#f/f whump

[the-bar-sinister]

"I'd die for you."

"Would you live for me? No, I mean would you live for me? Would you change yourself in every conceivable way to better fit my desires? Would you abandon any principle you ever had and pervert yourself until you've forgotten what you once were, all for my love?"

[jen-with-a-pen]

F O X ＨＵＮＴ

summary: Not only has HYDRA executed their infiltration on S.H.I.E.L.D., but they have also reclaimed their finest weapon. Your safety isn't the only thing that's compromised.

pairings: WS!Beefy!Bucky Barnes x F!Avenger!Reader

word count: 6.1k

warnings: chasing, being hunted down, implied n0n-con elements, canon-level violence, cursing, implied t0rture, blood, beat1ngs, forced nud1ty, language, HYDRA-level cruelty, Bucky gets Brainwashed (again), there's Steve x Reader if you squint REALLY REALLY hard

read here on ao3!

a/n: This was inspired by last year's Whumptober Day 2: NOWHERE TO RUN - CORNERED, CAGED AND CONFRONTATION. I know it's February JUNE, but shit came up and my motivation tanked lmao thanks adhd med trials Literally have never done a dark(er?) fic before and this one has been cooking for god knows how fucking long now. I hope y'all like it <3 (also the hydra victory au is something i discovered from the lovely @lunarbuck reset series and stewed obsessively over for literal months now. still obsessed with it whoops)

dividers by @firefly-graphics | gif by @lost-shoe | @hydravictrix

my ao3 | my masterlist

Translations

Lisitsa | лисица - fox/little fox

Soldat | солдат - soldier

Syuda | сюда - over here

Khitraya suka | хитрая сука - sly bitch

Moy priz | мой приз - my prize

Glupaya pizda | глупая пизда - stupid cunt

Moye | мое - mine

The infiltration was subtle at the start.

A few missions gone mysteriously wrong, agents killed in action or disappearing entirely, hacks that were, thankfully, contained within an inch of a full-blown data breach. All of it seemed so coincidental when it happened, swept under the rug each and every single time before Director Fury could have a swear-filled say as to what the hell was going on. 

But hindsight is 20/20. It always is.

The day S.H.I.E.L.D. fell was, ironically, the perfect day: brilliant sunshine, clear blue skies, a breeze weaving between the towering buildings and skyscrapers. It was almost eerie, in a way, how perfect of a day it was. 

You found yourself in the gym, Steve and Sam hashing it out on whose turn it was in sparring. You had all but knocked Sam out cold in the previous round as Steve watched from behind the ropes, cheering you on with a cocky, proud grin as he watched all of his hard work in your training pay off.

Of course, the stubborn ass he was, Sam wanted another go. 

“C’mon, Steve! I wanna rematch!” Sam protested, gesturing wildly in your direction with one hand while his other held an ice pack to his bruised temple. Steve stifled a laugh, tossing a glance over his shoulder to you. You shook your head, smiling back as you gulped down the rest of your water bottle. Cool strands spilled out from the corners of your lips and down your chest. You welcomed the relief from the sweat gluing your t-shirt to your skin. 

“How ‘bout I take Steve instead of giving you another concussion?” you retorted, giggling as Sam shot a narrow look at you. He huffed, forfeiting his argument by waving a dismissive hand. 

“Fine, ’m gonna go find some pain meds,” he grumbled, turning to point a swollen finger at Steve. “I better see you in the infirmary next, Cap.” 

He stomped off through the metal doors and left the two of you in silence.

“Whaddya say, sweetheart? You up for round two?” Steve teased, stepping under the ropes and into the ring. He wrapped his hands as he moved to the center, muscle memory carrying him while keeping his eager gaze on you. His eyes carried excitement as they journeyed up and down your figure, rolling his lip between his teeth as he drank you with his stare. 

You did little to hide your pride at the Captain checking you out, chewing the corner of your cheek to tame your own smirk at the beautiful blond. You turned away, hiding the heat from your cheeks as you tossed your bottle at your bag. You weaved under the ropes, coming face to face with your willing opponent in the center. You lifted your chin to meet his, the hidden smirk on your lips growing into a grin.

“With you? Always, old man,” you purred. You tossed him a teasing wink as you positioned your fists in front of you, feet planted firmly in the starting stance. Steve lingered on you for a second longer, tongue swiping across his lips hungrily as he cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, raising his hands to mirror you.

The two of you began to circle one another, dancing in a familiar pattern you knew by heart. Steve took his first swipe at you and you ducked, managing a hit to his stomach. A grunt escaped from him– not of hurt but of thrill. He lunged for you as you dodged again, blocking his failed strike to your head. 

“Wow! You really can’t teach an old dog new tricks!” you taunted, dodging another blow, his wrapped fist only grazing your shoulder. You rolled it back, holding back a slight wince as you continued the violent waltz. 

You lunged at him, instead faltering and falling to the ground. Readying the curse on your tongue, it stopped short of your lips as you looked up at Steve. 

He stood frozen in place, panting, fists at his sides clenching tighter and tighter. As you opened your mouth to unload even more cursing questions, screeching erupted from the loudspeakers around the room. High-pitched tones screaming above, a robotic voice speaking clinically and quickly. You scrambled off the floor, unease creeping in as you latched onto Steve’s arm, his arm tensing under your touch.

CODE WHITE. CODE SILVER. ALL SECURITY AND TEAM UNITS URGENTLY NEEDED. 40th FLOOR. THREAT IS ACTIVE AND HIGHLY DANGEROUS. REPEAT. CODE WHITE. CODE SILVER. ALL SECURITY AND TEAM UNITS–

The message had cut out, static replacing it alongside the echoing alarms throughout the hallways outside the gym. You looked up at Steve. Anxiety surged upon finding his face devoid of all blood, his jaw slack, eyes boring into the metal doors leading to the hallway. He looked scared. 

You’d never seen Steve scared before. 

“Steve, what the fuck was that–”

“Get to the locker rooms and hide,” he ordered. He pulled his arm from you, jumping over the ropes and sprinting to his duffel bag on the floor. He pulled out his phone and dialed frantically as he ran to the doors. 

“Steve!” You stood trembling in the ring as your stomach churned. 

“Now!” he yelled. “I’ll come back for you!” 

He didn’t wait to hear your response as he slammed the gym doors shut, followed by a whir and click.

He locked you in. 

You didn’t– couldn’t– hesitate as a surge of urgency overtook you. You needed to hide. Now. Fast.

Your legs carried you as you jumped out of the ring and raced to grab your duffel bag, sprinting to the back of the gym through another set of double doors. You wove through the tiled maze of the locker room searching for some sort of hiding spot, settling on the showers. You snuck over to the stall at the very end, the closest one to the emergency exit, and ducked under the opaque plastic curtain. Your bag fell to the floor as you climbed onto the stall seat. Blood pumped in your ears, thumping as quickly as your shaky, shallow breathing. Millions of thoughts and questions and worries rushed through your mind at impossible speeds.

White and Silver. Which alert was that for?

You racked through fleeting memories, distant recollections of training and orientation from months ago, searching for anything remotely familiar. You remembered all of the other codes– red, orange, teal– but no white, no silver. 

A faint buzzing sounded from inside your duffel. You lunged, unzipping it and fishing out your phone. Natasha. Her name lit up the screen and you frantically hit the answer key before the call could even think about dropping.

“Where the fuck are you?” Her panicked voice hissed into your ear. Her edged tone was enough to make your stomach backflip faster. 

“Locker rooms, forty-fifth floor. What the fuck is going on, Nat?” Your voice shook as anger and confusion boiled in your blood.

A muffled swear. “Where’s Steve?”

“He ran out, locked me in, told me to hide.” More incoherent curses.

“Fuck, fuck, okay, look, trust me on this, you need to stay where you are, okay? I can get you out, I–” 

High-pitched ringing overtook the speaker, sending you reeling away from the receiver. Static echoed out of the speakers.

“You what? Natasha!”

“No– time– you–”

“Natasha! Hello?”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

You tore the phone away from your ear and choked back the bile rising in your throat. Service was out. The blinking bars at the top of the screen mocked you and your sudden plunge into isolation. 

The lights went next. 

The dull fluorescents flickered. Someone cut the electricity, sending you into almost darkness as the backup generator lights kicked on. Scattered lights from above cast an eerie yellow glow over the shower tiles. You’d only seen this kind of outage happen once before, when New York was hit with Hurricane Noah a few years back.

The fear you felt in that storm paled in comparison to what you felt now.

You sighed, shaky and surrendering, and pulled your body closer to you on the shower bench. A chill snaked its way down your spine as your skin brushed the cool ceramic, an unwelcome addition to the cold already enveloping you. Your sweat-soaked t-shirt and shorts failed to aid you and your aching muscles. Fingernails dug into your kneecaps in a struggle to stop trembling as you tried to focus on your breathing. Inhaling, exhaling, in, out. Screwing your eyes shut, praying to any deity imaginable it was all just a drill, it was all an accident or a misunderstanding or–

The ground shook as a loud bang echoed from outside the locker room. A panicked yelp escaped your throat before your hands could scramble and cover your mouth. You froze as the tremors subsided and listened. It, or they, sounded close. 

Too close. 

Another BANG! Then another. 

Rhythmic, steady blows, each quicker and more powerful than the last. Hands clamped tighter over your lips until your blood froze at the sounds of crushing steel and crumbling concrete. The lump in your throat grew as horrific realization flooded over you. 

They, or it, broke in.

You couldn’t wrap your head around it– those doors were more fortified than Tony’s lab. Four-inch-thick, steel and plexiglass doors with a three-tier secured locking system. Nothing, nobody– not even the strongest Super Soldier– was powerful enough to make the faintest of dents in them.

Racing through who, or what, could have possibly broken into the gym, your train of thought derailed as echoes of men yelling indecipherable words and mixed commands shattered the remaining air of safety you clung to. Listening intently, a mix of combat boots and tactical gear filtered in with the echoed commands.

The S.T.R.I.K.E. Team.

Your legs begged for reprieve from crouching, but your body disobeyed and froze you in place. Part of you didn’t trust who was outside. Footsteps and gruff voices became heavier, closer. The relief that greeted you was replaced again by panic as you listened closer.

Clear, Russian commands resonated at the entrance to the locker rooms. They were coming in. 

Your breath hitched, blood running cold as footsteps closed in. It was one person, but their steps didn’t sound like the heavy boots before them. They sounded more like…

Sneakers?

The rubber from the intruder’s shoes squeaked on the tiled floors. Ragged breathing echoed off the walls. A low growl, accompanied by quiet whirring. Someone big, someone mean. 

Your heart made its way to your throat as the intruder inched closer. Slow, methodical, as if trained in search and rescue. 

It didn’t feel like a rescue.

The lump almost turned into a scream as an echoed BANG carried from the bathroom stalls around the corner. Silence followed, then a growl, then another BANG. The cycle repeated for the remaining stalls, the intruder slowly creeping along. Growls became deeper upon each disappointment. 

Hostages. They were looking for hostages.

Soles squeaked as the intruder changed course, stomping around the corner to search the line of shower stalls. You hiccuped a sob, realizing tears started to trail down your cheeks. Biting your palm only proved a lame attempt to calm your racing heart, a scream threatening to leave your throat as they began tearing the plastic curtains off the stalls. Each clang of metal cracking onto the tile became closer as you ground your teeth into the meat of your hand. Eyes screwed shut, silent prayers raced in your head, pleading to wake up; to wake up from this hellscape of a sick, twisted nightmare. 

The intruder’s steps stopped. 

Your eyes opened, widening at the blurred, hulking shadow standing outside of your stall. They had to be well over six feet. Towering, bulky, monstrous. 

Slowly, the shadow’s hand reached for the curtain. One by one, its fingers closed around the plastic’s edge, preparing to rip it down and rip you open. Eyes burning, hot tears felt like molten metal as you attempted to make yourself as small as possible in your corner, huddling your knees as close as they could be. This was it. This was the end. You prayed– actually fucking prayed– hoping they couldn’t hear your pathetic whimpering, hoping they would make this quick, painless; break your neck or put a gun to your head and get it over with. Leave your body for someone else to find.

“Soldat, syuda!” 

The command made your heart stop.

The shadow froze, stopped by a call from the entrance to the locker room. Skin met your teeth as you bit harder into your hand. Lungs began panicking as you started hyperventilating, bile reaching your throat and burning the back of your tongue. 

The shadow, the monster, growled in protest. It retracted the curled hand from the curtain, wordlessly moving back towards the bathroom stalls. Footsteps faded as muffled conversation floated away from the locker room.

You needed to get the fuck out of there. 

You slid off the bench, legs aching and knees popping as you crouched silently over to the curtain, peeking out behind the plastic. It crinkled quietly and you bit your lip, leaning out ever so slightly over the threshold. 

Tiptoeing around the corner, you faced the emergency exit. The glowing sign omitted a creepy, green glow that added to the eeriness brought by the generator lights. 

This was it.

You slammed the push bar down, throwing the door open with your body and spilling out into the hallway. Sunlight flashed through the infinite glass hallway, blinding you. In your frozen state, you hear commotion from behind the door as it slammed shut. Banging from the other side, the sound of metal on metal, made your teeth grind. Indents from punches dented the door, deforming its smooth outside. You didn’t stay frozen for long as your body screamed at you to fucking move, now.

Your legs obeyed immediately, carrying you through the corridor to the closest means of escape you could find. As you rounded the corner, the crushing sounds of the door breaking off of its hinges hit your ears. You didn’t dare to look back, sprinting through the twists and turns of the infinite hallway. You followed what felt familiar, burning muscles egged on by the sound of pounding footsteps getting closer and closer.

Finally, you stumbled onto the entrance to a stairwell, pausing to gasp for air your lungs demanded. The burn in your legs and chest only aided in the physiological need to hyperventilate. Sweat dripped from your temple and your head pounded as hard as your feet hitting the ground. 

You leaned into the safety bar, inches away from further distancing yourself from whatever, whoever, was on your trail, when a yell erupted from the end of the hallway. 

It felt like slow-motion; one of those scenes in those cheesy horror movies Sam always made you and Steve watch on weekends off. The ones with cheap FX, bad sound, but somehow great editing for the budget. The scenes where realization hits the main character and suddenly everything is half the speed while they still move in real time. 

You turned your head towards the source. Then, it hit you. Blood drained from your face as the horror of realization hit you, like a speeding sixteen-wheeler head on.

Bucky Barnes stood hulking at the end of the hallway. Generator lights and setting sun illuminated his snarling teeth, gleaming from parted lips that had him panting like a rabid dog. If you hadn’t known better it would’ve looked like he was heading for the gym for his daily workout. Blown pupils, sweat-stuck hair, complimented by a shaking frame– most definitely caused by adrenaline, dopamine, and a slew of Gods-knew-what other drugs he had pumped into his system. Splotches of drying, smeared blood coated his neck and shirt while even more dripped onto the ground from his fists. The crimson contrasted with the medically white floors. 

Bile rose in your throat again. The acidic taste made you dry heave at the sight of the blood, knowing from the looks of Bucky it definitely wasn’t his.

He snarled as your eyes finally met. Fists of flesh and metal flexed. Rippling muscles shook as he readied to launch forward.

“You’re mine, lisitsa!” he barked. His voice booming louder than the speed of sound, it made your ears ring.

Your throat finally opened. You screamed as he sprinted towards you, making more ground down the hallway than an apex predator out of hibernation. You shoved the exit door open, heaving your legs forward as you ascended the stairs. No choice but to go up, you refused to look back– nay you didn’t dare to even consider it. Muscles and tendons and joints burned, yearning for you to stop, but the door slamming from flights below you only pushed you harder, flying up and passing floor after floor. 

You were fast, but he was faster. 

Dizziness overtook you as your vision began to blur. Darkened edges of your peripherals made you stop your climb at level 50, pausing for a split second to hear Bucky’s progress. He was close behind, but you still had more of an advantage. You knew the Tower better than him. You knew level 50 had another stairwell on the opposite side of the floor, through another hallway off the corner of your current one. Sneakers pounded too close for comfort as you shoved the door open and made a break for it down another corridor labyrinth.

If you made it out of this alive, you swore you’d kill Tony’s architect yourself. 

“You can’t hide forever, lisitsa!” Bucky’s voice rang out from the stairwell as you rounded the corner, sprinting through more identical-looking hallways. Another corner later and the glowing red EXIT sign appeared above the next stairwell. A beacon of hope, almost. Relieved, you head straight for it, body and mind and soul pushing against the burning and the gasping for air. You were right there, hand outstretched, fingertips grasping the metal bar–

It felt like a car crash. 

Not an accident or fender bender. No, it felt like seventy miles an hour meets a tree with no intent of moving. That split-second feeling where your stomach drops and you can all but brace for the deadly impact destined for you to meet.

Time stopped as you were yanked backwards. Cold, slick metal wrapped around your ankle, bloody hand print smearing some poor bastard’s DNA all over your calf as your body fell to the ground. Hard. Your jaw clenched as your chin slammed into the linoleum. Teeth ground into your tongue as copper flooded your tastebuds. Your lungs, with little wind left in them, gasped for oxygen. Another scream rising in your throat became stuck in your vocal cords. 

Bucky whipped you around as you struggled to free your lower half. You landed on your shoulder, head bouncing against the floor and teary eyes struggled to stay open and endure the pain. He straddled your form, the weight crashing down on your bones and organs. A sharp inhale impaled your chest as you met Bucky’s darkened eyes, then; the familiar steel blue replaced entirely with dilated, unhinged pupils. 

