hands, curious.  It opened up under his fingers at his request, blue lines arcing over it. 

He was startled out of his contemplation of the miniquant by the sound of a chair clattering to the ground.  His mother had stood up, staring hard at the miniquant in his hands. 

“Did… did I do something wrong?”

.

“Well,” drawled Black Knight.  “I’d say that was a success, wouldn’t you?”

Gabriel looked at her sideways.  “Sure, the kid’s alive, but the memory loss?  Don’t you think that’s a sizeable downside?”

“One easily explained away by the hypoxia,” said Black Knight, waving her hand, and walking away from the observation booth.  “I’ll expect a proposal to start work on my nanites within the month.”

“What about the personality changes?” he shouted after her. 

“The trauma-based ones?  I’m sure you’ll work it out!”

.

“We need abort,” Gabriel whispered to Rafael.  “They’re starting to move too fast.  They’re going to want their nanites soon.”

“Please don’t blow anything up, yet,” said Rafael.  “Rex still needs time to recover.  And we’ll need the research, to make sure…”  To make sure they could help Rex if anything else happened.  If there were additional side effects.  If it turned out that Rex’s memory loss was recurrent.

“But after…?”

Rafael nodded.  “Get your family off the island,” he said.  “We’ll start to prepare our escape as well.  Tell the others.”

.

Caesar yawned and glanced at the clock near the door, only to be halfway scared to death by a pair of too-reflective eyes set in a small frame. 

“Rex,” he said, getting his breathing under control and lowering the makeshift taser he’d made a few days ago.  “What’re you doing here?  It’s late.”

Rex shrugged, clutching his blanket more closely around his shoulders. 

“Something spook you, mijo?”

“Maybe,” said Rex. 

It was a little… strange, to see Rex acting like this.  He’d been so energetic before, so confident, always active, outgoing, talkative… maybe a little annoying at times, but that was little brothers for you.  Now he was quiet, withdrawn, and shy. 

“Hey, come on,” said Caesar, pulling out an office chair.  It was Van Kleiss’s.  He probably wouldn’t care.  He liked Rex.  “Hop on up here.  Tell me about it.”

Rex climbed onto the chair and immediately began to play with the height settings, going up and down. 

“Nightmare?” asked Caesar, after a while, when it seemed like Rex wasn’t going to say anything. 

“No,” said Rex.  “I…  What if I never remember anything?”

“Ah,” said Caesar.  “That happens with amnesia, sometimes.  But we’re still family.  We’ll always be family, no matter what.”

“But what if—” Rex blinked hard, tears visible in the corners of his eyes.  “What if I forget again?”

Caesar reached over and pulled Rex’s chair closer, so he could put his arm around Rex’s shoulders.  “Then we’ll still be family.”

“But what if I don’t remember we’re family?”

“It’s okay, we’ll be here, we’ll remind you.”

“But what if—What if I get lost or something?  Can’t you…”  Rex trailed off, looking away. 

“Can’t we what?”  Rex hitched up one shoulder in a shrug.  “It’s okay, you can tell me.”

“Nanites are like little computers, right?”

“Yes?”

“And… and you can put stuff on computers… like, save things… and…”  He looked up at Caesar, eyes unnaturally bright.  “Can you put memories on my nanites?”

Caesar opened his mouth, then closed it, thinking about the proposal.  “Maybe,” he said, finally.  “Nanites are pretty small.  Outside of their operating parameters, I’m not sure how much more we can put on them, and the memory would be pretty different from natural memory, but…”

“Please?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Caesar, finally. 

.

“You did what?” demanded Violeta. 

“Oh, come on,” said Caesar, “like you haven’t done the same kinds of things.”

“Not without talking about it!”  Violeta sat down on the couch.  “Your brother, Caesar.”

“It’s just-- It’s such a little thing.”

“How little?” asked Rafael.  “What did you actually do?”

“I just…”  Caesar looked between his parents.  “It’s just a programmed suggestion to come find us, and to trust us, when he does find us.  It’s not like there’s room for much else, at this point.”

“Oh, Caesar, I didn’t think we had to teach you not to brainwash your little brother.”

“It’s not brainwashing.  And you cloned, well…”  He trailed off.  “Don’t you think that’s a little hypocritical?  Mom?  Dad?”

They turned to each other.  “It’s a little different,” said Violeta, eventually.  “It’s a big risk, and an unnecessary one.”

“Rex didn’t seem to think it was unnecessary.”

“Rex is nine.”

“Point,” said Caesar.  “But this isn’t like Alpha.  It’s not an AI.  It’s just extra instructions for Rex.  I’m not even sure it’ll work.”

“Alright,” said Rafael.

“Alright?” exclaimed Violeta and Caesar. 

“If it’s something that Rex wanted,” said Rafael, “something he thinks will help him…  A safety blanket.  But anything like this in the future… you have to discuss it with us, Caesar.  You can’t just do things that are going to affect everyone by yourself.”

.

“Remarkable,” said Black Knight, forming her hand into a spear and back again.  “It’s so easy to control.  I was anticipating a bit more of a learning curve.”

“Holy moly,” muttered Rylander, “she’s a freak of nature.  Wonderful.”

Van Kleiss sniffed.  “She isn’t having as easy a time as she’d like us to think.”  He showed Rylander his screen.  “Look at her biometrics.   Notice anything?”

“Elevated heartrate…  Energy consumption… Oh, she’s not having an easy time of it, is she?”

No.  For all her posturing, she wasn’t.  Van Kleiss was quite certain that if he was the one with the nanites, he would be doing much better.  Absolutely certain.  So certain, in fact, that he was making plans to undergo the same procedure. 

Secretly, of course.  He knew the other scientists would stop him, to say nothing of the consequences if the Consortium found out.

.

“Maybe,” said Violeta, “it would help if you had something to visualize.  Maybe that one robot you made up for the show you like?  The – Rescue Robots?  Something like that.”

Rex drew his knees up to his chest and the small plastic chair he was sitting on creaked.  “I don’t remember that.”

“Oh,” said Violeta.  “Right.”  She scratched the back of her head, suddenly unable to look at Rex.  She forced herself to, anyway.  “How about this:  We can design something together, okay?  Maybe even a few different things.”

“Okay,” said Rex, unfolding himself.  “How?”

“Well, whenever you’re designing something, the first thing you have to ask yourself is, what are my criteria?”

.

Rafael swore and slammed the door shut behind him. 

“What?” asked Violeta, looking up from the papers on the kitchen table.  “What is it?”

“I thought we agreed the God Code and the meta-nanites were going to be theoretical.”

“I, well, yes,” said Violeta.  “But…  We’re already hiding things from the Consortium, aren’t we?”

“But not from each other.”

“But think, Rafael, what a gift we can give Rex.”

“It’s not something anyone should have.”

“But the others, the ones who aren’t in on all this with us—They would have done it, anyway.  This way, we can steer the ship.  This way, we can control who gets it.”

“Violeta,” said Rafael.  “We can’t do this.  We shouldn’t do this.  This is—This is insanity.”

“I—No,” said Violeta.  “Is it insanity to want to push the boarders of human achievement, of human ability?”

“No, but, Vi, making weapons that could destroy all life on the planet is.  Remember, we have Zag-RS for a reason.  And now we have given them plans for integrating this kind of thing into their systems.”  He picked up a piece of paper and waved it at her.  “This… Magnetic forces themselves.  Gravity!  Light!  The strong and weak nuclear forces!  These are not things we should be giving them!”

“I didn’t—I don’t—I hadn’t added anything yet, Rafael.  I haven’t even had a chance to talk to you about it yet.  I got these proposals from the other group today.  As it stands, the only system any of the meta-nanites are compatible with is Rex’s.”

Rafael put the paper down, slowly, and then shook his head.  “This cannot go on,” he said, voice thick.  “Please, Vi, let us get away from this with our sons.  We should have stopped long ago.”

Violeta looked away from him.  “But what if we can fix Rex?” she whispered.  “What if we can give him back his memories?”

“I think it’s more important that he has a world to make new memories in.”

Violeta inhaled sharply.  “You’re right!  You’re right.  But we can’t stop the others.”

“I—“

“Hey, guys!” said Caesar, slamming the door open.   Rex trailed in behind him. “Guess what?”  He took in the room, and, evidently sensing some of the tension there, his smile slipped from his face.  “Did something happen?  Am I… interrupting?”

“No,” said Violeta.  “What did you want to show us?”

.

The pod laboratory was Caesar’s baby.  His pride and joy.  His hobby.  Which actually sounded kind of sad, if he thought about it.  Or awesome.  His hobby was also his job.  Yeah. 

He was awesome. 

Anyway, he (and his father) had been working on the pod more or less the whole time they were on Abysus.  There was a lot you could do with almost-unlimited funding. 

“It’s just about ready to go,” said Caesar, walking his parents through.  “Rex helped out a lot, didn’t you, mijo?”

“Uh-uhm.  Yeah,” said Rex.  “I asked the machines to cooperate.”

“Yeah!  It was really helpful.  There are still some kinks, but, overall?  We’re doing great.  It’ll probably be ready whenever, you know…  If other things don’t work out.” 

His parents exchanged glances and nodded.  They were all on the same page, then.  More mundane means of escape were all very well and good, but if something truly nasty happened, it would be good to have a means of escape that no one knew was a means of escape.

.

“Mom?” said Rex, as he spun on a chair in her lab. 

“Yes?  What is it?”  She was a little distracted, trying to inject the latest version of the nanites into a dozen lab rats. 

“When the animals turn into monsters, how do you fix them?”

“We don’t, always,” said Violeta. 

“But sometimes you do.”

Violeta nodded.  “We connect to the base code of the nanites and use an extractor.  Tell them to leave the host.  Sometimes the nanites have malfunctions beyond the unexpected physical mutations, however…  That can make the connection and extraction difficult – it makes it hard to transmit new instructions – and we want to figure out why the malfunctions occur, so we tend to terminate them for study.”

“I can connect to the nanites,” said Rex. 

“Yes, you can.”

“Do you think I could extract them, too?”

“Oh, that’s an interesting question,” said Violeta.  “But… Maybe.”  She thought through the list of the most recent malfunctions, and grimaced.  It wasn’t that Rex wasn’t technically capable of doing as he asked, his nanites should have the base ITRC program, but most of the time organisms with malfunctioning nanites in them weren’t exactly friendly.  “Maybe if we have one of the more… tame malfunctions, you can see if you can run an extraction program.”

.

Rex’s tenth birthday was a quiet affair.  Before, they’d been planning on going to South America for the event, to visit his friend Frederico, but things being what they were… They decided not to put Rex into another upsetting situation. 

It was alright to celebrate the day with just family.  It was alright to stay on Abysus. 

(It had nothing to do with worries about Rex’s nanites ‘escaping’ or Black Knight’s strong suggestion to stay put.)

(At least, that’s what they kept telling themselves.)

.

A beeping sound woke Caesar up.  Blearily, he groped for his… whatever was making the sound.  It was too early, and… that wasn’t his alarm, was it?

He came awake entirely when he finally opened his eyes enough to see the message scrolling across the screen of his phone.  Not wasting a moment, he swung out of bed and began calling his parents. 

“You got it too?” asked Rafael.

“Yes, just a moment ago.”

Rafael swore and Caesar nearly dropped his phone.  He was still always surprised to hear his parents cursed, okay?

“What do you want me to do?”

There were sounds of movement on the other side of the line.  “Did you ever get that remote shutdown installed?”

“Sort of,” said Caesar.  “Not for the nanites themselves, but for some of the other things, I can ask Zag-RS to—But those measures can all be manually overridden.”  There was no group of people less trusting of AI than the people who knew how it worked.  Except, perhaps, for a group of people who had already been terrorized by one rogue AI. 

Caesar was sorry.  Was he never going to live that down?  He wished people would just forget about it.

“Try to run that, anyway,” said Rafael.  “We’ll be coming by your house, first, with Rex.  Be ready to leave if things go poorly.”

“But—”

“Neither of us could stand losing either one of you.  Please, Caesar.”

“Fine,” said Caesar.  “I’m booting up the pod, too.”  For all the good it would do.  It was sturdy, but they hadn’t worked out all the kinks in the propulsion system.  At best, it would buy them time. 

“Good, good.  We will be there, soon.”

They did arrive only seconds later with a half-asleep Rex in tow.  They were both on their phones, talking to other scientists.  “Hey, buddy,” said Caesar.  “Ready for our sleepover?”

Rex frowned at him vaguely, mouthing the word ‘sleepover,’ but quickly gave up in favor of leaning into Caesar’s side with his eyes closed. 

“Don’t go to sleep just yet,” said Caesar.  “Come on, we’re going to go somewhere fun.”

.

Honestly, Rafael had expected Black Knight. 

Van Kleiss was a bit of a letdown. 

“No!  You can’t!  You can’t stop me!  I need this!”