It was the first time you got a good look at his face. His face is speckled with blood spatter and several bruises spread across his cheek down his neck. Two black eyes, a bloody nose– one you hoped was his– and a broken lip. The bloodied collar of his shirt only aided in the mess of his hair. His soft, chocolate strands stuck in mats to his neck and temples with sweat and blood. 

Out of sheer habit, because he looked like your Bucky, you couldn’t help but reach a hand out to him. A soft plea for the man behind his eyes, one you begged everything holy was still there. He held your stare, face contorting into unrecognizable emotions. Tears brimmed your eyes as your hand stretched further, sobs escaping as your fingers inched closer and closer to his battered face.

“Bucky, it’s me–”

Your appeal transformed into a shriek, quickly snuffed out as Bucky wrapped his crimson-spattered metal hand around your throat. You choked, sputtering lost pleas as your hands flew to your neck. Fingernails flailed in futile attempts to claw off the weapons-grade titanium. 

“You’re done running, khitraya suka,” Bucky’s hot breath fanned your face as he leaned in. His mouth grazed your jaw, titanium hand on your throat flexing with each syllable. He slowly made his way down your neck, pushing harder into your chest with his forearm. A heavy growl. His grip only tightened as you tried to knee him in the groin, picking you up by your neck and slamming you down again.

Stars circled your blurred vision, eyes rolling back into your head. The corridor, the lights, everything split into two.

“You owe me for my victory, lisitsa,” Bucky’s husky whisper resonated in your ear as he licked the side of your face, his hot, wet mouth against your tear-stained cheek. As his free hand moved to the waistband of your shorts, another surge of panic washed through you. You tried to sputter a weak cry from your closed-off throat, blood turning cold, another scream building and building in your chest and aching for release. 

“You owe me what’s mine –!” 

BANG!

Something from somewhere all of a sudden. The object slammed into Bucky, throwing him off of you and spilling across the floor. 

Finally, your lungs lunged at the chance for air, leaving you a heaving, choking, coughing mess. Spitting at the ground as you made your way shakily to your hands and knees, a freed hand traveling to rub the fresh strangulation bruises forming on the column of your stiff neck. 

“Get the fuck off her, Bucky!” 

Steve.

As your vision cleared, the shield whizzed past you as it ricocheted back into Steve’s open arms. Bucky groaned, low and guttural, but only for a moment is he subdued. Slowly, he rose, like smoke from extinguished ashes, looking to his metal vice. A large dent adorned the weathered, bloodied appendage where his bicep met his shoulder. He then turned his attention to Steve, baring his teeth, anger coursing through him as he immediately disregarded you. His sights set on a new target, launching himself at Steve without a beat lost.

Steve grunted as Bucky’s metal fist met the vibranium shield with a deafening clang. Steve gritted his teeth and pushed back, managing to break Bucky’s attack and aim a kick for his stomach.

“Go! I got him!” Steve yelled to you through a gasp as Bucky countered with his own swipe at Steve’s middle. Your body stayed put, relishing in the ability to fucking breathe again, also painfully aware how screwed you’d be if you didn’t escape as you had the chance. You willed yourself to move, to run and to keep going, to no avail. As Steve landed a blow to Bucky, his eyes met yours once more. His baby blues, pained and tired, begged for you to listen to him for once in your life. 

“Now!”

The strain in Steve’s voice seemed to ignite a fire underneath you. Pushing yourself up, you willed your legs to carry you to the exit. Bloody shoe prints tracked your route as you slammed through the doorway. You cursed, knowing they’ll give away which way you’d go, knowing your life matters more than a twenty-dollar pair of sneakers. Kicking them off, throwing the pair down the exit, praying they made it far enough Bucky wouldn’t know any better. 

You threw yourself up the stars, tremors and pain afflicting every limb as the cold concrete seeped in through your socks in each step. The railing helped as you heaved yourself forward with help from the railing. Sweaty palms slipped on the bars, but your grip only grew tighter. 

You didn’t know how you, or your body, was able to do it, making it up seven more flights of stairs before your knees buckled on level 57. Heaving the door open and slamming it shut, you stumbled out into the new hallway. You hadn’t visited that level before. Something Steve and the others– especially Doctor Banner– said was “just a business floor.”

The sign on the wall directing to ‘SAFELAB’ said otherwise. Nothing in the Tower was “just business.” 

What you did know was that every SAFELAB on every floor was located in the same, far-east hallway. 

Wiping the sweat from your temple, you turned right, jogging down the darkened, emptied-out hallway. It felt like the apocalypse. No sign of anybody else. Doors left ajar, papers and bags and other employee memorabilia scattered throughout abandoned offices and cubicles. You hoped everyone was able to make it out, at least.

Part of you didn’t hope for much, though. 

The door to the lab came into view as you rounded the last corner. The door was still locked, the lab inside sterile and untouched. A sigh of relief escaped you. Holding your palm to the door’s scanner, it answered your prayers in a soft beep and whir, miraculously allowing you in. 

You maneuvered through the multiple security doors, four in total, crouching low once you managed to slip into the lab itself. The gigantic window at the front of the labspace spared no room for you to hide easily, but you had zero room to complain about it. It was your only option, after all.

Well, besides the roof. 

Crouched, you snuck your way around the counters and various equipment to one of the supply closets. The furthest corner from the entrance. You scoured through drawers and cupboards for some sort of weaponry; the most you could find was a new scalpel out of a box of extras. 

You closed in on the supply closet, reaching up and grasping the handle, turning it slowly to prevent any squeaks from the inner hinge. A tear glided down your cheek in relief. You hadn’t realized you started crying. Again. 

The door swung open. It greeted you mostly empty, deep enough for you to cram your body into. Crawling inside, bones and limbs contorted into the most comfortable position you could manage. You pinched the edges of the doors to close them as best as you can, accepting they, in fact, couldn’t close all the way from the inside. A curse under your breath, the sliver of dim light through the crack cast onto your face. Once settled, you crumpled your damp t-shirt up from the collar and shoved the fabric into your mouth. Teeth and tongue greeted sweaty cotton and hints of copper as you bit down on the collar, covering your mouth with a free hand. 

At last, after Gods knew how long it had been since you ceased moving, a silenced sob heaved out of your chest. Tremors only worsened as your nervous system rode out the fumes of its adrenaline high and flight mode instincts. Hot tears spilled down your cheeks, mixing with snot further down your face, slipping down to your neck and leaving behind streaked paths in the bloodied, hand-printed bruises adorned on your flesh. The pain from the near-strangulation you suffered broke through the shock and endorphins that were keeping you sane until then. You knew, though, you couldn’t break down. Not yet. Not until you saw Natasha or Steve or someone you trusted face-to-face. 

You started counting your breaths. Mind racing, thoughts traveling near sonic speeds through your mind carrying questions at how the hell it all happened.

You thought for sure S.H.I.E.L.D. was secure, especially after the ordeal with Bucky, Steve, and the whole ‘defeating HYDRA’ ordeal from a few years back. Hell, you thought it was safer than taking the FBI’s recon mission that was offered to you before being referred to Tony himself. Your mind raced, what-ifs and endless possibilities flashing across your eyes like a snuff film. You hoped Steve was okay. You hoped Natasha was on her way to your location any second. You hoped Sam was safe and made it out okay. You hoped Bucky –

Bucky. 

Christ, you hadn’t even stopped to think about how the hell everything happened to him. He’d been doing so well in his recovery program. Steve was even telling you about it that same morning, bragging about how well Bucky was doing, how much progress he was making, how soon they’d finally be able to move in together once Doctor Banner cleared him. Another sob overtook you. How you’d never seen him like that before, the feeling of his titanium arm slowly crushing your windpipe, the weight of his entire body crushing your internal organs as he’d held you down. The things he’d said. You tried to wrap your head around what he’d said, what he was going to do–

Crashing followed by shattering glass emitted a muffled yelp from you as your blood ran cold. Another wave of tears flooded out of your burning eyes, chest heaving unevenly. Your hand clamped even tighter over your mouth as teeth bit into the salty fabric of your shirt, drying up any more moisture your mouth was grateful to finally have.

BANG! Then another. Then more in rapid succession. Shattering, crashing, shattering, silence. The final blow to the security doors sounded from inside the lab itself. Your breath hitched and bile began bubbling in your stomach, reaching the back of your throat and across your tongue. You forced yourself to swallow the acid, listening intently to the crunch of sneakers on shattered glass.

He’d found you. 

“Lisitsaaa,” Bucky drawled, his voice dropped to a primally low octave. Lower than before. You almost couldn’t make out the words, a mixture of growled mumblings of English and Russian. Knees folded closer to your chest, you tightened your grip on the handle of the scalpel. Bucky’s footsteps were slow, methodical, predatorial. 

His heavy steps inched closer, each followed by a pause, then sudden crashing of lab equipment and smashing of drawers. More glass and metal slammed to the ground and walls after each pause. He sounded feet away. Then inches. 

Your breathing stopped as the sliver of light clouded over. The lump in your throat threatened more puke to rise as you dared to peer up through the crack, heart dropping like a dead weight to your stomach as your eyes fell on freshly bloodied sneakers. A stifled scream in your lungs choked you. You refused to think about whose blood that was.

Eyes darted back up. You could see Bucky’s blurred features clouded in shadows. The only light visible, then, was the glint from his wicked smile. Bloodied teeth shone as he licked his lips hungrily, a predator finally cornering its prey. 

Ever so slowly he crouched, shoving his face closer into the seam in the door. Tears and snot continued to stream down your face, your body hyperventilating as you forced yourself to look into his eyes. There was nothing else you could do. Nothing else to say, to cry about. There was nowhere left to run. He got you. 

“There you are, moy priz,” Bucky hissed before reaching through and throwing the doors open, heavy hands leaving imprints in the flimsy metal. Frozen, your fist was still closed around the scalpel, your muscles tensed as joints locked in place. His evil eyes scanned your body greedily, looking for which cut of meat to divulge in first. His gaze stopped at your fist and he chuckled, tisking in a disappointed tone. 

“Oh, glupaya pizda,” Bucky shook his head, amused at your meager choice of weaponry. Compared to him, you might as well have been waving a white flag. His smile only grew, tongue jutting out to lick his lips. Specks of blood coated the sides of his cheeks and edges of his mouth, smeared about from ear to ear with the back of his hand.

“Come with me and they might consider your life, lisitsa–”

You sprung into him, swinging your arm, landing the scalpel into the middle of his flesh hand, impaling straight through it. In an instant, blood spewed from the impact. Bucky screamed out in pain, a slew of mixed language curses reverberating in your skull. You scrambled out of your hiding place, bashing him with a balled fist to the face as you tumbled out and onto your feet, sprinting to the lab’s only exit. Freedom was only an arm’s length away when an overturned stool tripped you. The impact didn’t hurt near as much as the millions of shattered glass bits shredded cut into your skin, your hands and knees and arms and face littered as blood smeared under you and across the once-sterile white floors. You cried out, writhing around. Battered and bloodied, struggling to rise and run again despite the searing pain in your ankle.

Before you could form your next thought, a rough hand snatched your scalp and dragged you up by your hair. You uttered a panicked scream as Bucky hoisted you to eye level, snarling like a rabid dog as he shook you hard.

“I thought you were smarter than that, lisitsa,” he sneered, “but I was wrong.”

He hurled you back onto the floor, his bloodied, titanium fist still gripping your hair, dragging you over to one of the disheveled lab tables. More glass shredded your skin, blood and sweat and tears mixing and pouring over your face and hands and body. With ease and a free hand, he swiped the rest of the contents off another counter; beakers and burners crashed to the floor. His grip tightened as he threw you up onto the stainless steel counter, the dead weight of your body banging onto the table, landing you hard on your back. Eardrums rang into your skull and jaw, radiating down your spine and out your limbs. Your hands slip against the smooth metal from the blood, futile attempts to grab onto something, anything. You groaned and huffed excess sobs. The pain, unbearable; the fear, unimaginable. 

Bucky hoisted himself onto the table, landing on top of your broken body, his knee hitting your spine and knocking your last breath out of you. Straddling you, his thick thighs bulged through tattered sweatpants, squeezing into your rib cage. He looped another fist into your hair, raising your head and slamming it down. The side of your face smushed into the steel table, smearing around more blood as he did it again. And again. The cartilage in your nose cracked and throbbing pain radiated into your eyes, your skull. Warmth from the break and the blood poured over your face. The pain, dulling into numbness as you began to fade in and out of consciousness.

Your vision started to blur and blacken, stars and specks orbiting around Bucky like a halo of hallucination. Your body, finally surrendering to him. No fight left. Any strength you could have mustered, funneled into staying awake, proved useless. 

A new sound, then: ripping.

You didn’t have to look to witness Bucky unrelentingly tear your t-shirt away from your body, training his eyes on your open form. Bruised skin exposed to cool air, your chest still momentarily held together by your sports bra. He made quick work of it next, the nylon snapping off in one swipe, sending goosebumps racing down your spine. 

Ice-cold titanium fingers untangled from your matted hair and made their way from your nape, to the small of your back, to the waistband of your gym shorts. Muscles tensed as you felt each digit wrap almost leisurely onto the elastic. He tore them away swiftly, baring the rest of you and your skin to him. A growl, one of pleasure, vibrated into you from him, emitted he palmed the skin of your ass. His fingers journeyed languidly in a slow trail from your back to your core. You squirmed, wasting the last of your strength, a hopeless attempt to get away one last time. 

A crack came across your face. Flesh against flesh, he slapped you. A punishment. A command for obedience. Your body fell limp. Breathing raggedly and gagging on blood and spit, you shuddered as he took your wrists and tied them together with your t-shirt. 

Satisfied, his prey finally submitting, Bucky paused, panting as he leaned down to you. He wet his lips before speaking, gruff words slurred against your ringing eardrum. As he spoke, cold metal grazed your entrance, a threat of what was to come. 

“Now, I get to take what’s mine.”

Your screams echoed as the world fell dark.

[ohtobeleah]

Bruises // Jake Seresin

Summary: After a mission goes south, Jake finds himself captured by insurgents that show no remorse. But what’s worse than knowing he failed his mission? Knowing that the Weapons Systems Officer who trusted him to bring her home safe was in the same cell as him. Collecting bruises that match his own.

Coming Soon

[foundfamilywhump]

allow me to pitch what i, as a sports fiction writer, find to be a wholly underrated and underexplored genre of whump: sports whump

like. think about it. sports injuries can be devastating and gruesome. cultures of pushing through it and ignoring the pain and often re-injuring yourself much worse. Team Dynamics. the rivalries and alliances built into it. the potential for either whumper-free whump (accidents, stress injuries, bad falls, etc) AND whumpers that can exist in it (what if the whumper was a coach or a teammate or a rival? even a parent if it's school athletics? a journalist who has it out for someone? the potential ways for things to go wrong if you get a Bad Actor in any role are endless). the publicity if it's professional, for those of you who enjoy famous whumpees.

sports whump. that is all.

[a-reader-and-a-writer-for-all]

That's What Family is For (Part 2)

Fandom: DC, Batman, Batfam, Damian Wayne, Batsis!reader, f!reader Summary: After being kidnapped and offering to take Damian's place to be tortured, you miraculously find yourself waking up back home. Damian has a new outlook on your relationship, but will a secret from your past ruin everything? Word Count: 5231 TW: Hospital, Aftermath of Torture, Mentions of Past Torture, Mentions of Death, Forced to Watch, Crying, Coma, Past Trauma Note: Today is the 2 year anniversary of posting Part 1 of this fic. Thank you so incredibly much for your patience and support as I worked on this and I hope it lives up to Part 1 💖 Part of @ailesswhumptober

Part 1

You have no idea how long you were asleep for, but when you finally managed to drag yourself into consciousness, you couldn’t remember why every inch of your body was in a strange state of concurrent numbness and agony, or why you couldn’t seem to see out of your left eye. It was only when you caught sight of the two casts stretching from the soles of your feet up to the top of your thighs that it all came flooding back to you. 

You and Damian had been kidnapped in an attempt to get a ransom from Bruce. To prove they meant business, the kidnappers were going to torture Damian but you had offered to take his place. What happened next was just a blur of blood and pain: The glint of a large knife. The blunt impact of a bat. But mercifully, you couldn’t remember much else. Just that it had been bad. Really bad. 

You tried to take a mental inventory of what hurt and what sort of injuries you had sustained, but there was too much damage. All the individual pain bled into each other until it just felt like one massive wound. Every breath you took made your chest, ribs, and throat ache, your head was pounding, and you couldn’t move either leg or your left arm. All you could manage was a slight turn of your head as you looked towards the door but even that small motion sent new waves of pain through you, causing a low moan to slip from your lips.

Almost instantly, Jason came rushing into the room, panic etched onto his face. Yet the second he saw you looking at him, his face split into a massive grin. The kind you couldn’t remember seeing on him since he returned from the dead. And despite everything, that sight warmed your heart.

Licking your cracked lips, you tried to speak but nothing happened. Swallowing a few times, you finally managed a barely audible, “Hey, Jaybird.” 

The words sounded funny, thick and slightly lispy but Jay’s smile only widened. He hurried to your bedside and dropped into the chair that had been left there. “Damn, sis. You look terrible.”

You knew he was trying to keep the mood light, but you could hear the tears hiding just behind his words. Giving your best attempt at a smile, you croaked, “Even like this, I bet I still look better than you.”

“Yeah, probably,” he chuckled. “That voice though…. They said it would probably be hard to speak for a few days because of the tube and–” He cut himself off, but you knew what he was going to say. Because all your screams of pain had damaged it. 

Swallowing again, you tried to make your voice sound as normal as possible. “Yeah, well, you better be careful. You keep smoking all those cigarettes, this is what you’ll sound like in a few years.”

“Even now you gotta hassle me about those?”

“If you would just quit, I wouldn’t have to get on you about the–” 

Your words were cut off as your body fell prey to a fit of coughing. It tore at your throat like daggers and your chest felt like it was shattering into pieces. It only lasted for a few seconds but when it passed, you were left panting and moaning in pain. 

When you finally managed to pull yourself together once more and looked back at Jason, his smile had completely vanished, replaced with a thin-lipped grimace. His eyes drifted over your broken body before returning to your face. “So… Honestly. How do you feel?”

“How do you think?” you wheezed. “Like someone ran over me with.. with a… wit– oh forget it. I’m in too much pain to think of something clever. I feel shitty.”

“What hurts?”

“The easier question is ‘what doesn’t hurt?’. And why can’t I open my left eye?”

“Alfred taped it closed for now. It looked pretty messed up.”

You nod slightly. “Permanent?”

“Not sure,” he muttered, staring down at the floor. “They had to wait until you woke up to fully assess the damage.”

You nodded again, the dread growing in the pit of your stomach. But you have to know the answer to your next question, no matter how terrifying the answer might be. In a small voice, you ask, “How bad overall?”

Jason hesitated. “Maybe you should wait for Bruce or Alfred to–”

“How bad, Jay?”

Still avoiding your eye, he shifted in his chair before answering. “Bad. The worst of the damage is on your left side. Your arm was dislocated, your cheekbone was destroyed, you’re missing several teeth, and your eye is… well, I already mentioned that. Also, most of your ribs were pretty much shattered and the ones that weren’t are cracked. The pieces punctured your lungs in multiple places. Your legs…The knives thankfully missed all the major arteries, but Alfred said there still might be some nerve damage.”

“Is that all?” You had meant for the question to be sarcastic, but the quiver in your voice made it sound more like a desperate plea.

Jason took a long, deep breath. “It also took eight surgeries, four blood transfusions, and three resuscitations to get you stable.”

“Yeah, that feels about right.” You clenched your jaw tightly as you struggled to hold back your tears, but that just sent a fresh jolt of pain through your mouth. Using your tongue, you gently prod the three new gaps where teeth used to be. No wonder your words sounded funny. 

In a soft whisper, you asked, “I’m done, aren’t I? There’s no coming back from this, not really. Even if I can get back to a halfway normal state, I’m never going to be able to put the costume back on. No going on patrol, no more protecting the city, no more being a hero.” 

A small sob bubbled in your throat. When Bruce had taken you in all those years ago, you were a mess. Every night, you woke up screaming from nightmares—memories—of watching your parents tortured to death in front of you while you were helpless to do anything. You had felt so powerless. But then Bruce told you about his secret life. That he was the man in the mask who had rescued you from that horrible place. And he taught you how to be strong, how to be for others what he had been for you. He had given your life a purpose but now….it had been taken from you just like your parents had been. 

As the tears began to slip down your face, Jason carefully took your hand, rubbing the back with his thumb as he leaned in to stare you directly in your good eye. “Hey, don’t think that way. Bruce was able to come back from a broken back, I came back from the dead, and you… you can come back from this. It’s not gonna be easy and it’ll take a lot of hard work, but if anyone can do it, you can.”

The tears began to flow faster as you finally let the sob you had been holding back free. Squeezing Jason’s hand as tightly as you were able, you cried, “Thank you, Jay. Thank you for everything. I can’t even imagine making it through what comes next without my brothers by my side.”

Jason snatched his hand back from your grasp and pushed back in his chair, his expression growing dark as he spat, “Don’t. Don’t thank me. While you were sacrificing everything for Damian, while you were lying there dying, I was here. Too weak to help you when you needed me most.”

“Jay–”

“I wanted to be there, I did, I just…” His sharp tone crumbled into a near sob as he buried his face in his hands. “I was fine until he picked up the bat. Then it all came rushing back. All I could see was the Joker standing over me with that crowbar and…and I….” His hands muffled his cries, but you could still see the way his shoulders shook as he sobbed.

You had forgotten that they had sent a live feed of your torture to all of Wayne Industries which was probably how Bruce had located you and Damian. Jason never talked about what had happened to him all those years ago in that warehouse, but you had been waiting in the Batcave when Bruce had brought Jason’s body home. You still remembered the bruises and blunt force trauma that couldn’t have been made from the explosion. And you also recalled how the sight of your brother’s broken form sent you into a hysterical fit, not only over the loss of the boy you loved like family but also because it brought back all of the scars from your parents’ deaths. You had felt incredibly guilty later once Bruce and Alfred calmed you down that you had made Jason’s death all about you and your past traumas. But Bruce reminded you that your pain and grief was valid, whenever it hit you, and despite the circumstances, you needed to take care of yourself first or you weren’t going to be able to help anyone else.

Just like Jason needed to take care of whatever horrors he had relived before coming to help you.

It took a lot of determination and concentration, but you slowly moved your hand towards Jason. Luckily, he was sitting on your right side since that was the only arm you could move at the moment, but it still took an achingly long time to close the short distance between you.

As you lay your hand on his shoulder, his head jerked up. When he saw what you had done, his eyes—the blue magnified by the tears about to fall—grew wide. Smiling, you brushed your fingertips lightly across his cheek and said, “Jay, I understand why you didn’t come. There was nothing you could have done and you needed a chance to deal with your own pain. And I’m sorry that I was the reason you had to relive that experience.” 

Jason shook his head furiously and clutched at your hand. “No! This was not your fault! All you did was protect Damian. The only person to blame is that psychopath Moore.” His face darkened. “Bruce better be glad they threw that son of a bitch in Blackgate because if he had gotten away, nothing and no one would have stopped me from hunting him down and putting a bullet between his eyes.”

“See? You are such a loving, protective brother who would do anything for me.” His expression softened slightly. “Besides, you even just admitted. Moore is the only one to blame here. Not me, and not you. So, please, don’t beat yourself up over this. I’m still here and I need you now more than ever.” You squeezed his hand as tightly as you were able and after a moment, he returned both the squeeze and the smile. You nodded softly then changed the subject. “How is Damian handling all of this?”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” Jason nodded towards the other side of the room.

It took you a moment and quite a bit of pain to turn your head enough so your right eye could see where he was gesturing, but when you managed it, your smile grew wider.

Curled into a tight ball, Damian was fast asleep on the couch on the far side of the room. He looked so small and it reminded you that despite his upbringing, he was still just a kid, which made you feel better about your condition. If one of you had to be lying in this bed, you would have offered yourself up every time.

Jason chuckled softly to himself as he saw your face. “He’s barely left the room since they brought the two of you home. Bruce tried getting him to go back to school the last two days, but he flat-out refused. Said he wasn’t going anywhere until you woke up.”

“Really? That doesn’t sound like Damian.”

“Well, I think his actual words were ‘Tt. Father, I cannot be bothered with those trivial lessons while my sister’s fate is still uncertain. I am needed here. Yes, I have a geography test next week, but I have traveled to more countries than my so-called teacher could even possibly name. This is more important.’”

Despite the mocking—though fairly accurate—impression Jason had made, your eyes welled up with tears once more. Damian had called you ‘sister’. It was the first time you could ever remember him doing so. No. That wasn’t true. He had said it when Bruce and Dick had shown up to save them. In fact, the echoing word was the last thing you remembered before the world had gone dark. 

Swallowing hard to clear your throat, you asked, “Um, do you think…Would he be upset if I asked you to wake him up?”

“Yo! Demon Spawn! Wake up!” Before you could stop him, Jason hurled a pillow across the room so it slammed into Damian’s sleeping form. 

The kid instantly leaped to his feet in a crouched position, ready to take on any and all attackers. But he straightened up when he saw Jason’s smug grin and your weak smile staring back at him instead. Rushing to your side, he said, “Sister! You are awake!”

You tilted your head slightly to look at him better. “So are you. Sorry for the rude wake-up. That was all Jay.”

“Hey!” Jason huffed indignantly. “You asked me to wake him up and I did! You just never said how.”

Damian glared at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Yes, Todd has been exceedingly insufferable this last week while you have been injured—”

“W-week? I’ve been out of it for a week?” You felt your blood run cold. You knew things were bad, but for some reason the thought of you laying in this bed unconscious for the past 7 days made your condition seem so much worse.

Jason and Damian exchanged a worried look. Then Jason cleared his throat and said, “Yeah…. It's been eight days since you and Damian were kidnapped. They had to keep you in a medically induced coma for the first five days while they operated. Then when they brought you out, they had to dope you up with so many pain meds that you were out of it even when you were awake. They tried to lower your dose but they had to up them again when they removed the breathing tube and you wouldn’t stop moaning…So, yeah. It’s been a week.”

You let your head fall back against the pillow as tears began to sting your eyes. Obviously, it would have taken you time to recover from that level of injury, but a week? No, actually, eight days. And that was just the start of your recovery. The amount of time, therapy, and hard work it would take you just to be able to stand again, let alone walk or fight, was dizzying to think about. Despite the fact Jason had reassured you differently, you didn’t see how you weren’t done after this. How were you supposed to bounce back?

As the tears finally became too much and began slipping down your face, you whispered, “You all should have just let me go.”

“No!” The ferocity in Damian’s voice startled you and you looked over to see his small hands curled into tight fists as his face bore a determined scowl that could rival Bruce’s. “No. You do not get to give up. Not now. Not now that the worst of it is behind you. You never once gave up while we were captured. Despite everything that sadistic fiend did to you, you fought to protect me. We would not have been in that situation if it was not for me and I will repay my debt to you by remaining by your side to ensure you get through this.”

You stared at Damian for a long time, a mix of pride, adoration, and guilt stirring in your chest. Seeing how he wanted to stand by you and help you through what came next meant the world to you. The Damian who climbed into your car eight days ago wouldn’t have done so. However, you couldn’t let him make such a vow without knowing all the facts.

Shifting your eye to look at Jason, you muttered, “Can you give us a minute alone?”

He hesitated, his eyes flickering back and forth between you and his younger brother, but finally, he nodded. “Yeah, sure. I’ll go let everyone else know you’re not only awake but coherent this time. They’ll want to see you.”  

“Thanks, Jay. I’ll have Damian let you know when we’re done.”

He nodded, shot Damian one last look, and left the room. 

Now that you were alone, you carefully motioned for Damian to take the chair Jason had been sitting in earlier and he silently did as you wished…for once. He looked so small compared to the memory of Jason’s hulking form sitting there just moments before and tears once more stung your eyes as it hit you all over again how young he was to have experienced what the two of you just went through. You hadn’t planned on having this conversation until you were a little better, but he deserved to know the truth and not continue blaming himself for what happened. 

Taking a deep breath, you said, “It’s not your fault, Dami. He was never after you. You were only there because of me.”

“Tt,” Damian scoffed, folding his arms across his chest. “You have no proof of that. As you said in that warehouse, I am Father’s blood heir. If anyone was the target, it would have been me.”

You shook your head. “It was my car, Damian. The car I insisted you get in even though you didn’t want to. If I would’ve just let you walk home like you wanted–”

“They could have been monitoring me and adjusted their plans when I joined you in your vehicle. You still cannot be confident–”

“I know Moore.”

Damian blinked in surprise. “Yo–you what?”

You nodded sadly. “I know him. I didn’t realize it at first because it was so long ago and I’ve tried so hard to forget that day, but it was him. After I had passed out from Moore’s torture, they unhooked me from the chains and just let me drop to the floor. The pain of the landing woke me up for just a minute and I tried to beg them to put me back up because I knew otherwise they’d be coming for you, but I was in so much pain I could barely form a sentence. Moore saw I was awake and came to stand over me with that nauseatingly cocky look on his face.” 

You shuttered at the memory of it and knew it was an image that would haunt your nightmares for years to come. But you pressed on. “Then he said, ‘For what it’s worth, you should be proud. You died a lot more honorably than your parents did.’ And that’s when I remembered.”

Tears slipped from your eyes as you allowed all the walls and safeguards you had built up over the years to finally come down and you recalled the night your life changed forever. “It’s been so long and he was just a kid, no older than Tim. But then again, I was even younger.” Taking a deep breath, you looked up at Damian. “How much do you know about my life before Bruce took me in?”

Damian shrugged one shoulder. “Just what I said in the car. Your parents were tortured to death by a gang who left you tied up with their bodies until the police found you. Then when he heard what happened and that you had no one left, Father took you in.”

You nodded and wiped a tear from your eye. “My parents owned a little shop near Crime Alley at the time. It was a hole-in-the-wall thrift store that barely made enough to put food on the table but my parents loved that place. It was their pride and joy so when the local gang came by to demand protection money, they refused. They didn’t want their place associated with gangsters. Which of course the gang didn’t like. We lived in a small apartment above it and one night, the gang broke in while we were sleeping. I was only six at the time and I didn’t understand what was happening. I just knew some bad people dragged us out of bed and into the basement where they tied us all up to chairs. I was sitting between my parents as they begged and pleaded for our lives, but even then I still didn’t understand. Not until one of the men pulled out a knife.”

A humorless chuckle fell softly from your lips. “I guess in hindsight, I should have remembered Moore sooner. The way he tortured and hurt me was very similar to what the gang did to my parents. Just small cuts that got deeper and deeper. Small weapons that got more and more damaging until….” 

A small hiccupy sob slipped from your lips as everything came flooding back to you. Your father screaming in pain as the gang broke bone after bone and cut off his fingers one by one. Your mother hysterically sobbing as she begged them to let you all go. The way those pleas eventually shifted to just begging them to let you go. And then the eerie silence that fell across the room after your mother had taken her last breath. 

Damian took your hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “It is alright, sister. You do not have to continue.”

You shot him an appreciative smile but shook your head. “No. It’s okay.” Taking several deep breaths to compose yourself, you continued. “There was one gang member who stayed huddled in the corner, refusing to watch as the rest of the gang had their fun.”

“Moore.”

You nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but yeah. He had started by anxiously pacing around at the back of the room but once things turned really violent….he couldn’t take it. He tried to run back upstairs but the gang forced him to stay and watch. Said he needed to learn how things were done. And after the other day, I’d say he learned his lesson pretty well.”

“And you are certain it was him?”

“Absolutely. I stared at him through most of it, partly because I couldn’t stand to watch what they were doing to my parents, but also partly because I could tell he was just as horrified as I was and yet he did nothing to stop it. I wanted to scream at him to help us, to do something, but I also was too afraid to speak up. And when they were done and the gang members left, he was the last one out of the room. He looked at me as if he wanted to apologize or set me free or…I don’t know. But instead, he just turned and ran up the stairs. The next time I saw him was when he walked into that room we were both chained up in.” You scoffed as you felt a lump growing in your throat. “I guess we picked up right where we left off, huh?”

The physical damage that had been done to you was hard enough to bear, but now realizing the connection your tormentor had to your past made you want to vomit. Moore may not have laid a finger on you back then, but he had been there to witness the worst day of your life. His friends had been the ones who did the same thing to your parents—only your parents hadn’t been lucky enough to survive. You wondered how long Moore had been planning this, how long he had wanted to finish the job that had been started all those years ago. Perhaps it was some sort of decades-long revenge plot since your parents’ deaths had eventually led to the arrest of most of the other gang members and the collapse of his gang. Or it was possible he just wanted to blackmail Bruce as he said and he thought using you to do it was just a bonus. Jason said Moore had been taken to Blackgate so once you were better, you could go try to get some answers. But at the moment, you weren’t sure if you even wanted them.

You had been so deep in thought that you only just realized that Damian had been silently staring down at your interlocked hands for the past few minutes. His expression was nigh-on unreadable and you were once again reminded of Bruce. Given enough time, support, and guidance, you could see him growing into a man worthy to carry on his father’s legacy. You just hoped he would want you to be around to see it. 

You wouldn’t blame Damian if his attitude towards you reverted back to how it was before all of this happened. After all, he was put through hell because of you. He had warmed up to you solely because you had offered yourself up to be tortured instead of him—yet he never should have been there in the first place. Maybe this would actually make your relationship worse. Maybe Damian would cut you off completely. Maybe—

“Sister, I cannot imagine how hard this realization must have been for you and I…I am sorry.”

His voice cut through your internal spiraling and you blinked in surprise. “Wh-what?” With all the scenarios you had swirling around in your head, hearing Damian apologize had never even crossed your mind. “But Dami you’re not…mad?” 

Now it was his turn to look surprised. “Why would I be mad?”

“I’m the reason you were there. I thought once you knew the whole story and realized that, you would hate me for getting you dragged into everything. Or at least–” you dropped your gaze down to the bed “–at least I thought you’d go back to not really liking me.”

“Oh…” The small boy shifted in his chair. “I can understand why you may have come to that conclusion but knowing your history with Moore does not change how I feel about what you did for me. You saved me long before you remembered who he was or your connection to him. And even that still does not prove you were the one he was after, not me. I am the youngest and, as such, am perceived to be the most vulnerable and incapable of protecting myself—Tt, though in reality, it is Drake who fits that description.” 

You smiled as you shook your head. Tim would disagree with that statement, but Damian’s point was still valid. To those who did not know of his past upbringing or training, it would be easy to dismiss him as a young, spoiled, entitled brat who never had to lift a finger his entire life. But they couldn’t be farther from the truth. Despite being a kid, Damian had already experienced more than 90% of people would in their lifetime. Hell, when he was the same age you were when you watched your parents die, he had already been training for years with the League of Assassins. Moore had just gotten lucky when he grabbed the two of you: if Damian hadn’t woken up hurt and already chained up, he probably could have incapacitated every one of your kidnappers. 

Damian continued. “Regardless of who the target was, it does not change the fact you volunteered yourself in my place when they wanted to take me. And despite the pain you were in, you tried to hold on as long as possible so I would not be forced to take your place. How could any other detail matter except my sister loves me enough to die for me?”