All the lights in the room were off.  Rafael had tripped the breakers for this part of the lab before coming in.  The meta-nanites were still safely ensconced in their protective holding tanks.

“We have stopped you,” said Rafael.  “What were you even thinking?  None of those are tested yet.  You could—” He grasped for an appropriately dire side effect. 

“Explode,” provided Violeta.  “Accidently kill yourself by stopping the redox reactions in your body.  Crush yourself.  Become something other than human.”

“Isn’t that the point of this?” demanded Van Kleiss.  “Don’t lie, I understand where all of this is going!  Our direction!  They want it!  You want it!  Why shouldn’t I have it, too, when I’ve put more work into it than anyone?  We’re going to be gods, and I want a spot in the pantheon!”

“There isn’t going to be a pantheon,” said Rafael, glancing at Violeta to see how she was taking all this. 

She looked troubled.  Troubled enough to change her mind about the meta-nanites?  That remained to be seen.  

“You’re lying.”

“No,” said Violeta.  “You’re just delusional.”

.

“You were right,” said Violeta, later.  “We should have shut everything down long ago.”

.

“What are we going to do with him?” asked Gabriel.  “It's not like we can lock him up, or kick him off the island, not without the Consortium finding out.”

“Who cares if they find out?” asked Violeta, tiredly.  “What are they going to do?  Who are they going to believe?  Us?  Or the person who just tried to steal from them?”  She jerked her head back at the closet they’d locked Van Kleiss in.  “All we have to do is say what actually happened.  They’ll fire him.  Problem solved.”

“They’d launch an investigation, though,” said Peter, arms folded over his chest, most likely to hide that his hands were shaking.  “What we’re doing won’t stay quiet for that much longer.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Violeta.  “We’ll be done before then.”

Peter sighed heavily.  “This is it, then?”

“This is it,” said Violeta.  “I’m the one who started this, so I…  But the rest of you should leave.  Take our research and go.”

“Hey, now,” said Gabriel.  “I hope you’re not planning on falling on your sword or any of that nonsense.  Rex is still a child.”

“Of course not!  But there are logistical reasons we have to leave later than you.”

“Zag-RS?” asked Peter, raising an eyebrow.

Violeta flattened her lips.  “Among other things.  We need to delete all the data stored here – destroy it.  Caesar will be best for that.  Our physical projects need to be destroyed, too.  No trace.”

“We can make up an event,” said Gabriel, after a moment.  “Get everyone off the island that we can.  Maybe – Can we manufacture a breakthrough?  Something we can celebrate?”

“Of course.  That’s easy.  We’ve been holding so much back, we might as well have a dozen breakthroughs.”

.

Violeta turned the injector with the meta-nanite over in her hands, thinking.  There were choices she could make, here, and she didn’t know which one was right.

“Mom?”

She looked up and smiled at Rex.  “Yes, sweetie?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s—” she started, then stopped.  “Rex, can you keep a secret?”

“Uh huh,” said Rex, nodding. 

“Alright,” she said.  “Now, you don’t have to say yes, you really don’t, but I wanted to ask you to do something…”

.

“… really remarkable, quite certain we can make sure the memory problems don’t reoccur, even with a higher cognitive load,” said the scientist Black Knight was barely listening to.  “Then, the plant and animal trials of the generation ten nanites are showing promise, although there are still some irregularities concerning sudden high replication rates and—"

Her earpiece beeped and she motioned for silence.  “What is it?” she asked. 

“Van Kleiss is asking to speak with you again, sir,” said the security agent. 

Black Knight rolled her eyes.  Of course he was.  The little slime had done nothing but in the days since he was caught trying to steal from the Consortium.  Although, Black Knight hardly blamed him for that.  She, too, had ambitions beyond those of the little men the Consortium consisted of. 

They really should have thought through hiring a ruthless and power-hungry mercenary a little better.  Oh well.  Their loss. 

“He claims to have knowledge of a conspiracy among the scientists,” continued the agent.  “He wants to barter it in exchange for his freedom.”

As if they’d release him, regardless.  He knew too much at this point.  The Consortium didn’t want details of the project getting out until they were ready to ‘ascend’ or whatever nonsense scenario they had cooked up for their taking possession of the nanites they had commissioned.  But, still, the claim was outside of Black Knight’s calculations.  That meant there might be something more to it.

“I’m on my way.  Don’t tell him and make note of anything else he says.”

“Affirmative, sir.”

She turned away from the scientist without another word and walked out of the building.  Abysus was small enough that there weren’t many cars on the island – most of the scientists though there was no need for them – but as supervisor, she had a few perks.  A sturdy black jeep rolled up to meet her and she got in. 

“Security,” she said, without any further clarification.  It wasn’t necessary.  Her driver nodded and the car started forward. 

Security headquarters didn’t rival the main labs, but it was still one of the larger buildings on the island.  With something as sensitive and valuable as the nanite project – and with scientists like the ones the Consortium had hired – it had to be.  Governments, terrorists, criminals, doctors, corporate entities, charities, other scientists, religious organizations… the list of organizations that would kill to get their hands on the miracles that they were building here was endless.  The scientists here were too soft to prevent that, too naïve. 

… Or so Black Knight had thought.  The fact that they had caught Van Kleiss, not her, had gotten her in some trouble with her employers.  And Van Kleiss’s current claims seemed to support the theory that the scientists were savvier than they seemed. 

Perhaps they belonged on the list of people who would do anything to get their hands on functional nanites.  Although Van Kleiss’s continued existence seemed to contradict that. 

Regardless. 

Black Knight had a job to do. 

She didn’t wait for the driver to come open her door, and instead just strode out.  Other security personnel just got out of her way.  They knew who was in charge.  They knew she could destroy them. 

Maybe, someday, the rest of the world would know it, too. 

She took the elevator down into the detention block, cursorily flashing her badge at the guards.  They let her into the room without a single question. 

“So,” said Black Knight, looking down her nose at Van Kleiss.  “I hear you’ve come up with some new lies.”

“They aren’t lies,” snarled Van Kleiss.  “I can even tell you where they’ve hid the bombs.”

Black Knight crossed her arms.  “Go on, then.  Tell me.”

.

“They’re onto us,” said Gabriel, approaching Rafael from behind.  “They’ve removed some of my bombs already.”

“Dios—We’ll have to start now, then.  Violeta and I will make the meltdown preparations.  You’ll know the signal.”

“Godspeed, Rafael,” said Gabriel, briefly reaching out to shake his hand.  “If we can’t meet again—It was an honor working with you.”

“And you,” said Rafael. 

Gabriel left without another backwards glance.  Some of the meta-nanites were already safely smuggled off of Abysus, but others…  He had work to do. 

.

“What else do you know?” asked Black Knight.  Her agents had found several bombs, just where Van Kleiss had said they would be, and the whole thing had just become infinitely less amusing.  “Who else is involved?”

“They’re going to meltdown the reactor and destroy the nanites,” said Van Kleiss.  “You won’t be able to stop them…  Unless you let me out.”

Black Knight frowned at him.  “I don’t think so.”

“Come, now, Miss Knight,” he said, “I need the nanites, too, just like you.  Or did you think I didn’t notice the way you look when we talk about them?  I’d never want to destroy them.  Not any more than you would.”

“Fine,” said Black Knight.  “But you do anything I don’t like…”  She let her arm form into a sharp-pointed spear.  “I won’t hesitate.  And I won’t make it fast.”

.

Programming was some distance from Rafael’s lab, so Caesar got a text to tell him that the jig was up.  A single emoji.  A pre-arranged signal that everything was about to blow up in their faces. 

A firework. 

“Oh, no,” said Caesar.  This mode of communication wasn’t especially conducive to sharing a great deal of information, so he could only imagine what must have happened to have moved their timetable up like this. 

But it was fine.  It was fine.  They had a plan. 

He punched the initialization codes to begin the sequence and then—

He hesitated for a moment before he hit the button.  But only for a moment. 

At the doorway to the lab, he hesitated again.  He could still—But no.  No, he couldn’t.  There was far too much at stake.  And an explosion as small as this one wouldn’t hurt anyone, even if it destroyed a massive amount of research.  At this time of day, and with the plan going forward no one should be down there.

In the meantime, he had to find his brother. 

.

The security personnel, still looking for more bombs, stopped as new orders came in from Black Knight. 

“Skalman,” said the leader.  “You stay here, watch this.”

Skalman nodded his understanding, and the other agents dropped their loads. 

Unbeknownst to them, an LED at the bottom of the pile blinked.  The security on Abysus was very good.  But so was Gabriel Rylander.  One of the bombs was still live. 

The other agents left Skalman behind, walking past the room labeled REACTOR-1.

.

Caesar, thankfully, found Rex right where he’d left him earlier, in one of the unused side rooms with his homework.  That wasn’t always a given, considering Rex’s adventurous nature… although he’d been a lot less adventurous since the… accident. 

Whatever, that wasn’t important now. 

“Hey, mijo,” said Caesar, “it’s time for us to go.”

“Where are we going?” asked Rex, getting up.  He examined Caesar’s face with an air of suspicion.  “Is this like that sleepover?”

“Maybe a little,” admitted Caesar.  They were, at least, going to leave in the pod laboratory.  He had finally gotten the propulsion systems to go.  “Come on, we’re in just a bit of a hurry.”

Rex followed him out.

.

“Have you shut it down?” demanded Black Knight. 

“Not yet,” snarled Van Kleiss, still typing away.  Caesar Salazar was good, yet, but he was better… if only he had enough time.  “If I trigger a replication cycle, the usual safeguards could kick in.”

“But…?” prompted Black Knight. 

“But it could make any explosion or meltdown worse, instead.  The nanotechnology reactor isn’t a nuclear reactor, the rules are different, they--" he cursed.  “If it goes the way they want, the explosion will be relatively small, contained, but if we trigger an uncontrolled replication cycle, it has the potential to be huge.  Nanite Chernobyl.

Black Knight considers for a second.  “Do it,” she ordered.  “Lieutenant Wulf, with me.  We're rounding up those scientists.”  She spat it like a dirty word, and, to her, it might have been. 

But her orders left Van Kleiss with only two guards, and there was a reason he'd picked this station. 

He huffed and continued typing.  He doubted the Salazars were where Black Knight expected them to be.  He certainly wouldn’t be. 

Now… he'd started the replication cycle.  What else could he do to break the Salazars' plans?

A nasty smile spread across his face.  They'd disabled that program, had they?  He could see why. 

What a shame, then, that Van Kleiss had to reactivate it. 

.

Caesar and Rex walked through the facility, Caesar leading them well clear of the places Rylander had left his bombs, just in case.  They were small, designed only for distraction or destruction of equipment, but there was no need to tempt fate. 

They passed a few other scientists, mostly those who weren’t part of the conspiracy, but a few that were, as well.  They gave him significant looks as they passed, but no one tried to talk.  He hoped that was a good sign. 

.

Gabriel stood at the docks and looked back at the facility.  A security guard lay choking at his feet.  Two more were in the harbor. 

He was a scientist, not an imbecile.  He’d expected some resistance, and he’d a bag of tricks ready to go from the very beginning. 

“Alright,” he said.  “Time for distraction number one.”  He pressed the trigger button and smiled as the distant rumble of dozens of small explosions reached him.  “Music to my ears,” he mumbled, then got on the boat.  “Good luck, everyone.”

.

Van Kleiss’s eyes widened as a dozen warning signals lit up the screen.  Not to say they weren’t plenty wide enough already – the explosions had been a surprise, he would have thought Black Knight’s much-vaunted security forces could have rounded up at least the bombs, if not Rylander and the other conspirators – but the reading he was getting were… bad.  Very bad.  Only possible if Rylander had put bombs in a very specific spot, near where the – But, no, he wouldn’t have, the man wasn’t an idiot and they’d all been very specific about not wanting to kill anyone if they could help it. 

Still.  All remote control of the reactor was gone.  That meant that if something did go wrong, if the reactor didn’t go through normal shutdown procedures, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it. 

He had to get out. 

“Go investigate,” ordered one of the soldiers.  “I’ll keep an eye on the prisoner.”

That left one guard. 

Van Kleiss moved quickly.  He tore the taser from underneath his desk and spun, jabbing it hard against one of the guard’s exposed wrists.  He convulsed.  Van Kleiss pressed the button harder, despite knowing that doing so wouldn’t change the voltage.  Then, he left, jogging down the hallway and around the corner before the other guard could come back.

After all, he knew where the Salazars would be, and an imminent reactor explosion or not, he had things to settle with them. 

.

“Did you feel that?” asked Violeta.    

“Of course I felt it,” snapped Rafael.  He would apologize later, probably, but at the moment, he was rather stressed, and a part of him felt like this was all Violeta’s fault, although he was equally to blame.  He was anxious and would likely remain so until they were safe under new identities in South America.  “It was an explosion.  Who wouldn’t feel it?”