The lump in your throat got bigger until you felt like you couldn’t breathe. You managed to nod your head quickly and repeatedly as you choked out, “I would. Because I do. I do love you, Damian.” He stared down at the floor, shifting once more in his chair as his fist tightened around yours. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. You knew how hard it was for him but you could see he wanted to say it and that was enough. So, squeezing his hand back, you whispered, “It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back.”

His shoulders dropped with visible relief and he gave you a small, grateful smile. Then, in a tiny voice, he muttered, “But I do though.”

It was the final straw. Tears began flowing down your cheeks as a small cry burst from behind your lips. There was a sharp pain in your chest as you disturbed your injuries, but it seemed unimportant at the moment. You tried to control yourself as much as possible, knowing emotions and displays of affection bothered Damian, but it was all too overwhelming. For so long you had tried to get him to at least tolerate you, but this? This was more than you ever dared to hope for. 

Damian sat quietly as you took a moment to compose yourself. Despite the added pain you incurred from your crying, you couldn’t remember feeling this happy in a while…..or this worn out. Now that you had cleared the air with Damian and everything was better than expected, you realized how much you had been struggling to stay awake. 

Another wave of exhaustion hit you and it took almost everything you had to murmur, “I know Jay said everyone was waiting to see me but I think….I think I need to rest for a bit. Could you ask them to wait until I take a small nap?”

He nodded. “Of course, sister. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks, Dami.”

You expected him to leave but instead, he squeezed your hand hard and looked you dead in the eye. “I mean it. Whatever you need. You will heal and things will return to normal. And I will be by your side for all of it.”

You smiled up at him, fighting to keep your eyes open. “Thank you, Dami.” 

He laid your hand gently back on the bed before standing from his chair and walking to the door. He glanced over his shoulder at you one last time, nodded, and then disappeared.

With no reason left to hold on, you let yourself collapse back into the bed as you gave into the darkness that was dancing on the edge of your vision. 

And as you felt yourself being pulled under to unconsciousness once more, you couldn’t help but smile. Despite everything that had happened and the long road to recovery that lay before you, you had a father and four brothers who loved you and would be by your side through all of it. Because at the end of the day, that’s what family is for. And you were so thankful to have found this family. 

Taglist: @zebralover, @itzagothamcitysiren, @roses-and-ricex, @blackpearl2324, @po55um, @missborntodiex, @hypnobanditprofessorhorse-blog, @an-ever-angry-bi, @rukia-uchiha-98, @shipsforlif3, @dumb-fawkin-bitch, @hyding-out-here, @555hikaii, @nik2blog, @thefictionalcharacterssimp, @venomsvl, @sugarysweetsandpainfulteeth, @your-friendly-neighborhood-al, @hellfire-fan-club

[buckrecs]

Hurt / Comfort

masterlist | req masterlist

deny (with love) my labor by @divine-mistake

“I’m here,” you sob, hand shaking. “I’m right here, Bucky. I’m here. I’m here. Bucky, please. I’m here. Please don’t leave me. I’m here. I’m right here.”

Lavender by @wkemeup

Not every nightmare is the same and Bucky doesn’t always wakes up as the man you know.

A New Start by @wkemeup

Woken from a nightmare plagued with memories from his time in Hydra, Bucky finds himself standing at a mirror at 3am holding a pair of scissors, determined to cut away the strongest connection he has left to that time. His hair.

Going Backwards by @wkemeup

Bucky struggles to let go of his past and you’re there to help ease him back to the light

Scared of Loosing You by @moonvis

Bucky has a nightmare about loosing you. So, when he wakes up to see your bedside epmty, the nightmare feels all to real.

Trust by @softlyspector

She panics the day she finds him in the bathroom with scissors in his hands and freshly cut hair in a soft pile on the floor, innocently sandwiched between his bare feet.

never by @irndad

Bucky has a nightmare that you find a file of everything he’s done (you already know everything in the waking world) and tell him to get out, and that he’s a monster. when he wakes, she informs him otherwise.

solace by @buckysfaveplum

Bucky’s been avoiding the idea of you spending the night, until he no longer can. After you witness one of his nightmares, he prepares for you to end it.

All of You by @itsapeterthing

in which bucky confesses that he’s afraid to sleep next to you because he believes his arm is a weapon and he fears hurting you

Mended Fragments by @foreverindreamlandd

After a night filled with nightmares about his past, Bucky is drowning in pain and shame. His friend Steve Rogers finds him sitting on the floor in a comatose state, and texts you to ask for you to come over and help Bucky fight the demons that are haunting him.

Cutting Bucky’s Hair by @mellowpiepizzalamp

Bucky’s hair didn’t sit good with him anymore.

Still Having Nightmares by @spilledkauffie

The desperate “no’s” and the heavy breathing. Rolling over in bed, you placed your hand where he often began the night, right next to you.

Scrub-a-dub by @subwaysurf45

Bucky asks you to cut and wash his hair.

boys don’t cry by @bucky-bucket-barnes

Bucky keeps all his emotions buried deep within because that’s what he believes he’s supposed to do. One night after he’s attacked, he goes to you searching for some sense of comfort. After a loving conversation, Bucky learns to let it all out.

3:15 by @delicatelyherdreams

After hearing Bucky’s screams, you know you can’t just leave him alone.

Burning the Midnight Oil by @bucky-bucky-bucky-bucky

Bucky says he’s okay. He tells you that he just can’t fall asleep, but his continuous absence from your bedroom spells trouble.

midnight haircuts by @lovelybarnes

reader cuts bucky’s hair

better man by @rocketrhap3000

Bucky wants to take a big step in his personal growth and change up his hairstyle, and you promise him you’ll love him no matter what.

Give Me A Sign by @lostgirlmuseum

Bucky asks the universe for a reason to live. The universe delivers you.

[sleepyangelkami]

ELLIE WILLIAMS MASTERLIST

ONE SHOTS

jaded twilight crybaby unwanted affinity truth or dare make it better pains and aches fuck the cheerleaders drunk on love dear diary haunted dreams check, check, check

DRABBLES

pretty lips pastors daughter drabble cold hands yap don't be shy

HEADCANNONS

ns/fw alphabet

SERIES

pastor's daughter

[a-reader-and-a-writer]

The Life I Didn't Know

Fandom: Top Gun, Top Gun: Maverick, Mickey "Fanboy" Garcia, f!reader Summary: Mickey Garcia thought returning to Top Gun was the most life-changing thing to ever happen to him. And that was before a ghost from his past confronted him on the tarmac. What you tell him next will change both how he views his past and his vision for his future. Word Count: 4591 TW: Lies, Secret Reveals, Hidden Child, Ghosting, Confessions; Unplanned Pregnancy; Reader is a Mom Note: Written for day 12 of @whumpthemusical's event for "Unplanned Pregnancy" from Waitress. Thank you to @musings-of-a-rose for your ask that inspired this fic 🥰 I'm just sorry it's taken almost 10 months to finish (but I guess it fits thematically 😂). And thank you to @topguncortez and @lorecraft for beta reading for me! 💕

Mickey Garcia always expected the greatest honor of his career would be when he was accepted into Top Gun. However, he never imagined he would be chosen to return as one of the best of the best a few years later. Yet he had done it! Selected along with his pilot and close friend, Payback, as one of the few to train for a top-secret mission. It was a dream come true.

He met most of the other aviators the night before at the Hard Deck, and with one possible exception, everyone seemed very nice and supportive. Then, after the debriefing this morning, he was excited—if a little nervous—about the next few weeks of training. He still can’t believe he was selected as a potential member of the mission. He doesn’t have high expectations for being chosen, but he is still going to try his very best.

After running back out to his car to grab some paperwork, he’s heading for the row of hangars so he can meet Payback to prep their plane for their first practice, a wide grin spread across his face. The fact he is about to fly in a training dogfight with Maverick—the Maverick—still feels like a dream to him. It feels like he’s being trained by Han Solo or Captain Kirk! He is a legend that other legends look up to and Mickey had never imagined he would get an opportunity like this. Could this day get any better?

Mickey should have known better than to send something like that into the universe.

As he reaches the tarmac, Mickey suddenly stumbles to a stop and his face drops as he catches sight of the ghost from his past standing in the way, almost as if waiting for him. But it’s impossible. He double-checked the roster ten times just to make sure there was no chance you were going to be here. 

And yet here you are. Five—almost six—years older but still the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. 

“Falcon…” 

You worry your lip between your teeth just like you used to when you got nervous or were deep in thought, but your eyes shine brightly when your callsign slipped from his lips. “Hey there, Fanboy.” 

Oh, God… that voice. Instantly, a thousand memories flash through Mickey’s mind: the first time he laid eyes on you at boot camp with your brilliant smile and Death Star tattoo; flying with you as his pilot, and how he instantly knew he never wanted to fly with anyone else; you dubbing him Fanboy after seeing him nearly burst into tears after running into William Shatner in a coffee shop and him naming you Falcon after the iconic Star Wars ship; all the stolen, secret moments and rendezvous as your friendship blossomed into something deeper despite the risk of Command finding out; the morning he found your letter left on his bunk saying you had transferred and had already left without a warning or a goodbye.

With a Herculean effort, Mickey pulls himself together enough to ask, “Wha…. What are you doing here?”

“I work here. I’ve been an instructor at Top Gun for the past two years.” Your leg is bouncing slightly and you keep clenching and unclenching your hands. “I guess you were in the class the year before I started, but I was so proud when I heard you made it. Of course, I always knew you could.”

Instructors. Mickey groans softly to himself. He had been so focused on what other aviators  had been recruited for the mission it never crossed his mind to check who the instructors would be. But it’s too late to do anything about it now. 

“So, does that mean you’ll be teaching me?” It’s hard enough seeing you standing before him. But if he has to see you on a daily basis, listen to your lessons, follow your orders…there is no way he’ll make it the next three weeks.

Luckily, you shake your head. “No, it’s all top secret and I don’t have the clearance. I’m not even sure what your mission is. All they’ve told us is that they need the best of the best in the hopes of completing it, so I wasn’t surprised to see your name on the list. I never flew better than with you in my backseat.”

Mickey silently sighs in relief before he jams his hands in his pockets and coldly asks, “If you don’t have anything to do with my mission, what do you want, Falcon? After you disappeared for almost six years, I don’t really have anything I want to say to you. I think it’s better if we keep things the way you wanted it and just pretend the other doesn’t exist.” 

He starts to walk around you, but you step in front of him, holding up your hand to block his retreat. “Is that really what you think I did? Left and never gave you another thought? Because you’re wrong. I think about you every single day, Mickey. And I haven’t been able to get into a plane without you in my head. No matter who I’m flying with, your voice is in my headset giving me directions, or doing systems checks, or failing to stump me with random trivia about another movie or tv show just like it used to be.” You take a deep breath as you let your hand drop to your side. “But maybe if I didn’t care, it would make all of this easier. I–”

You are close to tears as your voice trembles with every word, but Mickey is having none of it. “No! Uh uh. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to act like you’re the one who was hurt here,” he says, jamming his finger accusingly at you. “You’re the one who put in for a transfer without even talking to me about it first, so don’t act like you’re the victim. One day, I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, flying with the woman I love at the stick, and the next, I wake up to a note telling me you’d left to fly with another unit. No explanation. No nothing. I never even got to say goodbye! You just disappeared from my life and you took my heart with you. But you never gave a shit.”

“Yes, I did! I swear!” Tears now begin to flow freely down your cheeks. You try to close the distance between you, but when Mickey steps back, you stop. Clutching your arms across your chest, you beg, “Mickey, I loved you. If there had been another way, I would have moved Heaven and Earth to stay with you but I didn’t have a choice.”

“Really?” Mickey scoffs. “Why not?”

“Because they found out about us.”

Needing no further context to understand what you are referring to, a cold dread washes over him. “W-who did?” 

“Command. They heard from a few different people that we were ‘fraternizing’ outside of our duties. That we had started sleeping together a few months earlier and that it had evolved into an actual relationship.”

Mickey shakes his head as, in a softer tone, he says, “I never told anyone. I swear.”

Smiling warmly at him, you say, “I never doubted that. And just so you know, I didn’t either. But someone must have found some sort of evidence and turned us in. I tried to find out who, but I never had any luck. All I know is I got called into the discipline office and they said they were starting an investigation into our alleged relationship and if it were true…” 

You take a deep breath as your arms tighten around your chest. “I knew if they went looking, they’d find out about us so I did the only thing I could think of to save our careers. I told them it wasn’t true but if they were still concerned, I would voluntarily opt for a different WSO or even transfer to another unit if that would clear things up. And they took me up on my offer.”

Missing pieces of Mickey’s past suddenly start to click into place. While it was against regulation for pilots and their backseaters to “fraternize” with any kind of romantic or sexual relationship, the rule was hardly ever enforced. However, around the time you disappeared, a pilot in another unit almost botched a mission saving his injured WSO instead of carrying out his assignment. When it was discovered they were in a romantic relationship at the time, Command began taking the regulation very seriously. Mickey recalls the two of you even had a nervous conversation about it at one point but just agreed to be more discreet while on base. 

However, it still left some gaping holes in your excuse.

“But why did you do it? Some anonymous jerk claims we were dating and that’s it? We could have fought it. If you had told me what was going on, we could have both denied everything and there was no way they could prove it.”

“Yes, they could.” Your voice quivers slightly even as you scoff humorlessly. “There was one piece of undeniable proof that would have had us both discharged if they had discovered it.”

“What?”

Tears slip from your eyes as you whisper, “I was pregnant.”

All the air is sucked from Mickey’s lungs. He feels like he’s doing barrel rolls in his jet as the world spins around him and an immense pressure weighs on his chest. “You… you were… what?”

You nod gently. “I had only found out a few days before and I was trying to figure out how to tell you. But then the investigation was brought up and it changed everything. All they had was the word of someone else we were dating, but if they knew I was pregnant with your baby, well, that’s pretty solid evidence. I didn’t know if you wanted kids. Hell, I didn’t even know if I wanted kids. So, I didn’t say anything and they transferred me two days later.”

“How could you not tell me?” Mickey whispers, trying to wrap his head around this life-changing revelation. “I would have been by your side for every minute. We could have figured it out together, we could have found a way to make it work. But even if we couldn’t, I loved you. I wanted to spend my life with you. And if that meant giving up everything else, I would have done it.”

“I know you would have. And that’s why I couldn’t say anything.” You take a few steps towards him. This time, Mickey doesn’t move back, but you still keep a little space between you so you don’t overwhelm him. “I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t let me leave and it would be the end of both our careers. We’d both worked so hard to get where we were, I couldn’t let you throw everything away for a kid I still didn’t know if I even wanted. And by the time I had decided, it was too late to change what I’d done. So, when I reported to Command I was pregnant a few months later, I said it was from a nameless one-night stand I met at a bar right after I transferred.”

Mickey’s head is still reeling from everything you have told him, yet he catches one important detail in what you just said. “Wait. You reported it. Does that mean…did you…do we…?”

“Yeah, Mickey,” you half sob as more tears flow steadily down your face. “We have a son.”

“A son…” 

It is the final straw. Stumbling over to the nearby wall, Mickey slides down it until he is sitting on the ground and rests his head on his knees. He has a son. A four- or five-year-old son that he never knew about. Someone who was already walking, and talking, and going to school. Who was his own person with his own personality and likes and dislikes. Who Mickey knows absolutely nothing about.

The two of you had never talked about whether you wanted kids or a family. Until the moment you disappeared, Mickey had never doubted you both loved each other deeply but your relationship had been too complicated by rules and regulations to face what might happen in the future. So, the two of you had lived in the moment and tried to enjoy what time you had together instead of talking about the future. But that didn’t mean Mickey hadn’t thought about it. He had known from a young age he wanted to be a father. He helped take care of his younger siblings growing up and he couldn’t wait to have a family of his own. 

So to find out now that he has a child is simultaneously exhilarating and devastating. He could have had everything he had always dreamed of, but you had taken all those early milestones, all those precious irreplaceable moments with his son, and Mickey doesn’t know how to accept that. What if his son never forgives him for not being there? Mickey might not have known he even existed until a few moments ago, but that doesn’t change the fact his son has had to grow up not knowing what it was like to have a father. To have a void in his life where others around him had a loving, supportive presence. Will his son even want him in his life at this point?

He hears you walking over to him and can see your feet stop a few inches from him out of the corner of his eye. 

In a voice thick with tears, you whisper, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so incredibly sorry. I just…I didn’t…I didn’t know…” You can’t find the words to finish that sentence.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Mickey raises his head to glare up at you, all of his swirling emotions finding a much-needed target to explode at. “Even if I accept why you let them transfer you or that you didn’t tell me right then, why didn’t you tell me at any point during the last five years! Is it just because I’m here? If I hadn’t come back to Top Gun, would you ever have told me?”

You open your mouth to respond but then close it again as you try to find the best way to answer. “Those are all fair questions. I figured if I told you while I was still pregnant or right after I gave birth, we would still get in trouble. My superiors weren’t happy that I had just transferred to fly with one of their WSOs and this happened but they had to accept it. I flew for another month or two but then I was placed on desk duty until I got this job at Top Gun. I hated being grounded but at least I was someplace consistent where I could go home to my family every night.”

“‘Your family’? Do you mean you…?” Maybe his son has had a father-figure in his life after all.

You seem confused for a moment but as soon as you realize what he is asking, you quickly clarify, “Oh, no, no, no! Nothing like that. My mom moved in a month before I gave birth and stayed so she could watch the kiddo while I was at work.” You duck your head to stare at the ground as you mutter, “But no, there, uh, there hasn’t been anyone like that since you. I’ve got one little man who has my whole heart, and between him and work, I don’t have the time or the energy to spend on anyone else.”

Mickey hates the way his heart warmed slightly at that. He should hate you right now, not be happy that you aren’t with someone. Quickly changing the topic before he lets himself dwell on that for too long, he says, “You still haven’t answered my question. Why now? Why are you telling me about him now?”

“He asked about you.”

“What?”

“Well, not you specifically but he started asking about his dad. He doesn’t understand….” Your voice breaks as your lip begins to quiver. Mickey’s resolve wavers and he starts to reach for your hand but then he remembers the reason you are upset in the first place and lets his hand fall. Taking a deep breath, you continue, “He’s too young to understand and I’m too selfish to admit it’s my fault you’re not there, so I just told him his dad was a Naval aviator like me and he’s off protecting everyone from danger. I was hoping…I don’t know what I was hoping, but it didn’t satisfy him like I thought it would. Two weeks ago, he told me all he wants for his birthday next month is to meet his dad.”

“He…he wants to meet me?” Mickey asks.

You nod. “And I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea where in the world you were, if you had your own family by now, or if you would even want to meet him once you knew. But then a few days ago I saw you were coming here and…it seemed like fate. I knew telling you would be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I couldn’t go home and look into our son’s eyes if I didn’t at least try. That’s why I’m telling you now.”

“So this is just a way for you to clear your conscience?” Mickey asks. “You finally tell me I have a son, and that’s supposed to absolve you of everything? You took nearly five years I could have had with him away from me! I missed out on so many firsts!” Mickey suddenly freezes, all the anger evaporating in an instant as a sober realization sets in. “I still don’t even know his name….”

“Miguel. His name’s Miguel.” 

Tears spring to Mickey’s eyes as he whispers, “Miguel?”

You smile at the reverence on Mickey’s face. “It was the only name I ever considered.” Pulling out your phone and tapping the screen a few times, you offer it to him. “It turns out it was perfect. He’s the spitting image of his namesake.”

With shaking hands, Mickey takes the phone from you. Looking down, he sees a little boy staring back at him with a wide grin that’s too big for his face, a mess of dark curly hair, and rich brown eyes that make Mickey feel like he is looking into a mirror. You weren’t far off. Miguel looks almost exactly like the baby photos Mickey had seen of himself at that age. However, he can also see traces of you in the toddler’s face; in the shape of his lips and the cut of his jaw. There’s no way to deny it any longer. This was his kid. Yours and his together. 

Watching the waves of emotions washing across his face, you murmur, “I swear, I never wanted to hurt you…either of you. I just didn’t know what to do and then, once I made a decision, I didn’t know how to tell you the truth. The longer I put it off, the more impossible it got to tell you. But you did nothing wrong and I just thought he should have another piece of you to carry with him, even if he doesn’t understand it yet.”

Mickey swipes his finger across the phone and the photo changes to one of you balancing Miguel on your hip as you point towards the camera. He looks younger here but the same joy is evident on his face as he clings to you with one arm and to a ratty-looking Spider-Man plush in the other. Another swipe shows Miguel blowing out a candle on a birthday cake shaped like a Stegosaurus. There is a big “4” balloon floating in the background next to a woman Mickey recognizes as your mother. He swipes again to see a picture of you fast asleep in a rocking chair with an infant Migual curled on your chest. He is so tiny that he could only have been a month or two old. You look disheveled and exhausted even in sleep, yet Mickey doesn’t think he can remember a time you were more breathtaking.

He is about to swipe again when something at the top of the picture stops him. Zooming in closer, he inhales sharply. 

There is a small framed drawing hanging on the wall just above Miguel’s crib. It’s of two stick people looking at each other with little hearts above their heads. He doubts a single other person would have ever noticed it, but he would recognize it anywhere. He had doodled it on a note he slipped you right after his friendship with you had developed into a romance. And you had kept it all of these years then hung it so it would watch over your son.

Tears that have been threatening to fall finally crest over his eyes as Mickey chokes out, “Can I meet him?”

“You really want to?”

He nods before tearing his eyes from the phone to look up at you. “Yeah. More than anything.”

“Okay, then yeah, of course you can,” you say eagerly as your face lights up. But then it dims slightly as you add, “But, um, I think it’s better if we wait just a few days.” Mickey starts to protest but you hold up your hand. “I know I’ve already made you wait far too long for this, but we need to figure out some things first and I’m sure once you’ve had time to process everything, you’ll have a million questions. I just want you to be as prepared for this as possible so you both feel comfortable. It’s a big deal and Miguel is the sweetest kid you’ll ever meet, but he is pretty shy around new people and I don’t want to just spring this on him without talking to him first.”

Mickey can’t help smiling to himself. He was the exact same way when he was little. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I already have a thousand questions and I’m sure by tomorrow, I’ll have a thousand more. How ‘bout we say Friday after training? I could come over or meet you guys somewhere or whatever you think is best.”

You hesitate for a minute. “I have an appointment Friday afternoon and I’m not sure how long it’ll last. Why don’t we do Saturday morning? We could meet for pancakes. That’ll definitely get you on Miguel’s good side.”

“Pancakes it is.” Mickey climbs to his feet and holds out your phone to you. But just as you are about to take it, he pulls it back slightly. “Um…do you think…could you send me some photos of Miguel?”

Smiling softly, you say, “Of course, Mickey. As many as you want. And I have some videos too. Do you still have the same number?”

“You still have it saved?” Mickey asks in surprise.

You duck your head. “I couldn’t delete it. I stared at it countless nights with my finger hovering over the call button, but I always chickened out. However, I knew one day I’d find the strength to tell you everything, and when that happened, I’d need a way to contact you so I kept it. I’m still just so sorry it took me this long.”

Mickey sighs as he stares off across the open tarmac. “Part of me gets it, you know? It was a no-win situation given the circumstances.”

“Yeah…” you mutter, wrapping your arms around yourself once again. “I felt like I was in my own personal Kobayashi Maru except no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out how to cheat the system.”

Oh God. The ease at which that perfect Star Trek metaphor slips from your lips once again has Mickey flashing back to all the little reasons he fell in love with you in the first place. However, after the secrets you revealed today, he can’t let himself fall back into what was. 

“That might be true, but another part of me doesn’t know if I can ever forgive you for stealing these last five years I could have had with my son.” He scrubs his hand over his closely buzzed hair. “Right now, I just don’t know how to feel about you or what you did. However, I do know that I can be pleasant and get along when we’re around Miguel, though I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to get back to a point where we’re friends again.”

You bob your head, tears dampening your eyes even as a small smile spreads across your face. “That’s fair. That’s more than fair. Honestly, I half expected you never to want to see me again after I told you, so I’ll take pleasant. Thank you, Mickey.”

He nods and holds out your phone. As you take it, your fingers brush against his and Mickey feels a jolt run up his arm as he touches you for the first time in almost six years. And based on the way your eyes widened, you felt it too. The two of you gaze at each other, your hands still both holding the phone between you. Mickey feels his heart start to race slightly in his chest, and he wonders if maybe he’s wrong and forgiving you won’t be as difficult as he thinks it is. 

But then you pull the phone from his hand and slip it into your pocket. Taking a few steps back, you mutter, “I’ll send you those pictures. And please do text me any questions you have this week. Otherwise, I’ll call you Friday to figure out the details for breakfast Saturday.”

And with that, you pivot and hurry across the tarmac before disappearing into one of the hangars.

For several minutes, Mickey continues to stare at where you had been standing, still half wondering if anything that just happened was real or not. He always knew returning to Top Gun would be life-changing, but he had never expected this in a million years. 

Still in a daze, he stumbles off towards the hangar where his plane is housed. As he approaches, he sees Payback already dressed in his flight suit and busy checking out the plane. He looks up when he hears Mickey approaching.

“Hey, there you are. I thought you were just gonna be a minute.” As he gets closer, Payback does a double-take when he notices Mickey’s face. “Oh, man, are you okay?”

Mickey is still wondering that himself, but he says, “Yeah… yeah, I’m good.”

As Mickey walks past him to put his stuff in his locker and pull out his flight suit, Payback follows him, concern etched across his face. “Dude, you’re a mess.”

“I’m not a mess.”

“Yeah, you are. You look like you’re about to pass out and I can tell you’ve been crying.”

“Yeah, guess I have.” Just then, Mickey’s phone vibrates and he pulls it out to see you have sent him a link to a folder filled with hundreds of pictures and videos of Miguel. Just a brief scan of them makes tears begin to well up in his eyes once more. But when he looks back up at Payback, the smile on his face is so wide it hurts. “But it’s all good. In fact… It’s never been better.”

I have a few ideas for other parts if anyone is interested (but no promises at this point)

Taglist: @green-socks, @lorecraft, @heart-0n-fire, @mayhem24-7forever, @the-untamed-soul, @inglourious-imagines, @airhogger, @piscesvancouverite, @straightforwardly, @bonnieelizabethparker, @srry-itshockeyszn, @flyinlove, @fandomhopped, @sweetheartlizzie07, @yjwnoot, @wanderdreamer, @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy, @callsign-phoenix, @shanimallina87, @forever-sleepy-sloth, @blue-aconite, @notroosterbradshaw, @dezthegeek, @blessupblessup, @cherrycola27, @phoenix1389, @nicangelinee, @smells-like-perfect-senses, @boringusername3, @petlaufeyson, @cycbaby, @topguncortez, @fantasticcopeaglepasta, @writercole, @onebigfangirlworld, @wkndwlff, @ravenmoore14, @roosterforme, @clancycucumber230, @mamachasesmayhem, @slightly-psycho-multifan, @kmc1989, @ohtobeleah, @deppresseddyslexic, @horneybeach1, @mandylove1000, @aczhang777

[f-whump-ruary]

F-whump-ruary 24

How to participate:

Chose to do either:

all three weeks

 two weeks

 one week

 or one of the star marked days.

You can switch out any promote with the star marked.

All types of media are welcome. Tag with #F-whump-ruary24 and which promote used.

Week A

Compassion Tears Sleep Hurt/Comfort Coping Method Embarrassed Cure

Week B

Injection Spoons Fever Overwhelmed Scar Blind Medicine

Week C

Heat-Stroke Nightmare Blood loss Hallucination Anxiety Imprisoned Betrayal

Star marked:

Sensory Overload Hyperthermia Migraine Fear Suppression

[surplus-of-sarcasm]

#32

TW: Knives, references to violence, restraints, bruises/wounds, flirty? 

I am literally sauurrr sorry for being so inactive but college is destroying me. It's been so long since I've written too, so I do hope the quality of this piece isn't affected. Missed u guys 💙

"Do I scare you?" the hero asked, her voice devoid of any emotion, all while her eyes stared straight through the villain like he was transparent, searching for something in his expression. 

Except his face remained defiantly blank, looking up at her, fire in his honey brown eyes, surprisingly not sparing any effort to attempt escaping his restraints. 

When the hero stuck one of her nails into a small, open cut on his neck, the villain bit back a wince, an irritated frown tugging at the corner of his lip. "Yes," he supplied, his tone even and calm, not even hostile, trying to render himself as passive as possible. 

Except he'd licked his lip in that quick, almost imperceptible manner, something he only ever did when he lied, something the hero wasn't supposed to know. 

But she did. 

"Stop lying," she snarled, sticking her nail again in the cut.

"The hell do you want, Hero?" he snapped, hissing as her finger left his cut. 

The breaking point. The point where the villain was done placating and playing along and already back to his normal, wild state, where he could care less about whatever earned the hero's ire. 

She'd spent the last three hours mostly in silence, only ever talking to ask the villain a question she knew would irritate him. He held up surprisingly well, even though his self-preservation instincts were usually nowhere to be found. So she wondered why he'd act so placidly in the beginning.

The villain liked to talk. He did most of the talking during their fights. The quiet drove him insane, and now he had his teeth bared like an animal, murder in his eyes and tension in his jaw.

This was the part where the hero should've laughed or slapped him across the face, or done anything just as cruel.

The truth was that they'd both been nothing but cruel to each other, enemies by virtue. The villain had beat the hero black and blue, had called her a myriad of flithy names, had screamed at her because of how much he hated that she was quiet. In turn, the hero made sure that every nick with a knife and every punch against skin had left a mark on the villain. She fought to scar, not just to incapacitate. She knew the scars were more a wound to his ego than his body, proof she'd hurt him.

And yet, the villain had pulled her out of a ditch and bandaged up her nearly destroyed leg, effectively saving her life when he had no business being there. In turn, she'd pulled him up when he almost slipped off a roof during one of their fights. 

And situations like that would only keep happening more and more often, almost a staple of their atypical relationship. The villain would laugh, would crack a joke, would be so careful with her wounds, would be anything but his usual abrasive self. 

And the very next fight, they would be even more horrible to each other, as though whatever had happened the day before had never been, as though cruelty was the only language they could speak. 

The hero didn't have friends. They were another luxury she couldn't afford. Her teammates weren't actively cruel or anything of the like, but the agency left no room for any semblance of friendship or love or all the things the hero wanted but could never really have. And the villain wasn't her friend. He wasn't supposed to be anyone. But he was genuine, almost the only person in her life who didn't sound and act like a robot. He'd had actual conversations with the hero. And maybe she was not stupid enough to think that made him any good, but maybe she was stupid enough to think that made him mean something to her.

"Answer me, Hero," he snarled coldly, tearing her chain of thought in half. 

The hero didn't consider spending any time on thinking of an intelligible response. People weren't logical when they were desperate.  Desperate was the hero's hand cupping the villain's jaw so gently that the shiver up his spine was still awfully intense, even with his numb body. Desperate was staring into the villain's eyes, watching the way his lashes fluttered, as his eyes told a completely different story from the harsh frown on his lips. Desperate was the hero's lips on his cheekbone, warm against his skin, shy, terrified, staying there for a fleeting moment that still felt like too long and retracting away with shame written all over her features. 

"I'm sorry."

Villain's eyes had widened, even though it seemed impossible they could grow any bigger. "I- come closer again," he half-whispered, all the roughness from his voice gone. "Lean down a little." 

And the hero obliged, even though it went against every single thing she'd been taught, and in turn the villain's lips were pressed to her jaw, careful but in no way timid. They weren't supposed to be velvet-soft, and hints of the villain's spicy cologne shouldn't have still managed to be distinguishable through the blood and the sweat. But of course the seemingly impossible was happening. 

"Yes," he answered, "you do scare me, but not in the way that you asked, so I was lying," he continued against the hero's jaw.

And she hated how palpable the relief was when he hadn't licked his lips. 

"This is how you actually kiss someone." The smirk on the villain's face may have been merciless as he pulled away, but it was clear he was trying to break the tension that they could have sliced through with a blade. 

God, the hero could barely breathe. She never knew something that felt almost forbidden could feel so right. She was scared the villain's response had been a trick and more scared that it hadn't. She wanted to scream at him and slam her fists into his body, to split his rose-petal-like lips with a jagged streak of crimson. But more than anything, she wanted him close enough to her that they were breathing each other's air, she wanted to kiss his face again, properly this time, so that it truly felt like something, something that set the hero's nerves on fire.

The hero had pulled out her twin knives, cutting through his ropes with one, while the other remained pressed against his carotid artery, as he still remained sitting on the chair. 

Except the villain had pulled the knife out of her hand, slightly scratching himself, and he got up, twirling the knife with his hand and pressing its cold, flat edge to the hero's jaw, his breath warm on her face. "Don't fight it. That's all you've done, all I've done, and I'm sick of it." 

And in all honesty, so was she. Sick of having no one, sick of wanting someone who was right there and yet so far away, sick of pushing a knife into the skin of the same boy who had bandaged her bleeding knuckles and made fun of the stupid kids' designs etched on them, the only thing he had, the next day after it happened.

The hero nodded, slowly putting her knives away when the villain handed her the other blade back, slinging an arm around the villain's waist, surprisingly small for someone so athletically built, but not any less attractive. 

"Let's go home. I mean, my place," the villain suggested, utterly exhausted, but a hint of a smile was still there in his words as he wrapped his arm around the hero's shoulder, his fingers gripping onto the fabric of her suit a little playfully. 

And the hero simply nodded, mirroring the villain's own soft smile.

Emotions are hard to understand, no rules or logic existent that could ever explain the power they hold over a person; the power that the heart exercises so ruthlessly over the mind. And yet nearly nothing could ever leave one feeling so certain, so absolutely euphoric to the point that not even the entire world would seem to matter compared to the one person love tethers you to. 

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[the-bar-sinister]

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[brabblesblog]

Ch 14: For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave

Astarion has ascended, and she has stayed with him. Life in the Crimson Palace isn’t as idyllic as it seems. Is there a chance for their relationship to go back to how it was? Or is it too late for the Ascendant and his consort?

This series is about Ban, my Tav, and the Vampire Ascendant. Will be angst and smut, with sprinkles of fluff.

This fic is a softer take on Ascendant!Astarion and of the changes he undergoes after the rite. Can Ban handle the change, and if a chance came, would she choose to run? And can the Ascendant win her back in time? Inspired by the concept of vampire wives and that IGN interview with Larian that discussed the ascension.

Professionally edited by @editing-by-night

The rescue attempt goes off with some hitches.

Read on AO3.

Masterlist.

The morning light was streaming through the window when Astarion looked up to see Gale walk into the room. His tressym followed, fixing Astarion with a stare that felt a little too penetrating for what was, in his not-so-humble opinion, essentially a glorified cat.

“Are you ready?” Gale asked, leaning on his staff.

“Indeed.” Astarion’s tone was surly, an attempt to mask his weariness. He had maintained the mental link with Ban until she had fallen asleep. Even now a part of him cradled her mind, soothing her through the worst of the torment.