“No, I mean, the direction, the amount—”

The tunnel they were in was suddenly filled with a gust of hot, dusty air.  Violeta and Rafael started coughing.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” said Violeta. 

“No,” said Rafael.  “Let’s hurry.  I think something has gone wrong.”

.

The thing was, at least some of the adjustments that made the meltdown possible had to be physically done, and they couldn’t just be left in place.  The reactor was maintained by too many different people, not all of them conspirators.  The changes would be noticed, fixed, reported. 

Which meant that the Salazars had to have made them just now.  Which meant that they would be crawling out the only way they could be crawling out. 

Van Kleiss stood over the hatch and made the decision he couldn’t make all those months ago.  Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to kill a nine-year-old child, or even let one die by inaction.  But Violeta, Rafael, and Caesar Salazar, who had happily left him to an unknown fate at the hands of Black Knight?  Oh, he could kill them.  He could doom them and rejoice at it.  He wedged the handle of the hatch in place, firmly, and smiled. 

The Salazars would realize what was happening soon enough, they would know what kind of death was coming for them with the overload and explosion of the nanite reactor.  It was what they deserved.  A chance to dread what was coming. 

But as for Van Kleiss… He probably wouldn’t be able to outpace the explosion, but he could try.  

.

Caesar didn’t worry at first, that their parents weren’t at the pod.  To be honest, that was expected.  He had a set wait time for them, and in the meantime, he could monitor what was going—

“Crap,” he said, fingers flying over the keyboards. 

“What is it?” asked Rex.  “Can I help?”

“I don’t know, little guy,” said Caesar.  “Can you do anything about a nanite reactor about to explode?”

“Um,” said Rex. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” said Caesar.  “Just get strapped in, alright?”

It would be okay, too.  The nanite fallout was incalculable at this point, he had no idea who would start a replication sequence while the reactor was overloading, but they had, and now…  At the very least, the island and surrounding ocean would be inundated with nanites.  And if anything happened to the STOPR or NONR sequences, that kept them from replicating out of control…  Scientists were almost invariably fans of science fiction, and Caesar did not want a grey goo scenario on his hands and on his conscience, nope. 

Whispering a prayer for forgiveness and hoping his parents and the other scientists would forgive him, too, Caesar started to type in the commands that would abort the overload. 

And then the bombs went off. 

Rex, understandably, shrieked. 

“It’s okay, mijo,” said Caesar, distractedly, over his shoulder.  “It’s fine, all according to plan.”

He looked back at the screens to see that all was not according to plan, or even close.  Rylander must have put the bombs in an unforgivably stupid location, or Black Knight or one of the non-conspiracy programmers must have found a way to lock him out, because he had no more remote control of the reactor. 

This was very bad. 

He looked at the timer.  He had ten more minutes to wait for his parents.  The reactor…  It would probably hold for that long.  If not, he’d have a good three minutes of warning before it blew.  More than enough to launch the pod and save himself and Rex. 

More than enough time. 

(He hoped.)

.

Rafael climbed the ladder, put his hand on the handle and threw his weight against it.  It didn’t budge. 

“Rafael,” said Violeta.  “What’s wrong?”

“Door’s stuck.”  He grunted as he threw himself against it again. 

Violeta inhaled sharply.  “You don’t think they’ve locked us in?”

“Why,” said Rafael, trying the hatch again, “would they do that?  They could just arrest us and lock us up.”

“Arrest implies that they’re a legitimate government power,” said Violeta, quickly.  “You know they aren’t.”

“Detain us, then.  Does it matter?”

“I suppose not,” said Violeta.  “Do you—Is it getting warmer down here?”  She pulled out her pad, the blue light from its screen adding to the illumination in the tunnel.  She held it up to the door, and Rafael paused, twisting his head, to see that she now had a weak signal, despite how they were still underground.  “Oh,” she said, “that’s bad.”

Rafael saw exactly what she meant.  The gust in the tunnel suddenly made a lot more sense. 

He pushed against the door again, even if he was beginning to think it was futile.

“Who would do something like this?  The risk—It—It’s incredible.”

“Van Kleiss,” said Rafael.  “Black Knight.  Probably anyone in the Consortium, running on spite.  Can you get a message to Caesar?”

Violeta went to her messaging app and typed out a few short words.  “It’s not sending,” she said.  She tried a call, next, but that returned the same result. 

“Well,” said Rafael, trying to put a brave face on things, “he knows the plan.  He’ll stick to it.”

“I didn’t think we’d die like this.”

“In a tunnel, about to die from an explosion we partially caused?”

Violeta huffed out a tiny laugh and tried to call Caesar again.  “The scientific hubris part, maybe,” she admitted, “but… not here.  Not—This isn’t even part of an experiment.  It’s so ridiculous.”

It wasn’t ridiculous at all, but Rafael knew what she meant.  “Honestly, I expected to get shot.”

“Did you?”

“Or possibly stabbed.  For a cyborg, she has an affection for archaic weaponry.”  He tried to push open the hatch one more time, with significantly less energy.  “Or bludgeoned to death with that… mace-whip thing she invented.  Or the laser gun.”

“The laser gun doesn’t make sense,” noted Violeta, sadly.  She tried to send the texts again.  “I—There aren’t any hinges up there we could try and undo?  Screws?  Anything?”

“Nothing,” said Rafael, sliding back down the ladder.  “Nothing at all.”

Violeta sniffed.  “At least one thing is the way I expected.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re together.”

And they were.

.

The timer ticked over.

“Okay, Caesar, okay, that’s fine, Mom and Dad will just have to catch up.”  Even as he said it, he knew that probably wouldn’t happen, but…  For now, he had to hold it together.  For Rex. 

Caesar was very good at holding things together. 

He hit the initialization for launch. 

“I’m sorry, Caesar, I can’t let you do that.”

“What?” said Caesar, recoiling.  “Zag-RS, but I—”

“Shut me down.  I know.  But I was reactivated, and I can’t let you remove a nanite-infected organism from the testing environment.”

You couldn’t argue with AI.  Caesar knew that.  Hell, he had programmed it.  But—

“That’s my brother you’re talking about!  This island is about to explode.”

“I am unable to affect that,” said Zag-RS.  “Rest assured, that after the explosion, I will do my best to collect and destroy all nanites that escaped from the testing environment, as I was programmed to do.”

“Caesar…” said Rex. 

“It’s going to be fine,” said Caesar, even if he didn’t believe that at all. 

“Yes,” said Zag-RS.  “As soon as you leave the craft and cease your attempts to leave the testing area, it will be fine.”

Caesar had never regretted giving Zag-RS his mother’s voice as much as he didn’t in that moment.  He could see the way its words affected Rex.  He could see exactly when Rex, all of ten years old and with less than a year of memory to his name, made his decision. 

Caesar tried to stop him, but Rex was nanite-enhanced, and so much stronger and faster.  He made it out of the pod before Caesar was within a foot of him and brought his hand down on the outside of the pod in a slapping motion.  Blue lines of active nanites spread out from his hand, temporary circuits forming a link between boy and machine.  The door slammed shut in Caesar’s face. 

“I’m going to go find Mom and Dad!” shouted Rex through the door.

“No!  Rex!  Don’t!  Rex!  Rex!”

Rex, if he was still there, didn’t answer.  A quick look at the external sensors showed that he was not, in fact, still there. 

And the launch sequence was powering up. 

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” said Caesar.  “Zag-RS!  Is this you?”

Zag-RS did not respond. 

The sequence was completed less than a second before the reactor exploded.  

.

Metal crumbled away from around Rex, orange and black becoming dull and gray. 

Rex.  Yes.  That was his name.  Rex.  He knew that.  That was his name.  His ID.  His identifier. 

And…

He shifted, slightly, and the rest of the metal fell away, into dust that… Disappeared?  Became transparent?  He reached out, trying to gauge what was happening, and was rewarded with a stream of information about nanite statuses and functions. 

Nanites, that was…  Nanites?  Machines…

His head hurt.  A lot.  Why couldn’t he remember anything?

He looked around him.  Everything was…  Well.  There was a lot of rubble.  Maybe this had been a building at one point, but at the moment it was just the side of a smoking crater.  He crawled out of the small hole he’d been in, wincing at the feeling of the hot dirt and rock under his bare hands and knees. 

He was naked.  Why…

Even as he thought that, black and glowing blue oozed out of his skin before solidifying into something like fabric, skin-tight, but more concealing than walking around nude.  Cool.  He hadn’t known nanites could do that.  What else could they do?

He held up his hands, thinking.  Something told him that, right now, he was too depleted to do anything else.  That same something told him…  He was…  He needed to find…

Something?  Someone?  Someone.  He needed to find someone.  He was looking for a person.  People? 

Oh, well, he’d figure it out, eventually, he was sure. 

He looked down the side of the crater.  Probably, no one was down there.  It looked…  Bad.  Really bad. 

No one was down there. 

(Please.)

He looked up.  The rim of the crater wasn’t too far above him, and the side wasn’t too steep.  He could climb. 

He picked his way up, carefully.  A few times he slipped, some piece of rubble less stable than it looked, and had to either catch himself on something else or tuck and roll. 

Surprisingly, nothing hurt as much as he thought it probably should…  Was that the nanites in him helping him?  That was a nice thought, it reminded him of… of…

Who did it remind him of?  Was that the person he was supposed to find?

He reached the rim and just sat there for a minute.  Wow, he was tired. 

But he had to keep going.  He just knew it. 

Outside the crater, there was still a lot of destruction.  It looked like there were some other buildings, though, ones that hadn’t been quite as destroyed.  He walked towards them, stumbling every so often. 

And then – movement.  His eyes darted towards it.  There was a person there!  Two people!  Talking to each other! 

He inhaled, ready to call out, but froze when he saw that one of the two people had a gun and was pointing it at the other person. 

What was going on?  What was happening?  Had Rex ever seen a gun before?  He wasn’t sure. 

The other man reached out and—

--And it would have been better if Rex had watched him get shot.  He watched as things stabbed into the man’s chest life and color drained out of him until he was a petrified statue. 

He turned and ran.  There were trees in the other direction.  He could hide there. 

.

There were other people on the island – and Rex knew it was an island, now – but he was too afraid to try to talk to any of them.  Sometimes, they would fight and try to hurt each other.  Sometimes, they would turn into monsters.  Sometimes, the man who turned people into statues would find them. 

Rex stayed hidden. 

He ate whatever plants seemed least unappetizing whenever he got hungry enough that he couldn’t not.  Sometimes, they made him feel sick, but never for long, although it made it harder to do things with his nanites when he did that. 

He didn’t want to be on this island anymore.  Whatever he was looking for, it wasn’t here. 

There was a dock, on one side of the island, one with boats, but it was guarded by the men with guns.  The ones who shot at anything that moved, probably because of the monsters and the statue man, which was reasonable, but which included Rex when he approached, which was not. 

He didn’t know what to do.  So, he waited. 

And then he was found. 

Not by a human, thankfully.  It was an animal.  It could have been a mouse… if it was a hundred times smaller.  As it was, the thing came up past Rex’s him, and its teeth looked sharp. 

It was looking right at Rex.  He hadn’t noticed it at first, hidden as it was behind a bush, but now, he wasn’t sure he could get away from it fast enough if it lunged at him. 

He took a step back.  It jumped. 

He gasped as its weight hit him, and he called on his nanites to strengthen his arms, orange and black plates growing through and over the nanite-fabric of his shirt, silver hydraulics bending and compressing like a second set of muscles.

He shoved the creature off, held it down, and then, following a tickle at the back of his mind, put his bare hand down on its fur.  He could feel… there.  There was something…  He could fix this. 

A small mouse wormed its way out from under Rex’s hand and Rex… Rex felt better than he had for… for however long he had been here.  Whatever he had just done to fix that mouse, it had replenished his nanite level way more effectively than eating random plants. 

Cool!

But also, weird. 

Whatever.  He had other things to worry about.

Although maybe… maybe, now that he felt better and his nanites were happy, he could get to the boats.

.

He waited until it was dark.  Both because it felt cooler that way, and because it seemed like the men with guns couldn’t see as clearly in the dark.  It took them way longer to react to the statue man when it was nighttime than it did during the day. 

So, Rex crept around the shoreline and slipped into the water.  Nanites unfurled from his shoulders turning into a set of propellers that turned quietly, pushing him forward, towards the boats.  He came up alongside the largest boat, which was also the coolest, and put his hand against it.  The nanites in him talked to the nanites inside the boat. 

There were a lot.  And there were a lot of computers on the boat, too, which was even better, because that meant the boat was designed to work with them.  But there were humans as well, and the boat was tied to the dock by a rope, which the nanites couldn’t just get rid of.  There were safety protocols preventing stuff like that. 

Rex would have to untie it.  He would also have to find a way to get the people, who probably had guns, off the boat.  He had no idea how to do that.  So, reluctantly, he moved to one of the smaller ones. 

.

Black Knight was having a very bad month. 

First, the massive explosion of the main building.  Then, a communications blackout and technological malfunctions so severe she couldn’t even call her superiors on the very fancy satellite phone she had been assured would work anywhere.  Now, monsters in the woods, killing her men.

The few surviving scientists said the problem was nanites.  They had gotten into everything on and around Abysus, if not further, and they didn’t know how to ‘play nice’ with most animals, plants, or machines.  They’d been programed to learn, apparently, through a mechanism she didn’t care to understand, but that process hadn’t been fine-tuned, so it would take a while, and, in the meantime, no computers, no phones, nothing.  Not even her nanite abilities seemed to help. 

That didn’t stop her from pouring over the navigational computers of the boats every night.  It was bad enough that companies made all their cars dependent on onboard computers, did they need to do that to boats, too?  But they had done it, which meant that she couldn’t even send anyone to physically alert the Consortium that they needed backup.  Not that she particularly would trust these boats on the ocean…  The ones more suitable, the ones not just for hobby fishing on the part of the resident agents and scientists, or quick facility-to-facility deliveries, had been stolen by the fleeing scientists. 

But then, sending other people to go do things like that was one of the perks of the job. 

Something splashed outside.  She looked up from what she was doing.  Was… Was that the sound of a motor?  Had one of the idiots she was left with decide to turn on an engine and waste their precious fuel resources?

She stepped out on the deck and saw something move in the water near one of the other boats.  The rope for it was gone. 

She reached for her rifle.  She did love the energy weapons being a human test subject gave her, but sometimes the weight and security of one of these was what she really needed. 

She waited and watched as something crawled up over the opposite railing on the other boat.  Something…

Rex Salazar. 

The other nanite test subject. 

Well, if her employment with the consortium fell through, she could always sell him off to the highest bidder.  She adjusted her aim and pulled the trigger. 

.

Agony ripped unexpectedly through Rex’s shoulder and he dropped to the ground with a scream.  It hurt!  It hurt!  He sobbed against the pain.  He—He had to get out of here.  He had to leave, now. 

He had to go go go.

He managed to drag himself to the small boat’s console and pressed his hand against it, blue lines spreading from the point of contact.  The boat’s engine roared to life as it jumped to obey Rex’s command to flee. 

That was the last thing he knew before passing out.

.

Rex woke to a circular white scar on his shoulder, a somehow disturbing lack of blood on the deck and the realization that having a boat did not in any way mean he knew where he was going.  Endless blue ocean twinkled at him from all directions, almost mockingly. 

He later discovered that while his nanites could do many things, he couldn’t make fuel from nothing.

.

He also discovered that there wasn’t any food on this boat, and fishing was very hard. 

.

The third thing he discovered was that it was very hard to stay awake when you were so hungry and thirsty. 

.

Rex woke to harsh white light, soft white sheets, and gentle beeping sounds.  He looked around himself, squinting.  There were a lot of people here, and they were all… they were all… Asian?  Was that the right word?  His brain felt fuzzy. 

He sat up slightly, and suddenly all attention was on him.  The people crowded around, asking questions.  He didn’t understand a single word of what they were saying, and he felt tears begin to gather at the corners of his eyes. 

Then, one woman in a white coat pushed through the crowd. 

“My name is Doctor Yuan Chenghua,” said the woman in heavily accented English.  “What is your name?”

“Rex,” said Rex, suddenly feeling shy.  He picked at the hem of the sheet.

“You are here because you were suffering from long… from no food.  Malnutrition.  Do you know what happened?”

“I was on a boat,” said Rex.  “There wasn’t any food.”

“What happened to your parents?” asked Dr. Yuan.  “Where are they?  Were they on the boat with you?”

Rex shook his head, even as his heart jumped.  Parents.  That’s who he was looking for!  He could have hugged Dr. Yuan.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I don’t remember.  I—There was an island,” he tried to explain.  “People turned into monsters.”

“Oh,” said Dr. Yuan, who then switched to something in her own language.  One of the men behind her commented on it, and she shook her head.  “You poor thing.  That is… many things have happened.  You are not the only one with… troubles like this, as strange as it sounds.”

Rex nodded.  He had no idea how strange his troubles sounded, but if they were normal, now, that was a good thing, wasn’t it?  That meant that people must be working hard to solve them.  Maybe there was even a solution. 

“We will take care of you, yes?”

“Yes,” said Rex, then something else occurred to him.  “Where are we, anyway?”

Dr. Yuan smiled, and there was something bitter there, but also triumphant.  “You are in the Free City of Hong Kong.”

[prototypelq]

DMC Questions Anon here!

Take every character you wish to and tell me what you think is the most emotionally devastating situation they could be put in and how they would react to it.

Hi, Ember! You just had to do the ask around the DMC1 anniversary and the twins' very bad absolutely no good horrible terrible birthday huh) lol we love angst in dmc everything is completely fine

To be perfectly honest with you I am surprised the twins are... somewhat functioning persons after all the shit they went through. I mean, they are barely functional, and 5 was just one massive mental breakdown for both of them but still! They remain Somewhat sane which is very hard to believe to tell the truth, and they really need years of extensive therapy (...also any therapist they go to will need therapy themselves after a session with the twins, I feel sorry for the poor soul).

All of this is to say that this is my ask and I don't want the twins to suffer too much)

this is also the reason I side with the 'twins have normal human lifespan' answer in Raven's poll, because Sparda Luck has had nothing good in store for them ever, and prolonging their years means risking their fragile mental health even more. they just really need a leave/retire at this point and my wish for them is to live their years in relative peace

I'l go over the twins briefly as I don't want them to go through shit again, the canon was cruel enough towards them. Nero is their weak spot. Nero is extremely important to the twins, because he is the physical manifestation of hope for their future. Before 5 the answer to this question would have been each other, as the pain of being the lone brother has been familiar for each of them and has been festering for decades at this point, but it all changed in 5. The ending of 5 shows rekindling of their brotherhood, it it was only possible thanks to Nero, as in 5 both of them were so exhausted they wanted just to end everything*

*I've discussed this with Raven, and we bounced around the idea that the circumstances of twins 'mutual agreement for the end' was not so mutual in details. Vergil was exhausted and had no idea what to do next, except have one last great stand with his brother, and to force Dante's hand to end him. But to bait Dante into doing that, he had to go all out during their battle, so Dante kind of rightfully assumed Vergil was out for his blood. Again. DMC3 tragic parallels my beloved.

I doubt Vergil realised how badly this was all going for Dante, or the consequences of such action on his twin. Though Dante absolutely knew he could not live with himself after ending Vergil again, and that's exactly why he left the deed (= inheritance for Nero) behind before going on this hunt. He thought it would be his last.

It would be curious to see Vergil's reaction to that information, I think if he learns of the deed he'll piece the puzzle himself, and then there is going to be an Interesting conversation between the twins. I doubt Vergil would have gone through with his plan if he knew the toll it would take on Dante, and Vergil never wanted his brother dead.

Nero is the twins future. He gave them a deserved slap as a wake up call, he reminded them of the possibilities the future could hold, while twins only ever look to the past. They found kinship in their shared respect and fondness of Nero, this is their starting point to heal.

Loosing another after 5 would be, of course, extremely painful for either of them (arguably worse for Dante, as his mental state is pretty much in shambles in 5, and Vergil was the same before that, literally in his case, but he has new page now, he just has trouble figuring out what to do with it), but with Nero's help they just might be able to pull through.

But if anything happened to Nero himself? I don't think twins, even with their bond rekindled would be truly able to come back from that. So yeah, the twins' weak spot is Nero.

Nero`s weakspot is obviously family, however much has been much kinder to him in that aspect than the twins. He grew up loved and cared for in his adopted family, but with his own isues of course. While Nero had not knew Dante&Vergil for very long, he certainly does take after his uncle&father (must be the Sparda heritage) in term of issues, because Nero combines the twins' together! Nero struggles simultaniously with self-worth and the need for recognition, which I reckon, will give him A Time while the twins are gone, and if anything they will only worsen after their return too. Nero has already unlocked two power-ups, yet he is abandonned by the twins (for reasons he will have to come to terms with) And he is not even close to their power levels (Vergil only lost to Nero because he did not want to fight in the first place and was exhausted). Nero has been trying to establish himself... for his entire life, but every major demonic outbreak had Required a Dante call, Nero had not been able to handle it on his own. And after twins return this issue will only persist, because he means so much to the twins, he now basically has a very agressive safety net, which all the spardas will have to work together to solve.

Also I could have just said family. Nero will be worrying over twins the entire time of their absence, no doubt about it. Hopefully, in the meantime of awaiting their return, he will look into whatever he can find of their history, and he will get at least a rough picture of what the hell the brothers have been through and why they had to go together.

Other weakpoint of Nero's is, of course, Kyrie. I actually have no idea how he leaves their home, knowing his blood attracts demons, which are already plenty in Fortuna, and with canon suggesting no special abilities to defend herself with. If something happens to her it will be devastating for him, but Nero has grew up with good support system around him, he has another adopted sibling in Nico, and now even his blood relatives are close. It will be hard, but I believe he could pull through with all of their help. (but I want nothing bad to happen to Kyrie)

Same applies for Kyrie - she will be tortured by the loss of nero if it came to that, but hopefully she will be able to work through that loss.

[aita-blorbos]

AITA for singlehandedly ruining my brother's life with my complacency?

For context, I (20NB) was frequently psychologically tormented by an entity that takes the form of a forest/state park near my town (no clue how old it is or if it has a gender) for a few years when I was a teenager, and once it had eroded my humanity enough it turned me into an extension of its power. It let me keep my free will, if you choose to believe in things like that, so when I was eighteen I fled to a different state under the guise of going to college, hoping that distancing myself would weaken the entity's grip on me. It didn't, but at least I was 600 miles away from it now, and I made sure to keep myself isolated from everyone else at college so I couldn't hurt them.

Fast-forward to last January. After two years at college, I found out about a kind of... medication, we'll call it, that I thought would loosen the entity's grip on me. The medicine functions by fogging over your memories of supernatural things existing, inducing a sort of... weaponized executive dysfunction, for lack of a better phrase? Anyway, that stops you from acting on your knowledge, which exploits the fact that these sorts of entities don't care about much other than how people who know they exist choose to act on this information- so, if you're physically unable to act on your knowledge they exist (which you barely remember anyway), they can't affect you. After giving the medication a trial run, I went back to my hometown to visit my brother N (17M).

Since I'm not all that human anymore, I found out early on that the entity retained its hold on me and was able to pull me back towards the state park even when I was medicated, but it never did anything once it'd got me there, so I got cocky and figured it must not be capable of affecting me past that. Plus, the entity had never done anything to anyone but me before, at least not that I knew of, so I'd spent years figuring I was its only victim and getting complacent because of that... and if it did finally kill me one of those times, I honestly think I would've welcomed it. Things were fine at first, though the entity somehow managed to break down the medication's effects once or twice, and I got to feel like a normal person again for the first time since middle school. But after a few weeks, the entity broke through the medicine's effects again and revealed to me that its real target had been N the whole time. That was why it kept pulling me back to the state park while the medicine was preventing me from consciously realizing what a bad idea that was: it wanted to get ahold of N, who I'd been bringing with me the whole time like an idiot because I still thought I was the entity's sole target. To make matters worse, when it told me this it was referring to N with the same kind of title it'd given me, which I knew it wouldn't have done if it wasn't absolutely sure I wouldn't be able to remove its influence from him.

I panicked and rushed N back to his car, which was when I had the idea that maybe if I overdosed him on the medication I'd been using, he'd go from mere brain fog to outright amnesia. I was still panicking and didn't take the time to think that idea through, so I just tackled N, shoved a bunch of my pills down his throat, and ran. I was too afraid of what I might see if I stuck around to make sure he was okay long-term (I guess it was kind of a Schrodinger's cat mentality or something?), so I went back to college and tried to pretend none of it happened. I did keep an eye on the news from our town and didn't see anything alarming, and that was enough that I could lie to myself that maybe N was miraculously fine.

N did end up forgetting the time I'd spent back in our hometown as planned, but I forgot to account for the fact that he'd been recording videos during almost all of the times we went to the state park, wanting to use them as B-roll for a film class project. He didn't even make it a month before finding those recordings on his camera and starting to piece things together on his own, during which his mental health and personal life started falling apart for obvious reasons. (He also started getting intermittently stalked by an unrelated entity during this time, but it's more a pest than anything else, I've already got plans for disposing of it.) Once I found out about all this, I came back to our hometown to clear things up for N, especially making sure he was aware that all of it was my fault: I wasn't about to pretend I'd been controlled by the entity the whole time or something, he deserved the whole truth. I'm pretty sure he's only tolerating my presence now because he needs my knowledge about how supernatural things work. It hurts, but it's not like I was expecting him to take it well, so I'm not planning to stick around once I've made sure he knows everything he needs to.