Astarion belatedly realized that he was not only exhausted, he was hungry and having difficulty concentrating. He’d only had one meal since arriving in Waterdeep, and between maintaining the mental link for so long and his state of stress, the lack of sleep and blood was noticeable. Today, he was especially glad that the sanguine hunger no longer tormented him, but blood helped him maintain his strength, kept his mind clear, and gave him energy. Energy he desperately could have used today. Grumbling, he picked up Woe.

“Do you need me to reiterate the-”

“Gods, Gale. Do you think me so stupid I can’t remember your frankly rudimentary plan?” Astarion waved a hand dismissively. “Let’s just go.”

Gale exhaled. “Here.” He stepped forward, holding out a small pouch.

Astarion hesitated before gingerly accepting the proffered bag with some suspicion.

“Healing potions. I prepared two. One for her, one for… potential mishaps.”

Astarion tucked the pouch away. “Thank you.” The words came out in an awkward drawl, his discomfort in expressing gratitude obvious.

The tressym kept staring at Astarion; he glanced down at it, fidgeting under its piercing gaze. “If your claws and teeth matched the enormity of your judgment, cat, then I’d perhaps be interested to hear what you have to say.”

“Tara,” Gale chided gently, though he wasn’t surprised she disapproved of the Ascendant. Gale had told her everything; she was fond of Ban and she’d rather liked when Ban had stayed with them.

She fixed Gale with a long, hard stare before turning to leave, flicking her tail haughtily as she went.

“Sorry,” Gale shrugged.

Astarion didn’t deign to answer, although he was privately rather affronted by her judgment. Damned cat.

Gale led Astarion through Waterdeep, heading for the Stedez mansion. It was far smaller than the Crimson Palace, though no less imposing. Astarion stayed a few steps behind him, mind still connected to Ban’s. As they approached the mansion, she kept slipping in and out of consciousness. He could see through her eyes each time she awoke, the visions merely feeding his rage.

“They should be asleep,” Gale mused. In theory, it would be easy to sneak in undetected, free Ban, and slip back out. But he wasn’t sure if Astarion was willing to let this affront go unpunished. He wasn’t sure if he was willing to let it go, either.

“Well if they aren’t,” Astarion hissed, his eyes glinting with a devilish glee that bordered on madness. “All the better.”

Gale stood in front of the large door of the Stedez mansion, steeling himself before knocking. He was disguised as an elf. Astarion hid nearby, invisible. All part of the plan, and yet Gale couldn’t help but feel apprehensive. It had been more than half a year since he had done anything remotely close to this, and he wondered if he was still capable. These days he was a professor, not a warrior, his life revolving around his students and books.

And sometimes Ban, he thought ruefully. The time she’d spent in his tower had been special.

Gale turned his attention back to the matter at hand as the door creaked open.

A tall, scantily clad servant eyed Gale curiously. Just like Cazador, Vel Stedez’s public persona was that of an affluent, if eccentric, nobleman. As such, the mansion rarely received visitors.

“Greetings,” the servant said, “You seem… lost. What can I do for you?”

“Is this not Saer Vel Stedez’s abode?” Gale offered his most winsome smile. “I’m here on behalf of the Blackstaff Academy. Saer Vel and I have corresponded about his most generous donation, for which the Academy is very grateful. In fact,” Gale held up an index finger, “I am here today to discuss a ball the Academy wishes to host in his honor!”

The servant hesitated. No instructions regarding visitors had been given today, but her vain master would most certainly want to hear about this. Gale noticed her moment of indecision and pressed his advantage, stepping forward so the servant was forced to open the door far enough for Astarion to very carefully slip inside, a small whisper of air the only sign of his movement.

“I- of course, saer,” the servant conceded. She beckoned Gale in, and he stepped over the threshold, shivering involuntarily at the chilly temperature inside the manse.

Gale noted that the house was eerily reminiscent of Cazador’s - and Astarion’s - iterations of the Szarr Mansion.

Dark marble floors and mahogany walls lent a sense of ominousness, thick curtains blocking out any sunshine that threatened to shine through. The air was stale, cold and tomblike, as if the mansion was frozen in time.

Astarion noticed the similarities too, stifling a snort. At least our marble is white. That had been Ban’s idea. The thought caused a pang of worry; he pushed it away quickly. Moving past Gale and the servant, he headed deeper into the mansion, taking the first set of stairs he found leading down.

Meanwhile, Gale let the servant lead him to a study.

“Saer…” the servant began, fishing for his name.

“Er. Dammon,” Gale said, cursing himself for not thinking up a name ahead of time.

“Saer Dammon,” the servant continued. “Kindly wait here while I inform the master of your arrival.”

The prospect of meeting the vampire lord alone made Gale a bit anxious, but he nodded. It was a possibility he hadn't wanted to contemplate too closely when they had planned this, but if all hell broke loose he knew he would be able to handle one vampire.

He hoped Astarion got to Ban fast.

The dungeon smelled putrid, like sewers and rust and congealed blood-

The iron-rich scent gave Astarion a longing for blood - a now-unfamiliar craving, all but forgotten after all this time. It caught him by surprise. He hadn’t hungered for blood, not since the rite, but the smell of it reminded him of just how exhausted he was. Some blood would be the perfect thing to perk him up. He sighed, shaking his head, and pushed on.

The dungeons were unguarded, just as Gale had surmised. After all, Vel’s coven lacked crucial information: the Ascendant didn’t need to be invited in to enter a domicile.

His eyes scanned the dimly lit dungeon, searching for Ban. He spotted her in the furthest cell and rushed forward with preternatural speed. As he reached the cell, Gale’s concentration broke; Astarion’s hands and body became visible again.

Ban? He tried to nudge her mind, and felt her stir.

The sight of her chained to the damp wall, her body sagging onto the filthy floor, broke his heart. Ban was mostly unharmed, though those cruel silver manacles had severely burned her wrists. He’d seen more than his fair share of torture, of course, but seeing it done to her brought forth a wave of indignation so strong it instantly became wrath.

How dare they. I will burn this entire mansion and everyone in it to ash for this.

He pulled out his tools, nimble hands working at the lock of the cell door, but it took longer to pick than it should have, owing to his trembling fingers.

Astarion heard a satisfying click and pushed the door open. Ban’s eyes opened and took a moment to focus, finally settling on him. He rushed forward, wrapping his arms around her tightly.

“You’re okay. I’m here. I’ve got you.”

I’ve got you. Words he’d spoken before she’d told him she loved him for the very first time. Words she’d told him the night before the rite. Always meant, always realized.

Ban merely nodded in response, slumping tiredly into Astarion’s arms. The movement caused her wrists to drag against the manacles and she gasped. He looked up at them, frowning, assessing the locks.

“Let me get you out.”

He reached for the first manacle, fingers moving across the surface of the silver. It made his skin sizzle, his fingertips burning where they made contact. The pain was sharp, but pain wasn’t new to him; he ignored it. He quickly worked one manacle open, then the other.

Ban’s hands fell to her sides; they'd gone numb after being held up for so long. Astarion firmly rubbed her arms to encourage blood flow, avoiding the burned parts of her wrists.

“Ban.” When she didn’t respond immediately, concern flooded him. He tapped her face hoping to rouse her, to no avail. Reaching into the pouch Gale had provided, he took out a flask and uncapped it. “Drink,” he urged, his eyes locked on her as she complied.

He gave her another once-over, noting that her complexion looked better. But not enough so. He fingered the cap of the remaining potion, debating. He could have her drink it now, but what if she needed it later? She could barely move, but he couldn’t risk using their last potion yet.

Determined, he reached a decision.

Ban watched with dazed eyes as Astarion lowered himself to her, cradling her head and tilting his head to bare his neck, a gesture that needed no words.

She obliged, fangs sinking into the scars Cazador had made centuries ago. She drank ravenously, her instincts taking over.

Astarion felt the icy numbness begin; the tips of his ears and his fingers started to grow numb. In spite of the situation, he felt a flood of contentment fill him. Ban had so rarely bitten him that even in this filthy dungeon, the joy of nourishing her was immense. Exhausted as he was, though, it didn’t take long for his vision to start to blur and his heart to flutter. He lifted a hand to her shoulder, a gentle reminder to stop.

The memory of the first time he bit her came to him unbidden; he couldn’t help the small smile that crossed his face.

Ban immediately stilled at the touch, pulling her fangs out of his flesh. After a light swipe of her thumb to clean up, she leaned back.

“Sorry. I jus-” She looked down at her shirt, at the tear where the stake had been shoved in. “I still can’t believe I’m alive…”

Astarion felt only relief suffusing his being. He cupped Ban’s cheek and leaned in. The urge to kiss her was overwhelming, but he hesitated. We don’t have the luxury of time.

“Let’s go,” he said, “It’s daytime. Most of them should be asleep.”

Ban followed Astarion out of the cell, but paused as his words sunk in - most?

“You said ‘most’.”

He sighed. “Yes. Unfortunately I suspect the master of the house to be awake.” Gale’s plan, after all, had hinged on it. He explained the plan to Ban, retrieving Woe from where he’d dropped it in his rush to free her.

“You expected Gale to - to distract Vel?” Ban was incredulous. Gale, really?

“Well- who else? Would you rather it be me doing the talking while Gale snuck around?”

She conceded the point. Gale had always been atrocious at stealth.

“So we have to kill Vel.” Ban spied a chest near the entrance of the dungeon; she opened it to reveal her pack and her sword. She dug through the pack, tossing out various unneeded items, then slung the now-lighter pack over her shoulder. She kept her sword in hand.

“I’m not displeased by the notion?” Astarion smirked. “But I didn’t exactly promise Gale I’d save him either, you know.”

“Ass.” She tried to smack his arm but he dodged it easily, his laughter pealing a little too loudly for the situation they were currently in. “If anything, you should be thanking Gale for coming with you.”

The laughter died and Astarion turned solemn. “He’s here for you. If he had his way I would be staked somewhere and you’d be in his arms.”

“Perhaps.” Ban shrugged. She looked at her husband, noting the taut expression and the tense set of his shoulders. “Problem?”

He took a moment to answer, gathering his thoughts. “I’m… envious of how easy it is for him to get you to confide in him. How easily you confide in all of them.” To trust them.

Astarion knew that Ban loved him the most; he did not doubt that at all. But did she truly trust him? It wasn’t something that would return without work from the both of them, he was perfectly aware, and yet the feeling was there. Jealousy, poisonous and foul and always lurking in his chest.

Before Ban could assuage his fears, they were back at the entrance hall.

“Do you know where-”

The question died in Ban’s throat. There was a disturbance in one of the rooms, going by the sounds emanating from it. They both rushed forward; Ban shouted for Gale, trying to ascertain his current state. Once again, Astarion found himself resenting the wizard.

The door was ajar; Ban rushed in to see an elf being held down by Enxisys and Miaxisys. The elf looked up at her, and she realized it was Gale. He was on his knees, his staff on the ground in front of him.

Astarion, right on Ban’s tail, halted for a different reason. Enxisys and Miaxisys were holding onto Gale, but their gazes were fixed on Astarion, numb expressions entirely too familiar. It brought forth a wave of memories, recollections that he had been pushing away - hiding from - since the rite. He forced them down as best he could, focusing on Vel and the situation at hand, but he wasn’t wholly successful.

“Look who decided to join us, hm?” Vel said, rounding on Ban. She immediately leveled her sword at his chest.

“Not another step,” Ban growled.

Vel laughed, raising his hand, Rhapsody in his grasp. “See, I knew the wizard would come to save you,” he said, pointing the dagger at the disguised Gale. “What I didn’t expect-”

Four more of Vel’s spawn came in behind Ban and Astarion as their master spoke, blocking their retreat.

“-was you, Ascendant.” The words were spat out, the contempt unmistakable.

“If you thought I wouldn’t come for her-“

“Oh, no! I know you’d come, eventually.” Vel snapped his fingers and the four vampires blocking the door closed the distance, crowding Ban and Astarion from behind. “That was the whole point.” He waved his hand indifferently.

“But I honestly expected you to make someone else do the grunt work first. I didn’t consider the fact that you might be able to… circumvent… some of our kind’s more peculiar quirks.”

“You know perfectly well I am stronger than you could ever hope to be, and yet you didn’t consider the possibility that I could enter your home uninvited as well?” He laughed without humor. “I can circumvent whatever the hells I damn well please, Vel. That includes your miserable existence.” He took a step towards Vel. Immediately the four spawn reacted, surrounding Astarion.

Ban weighed the situation. Seven vampires - well, six spawn and a vampire lord - against Gale, Astarion, and herself. Manageable, but not without risk. Especially with Gale held down and Astarion having given her so much of his blood. She would have laughed if it wasn’t such an ill-timed moment.

Rapidly, she reached a conclusion. She squared her shoulders and shot Gale a meaningful look.

Get ready.

Almost imperceptibly, Gale nodded.

The three of them glanced at each other, the long months of fighting as a unit resurfacing with ease. Everyone braced.

It all happened in an instant.

Ban dropped her pack and activated giant form, greatsword rising as though to cut Vel down. She knew she would miss - and indeed, as she swung Vel dodged effortlessly - but it was enough to draw Enxisys’ and Miaxisys’ attention. Their grip on Gale eased as they hesitated, torn between their obligation to protect their master and holding Gale down.

It was all Gale needed. He rose, Markoheshkir in hand, and called lightning. It struck the twins, Vel, and one of the four spawn near Astarion. The spawn did not get up.

Astarion seized the opportunity, turning to one of the remaining spawn and blighting him. The spawn crumpled, meeting his second death.

Ban raised her arms for another strike at Vel, the arc of her sword cut short when a blur of motion passed in front of her. Astarion lunged at Vel with inhuman speed, pinning him to the ground and shoving his fist into Vel’s mouth.

He turned to Ban with a pained expression. Astarion had seen the way Vel’s spawn had looked at their master; had known that look.

“Wait!” he panted. Vel was thrashing and biting, but the Ascendant was unaffected, holding him down without effort, his other hand pinning down the arm holding Rhapsody.

The four surviving spawn froze, unsure. If they made a move, they would be overwhelmed by the wizard and the consort. If they didn’t, and their master survived, he would punish them for it…

“Ban.” Astarion’s pained expression deepened into anguish. “Let them do it. Let them do what I should have done.”

“Can they? Won’t he compel them not to hurt him?”

“Not if we cut out his tongue,” Astarion’s voice was severe, rough with emotion.

Belatedly, Ban and Gale realized why Astarion had his fist in Vel’s mouth. Ban nodded, stepping on Vel’s weapon hand so Astarion could let go. Gale picked up Woe from where Astarion had dropped it, his face somber.

Astarion pried Rhapsody from Vel’s hand. He pulled Vel’s offensive tongue from his mouth and severed it with one quick slice, tossing it to the side. Vel’s wordless screams should have been satisfying. But he felt no joy - only a pang of regret, of shame. Rhapsody fell from his grasp just as swiftly as he’d used it. The last time I cut someone with that dagger… He shuddered at the memory.

This should have been how it went for me. With his friends present and his siblings at his side, working together to end their master’s life.

Astarion pulled away from Vel’s face to kneel beside him, holding his chest down, breathing hard. He turned to the spawn. They stared at him, still uncertain.

“Go on,” he urged, “Take what should be yours. What should have always been yours. Your freedom awaits.”

Freedom. He offered Ban a sad smile.

It should have always been yours as well, my love.

Ban’s response was a small, sad smile and a flood of warmth through their connection.

Vel’s spawn seemed to be recovering from the shock. They approached one another, quietly discussing Astarion’s offer amongst themselves. One of the spawn, the drow male who had helped abduct Ban, murmured an apology to her.

But neither Ban nor Astarion noticed. The only thing they saw was each other, eyes locked as they shared their emotions through their bond. Astarion’s mind was in turmoil, a dark maelstrom of conflicting, stormy thoughts that threatened to envelop him. Endless waves of rage, fear, regret, shame, and sadness were swirling, building upon the other until they were very close to overwhelming him. Ban could feel that he was on the verge of panicking.

She quickly sheathed her sword and approached Astarion, offering him a hand up, pulling him into an embrace.

Astarion let Ban pull him up and into a hug, squeezing her as tightly as she held him. He wanted to sob, to finally say I did the right thing, but he knew it was too late for him. He’d hurt her, he’d murdered his siblings, he’d driven away his friends and sacrificed all seven thousand of those poor souls.

But as Ban had drawn him up, she had turned her back on Vel. Had lifted her boot from his wrist. Had caused Astarion to let him go.

Movement over Ban’s shoulder drew Astarion’s attention. He saw Vel rise lightning-fast, Rhapsody in hand, poised for a strike, blade already arching down towards Ban’s back.

If I can be enough for only one thing, I hope it will be saving her.

With every ounce of strength he could muster, Astarion shoved Ban to the side. He felt a flash of relief as she was flung across the room, out of range of Vel’s swing.

As it had sunk into his former master’s back, Rhapsody sank into Astarion’s breast.

Into his heart.

[kaybreezy3000]

In The Flesh

Five Hargreeves / Reader Insert

Imagine that Five wasn't alone the entire time he was in the apocalypse...

-This is a special reader request for an extended scene from my Five Centric fanfic 'The Anti Hero's Pitfall of Arrogance.' Set during the apocalypse and Five is only 21.

-This request is a bit of a spoiler alert to the story that inspired it. It's written with a non-descript female character with no name, only referred to as she or her, so it's sort of a reader insert/you sort of vibe, or you can think of it as simply someone that Five loved. Think of it as you or someone else, either way, it's sad. 😭

Heed the warnings and click the link in the summary to read the full story if you want to get the full picture of what led up to this very sad moment for our favorite guy.