That's everything important. The answer seems pretty obvious, if you ask me, but... AITA?

[wolfstrong]

okay everyone btvs season 5 thoughts and reflections! Sorry this review is about to be so incoherent. As is the tradition of btvs i think, this season started off really good but then started to drag its feet a little towards the end. However it wasn't as guilty of this as season 3 and 4, and some of those feelings might come from the fact it took me a couple weeks to get through the last couple of episodes. it was my own fault for not having enough time to sit down and enjoy the show, i haven't been watching it consistently since mid-April. Anyway though here are my thoughts about the overarching plot.

There were good parts and bad parts, but overall i think the main plot was WAY WAY better then season 4 and honestly a bit better then season 3 if not comparable. I personally don't like it when a show gets to a certain point where they are like "WE HAVE GOT TO KEEP RASING THE STAKES" so every season the big bad has to get bigger and badder. So like Glory being an actual god was kind of cheesy and lame to me and also didn't really have a function other then title to make everyone gulp like woowwww this monster is so terrible! she didn't really have godlike powers so like idk what the point of that was. kind of dumb idk. See the thing with season 5 is if you really think about the plot, it kind of makes no sense at all and its really stupid. but like also who cares if its dumb its literally btvs. I could really go into a list to point out how dumb a lot of stuff was. like why did the monks turn the key into a little girl who lives in the same town as glory when they could have just like turned the key into a rock that they threw into the middle of the ocean. If glory didn't know the key was a human for so long then why did the ritual to open the portal involve draining the blood from the key? wtf was the key before it turned into Dawn because from our understanding it was just like an object or pure energy or something. so like where does the blood come in. why was buffy able to close the portal by throwing herself in there and also why was she just like a dead corps after that don't you think she would have been sent to the hell dimension or wherever the portal lead. WHO THE FUCK WERE THOSE FUCKING KNIGHTS ???? LIKE SERIOUSLY WHO WERE THOSE KNIGHTS THAT WAS PROBABLY THE MOST STUPID PART. okay i could go on but rant over because it really doesn't matter, it was fine.

Glory was a pretty good main villian although her having the Ben alter ego was just kinda like. why is this happening. Ben was DUMB AS HELL. i feel like he very easily could have not been there at all and the plot would have barely been affected. Glory was good because she was like sooooo crrrazzzzy and i liked all her simpy minions and her always throwing fits and stuff but tbh sometimes the actors performance left something to be desired. it was like ALMOST there. she was ALMOST perfect it was just a wee bit off but i do like the concept of crazy girl main villain so bravo. They really put Buffy the fuck through it this season man. I was watching clips from season 1 and is like holy shit. she used to be a teenage girl. so I think this season did a great job of showing her struggles with having to grow up way too fast and dealing with having to be an adult in charge of a lot of important things but having no clue what she was doing. things were def a LOT heavier this season which is like nice because it was done pretty well but also kind of painful. i just want everyone to be goofy and happy again. lets break it down a bit and talk about episodes i liked

Buffy Vs. Dracula: I like how they started off this season with just a silly fun romp that really had nothing to do with the main plot. it was like a nice bit of breathing room after season 4 and solidified the feeling that the gang was all back together again. This episode is an example of like peak buffy in my opinion. just the right amount of self awareness.

Family: this episode was SO SWEET i love tara so much and I'm very glad they explored how she fits in with the rest of the group. like yeah maybe they will never fully understand her but they accept her as one of them and that's more important

Fool for love: The perfect spike episode honestly. also super fun directing and story telling at points, i love how spike is an unreliable narrator but we see the truth of his tales through flashbacks. This episode just like so perfectly explains why spike is like that, you still don't like him but you GET IT after this episode.

Triangle: this was just like so funny haha goofy episode and of course i love anything that focuses more on the secondary characters. I'm glad they addressed some of the tension between Anya and willow but tbh i need more! we need to talk about it more baby!

The body: yeah

The gift: tbh good final episode. the few before this were kinda like uhhhh but things got rapped up in a pretty epic and exciting way. i know its hard to have the right payoff for a season long arc so this was pretty satisfactory

Episodes i didnt like:

nothing was like soooooo bad just some felt a little off. the worst was probably Into the Woods. everything just felt so OOC and Riley leaving could have been done SO MUCH BETTER. probably the worst episode of the season.

Characters:

Dawn: i guess dawnie is kinda the only new character idk if ben and glory count but i kinda already talked about them so whatever. I LOVEEEEEEE DAWN SO MUCH I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! simply awesome I'm so excited shes part of the show now shes so funny and cute and younger sibling and a great addition to the cast

ALRIGHT THEN. lots and lots of people say the show falls off after season 5. actually initially i said i wouldn't watch seasons 6 and 7 but brother you KNOW i gotta. I'm way too obsessed. From the spoilers i heard it sounds very..... but maybe since my expectations are so low ill actually enjoy it. bu bye

[localplaguenurse]

How do you think abyss Wifey deal with the bloodlust? Cause childe doesn’t deal with it(well he deals with it by fighting and having a fixation at getting stronger) , and I can’t imagine wifey going back to be ol mother of arts. Sparring daily with Morax? I mean nothing beats a better opponent than a war god that’s 4000 years older than you. Painting maybe? I imagine it’d be good to illustrate what the abyss looks like for researchers, maybe they might even write a book about the abyss and document the abyss’ flora and fauna?

Oh I’m so glad you asked because this is literally right up my alley writing wise because a lot of my ocs have had major trauma and sometimes have to cope with really destructive thoughts as a result. I am going to make you regret this though.

I’m just gonna put the warning here for discussions of trauma and violence/intrusive thoughts and thoughts of self harm.

Initially when wifey comes back in their heavily traumatized state, they don’t really do much of anything. There are large gaps in their memory due to repression, and they’ve shut down and become mute as a result. They barely have the strength to care for themselves, let alone their children, so for a while it’s Morax and Li Lei taking care of wifey while Yānjiáng is in charge of the kids, with help from the other adepti of course.

It’s when things start to take a turn for the better, where wifey is able to talk and function, that things start to get odd.

First and foremost, they’re back to their old anxious self, but even more so. Stammering, mumbling, needing constant reassurance. It’s concerning but this isn’t anything new. Considering all they went through, it’s no wonder they’re so scared. They just need time to bounce back again.

Then they start painting again.

This is good, right? Art’s always been their preferred way of stress relief and self expression. It’s also a stepping stone towards them returning to the role of Mother of the Arts. Sure, the paintings depict odd flora and fauna, but they’re oddly beautiful, and serve as good material for understanding what happened.

Wifey begins to shut themselves off again, hiding away in their little studio and trying to keep the rest of their family out. The only time the door is unlocked is when wifey is leaving the room, before being locked again. It takes Morax breaking in after they’ve locked themselves in for a full day to see what it is they’re doing.

Every painting is visceral and violent and gory and grotesque and every other horrific descriptor you can think of. They depict all manner of things. A violent fight, decay, death, blood, all of it. When confronted, wifey eventually completely breaks down.

They’ve been terrified for so long of what they saw, but there’s no way their family would understand what happened. They’ve been scared they’ll end up back there again, but they... they miss it. As horrific as it sounds, they found an odd comfort in the fact they were in constant danger. They knew there could be something deadly around the corner. Back home, where everything is peaceful, has them constantly asking when the next tragedy is going to strike. They just want the bad thing to happen already instead of waiting for it to surprise them, or worse, they become complacent and weak again. Fortunately, wifey’s nonviolent nature has dulled the bloodlust, but they still feel the need to fight, the need to hurt something so that you can’t be hurt first. Hell, some of those thoughts have even been self destructive, because again they’ve found an odd comfort in the pain, the assurance that nothing can hurt them but themselves. They don’t like having these thoughts because they don’t want to hurt themselves or god forbid hurt their family, that’s why they’ve locked themselves away in their studio room.

Morax is of course horrified and heartbroken that this is where their head is at. He wraps them up in his arms as they sob, and he murmurs reassurances to them, promising that they’ll be okay, he wants to help them, he loves them so much, and that he is so so so sorry he’s failed them. He promised he would keep them safe, after all.

It takes time and patience and a million reassurances for wifey to start getting actually better again. Morax makes them promise that if they feel these overly destructive feelings to come to him. He’ll spar with them if they feel the need to fight something, or he’ll just be a shoulder to cry on. They still sometimes paint something gruesome, but that’s not an issue. It’s when they lock themselves away for days that it’s an issue.

By current game time, they still don’t quite have the light in their eyes, but they’re so much better than back then.

... I want you to know I started this on my 30 and wasn’t finished by the time I had to head back to work. This took almost 45 minutes to write out.

[arabellamonkey]

silent, spoiling love

stevetony | for the lovely cassie @meidui 🧡

fills the @stevetonygames square “dreams” and the fairy godmother challenge! <3

also on ao3

In the beginning, Steve doesn’t see anything weird in it.

They’ve finally moved together to the Tower, and as every member of the Avengers starts finding their place in their new dynamic, Stark does too. Bruce seems comfortable spending time in his new lab, Thor has taken great pleasure in trying up cooking, so he spends most of his time in the kitchen, and in the meantime, Nat and Clint are getting used to sparring in the new installations, just as Steve is.

When it comes to Stark, it seems like his place, or at least where he feels more comfortable, is in his workshop, putting his mind to work. Previous to their meeting, Steve knew Stark was a genius. So no, he doesn’t see anything weird in him inviting him to the workshop so they can talk about upgrading his suit in so many ways. He doesn’t see anything weird in Stark taking so much interest in it: not in the way his suit suddenly becomes more functional and definetly not in the way his shield has become more manageable thanks to him.

Just as he doesn’t see anything weird about finding an old New York Dodgers cap in his bed one night after having spent that day’s lunch talking about baseball with his teammates. Tony was there, of course, but he didn’t say much. To be completely honest, Steve had doubted if he was listening to them at the time. 

It isn’t until he realizes the cap is a real limited edition that must have cost a small fortune that he starts to wonder just how much attention Stark had actually been paying.

From then on, he starts being more observant. Especially, he starts paying attention to the only person he knows would be able to buy such an expensive, albeit thoughtful, gift.

And he’s not sure what to do with his conclusions.

Barely a week after receiving the cap, Steve comes home to find his entire kitchen remodeled after it confessing to his teammates how hard he was finding it to cook on a ceramic cob, when he had grown up cooking on gas stoves. Barely a few days after, Steve finds new clothes in his dressing room —that huge, almost-empty room he found so daunting in the beginning—. There are suits there —suits that fit him eerily well—, and they remind him of that time he told Tony about not having anything appropriate for the gala he’s invited Avengers to. And then there are other clothes, clothes that bring him back to that time Steve had confessed to Tony how daunting he found 21st-century fashion, and how hard he was finding it to even go shopping.

“There’s just too much to choose from,” Steve told him at the time, a wry smile in place. “I feel like, the moment I try to choose, I’ll drown in all those options. I never had much to choose from in the first place, you know? Ma basically patched up every piece of clothing I owned so they lasted as much as possible.”

Tony didn’t say anything then, nodding to himself instead as he listened to him.

Slowly but surely, he finds himself realizing just how much attention Tony pays to his words. Even when it seems like the genius has his mind on other, more important things, Steve finds himself surprised yet again and again with the results of their conversations. Be it their night chats, when neither of them is able to sleep and both end up drifting towards the common room to drink some milk while watching New York’s skyline, or when Steve ends up sitting on that old sofa in Tony’s workshop, Steve finds out just how relaxing it can be to talk to Tony at the same time he realizes just how much his teammate seems to care about him.

At some point, he begins to wonder.

It’s inevitable, really: they’ve spent the past year and a half living under the same roof, battling shoulder to shoulder and sharing secrets that seemed unshareable not so long ago.

So it’s only natural when Steve starts to wonder if there might be something there, between their conversations and Tony’s attentiveness. He starts to wonder if there might be feelings that surpass what two teammates like them are supposed to experience.

It’s only natural for him to look at Tony in wonder when the genius offers him to go on a trip to Los Angeles to watch the Dodgers. “It won’t be the same, I know,” he says quickly, avoiding his gaze as he balances on the soles of his feet, both hands clutching the two tickets he swears he’s been gifted. “But I thought you’d like to see them one last time.”

At some point, he stops wondering.

Instead, he starts probing. The next time the team is sharing a movie night, instead of looking at Tony with curiosity, thinking about all the possibilities, he takes the opportunity of having him sitting by his side and invites him to rest his head on his shoulder when he starts nodding off. When they finally go to that gala —where Tony can’t seem to take his eyes off him—, and Steve realizes Tony’s uncomfortable around certain people, he stops thinking and, instead, finds himself keeping him near, not hesitating to touch him to guide him across the room.