Warning: possible triggers, suicidal thoughts/behavior issues, alcohol abuse/excessive drinking, extreme grief/loss, graphic description of death/corpse, we get some Dolores in this, meant to be very sad, this fic this is based on is not all gloom and doom but it's clearly not all pretty either.

(5312 words)

In The Flesh

The funny thing about rock bottom is I’d thought I’d hit it many times before she saved me but really there is no depth far enough down to describe where I was after finding her body and where I would be for a very long time after that.

Like I’d done every day since I saw her favorite baseball cap bobbing on that partially submerged branch stuck out in the depths of the churning flood waters, I was out looking for her. On my endless searches, I would yell her name, over and over, till my voice was nothing more than a pained screech of air.

It was as I was scouring a new area that the water had receded that I went to shout her name again but stopped with only the first faint syllable. 

The moment I saw her distinctly colorful sandal and what appeared to be the discolored fragments of flesh still clinging to the bones trapped in it, the wind shifted, and my nostrils were filled with a pungent, sickeningly sweet, earthy odor.

That is what the smell of death is like if a body has been exposed to the elements for ten days or more. The anatomy and physiology decomposition literature states, a body exposed to the elements begins to decompose within less than 1 hour postmortem. That rate is accelerated if the tissues are exposed to other factors such blunt force trauma or heat and moisture.

She had been exposed to all of it.

I could still hear the ominous sound of the huge trees snapping and boulders grinding over things in the swift current as I walked along the road, just hours after she’d gone, only then, I didn’t know she wasn’t coming back. I didn’t know what was being done to her.

Now her body was there, under the hardened soil, but her foot was the only part of her that was visible other than her twisted tangle of hair wrapped around a river beaten branch. 

For the last week I’d been lying to myself, trying to hang on to the idea that she was still out there, that she was just too mad at me to come home. But really, in that time, she’d been first submerged in the torrents of flood water decimating that landscape, and then after, (not long based on the murky pool of muck and the very small cracks in the clay at my feet), she’d been there, encased in the ground. 

I cried out her name.

I dropped the stick I’d been using to poke and prod the underbrush, my body instantly disappearing for a fraction of a second into the snapping vacuum of my portal. Stepping out of it a few yards away, I fell to my knees, my trembling hands not knowing what to do or what was safe to touch. I moved to her foot, then pulled back as the tiny black flies that were startled by my presence flew up in an angry swarm.

The temperature since the day she disappeared had been colder but that had done nothing to prevent her rapid decay.

Entomology and Body Decomp 101: A decomposing body will attract all manner of life forms within 24 after death. If allowed access, scavengers are ruthless in their pursuit of the flesh of the dead. 

Having been well read prior to my time in the apocalypse and being well acquainted with death in the years before this, I was still not prepared for what I saw or had to go through over the next several hours it took to free her.

Her body was no longer her anymore, but I couldn't accept that. My mind told me she was under there and she was so scared. 

Frantically, I started digging with my bare hands. No matter how careful I was clawing at the clay that had molded her in the ground, anytime my fingers came close to her, they crushed her slick, wet remnants of flesh, tearing it through.

At this point, she had surpassed the early stages of decomposition. Gone was the bloating. The gases and liquids had mostly expelled, and her skeleton was letting go of her skin, though in some areas it remained in denser sections that were identifiable but mostly because her clothes had embedded in her. Her jean shorts made clear where her abdomen was, what was left of her chest was now part of her t-shirt.

What I was seeing and touching and smelling made my stomach heave over and over but still I had to save her.

She had needed me, and I wasn’t there.

Stage 4 post-decay lacks some of the first levels of putridity, but even though I had seen hundreds of thousands of faces of death, seeing hers will always represent the loss of everything; even more so than the day I’d foolishly ran into the future, lost my family, and found I couldn’t get back.

“No, no, no,” I sobbed, my filthy, bloodied fingertips inching along her face, or what should have been her face. “I am so sorry… Please!  No! God, please!”

The mouth I had cherished was gaping, her once perfect teeth were more exposed than they should have been due to the skin around them receding or simply just not being there at all. 

Her eyes…

Where once someone had looked back at me with so much love and endless understanding, now there was horror, both mine and hers. 

Sickness took me again.

Dizzy, I frantically scrambled back, away from where I had unearthed most of her, my stomach emptied, but nothing but acid spilled onto the scattering of broken foliage off to my side. 

My ears were filled with the evil buzzing sound of insects that were warming themselves in the open area around us as the sun relentlessly beat down.

I couldn’t take it.

A feral sound of pure agony crawled out of my chest, getting eaten away by all the nothingness.

“Please, I am so sorry… Please forgive me, I never meant for…” 

She wouldn’t except my words and I couldn’t blame her.

My broken cries were lost in my delirium. On hands and knees, I came back to her, lifting her to me even though I shouldn’t have.

The gruesome sound of parts of her stickily pulling free from the ground and the sight of the parts of her that remained in the soil were enough to fracture what was left of my sanity.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you, we can go home now,” I shushed her, in my head believing I had the ability to soothe her pain. 

She still said nothing, and I told myself it was because she was just too weak.

She just needed my help. She was just mad. She was just…

“You are safe now,” I said, my hand sinking into her, her spinal column hitting my palm not even enough to shock me back into reality. 

After cradling her for far too long, I said, “I am not leaving you here.” 

Lightly as possible, I let my shaking hand touch her hair, seeing but not acknowledging that it was starting to detach from her scalp. Without thinking, I forced the massive amounts of energy I needed for a jump, the blue power expanding from my hands, then around us. 

I only took us across the drying riverbed, up the steep embankment and up the hill to where the road hadn’t been washed out, and that was far, but it was not even close to getting us back to our cabin. For that, I had planned to teleport again and again, as many times as it took but when my feet smacked the ground the force of it made the tendons holding her right thigh to her hip give way and the length of her leg landed at my feet. 

“Fuck!” I screamed, slamming to my knees to grab her.

Like a madman, I could at least put together that she was falling apart and that this wasn’t going to work. Even jumping with her was too much. She was so fragile; she’d always said she wasn’t, but she was…

“I am so-ssss-sorry,” my voice cracked as I carefully laid her down again. 

The sight of those tiny black bugs as they fought to get a piece of the woman I loved, caused me to feel the burn of violent anger and that almost brought me to my senses, but even that too, I washed away with another imaginary idea, that if I just covered her, somehow all the severed openings that were now more her than anything else, would be spared from further ruin.

In a frenzy, I stripped off my shirt, covering her with it the best I could. The moment I was able to get to my feet again, I swayed, the world spun, but when it came back into focus, I could see again like lightning struck my head, brightening the gray world around me, making the colors of her bright sandals and her hair and the tattered remains of her clothing stand out in stark contrast to the deep darkened purple of her rotting body.

My filthy hand came up, rubbing my face and my blurred eyes, then my fingers tore back as I painfully yanked at my hair. 

I had done this to her.

Sniffling and on the verge of a full screaming fit of rage, I turned and started making my way up the road, a few steps away, my hands coming together, my fingers like claws, I tried to gather the light in my hands to blink again, but instead I was met with the impotence of the faintest swirls of azure static crackling to life then fizzling out. 

Turning back to the motionless pile on the ground, I again assured her I’d be back. Then in a haze, like a zombie on empty, I mindlessly made my way back, my mud-covered boots trudging up the steep hill, my balance faltering over and over as I’d tripped over the uneven surface.

If you ask me what I was thinking during that walk, I couldn't tell you. All I knew was that I was empty and that a horrible numbness was taking hold.

Even still, I came back fast, like I’d promised. First, I placed her in a thick blanket, sure to get every bit that was her that was there, anything that wasn’t, I never found.

“There,” I breathed, positioning her leg that had been torn off at the hip in such a way that looked less painful. Then flapping away any visible bugs from her, I covered her completely. Knowing that she was in the later stages of decomposition but that it was far from over and she was seeping fluids, I lifted her, and laid the cocoon of wool on top of a tarp. 

I could have carried her the whole way but not wanting to hurt her or break her apart more than she already was, I only carried her to the cart I’d brought back with me, then I carefully laid her in. 

Though she didn’t answer no matter how much I wanted her to, I spoke to her the whole way as I tugged the wagon with her in it up the hill. 

Getting back to our home, the mud encrusted wheels clattered to a stop in the yard right next to the chair I had been sitting in the day we had gotten into our fight. It was dead silent and getting so dark by that point that the stars were coming out but as if in a time loop in hell, I could still hear the cruel things I’d said to her on that sunny morning. 

Looking down at the small mound of blanket with her in it, I said, “You have to forgive me. I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t want to live with-”

My heart was racing, I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt a new tightness where before, since the hours after she’d gone and not come back, I’d only felt the stabbing pain of regret and fear, now it was like an aching void as if there were an actual hole inside me.

I stood there blankly staring at the door, then back to her, my mind not working at all but somehow still functioning enough to make the start of a string of very bad decisions.

Taking her up in my arms, we went inside. “We’re back. You're not alone anymore. I never meant to leave you out there like that. I tried so hard to find you,” I said, smothering my words against her wrap. “It’s okay now…we are okay…”

I kicked the door closed then I moved straight for our bed, and I would have laid her down in it and climbed right in if not for the fact that Dolores was sitting in the chair next to it, staring at me looking horrified.

‘No, Five, don’t!’

Saying nothing, I spun around to instead place the bundle in my arms on the couch in front of the fireplace. It wasn’t lit and it needed to be. That’s what she and I did at night. That was our other special place.

Memories of sitting there together, her behind me, reaching around to place my fingers correctly to play the chords she was trying to teach me filled my head. I could almost trick myself into thinking I could hear her beautiful playing and that I could hear her laugh at me every time I’d try to get out of my lessons.

“This is okay. I’ll fix this. We are going to be okay,” I said, as I started to unwrap her.

Dolores panicked at the sight in front of us. ‘Five, no. She’s gone. This isn’t right. What are you doing?”

I stopped, leaving her under wraps but I ignored Dolores’ s warning and started to light the fire. 

Again, Dolores asked, ‘Five, what are you doing? She is dead. You can’t do this to yourself.’

“She’s not dead!” I shrieked, my eyes filling with welling tears as I clenched my hands, my broken fingernails slicing half-moons into the flesh of my dirty palms. 

‘I am sorry, Five, but she is. You knew that after she didn’t come back.”

My head turned back and forth as I shook away a flood of tears threatening to come out and drown me like the water had done to all that I loved. I pinched my eyes shut, a broken whimper squeaking out of my throat.

‘Look at yourself, Five… You are not okay. That is why she can’t stay here. I love her too, but she is gone.’

I opened my eyes and looked at myself. I had no shirt on, my body was covered in mud and death. 

The smell of me… 

The smell of her poor body…

‘You need to bury her. She wouldn’t want this.’

“No,” I whispered as my body trembled and I stared blankly at the floor. “No,” I said again, then screamed, “Stop!!!! Just stop! Don’t you fucking talk to me! I didn’t ask for your help! It didn’t ask for any of this!”

Refusing to look up and see the hurt on Dolores’s face, I looked to the motionless pile of fleece blanket.

“I am not putting you out there all alone again, sweetheart.”

With that affirmation, and me placing a kiss to her covered face, the night did not get better.

In the light of the fire, I sat there on the floor in front of the couch as close to her as I could be without touching her. I wanted to protect her. I needed to keep my promise that I wasn’t going to leave her. 

So many times, she and I had discussed the possibility of me being able to jump back in time and the fact that doing so with her was going to make it all the harder for me to pull off. Even with the right math, and just me, the energy needed to do it was something I hadn’t figured out how to achieve. Even though she had said that me getting back was all that mattered, I refused to consider leaving without her. 

I couldn’t leave her, not then and not now; that was what I kept telling myself.

Sometime late into the night, slumped against the plaid couch, my head resting near hers though she remained covered, my demented and wrong train of thoughts slipped away, and sleep took me but in it l found no solace. 

~~~

As I came to in the early hours of the next morning with my body crumbled on the cold floor, I knew instantly that everything I wanted to believe was okay was not. 

The dimly lit cabin smelled of death and I was graced with the buzzing sound of a half a dozen or more flies that had found their way in somehow in the tiniest of cracks.

The decay had been clinging to me since I found her, but I refused to acknowledge it even as the putrid odor only added to my ongoing nausea. I clumsily reached for the stale glass of water I’d left at some point on the end table. Drinking it burned my cracked lips and the taste of it felt laced with a bitter acid. I wanted to retch but managed to refrain.

Then, wanting to remain living in the land of make believe, I got up, went to our small kitchen area, and proceeded to grab several bottles of liquor.

Dropping down next to her again, I twisted a cap, sloshing the clear liquid as I tipped it back, dumping the alcohol down my raw throat. 

It was awful but that was not the only time I’d drank to forget, or that I’d drank things that were questionable in their quality.

“Remember when we found that stash of cheap wine with the seals broken,” I quietly asked. 

I took a long pull at the bottle, then another as I peered over my shoulder at her laying there on under her favorite blanket.

“Smarter than me as always, you refused to drink any of it, but not me… Stupid as always, I gave it a try and boy did I pay for it. You had to baby me for the entire next day. God, I am such a lightweight. I’d be dead if not for you.”

I laughed, the sound of it thick with irony.

“You were always so good to me…”

Eyeing the dried mud and smears of her flesh on my pants, my eyes blurred. 

“I didn’t deserve you and you didn’t deserve this.”

I started to cry. Then I started to hyperventilate, my breaths coming too fast and my head spinning. 

Shuddering, I drank more and more but I could never turn the image of my girl’s face staring back at me from that riverbed into the beautiful living version I wanted so badly to believe was still with me.

Hours later, I was disturbingly drunk. 

One minute I was musing to myself about our better times, talking out loud like a maniac about something so wonderful, like one night that she and I were out scavenging too far to come back, and we’d camped out under the stars. I’d told her the names of all the constellations I knew and there were many. She’d quietly listened, cuddled up next to me, both of us just happy to be in love and together even if our world was a landscape of tragedy. 

Together, we could have done anything. We were going to save the world.

Now she was gone.

I had nothing.

She’d been everything and now I had no one again.

With the room spinning, I abruptly got to my feet, stumbling towards the window above the sink basin. The flies zipped and buzzed in front of me, landing in the vomit I had left there after I’d finished the first bottle of liquor. Knowing that those same dirty insects were landing on my beautiful girl made me quake with not just sickness but unmeasurable self-hatred.

I was a fucking mess, and I wasn’t doing right by her. 

Dolores was right. 

Glancing back to where I had abandoned Dolores almost two days prior, the room tilted in my vision. I dizzily turned back, clutching the white cast iron basin.

The light outside was fading. I wanted to go along with it. I wanted all the horrible pain and debilitating heartache to stop.

Laying on the butcher block counter space where we prepared our meals, was a sharp kitchen blade. With where my head was at, seeing it, I immediately thought of my gun and other times of morbid desperation. 

My tears burned down my cheeks.

I hated myself so much for what I had caused. If I had not yelled at her, and if I could only have seen through my arrogance and own my deficiencies, she would still be here. I didn’t and instead did what I’d always done and blamed anyone but myself for my problems.

I’d taken out everything on her, again…

If I’d only learned from my mistakes, things that weren’t okay never would have been said. She never would have felt the need to be away from me. She never would have gone for that walk, and if she had, I would have been by her side. If I had just agreed with her to go to the city to try something new, I may not have had the breakthrough we needed so badly but at least she’d be there.

Feeling on the verge of vomiting again, I wanted to disappear into an alcohol induced coma.

I pushed off the sink, staggering like a drunken idiot the whole way back to the dresser that was next to my side of the bed. In a blur, I saw Dolores sitting there on her chair, but she didn’t say anything. She looked every bit the inanimate object she was.

It was as if I’d killed her too.

I yanked the top drawer open, my hand tearing through the clothes to find the heavy black metal object that my fucked-up mind craved. 

My fingers grazed the cold instrument of death. I could feel the barrel of the pistol sticking down my throat, the oiled slickness of it slipping past my parting lips. 

Just the thought made me gag but with sick fascination, and I didn't’ stop thinking about it.

All it would take is one second and my finger on the trigger and no more guilt. My brain would be a splatter of nothing, painting the bedspread behind me. The place we’d slept and loved would be ruined just like we were.

Images of us, heated tangled flesh, together in those same blankets filled my mind.

To get away from the hurt that memory caused, I looked up, the weapon in my hand but my eyes aimed at the small dresser mirror. It was as if a stranger was looking back at me. My stomach felt like it was trying to crawl out of my mouth and my vision was closing in with blackness threatening to pull me under.

I was seeing things and hearing things.

The loud pop of the bullet; the sound of my body hitting the floor. 

I saw bugs crawling out of the jagged rotting hole in my skull.

Then I saw her face, only not the destroyed one that was hidden under the blankets on the couch. 

That was when I finally came back to myself. 

“Don’t you fucking do it,” I furiously screamed at myself, throwing the gun back down in the drawer.

My ears were ringing from my own terrified voice reverberating in them, then a few seconds later, the silence of death and that room returned.  

It was just me, the mannequin and the body.

Dolores was right, I needed to let her go. 

I had to bury her.

~~~

Over the next several hours, through the task of digging a hole in the ground, I sobered up significantly. Having done that, I re-entered the dank, horrid smelling cabin, removing the small pile of remains that had been the love of my life.

I was still covered in layers of filth and knowing that even if Dolores wouldn’t speak to me, she’d loved her as much as me and she’d want to be there to say goodbye, I quickly washed myself outside under the spout attached to the spring fed line that was rigged to the house. Splashing my face with a mix of soap and water, I cleaned my battered hands, and my arms, and I removed my soiled pants, tossing them in the woods. 