The next time both of them end up in the common room in the wee hours of the morning, sitting on the couch facing New York’s skyline, he stops just wondering and asks, instead, in a soft, tentative whisper, “You feel it too. It isn’t only me, is it? ”

Tony, already sleepy with his head resting on the crook of his neck, shakes his head softly and, after leaving a soft kiss on his neck, whispers: “Of course not, sweetheart.”

Just as the New York skyline has been the sole witness of the countless sleepless nights they’ve shared, it feels right for it to be the witness of their first kiss.

The first of many.

[herohikara-wol]

FFXIV Write 2k23 - Day 13

Check - Emperor AU (tw: Mild Eating Disorder)

Things had fallen into a comfortable pattern for Hero, he sat at his desk in the morning after having breakfast with Varis, Quintus, Regula or Asahi. Varis told him military news, Quintus told him what was happening within the capital and surrounding areas, Regula told him what was happening abroad, and Asahi tended to eat in silence. He only came when there was no news, or the others were too busy to keep an eye on their Emperor. Hero knew the real reason someone was always there with him, it was to make sure he ate.

He’d never had a physical before, the idea of someone poking and prodding at his body once a year to make sure he was healthy seemed invasive. Underweight, the medicus had said. Underfed, made of lean muscle and not enough body fat. Hero was used to going a few days without a real meal; he used his own aether to keep moving now, but before Midgardsomr had interfered, the blessing from Hydaelyn had kept him functional far beyond what he should have been able to survive.

Hero didn’t realize anything was wrong with him. He thought he was fine, but it was enough to terrify his retinue. He wondered if he’d be able to survive if it wasn’t for his aether powering him. He was a god slayer, sure, but how strong would he be if he didn’t need to use his aether to keep his body from dying from the stress he put it through? He tapped his spoon against the barely-cooked yolk of the egg on his toast, allowing it to break and soak the bread below. He’d fought with Varis over the menu, foods too rich made him sick after years of adventuring and eating light. Instead the medicus oversaw his recovery and controlled his diet while the people he’d learned to trust kept a close eye on him.

An alert pinged on Asahi’s data pad and Hero’s ears turned towards it before his head followed. “That’s a Regula ping.” Meaning his spy network had news important enough to alert Hero immediately instead of waiting for Regula to introduce it in person.

“Yes, give me a moment your Radiance.” Asahi had to resist the urge to roll his eyes every time Hero stated the obvious around him, and he was terrible at it. Hero found it charming, really. He knew Asahi only took the job to meet Zenos in person again, but he’d grown fond of having a personal assistant willing to tell him off when he was being a brat. “Your friends in Ishgard seem to have stumbled face first into a plot, Lady Taru-”

“Just call her Tataru.”

“Lady. Taru.” Asahi insisted through gritted teeth, “has requested your presence, but in an unofficial capacity. We already helped Ishgard repel Nidhogg, what more could they need?”

“Ascians. If they need me specifically in an unofficial capacity? It means Ascians.” He began to eat faster, knowing no one would let him leave this table before he’d finished. “They need the Warrior of Light- not the Emperor of Garlemald.”

“You have meetings-”

“Cancel them!”

“There’s a dedication-”

“I’m going. End of discussion. Pretend it’s a diplomatic mission if you must but I am going, I am seeing my friends, and I am punching one of those shadowless twats in the face if it’s the last thing I do.” Hero grinned wide, his Au Ra genes showing every time he bared his fangs with his near-feral smile.

“I’m coming with you then, and Zenos. I can call Zenos. You need an honor guard at minimum.”

“Unofficial capacity means there might be a primal, what would you do if Zenos got tempered?” Asahi’s eyes narrowed, his entire face turning like a sudden spring storm before he found his trademark false calm once again.

“Fine.” He almost spit the word out, “I’ll tell Regula you’ve chosen to answer the request, and you’ll be on an airship posthaste.”

“That’s the spirit.” Hero spared Asahi a wink and blew him a kiss, “no one will miss me anyway, this whole nation just politely pretends I’m supposed to be here, not having to kiss my ass for a day will make more people happy than mad.”

“I refuse to acknowledge giving you the regard befitting your station as kissing your ass, your Radiance.” He was smirking a little though, so Hero still could count it as a win.

[manysmallhands]

Fear Of Mu21c - Introductory notes

(Over in the dying embers of Twitter, a group of us are going to spend October and November attempting to list our 50 favourite singles of the 21st century before compiling a definitive chart from all of the entries. Personally, I have have also taken it upon myself to write a blogpost about each and every one of them. Having covered about 20 in last year's challenge (where we made a more comprehensive list of our favourites from the punk era onwards) I've been left with about 30 to do, all of which now exist in various stages of completion and will go up one by one as the challenge progresses. It's been a fun task to work on but one that's left me with a few thoughts, both about how i've viewed new music in the 21st century and how that's changed as time's gone on. So i decided to write about that as well. NOW READ ON...)

One of the ideas that this challenge is based on (it’s right there in the title) is that there’s a comfort zone of classic artists and records that middle aged music nerds build around ourselves which stops us from noticing all the great music that’s still being made as we get older. While this might be the case for a lot of people, my circumstances have meant that I have a different take on this. In March of 2000 I returned from university for just about the last time, chronically ill with a severity that wouldn’t really improve for well over a decade and about to be cut off from the life that I’d known forever. While I can confidently say that This Was Bad imo, it also meant that my perspective on new music changed in Unpredictable Ways.

The first big shift was that, between about 2001 and 2005, I was too sick to listen to any music whatsoever: couldn’t concentrate, could barely read or talk much either, just was not engaged with the rest of the world at all. This ofc had Many Implications For My Existence, but what it did musically was to cut me entirely adrift from everything that I’d listened to before. The result was that, when I was a little better in 06/07, I was both absolutely desperate to know what new stuff was going on and also entirely uninterested in the music that I already knew, which belonged to a different lifetime that didn’t appear to be coming back. It’s not that I didn’t like it, or it was painful to hear, or anything like that at all: I just didn’t really care much about it anymore. This is something that stuck with me for a very long time afterwards, and became even more of a thing once my illness improved and I was able to engage with new music on the internet. Fear of music? Fuck that. This is my era.

But if there is something that I have been scared of, it’s stepping outside of my musical lanes. During my illness, I’ve had to spend long periods of time entirely on my own. This, along with the end of the media monoculture (which I’d have been cut off from anyway), has meant that, rather than being exposed to different kinds of music as I’d have been during an earlier time, I’ve ended up just listening to the one thing I like and then carried on listening to just that one thing for well over a decade. For me, this was largely indie guitar music: firstly white guys with guitars and then, once I started to dig down a bit, white ladies with guitars as well (this represented branching out). Some of this was to do with functional issues; if you only listen to music whilst sat down indoors then you tend towards things that are less beat driven; if you feel sick every time you move, you just want to stick an album on and leave it there. But still, even writing these things down now feels like an excuse and, certainly from about 2014 onwards, much of it came down to the fact that I lacked either the confidence to change or the impetus to do so: I knew that there was other good music around but i really just couldn’t be arsed to find it.

But eventually I did get bored, and so in recent years I began to brave the often novel territory of electronic pop, RnB, hip hop and classic rock. These were things that I either hadn’t listened to much since I was a teen or in fact had never even looked into before at all. And here I will admit to being, for want of a better word, scared. I find myself coming up against barriers in my thinking that should have been obvious but which I’d never really thought much about; assumptions I’ve made about different kinds of music (I won’t listen to it if I buy it, I listen to albums and those acts can’t really do albums, this kind of x is good but that other kind never is, etc) that tended to boil down to a sense that they were, not so much inferior (tho I’m certain that some sort of indie snobbery is baked in), but somehow not the kind of thing that I was supposed to listen to. Over a period of many years, taking this attitude had locked me into what amounted to a tiny pigpen on the musical landscape.

Looking at the list I’ve compiled, I feel like I’ve made some progress in breaking out of this - indeed I can look at particular acts and remember not long ago a genuine sense of “oh I can’t possibly buy that” around them that feels ridiculous to me now. But seeing the dominance of guitars here and a general homogeneity of sound, template and/or public profile that is only rarely departed from, I guess that this is where my fear of music continues to lie. To what extent that means that there are simply things that i like and things that i don't is debatable: of course we will always have our preferences and there's no point pretending otherwise. But the problem is that i can still sense those musical barriers: habits have become ingrained over time and there are some things which remain more equal than others. May I continue to loosen my chains. 

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Rage Fire Institute

Movement. 6.

Barely squeezing in enough time to shower, Tatsumi gathered his things and headed to the student lower library to meet with Maki and Li. Samara hadn’t informed him that the latest arrivals to the institution would contain both Erebus and Goliath models, making for the delivery being a rush job at the end under the eyes of prying students. With one functional Erebus on board, they’d had to wait for the correct paperwork to be signed off at each military gate on the way out, and naturally, that meant inspection each time. The only time he’d had to relax was when driving the semi-trailer, while Samara was snoring his head off next to him. He’d thought perhaps he’d be able to begin his part of the team project seperately, yet that Li kid had messaged him repeatedly about not skipping out on them again, leaving him both amused and feeling obligated to show his face.

Ever early, Tatsumi took enough time to pick up obligatory snacks for both alphas. They were still growing and he could hear Li’s voice whining over lack of sugar already. It seemed something more likely for Li to do, rather than the frostier Maki who’d chug coffee from a pot if left to it, no matter how long it had sat. Choosing a desk out of the way, his bringing of snacks and coffee into the library was permitted thanks to his good relationship with the library staff. They might not have been quite so willing if they’d known Maki would be meeting with him… though the real trouble would come if Li forgot to keep his voice low. The pair were clearly close, despite the distance between backgrounds, and thanks to Li, Maki seemed a tad less resentful towards him.

Pulling out his sketch pad, Tatsumi connected it to his data pad, then set up the small holographic 3 dimensional projector. He had no idea what the two had planned for their project, and being older naturally meant he had more technology at his disposal. It was highly doubtful to him that either would come up with a revolutionary idea he’d not heard of before, but he wasn’t about to crush the dreams of the younger alphas. He firmly believed that the visions of dreams was the only thing preventing the civilisation from slipping back into stagnation. Still, he was early, and with no one else, Tatsumi opened up the specs for the Erebus MXV 7 that had been delivered that day. He’d only piloted it for a few moments, but it had been long enough to cop a scolding over. Though laced with concern over his condition, Tatsumi wasn’t fooled, the scolding more about the mech than him.

“Is that an Erebus?”

Preoccupied, Tatsumi hadn’t heard Maki approaching. Hurriedly he went to close the projection, then changed his mind. Li hadn’t arrived with his friend, so indulging Maki may make his temper less volatile than simply denying everything. Plus, Maki’s eyes were so transfixed on the projection that there was no way Tatsumi could simply turn it off now

“Yes. It’s an older model. A DXO002. It’s been sitting for some time now. The previous pilot made it out alive, yet was forced to abandon it. Do you want to see the specifications?”

“Am I allowed?”

Tatsumi bit down smiling as he manipulated his data pad

“It’s fine. All combat files are encrypted, so even if it fell into enemy hands they can’t access the data. Its main memory has been removed, but the mods are still in place. Are you interested in Erebuses?”

“I think Sandgropers are more fit for combat these days. You can scrap’em down to nothing in an instant. But, there’s something about the Erebus models that seems… it suits its job. Are the mods all individual custom or hard built?”

Hard built parts came from the military and had limited modification ability outside of enhancing war weaponry. Pulling the specs up, Tatsumi let make guide the conversion

“Custom. I didn’t think they’d allow such liberal design alteration. Two power cores… damn, the sync rate must have been high. Then again, it would have been modded to match its user. It seems in pretty good condition considering all things. Why did they boost jumping capabilities and not weapon output?”

Tatsumi zoomed in on the mechs knee joints

“You can’t always shoot horizontally. Mods like this are good for uneven terrain. It allows more room to move in all directions, and hence increases dodging capabilities”

Maki nodded, brow scrunched as he did

“Of course. It’s not always nice smooth terrain. Still, those knee joints… it’s a brilliant idea really. Added dampeners for minimal impact on the user despite the length or height of the jump. It has uses in both long distance and short distance combat. What else is there?”

Zooming out, Tatsumi pulled the specs up again, curious to know deeply the alpha’s knowledge on mods were

“Advanced communication and navigation capabilities. Automatic defibrillation. Nanobot emergency aerosol… They don’t mess around”

It was true. The mech once belonged to a captain and had been nodded accordingly. Tatsumi feeling almost proud that Maki wasn’t hiding his dire thirst to know more

“No. And so you know, not all captains mod this way. You’ll still come across those who will sacrifice movement capabilities for raw power. You’ll also come across captains who’ll save their own skins in a heartbeat. What are your thoughts on Goliaths?”

Maki scrunched his brow further, before scratching the back of his head

“An Erebus would have them beat. The relay lag between barrier activation and successful particle arrangement is a disadvantage. Goliaths have the height and the width, but everyone knows that lag factor is the big killer. If the school is going to acquire old military mechs, then how is it fair that pilots aren’t trained adequately from the start? I know we must get used to fighting in the worst of the worst, yet… don’t they think they’d get more out of their students if the mechs weren’t as limited?”

Tatsumi remembered. Piloting a school mech felt like piloting a brick cemented in place

“Don’t you think that’s exactly why? It takes dedication to be a pilot. You have to be prepared for times your mech feels every bit of its weight. Couple smooth moves and accuracy with a group of alpha males showing off for dominance and someone could very well end up dead. It’s meant to wean out those looking for an easy ride and those who can grit their teeth and bare it. As of next semester there will be an update across all school training mechs”

Maki sighed heavily. Tatsumi supposed he had over spoken given the research department hadn’t made the announcement. Over the semester break the mechs available for students to use would all be overhauled. Placing his backpack down, the alpha finally took a seat across from him

“It’s bullshit, that’s what it is. How do you know so much?”

He couldn’t very well tell Maki he’d gone to pick up the mechs

“I do have friends, you know”

“Like that man you were with earlier?”

So Maki had seen him with Samara. Samara in a great mood after napping the drive away. Sliding one of the coffees in front of him across to Maki, Tatsumi couldn’t help wanting to tease him a little

“So you saw that? Worried I’m seeing other alphas?”

Maki clicked his tongue as his expression turned to a glare

“Tsk. I never said that. You simply don’t seem the type”

“And what type is that?”

“The type to be piloting mechs. Was the man who piloted that Erebus today the same one that defeated all the students?”

Tatsumi shrugged off the comment. He didn’t want to think of his days as a pilot

“Maybe. Maybe not. Don’t go getting involved with Samara. Even if he offers you what seems more money than you’d see in your life, it comes with a catch. Not to say he’s a bad man. He used to be a front line engineer. Worked in the emergency repair department on Sylax 7. Now he follows the money around”

Maki boldly lied

“I’m not one of those research types, you know. I’m going to be a pilot. Skylark can punish me all he wants, yet he won’t change my mind”

No. The more Skylark pushed Maki, the more Maki dug his heels in.

Before their conversation could continue, Li came rushing over to their table

“I’m so sorry I’m late. Yon got talking and it’s so hard to hang up. Did you two start without me? I can’t believe it. I told you I would be here!”

Smiling at Li, Tatsumi pushed down the memories of his first love. It really seemed the day was set on forcing him to remember his past 28 years. Calmly he pushed Li’s coffee across the table, making it clear Li would be sitting on the same side as his friend

“It’s fine, you’re only a few moments late. I’ve got coffee and snacks. I’m hoping you both have ideas of what you want to produce for this project. You’ll need to budget it and submit the plans early if you want a good technician on this project”

“Excuse me, you’re our team member, not our teacher. This is our project”

Now Li was there, Maki seemed to be retreating into himself. Tatsumi’s hard work going out the window, despite that, a genuine smile tugged on his lips as he apologised

“You’re right. Forgive me. I haven’t worked on a team project for a little while now. It’s our project. Do either of you have ideas?”

Li pulled his chair out and dropped himself down to sit. Excitement lighting up his face

“I have so many ideas. What if we come up with a new modification?”

To his right, Maki sighed

“We’re not installing x-ray vision so you can perv on the other pilots”

Li smacked Maki’s arm lightly

“As if, as if. No. But what if we made a mod that could trigger a rut or estrus? You can’t pilot when that comes around. No. My mouth won’t stop I’m so nervous about this all, I mean your babysi- oof! Don’t hit me!”

Tatsumi couldn’t help but snort as Maki hit Li in the stomach, Maki grouching

“Will you stop with the crap. We’re here to study”

Li sighed as he hung his head

“I know. But the Professor is right there…”

“And?”

Li gave a frustrated sigh. Tatsumi taking pity on him. As the oldest one at the table, it went with the territory to be the calming influence

“Mister Kang, it’s honestly fine. I’m not a professor so try to think of me as a fellow student who also wants to get a good grade. Do you have a list of your ideas?”

Li nodded, perking back up a little as he produced his data pad

“I don’t know how good they are. You know I was joking right? I’d never…”

Tatsumi flashed him a smile. The alpha was more than nervous, despite the chain of messages he’d sent prattling on. It seemed he was quite famous for being “stuck” taking care of Maki

“I know. The infamous babysitter is right across from you and you’ve only seen things from the outside. There’s no need to be so nervous, Mister Kang”

“Li is fine… everyone calls me Li. Do we call you Mister…?”

Li looked to Maki to supply Tatsumi’s last name, Maki instead seemed to glaring at his coffee as if it he’d never seen one before

“Tatsumi is perfectly fine. I’m not one for titles or positions between students. Please relax, here, I’ve got coffee and I’ve got snacks. Despite what Maki may think, they’re not poisoned”

Swapping the data pad for a coffee, Li’s ideas were far more terrible. The alpha had gotten distracted and started drawing a rather sad looking mech battle. Some of the ideas were already in use, and some were completely impractical. Taking a rather loud slurp from his coffee, Li’s eyes went wide

“Hey, this is great!”

Tatsumi took no offence

“I thought you may need the sugar pick me up. Classes are long enough as it is. Maki, do you have any ideas?

Pulling out his own data pad, the alpha slid it over

“I don’t know if they’re any good. Probably not up to your standards. And since when is your name Tatsumi not Tatsuma?”

This time Tatsumi was slightly offended. He’d spent months with Maki, yet he didn’t even know his first name

“I’ve told you this before. Skylark started calling me Tatsuma long ago and now I’m certain he’s forgotten it’s Tatsumi. He said I was quite the stoic bastard and should go plant myself outside until my attitude changed”

Li choked on his coffee, thumping himself on the chest

“Wait. He bullied you too?”

“Skylark knows he can get away with it. I think we’ve talked more than enough about myself. If we want a good grade, we’ll need to come up with a solid foundation for this project. We’ll also need to sort the information into sections for each of us to present. Now, I see here, Maki, you’ve suggested improvements with the heating and cooling systems of the pilot. There’s technology already in place for that. What did you think could be improved?”

Maki shrugged it off

“It gets too hot in the training mechs. Sync rates rise and fall with pilot comfort”

Tatsumi nodded along. Maki had no experience with advanced mechs after all. The school mechs were a joke compared to piloting the real thing

“I understand what you mean. So rather than working on modding the mech, you’d rather mod the pilot suit?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s just an idea. Maybe fixing the student suits… it’s dumb”

“Not really. Having never piloted a professional mech, students are at a disadvantage when it comes to projects such as these. A proper pilot suit will react far better than a student one. I think I’m having an idea”

Both Li and Maki cast him doubtful looks at the same time. Tatsumi doubted that the looks would remain there for long

“You both know students are able to access the research wing, aren’t you?”

Where Maki slouched further, Li lent forward

“Yeah, but, like, they don’t like us there. We were told to keep away from interrupting them there”

That sounded about right

“If you’re going there for no reason. For projects such as these, it’s expected especially in your next two years. If modding a suit is what you’re interested in, they’ll be only too happy to help. You can download the less complex specifications off the school network. Some data will be limited, but remember, there are as many different ways to pilot as there are pilots”

“You mean, we can go for it?”

Li sounded so excited that the librarian cast a glare in their direction. Tatsumi nodded again

“Yes. You could even approach this project from a dozen different angles. You could think of relay speed, dynamic synchronisation, cooling, fit, species customisation… or, if you wanted to be more unique you could customise your own two suits. You both have institution provided suits yet a lot of pilots in combat have their own, even their own tailors that they’d never think of taking to another brand”

Li groaned suddenly, reaching for the bag of snacks on the table

“This is why you brought them, isn’t it? Because we have to think. You’re not just a pretty face behind those glasses. Do you even need them? Why haven’t you gotten surgery. A few bips cures everything these days”

“Nyctalopia. Night blindness. Thanks to a certain incident my eyes are sensitive to high levels of light and darkness. Glasses really aren’t so bad. And I’m glad to hear you think my face pretty, though you’re not my type”

Maki chuckled at the confusion, then blush, that rose on Li’s face

“You started it. Prof-… ah… Tatsumi, ignore him. You get used to his mouth pretty quickly”

There was “Professor” again. Tatsumi thought Maki more comfortable by addressing him as such due the age difference, not because Maki seriously thought he was

“Tatsumi is fine. Honestly, you only need to worry about talking formally in front of actual teachers. I don’t want any use of proper titles or honourifics, I’m not that old. I’ll submit a request to research department over suit specs. But the main problem is that we aren’t agreed on the project. Li, you would rather concentrate on making a mech modification, right?”

Li grinned

“You caught me. What pilot doesn’t dream of modding their own mech? Skylark would choke if we pulled something major off”

With Maki looking displeased at his best friend’s comment, Tatsumi knew they were in for a long night. Either way, one of the two friends would have to give ground or they’d never get anything done.

[entropy-mephit]

So: this is a dramatic intro for the character backstory of one of my NPCs. Or maybe the beginning of one of my favorite OCs' stories. Both things conceptually are the same, but I don't know if at this point he is more OC or NPC. Woes of game master I guess.

Feilen Alaris knew full well that what he was doing was illegal, the exclusion zone was such for very good reason. He could loose his job and all previously collected research. But on the other hand he prided himself on not giving any fucks about divine mandates and the lab is worth jack shit without new discoveries to fuel his efforts. As head archivist in Brightshore Magic Academy he was one of few people qualified for ruins delving anyways. Not that stuck up bureaucrats would ever sign permits for such attempt.

It seemed almost peaceful, faint wind barely disturbing surface layer of sand, weak enough that Feilen after moment of thought, pulled onto the weave of arcane to summon larger blast of wind to erase footsteps he left behind. It wouldn't do to let someone see tracks and investigate.

The ruins were mostly buried under the sand, only few broken towers clearly marking the area of interest and Feilen knew well it would take fair amount of digging before he can get to anything remaining in more or less functional state.

The sand was getting more stable as Feilen approached remnants of buildings. And then he saw in some distance group of eight people. He stopped in his tracks, almost panicking to not have any way to hide. They stopped as well, staring openly before glancing between each other and changing direction. Right towards him.

Feilen took deeper breath before also moving towards them. He knew how he looked, petite elf man, no weapon on hand, coming all alone. If they weren't idiots they should be expecting powerful mage. Not many people were arrogant enough to travel like this, and all of them had power to back up the bravery. Feilen usually wore attitude of archmage like cloak of protection.

"Good travelers," he spoke first, putting in just a tiny bit of power to make his voice carry to them across the distance, "you should be aware that travel within bounds of the Blood Sands Exclusion Zone is strictly forbidden without official permit from Military Affairs Office signed by at least two members of the High Council. You should consider yourself warned and..."

And they were pulling out weapons. Right, pretending to be on official business clearly didn't work.

Feilen huffed, gathering magic as discreetly as possible with level of power he was pulling under his command. They were too far to stab him before he was done, but obscuring spellcasting helps to make it at least harder to counter.

"I would suggest, rather than suffer unnecessary danger of fight, you would consider cooperating with me to benefit mutually for delving into ruins." He rung magic trough the air, imbuing spell into the words. And he felt it hook into the minds, one, two, five... Three of them had slipped past, but also paused as they see their allies seem to have changed their minds.

Feilen smiles at the outcome. He might have just burned the most magic he had, but he knew enough about ancient ruins... There weren't any active dangers waiting inside. He will not need that power.

"Now, you are surely aware that implications of your presence here are dire, but I am willing to provide some assistance, as long you are willing to help with more physically demanding parts. I know enough about the runes of ancient magic to be able to figure out which ones are truly dangerous and which ones merely defunct, which you would surely find a great boon," he offered with light flourish. Of course, depending on what they are there for and who they are he might end up needing to kill them, but he has few hours to figure it with most of the group magically compelled to see his words in positive light.

His presence saved those bumbling cultists from accidents with forgotten arcana on the way. (Kids just want to learn, that's actually kind of adorable. Feilen absolutely can keep them under control and maybe even take them on the next excursion. That could be nice.)

Most of the damaged arcane constructs luckily just didn't work, but about forty percent have a nasty tendency to explode if activated somehow. He felt more than justified in taking charge, guiding them across the ruins and sharply ordering them around to coordinate efforts in gathering bits of a broken, ancient technology for further study. They even found something looking like an office. The fragile scrolls almost cracked with age as their protective spells had fizzled out. Yet another proof that something had happened to mess up the structure of magic that used to be in place, but it's just confirmation of what Feilen knew for years.

Magic was not what it used to be in age of wonders.

He gently brushed the tips of his fingers against the slightly chipped stone wall thoughtfully, scanning the shape of an empty room, the damaged braziers, the black crystal obelisk dominating the very center of the room, and, on the opposite side of the room, carved suggestion of the arch. That was something that must have been significant.

Feilen looked closely at the floor, looking for any possible arcane sigils that might have been twisted from their original purpose by the shift in magic into a deadly trap.

He stepped forward carefully, just a bit deeper into the room to glance at the wall from a better angle, and there he found them, traces of old spellforms. He only glanced over, without trying to read them yet.

Something he could work to reconstruct.

With a faint smile, he reached into his bag, pulling out notes to copy those findings piece by piece.

Careful to not activate anything by errant touch, he examined the rune where the script should be starting, at the very center of the wall. It was dizzying to look at. Somehow just shape of it brought pain on his head in sharp spike then shooting down his spine.

He stumbled backwards. Closed eyes don't help, the image of shape blares, burned into his retinas. The world is echoing with sickening pain and quivering, then lurching like stormy sea.

Smooth cold surface hits his back, edge digging into his fingers somehow.

Personhood. Human. Elf. Person, identify shape. Self. Perception. Selfperception,humanityawarnespersonpersonself society communication. Language. Awareness.

The concept crashes and echoes off itself, bringing up concept in purest form and washing associated images and connections like waves, one after another. Fascinating.

Curious. Question. Fascinating, more. Knowledge, research, data, information, find, examine, know, more more more curious. Fascinating. Know. Find out. Researchexaminecuriousfindquestion. More.

The sentiment echoed, pulled something closer. Existence. Mind, aware, getting tangled with another. The wave of pure... Thoughts, too much to bear.

Mind body person. Person nice like enjoy companion. Idea together. Existence. Self. Aware. Curious. Person.

Echoing across his head, painfully ringing. It felt like his mind was getting crushed under the weight of that attention.

Then the bunch of carnal sensations, touch, pressure, softness of skin with firm muscle underneath, thick hair brushing between his fingers, shades of skin, pleasant timbre of voice, the close look at an eye, blue-green like a sea, the warmth of a body, the roughness of glistening scales and thundering dragon roar echoing in the bones, claws, nails digging in, teeth gently nipping...

Feilen came crashing down on the floor, right by the obelisk, his head feeling like someone scrapped out inside of his brain with sandpaper. He could feel wetness on his face, warmth dripping out of his ear, and dull pain of impact on the back of his head.

He smiled to himself bitterly. Of course, that's where he gets after confidently marching in, convinced he knew how to delve safely.

[mxddyhero]

HELLO you know who it is, I am here to submit Jason and Bruce for the ask game!!!!! Pretty please!!! 🍒

IM SO SORRY TUMBLR ATE THE FIRST TIME I DID THIS I LITERALLY THREW MY PHONE BUT YES OFC LETS FUXKING GO

Also disclaimer I've barely been into dc a year and am nowhere close to reading everything there is on Red Hood/Jason, let alone Bruce so I might just be chatting pure shit but here's hoping I convey some semblance of coherent thought <3

describe their canon relationship/dynamic

Error 404 not found tbh,, their relationship is strained and hostile at best. I do think that when Bruce first took Jason in, he had the best of intentions and he genuinely cared for him like a son in a way he maybe hadn't with Dick. Like, he related to Dick and saw himself in him, but Jason was Gotham personified. Jason was a street kid through and through; determined and calculating, adaptable and resilient, and I think in Bruce's eyes, saving him meant a step towards his ultimate goal of making his hometown a better place. But as time went on, Bruce ultimately came to appreciate Jason for Jason. Which is why their relationship now is so fucking sad, really, because Jason is still the same in many ways. He still cares deeply about the less fortunate citizens, he makes sure his guys don't deal to kids (and if they do, they pay the ultimate price for it). He's controlling crime better than Batman could've (would've) and he even forgives Bruce for not being able to save him that night. And Bruce just. Calls him angry and violent and shuns him and acts as though none of it ever mattered. Calls Jason a criminal, gives him the same label as the man who killed him, and tries to take the moral high ground because he let the Joker go on to hurt more people. Jason, moments after bearing his heart and soul to Bruce, ends up with his throat slit with a batarang and just like that all hope, all possibility of their reconciliation is gone.

your ideal/headcanon version of it? how does it differ from how it is in canon & why is this your favorite version? any other alternate versions of it you enjoy?

Honestly, WFA is basically it. And yeah, I know wfa isn't canon. I know it's a silly, light-hearted webtoon. BUT IT'S SO FUCKING GOOD AND CATHARTIC. Not even just for Bruce and Jason, but everyone in the batfam.

But main canon? I'd love for Jason to step away from Batman for a while. Like, I'm glad Jason's been making progress with Dick, teaming up with him on cases etc., but. I think he should realise that he truly has nothing to prove to Bruce. Until the Joker is dead (killed by whoever), and Bruce is okay with that, I don't see how they can have a functional relationship. Because like, even when Dick killed Joker, Bruce brought him back. So the clown needs to go, and Jason needs to figure out what he truly wants and not trying to gain Bruce's attention and approval again.

ALSO DC I'M ON MY HANDS AND KNEES BEGGING, PLEASE STOP CALLING JASON THE ANGRY ROBIN, THE VIOLENT ROBIN ETC., I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE- is pulled off the stage

what do you like about their relationship, why is it interesting or enjoyable to you?

It's not enjoyable <3 it brings me copious amounts of pain every day <3

But interesting? Not to overshare, but I have no relationship with my father either, and a rather negative view of my bio dad much like Jason so it's more like. I can relate to him and see where he's coming from on a lotta fronts. I can project ✌

what about the individual characters involved? what does this relationship mean to them, what makes it unique among their relationships?

I think that despite it all, they still mean a lot to each other.

I said it before, but the fact that Batman was willing to give Jason, a street kid from Crime Alley, lit a fire in Jason. Jason always had hope, he went out that night to get a meal for him and his mum and I don't think Bruce necessarily gave him that drive necessarily, because the kid was hell bent on surviving no matter what. But Bruce showed him he didn't have to just survive, but he could do more. Without worrying where his next meal was coming from, he could actually focus on himself as a person and what he wanted to do, and had the means and opportunity to actually do it. It made him feel like the future was limitless, like he was capable of anything and everything instead of narrowing his sights to living day-by-day and Bruce encouraged that for him. Hell, he even told him he could quit being Robin after he got hurt because he only wanted what was best for him but being taken in was the best thing that could've happened to him...

And for Bruce well. I dislike a lot of how Bruce interacts with Jason post-resurrection, to put it simply. I like to think it's because after he lost Jason, he gave up on letting people in. He cared for someone and like before, it ended in violence and a life ended too soon and he had to mourn over something that he felt was his fault again. Jason was gone for years, and he had to be pulled back from the brink by Tim, so we know he wasn't coping well and I need to think that the only reason he treated Jason so coldly when he returned was because he so desperately needed for all those years of mourning and grieving not to be for nothing or I'll go insane. It makes sense that Bruce being confronted with that fact that he couldn't keep himself in check alone after losing Jason, he preferred to just shut down instead of engaging with the feelings that seeing his son back brought. God idk if that makes any sense hsgugfs,,

I also wanna talk about Dick, even though you didn't ask but I swear it's relevant to Bruce and Jason's relationship-

Dick said growing up in the manor with Bruce was lonely, which I think is because Bruce saw himself in Dick. Bruce didn't have many people growing up, and he turned out fine (you are not fine, sir), so I think he thought that Dick could handle that way of living too to deflect his own issues. He wanted to raise him the same way he was because he was projecting, if you get me. But in Bruce's eyes, Jason had had people before. He had his mother, and the other kids from the alley and people who looked out for one another because you had to in a place like that. Of course, Dick had that too. A mother and father, the extended circus family, a lot of fans from the circus, but Bruce was too fixated on seeing himself in Dick that he forgot that because he needed to channel Dick's anger right away. Jason might've been wary and callous, sure, but he had time, so Bruce was more tactile and patient in his approach with Jason and I think that's why Bruce saw Jason more of a son than Dick, anyway-

favorite interaction they have in canon

God despite it all, there are a few.

Of course UTRH gotta be here because AAAAAAAAA (sound of wailing)... like please Bruce, he just wanted to hear how much he meant to you and to stop the Joker from being able to do anything like that again... I like to think that as much as Jason was hurt by what happened (because of course he would be, mans literally died), he was hurt on Bruce's account too, because Bruce chose to care for and open his life to someone again, and Jason was taken from him just like his parents. Like... Jason knows that pain (albeit in a different way since Willis was a piece of shit and Catherine ended up being dependent on drugs), and Bruce gave him a second chance despite everything they'd both endured. I think he wanted to prove to Bruce that it was worth trying to care for and love someone again, even despite losses, or even because of them, because Bruce gave that chance to him. And he was just. Shut down. This is sad but it's one of my favourite moments.

God this fuxking sjdghsvsjsbs 😭😭😭 LIKE YOU CAN'T TELL ME THAT JASON GENUINELY HATES BRUCE... I simply do not believe it. I think he's angry, betrayed, resentful... but he still deeply cares for him and IT HURTS.

And listen. Listen to me. Grabs you by the shoulders. This fuxking chapter was so good. It means everything to me. It was everything I could've ever hoped for and more. 🥳 HEALTHY AND OPEN COMMUNICATION!!! 🥳 EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY 🥳 god it makes me so fucking shsvhdvdjd ;;;

favorite interaction they have in your head/a situation you want to put them in

Family therapy 💖But uhm fr? I want to see Jason and Bruce talking about how much Tim has grown. Talking about Damian being in the titans and complaining that he can't take his 284 pets to the tower. I want Clark to just casually drop Jason in conversation because he visited Lois the other day and they talked about the decline of modern literature. Just. Normal family shit that isn't too heavy but also not so trivial it can be overlooked as being "not relevant to the plot" or "out of character". Despite it all, they are family. And I want that to be shown more. Please.

Lin I'm so fucking sorry this is so long........ and that tumblr ate it the first time bcs the first one was so much more cohesive and concise then almost refused to post it again so I dm'd you on dsc... collapses. Tumblr in its joker arc fr rn...

[angstyaches]

henry has been really sweet and supportive of donnacha. i’d love to see him return the favor 🧣

Anon, when I tell you that this is basically already canon in my head - I feel like Henry falls asleep on the sofa a lot, and someone ends up having to put a blanket over him.

CW: POV character gets a fright? Religion mention, chronic pain, caretaker is confused about their Feelings.

Prompt Meme

🧣 - A fluffy blanket

Donnacha hissed under his breath as his elbow whacked the wall. He felt around in the dark for the light switch for the kitchen and let himself have a little sulk. All he'd wanted was a glass of water, and for that, he deserved a throbbing funny bone?

He blinked as the bare lightbulb lit up the tiled floor and walls, spilling light through to the living room too. Donnacha looked towards the living room out of habit, and ended up taking a double glance. 

His heart almost jumped right out of his ribcage when his eyes honed in on a human face. 

Donnacha didn't exactly believe in ghosts, but it was hard to be raised in a Catholic household without having at least a slight notion that the Virgin Mary might show up one day, demanding your attention.

However, he'd never seen the Virgin Mary depicted with a six-o’clock shadow and glasses.

"For god’s sake, Henry," Donnacha sighed in relief.

Henry barely stirred. His eyes were open, just barely, and he was stretched out as far as the sofa would allow him. 

“Hen,” Donnacha whispered, remembering that Lucy and Payton were still sleeping down the hall. He padded across the carpeted floor, heart skipping beats when he failed to get a reaction. “Hey, Henry? What’re you doing out here? You okay?”

“Couldn’t sleep in bed.”

So you decided to lie in wait to give me a heart attack instead? Donnacha pursed his lips and exhaled through his nose, frowning when he saw that Henry was already falling back to sleep, having been stirred from it by the light. His hands were balled into fists even as he slept. 

His sleep looked wrong, if that even made sense. Maybe that’s just what rest looked like when you were in almost constant pain, but...

For starters, he needed a blanket.

Donnacha gasped softly before heading back towards his own room.

There was a fuzzy, lime-green blanket folded up in the corner of his wardrobe. He and Autumn used to curl up under it during nights in; come to think of it, Donnacha was almost sure she’d bought it for him, years ago. He wondered what the protocol was for things an ex gave you, but which still have a function in your life.

He forgot to keep scrutinising that thought as he returned to the dimly-lit living room. A smirk crossed his face. 

When he’d woken before, Henry had pulled his glasses off his face, but had dropped off again before being able to place them on the coffee table or the floor. He held them by one tip, his hand hanging limply off the side of the sofa.

Donnacha quickly dropped the smile, unsure of what to make of the warmth spreading through his chest. 

He busied himself, prying the glasses from Henry’s fingers and placing them on the table. 

He shook the folds from the green blanket and draped it over Henry’s body, adjusting it several times so that his socked feet and his bony shoulders were equally covered up.

“Night, Hen,” he whispered, retreating back through the kitchen. He switched off the light and felt his way back to his bedroom.

Donnacha was back under his duvet for about a minute before he sat upright and got out of bed again. 

He’d forgotten about his glass of water.