The water streaming down my body was ice cold and disgusting. My fleshly cleaned and very pale skin ran under my fingers, standing in stark contrast to the filth that I was and the sight of it only furthered the much-needed reality check I'd only recently found. 

Once I’d made myself somewhat more presentable, I redressed, then silently approached Dolores.

My voice cracked from being burned by stomach acid so many times and by my screams and lack of simply drinking or eating appropriately for days, but I had the strength and weakness to ask her for something I didn't deserve.

“Please come with me…I don’t want to do this alone.”

When Dolores responded with her softly spoken words of devotion, ‘You are never alone, Five. You will always have me,’ I was nearly beside myself with emotion. I’d thought I’d lost her along with everything else.

“Oh, my God, thank you,” I sobbed as I lifted Dolores up and carried her outside into the yard.

We approached the hole I’d dug. It wasn’t that deep, and it wasn’t that big, but it didn’t need to be. It was in front of an ancient but long dead ash tree that she had once told me had to have been something truly beautiful at one point in time when it was alive.

It was just like her.

The burial was silent, save for the sound of the blade of my shovel slicing through the softened pile of dirt I had removed and then replaced. 

The sky was getting dark, the woods full of shadows of monstrous things that looked like they could come out of the night and pull you away forever. 

I sat, folded in on myself at the base of the old ash tree, the disturbed soil at my feet as I looked up to the highest branches of the barren tree. Its flesh had been taken. Remanence of its bark were scattered all around me. It would someday be nothing but dust. 

We all would be, but it was not my time-yet.

Burying my head in my hands, I kept telling myself that. 

~~~

In the days that came after that, it rained and rained. My mind tormented me constantly with the flawed idea that she was trapped out there in the crushing wet ground. One second, I’d be haunted by images of her so scared and trying to breath and break free as then dirty water filled her lungs, and then the next, I’d come back to the dimly lit room I was in; Dolores worriedly watching me as I slowly organized things and cleaned up my many messes.

We couldn't stay there, but I couldn't bring myself to leave either, not when everything I had that she'd ever touched was right there. All around me were parts of her life that she’d shared with me. I’d clung to every trinket; every item of fabric that bore her scent. 

Lying in bed at night, I’d break down into sobbing fits of anguish with my face buried in her pillow. I could stay like that for hours on end, fading in and out, tricking my mind and heart into thinking I hadn't lost her and that she was right there in bed next to me. But it would never last because the damp coldness of the empty space around me that had once been warmed by everything that was her was an inescapable reminder that I had failed the woman I loved and who had saved me.

It was in a notion during one of these times of despair that I realized the only thing I could do to redeem what I had done was to fix this like I'd always promised her I would. Out there somewhere in time there was a place where the world was still alive, and she was in it and everyone I ever cared about was still flesh and blood and filled with life.

I had to get back.

The pain that happened here was real and always would be but somewhere out there, there was a chance of better things.

There was a chance of seeing her again.

That idea of saving her and my family was the only way, and it was my reason for breathing again.

Broken, but somehow still standing, my heart though not the same was still beating. The flesh covering my hand could still feel hers in it and it was while cherishing that feeling that I made the decision that it was time to go. 

On our final day, I got up like every day since I’d put her in the ground under that tree. I came outside, picking up the wildflowers I had left for her the day before, then I went for a short walk, talking to her in my mind the entire time, making my usual promises while I worked through ideas and math and things that gave me hope. Then I’d come back, refill her favorite vase with new water and place the colorful blooms there above her.

Alone, the sun shone down on me, my shadow stretching across the earth above her, giving the illusion that we were laying there together.  

“I love you,” I whispered, my eyes blinking back the enormous weight I felt from her loss and would always feel.

I liked to think I heard her say she loved me back, but I knew she didn’t; it was just a memory of her words tickling my ear as her lips gently kissed along my neck.

I shivered from head to toe as I felt the ghost of her touch but not in a bad way.

I smiled, sniffing like a baby as I rubbed my eyes.

Then, making one last promise I said, “You will be okay. I’ll fix this.”

Going back in the house, with Dolores watching all the while, obedient and loyal and loving with words of encouragement, I packed my final things.

I left our cabin spotless and set up as if we were coming back to it. It was as if I could see us in there again, spending our nights in front of that fireplace, laughing and endlessly teasing each other; our bed ready for us to lay down in and explore each other in new and exciting ways that only made our love stronger. I saw all that but in the back of my head I knew I was never going to come back to that place because it was gone, and if I did return, I may never leave her.

So, it was with that in mind, late in the morning, I loaded Dolores with our supplies, setting her next to the hard black guitar case that held her cherished Christmas present I'd given her and so many other things I couldn’t let go. I pulled a blanket around Dolores and the case, as if the instrument inside it had become something in a way of being the woman I’d lost, so much the way Dolores was a real thing that needed my care and love. 

I walked to the old, grayed ash tree, its wind worn and smooth branches shone in the warm sun as I looked down at the ground where I’d left a piece of my heart. I could almost hear the sound of her playing my favorite sone and I knew that when I plucked those strings, a piece of my heart would break a little more with each strum, but I’d be back with her.

My lower lip trembled, and my nose burned with the same heat as my eyes.

“Until we meet again, my love…”

Thank you for your support , this special cover art was made just for this and for you.💞 @groovydazephantom

Master List Post for my Five Centric Stories and art

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[ohtobeleah]

Bruises // Jake Seresin

Chapter Three: [In The Arms Of The Enemy]

Summary: Both you and Jake come face to face with the man you only know as ‘The Commander’ who you soon find out has very little patience for bullshit.

Series Warnings: Heavy themes of violence, sexual assault, torture. 18+ content. Minors DNI. Mature themes. Being held in captivity. Hostage style situation. Main character death! Whump, Angst. Conversations that discuss antisocial & antisemitism views.

Word Count: 4.6k

Author Note: THIS SERIES IS CONFRONTING, FICTIONAL, AND DEPICTS IMAGES OF TORTURE. DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU BELIEVE THAT THIS SERIES WILL BE DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR MENTAL STABILITY. CURATE YOUR OWN TIMELINE.

Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist

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

Every Naval Aviator you had ever known had a shadow. A dark cloud of fear and doubt that followed even the best into the cockpit. Every day you’d pretend like the shadow wasn't there, it's what got you this far, hoping that if you went faster, pulled harder, mastered harder techniques, achieved more, did better, got stronger and knew enough knowledge to rival an F-18 Natop book, that the shadow would give in and give up the chase. 

“Hollywood.” But like they say, you can't out-run your shadow. “Hey hotshot, you okay?” Jake's voice was as angelic as an angel's whisper as it cut through the fog in your mind. You weren't sure where you were or how long you’d been out for. But what you did know is that you felt like crap. 

Jake watched through the bars of his cell as you made an attempt to get up onto your knees. You'd been lying face down in the dirt of the cell floor. Drooling to the point mud had begun to form where your cheek had been squished against the clay. Inhaling all kinds of nasty things. 

“There she is.” Jake beamed as he pressed himself up against the metal bars that kept him from you. “You're okay, just breathe alright.” Jake had been awake for a while now. He’d just been listening, taking in his surroundings before they had shoved you into your cell. Time was hard to tell, but Jake estimated you'd been on the ground unconscious for roughly twenty minutes. 

“Where are we?” You asked as you got up onto your knees. It was a little harder to achieve with your hands tied in front of you. The rope itself was pulled tight enough to give you pins and needles, but not hard enough to cut off blood flow completely. “Oh my god where the fuck are we!” It wasn't until you turned around in a panic that you saw it. You let out a blood curdling scream that came from the depths of your soul when your eyes landed on the dead body in the corner of your cell. Still tied up but very much dead.

“OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE!” You cried as you fell back onto your ass and shuffled closer and closer to the bars that kept you apart. You didn't stop moving until your back collided with the metal. “Jake! Jake you have to get me out of here I can’t–I can't breathe!” 

“Hey, hey hey–shhh I got you, I've got you.” Jake tried his best to try and calm you down. He’d been looking at that same dead body for the better half of what he assumed to be an hour before they brought you in. “I'm right here with you, okay?” 

“Oh god oh god oh god oh god.” It was the only thing you could say as you felt Jake right behind you. He did what he could to try and comfort you, but his own hands were tied in front of him. The same as yours. No matter how much he tried he couldn't squeeze his arms in through the gaps in the bars. He could probably get one, but not two. Not tied at the wrist like this. 

“Don't look at her.” Jake cooed, his voice still as calm as ever. Level headed as can be in a time like this. “Hey, Hollywood, don't look at her, turn around and look at me.” He asked softly as he stayed right behind you, right in your ear so you could hear him, so he could make sure you could hear him through the panic. Through the fear. “Turn around and look at me Y/n, just me.” 

It took everything you had to peel your eyes away from the woman slumped in the corner of your cell. It took everything you had to turn around and face Jake Seresin as he kneeled on the dirt of his own cell. Face to face with you up against the bars. 

“We’re gonna get out of here–” It was a vastly different take on the matter to what you had to say. “I'm gonna get you out of here, I promise.” 

“Noone knows where we are, we don't even know where we are.” You sobbed as Jake reached through the bars as much as he could to grip your hands in his. “I'm so scared.” 

“I'm scared too.” Jake admitted as he held your hands in his. “But we’ve gotta be smart here alright, you don't show them you're scared because the minute they see you're scared they’ll use it against you.” You understood the logic, but how the hell were you supposed to mask this? “And when they come back, which they will, you don't struggle.” Only then did Jake sound scared. Although he’d told you he was, he didn't sound it. If anything he sounded as confident as he did all the time. “You don't give them a reason to hurt you okay and I promise I will get you out of here.” 

All you did was nod as you tried to silence your sobbs. Jake had never seen you cry before, now he’d seen you cry enough for a lifetime. The thought of you being in this situation with him killed him. It was always him, just him. Jake had always flown solo. He’d never gone down in enemy territory before. And he hated that the time he did he took down his Weapons System Officer too. 

“Who is she?” You asked softly as you tried to calm down. “The woman.” Jake had had more time than you to try and figure that question out. He had an idea, but he wasn't entirely sure. 

“She's a pilot.” Jake answered hesitantly but he knew you'd figured that much out yourself. “I can't see you patch though.” It was Jake's very polite way of asking if you could take a look. He didn't want to ask you out right knowing how much fear coursed through your veins, but when you nodded he knew you got what he was asking. 

Jake watched as you stood, using the support of the bars to help you up. Things were so difficult with your arms tied in front of you. Jake did the same thing, he sat on his ass and pushed himself up. Your cell seemed so much smaller than it did a second ago. With Jake whispering in your ear that everything would be alright the dead body seemed a million miles away. Now? Now it seemed as though she was at your feet before you'd even taken three steps. 

“You’re okay.” Jake reminded you as he watched you step closer. “I'm right here with you.” It wasn't true, but it was nice to hear. You crouched down in front of her. The woman who was dead in your cell. It didn't look like she had been gone for too long. Her skin was cool to the touch but there was no rotting smell. The smell you think about when you think of dead bodies. “Can you see anything?” 

They must have wanted you to investigate, maybe they wanted you to know who it was. Because her uniform looked as if it had been washed, cleaned and dried of the blood they surely spilled over it. Her patches were all still there, including her callsign. 

“Dutchess.” You frowned as you looked at the patches and callsign on her uniform. Struggling to understand how she ended up here. “It's Captain Sarah ‘Dutchess’ Hewens.” Jake had heard about the missing Captain that had been reported missing in action just shy of four months ago. You all had. It had been the scuttle butt across every naval station. How she ended up here he’d never know, but you had a theory. “Jake, we were ambushed.” You turned around with fear in your eyes as you rose to your feet. “They had to have known we were coming because the second we were in that canyon they were on us.” 

It had all been such a blur Jake hadn’t even thought about it. All he was thinking about was trying to get out alive. He was thinking about his wingman, Rooster. Never once did the thought of an ambush cross his mind. But evidently it had crossed yours. Which made you the best WSO Jake had ever known. 

“You think Dutchess tried to trade intel for her life?” Jake asked as he stood by the bars. He wanted nothing more than to be in the same cell as you. He couldn't protect you with bars stopping him from getting to you. 

“I think she did whatever she had to do in order to survive.” You said exactly what Jake had just in a more forgiving way. “They knew we were coming because Dutchess told them hoping it would keep her alive, how else would they have known we were coming?” 

As you looked at Jake through the bars of your cell and he looked back at you with the same realisation and disbelief evident all over his face, you remembered he was struck on the back of the head. 

“Are you okay?” The softness in your voice was a stark contrast to the anger you had just before explaining your theory on the ambush. “Your head?” 

“You don’t have to worry about me hotshot.” Jake sent you that signature grin everyone loved. “But for the record? I’m fine.” 

“How about off the record?” Jake wasn’t expecting you to care so much. He thought for sure you’d want to kill him yourself for getting you into this mess. But you didn’t seem to pass blame. “I saw what that guy did to you. It must have hurt like a bitch.” It was then Jake let out the smallest of chuckles to himself as he nodded in response. 

“Off the record i've got a little bit of a headache but it's nothing I can't handle.” Jake explained as he stood face to face with you at the bars that kept you apart. “What about you? How're the ribs?” There was something about Jake that brought you comfort. If you were here alone you probably would have already given up. But when he looked at you like you were the only light that could guide him out of this hellscape–you couldn't help but to feel just a little special. Even in the darkest of times. 

“Yeah, no they’re fucked.” Your complete honesty made the pair of you laugh for just a fleeting moment. With that laughter came a little bit of reprieve, it made you feel even just for a second that you were at the Hard Deck just trying to fit in. It made you believe as you closed your eyes and revealed in the sweet sweet sound of Jake Seresins laugh that you were looking at him looking at you from across the bar. 

But then you opened your eyes and you were still in hell. 

“They hurt, but like you said, it’s nothing I can’t handle.” Your eyes trailed down from Hangman's eyes to watch as he pressed his lips together in a fine line. He was unsure, unsure if you were alright. Unsure of everything. “How the hell are we gonna get outta here Jake?” 

“I don’t know.” He sighed, letting his forehead rest against yours through the bars. “But I promise you I’ll figure that out.” You knew there was no way he could ever really promise that, but still you believed him. “Trust me, you and I? We weren’t born to die. We’re Hangman and Hollywood.” Jake tried to get you to smile as fresh tears began to stream down your cheeks. “Hollywood and Hangmans story doesn’t end in some dingy cell in some unknown territory.” 

“When exactly does our story end?” You asked as you felt Jake raise his hands up from in front of him to gently touch your chin. 

“After this? Hopefully old and gray in some retirement villages where we can spend our days bickering over the fact that we should have sued for a hell of a lot more than we end up suing for.” That made you smile, it made the corners of your lips turn into your cheeks. “It doesn’t end here.” 

Every Naval Aviator has a shadow. And the only way to get rid of a shadow–is to turn off the lights, stop running from the darkness—and face what you fear. Head on. 

You had no choice but to face your fears when your smile was ripped right off your face when the wheels of your cell door opening echoed throughout your cell. Jake felt you go stiff, he noticed how you held whatever little breath was in your lungs and he saw how fear took over your entire being. 

“Don’t give them a reason to hurt you.” Jake mumbled as he stayed put. He wasn’t leaving the bars. If this was as close as he could get then so be it. He wasn’t moving. “I’m right here.” 

“Let’s go.” The Insurgent ordered as you stepped away from the bars and made your way towards where he stood with arms crossed and feet spread slightly. He was built and tall and once again clothed head to toe in black clothing. Leaving you no way to identify the man. “Did you enjoy getting to know your cellmate?” He asked with an evil laugh that would have made the devil himself shiver as he gripped your arm hard. “She was my favourite.” He drew you closer so that you were as close as you could get. He snickered deeply as he inhaled your scent, you swore he could smell your fear. “But something tells me you’ll be a little more fun to torment.” 

“Okay Buddy let’s go.” All the while Jake was watching you, he didn’t notice his own guard coming to the door of his cell. 

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Jake argued as he turned around to face the guard. “Where the hell are we!? what are you doing with her!?” It was hard to watch but it happened quicker than you could look away. “Ahhh!” Jake fell to his knees as the guard in his cell tased his side. Sending volts of electricity through his body that he couldn’t fight. 

“Jake!” You tried to rush to his aid but the man who had come for you held you back against his chest and placed a rough hand over your mouth. 

“I swear to god if I didn’t have orders to keep you alive I’d smear your guts along the walls of this fucking cell.” He hissed before spinning you around only to shove you out of your cell into the hall. “Now fucking walk, I don’t wanna have to tell you again.” 

“What are you going to do to him?” Although you were being shoved out into the corridor your eyes wouldn’t leave Jake as he laid fetal style on the dirt floor of his cell. “I asked you a question!” Your insubordination cost you a slap across the face hard enough to nearly crack your neck. Jake heard it, the other guard heard it. 

“God I wanna fuck the fire out of this one.” The guy manhandling you snickered at his partner. 

“Not yet.” Was all the guy who was towering over Jake replied. You watched with a whine as he brought his leg back only to kick Jake and kick Jake hard right in his gut while he was down. “Take her to The Commander.” Again there was a harsh kick that had Jake groaning in unbearable pain, but all you could do was watch and take in small identifiable features of your captors. 

Deep voices, tall, the hand that had wrapped itself around your mouth was caucasian, the size boot of the guard kicking Jake had to have at least been a ten or more. Small, hopefully valuable pieces of a much larger puzzle. 

“Is that all you’ve got, big guy?” You heard Jake laugh as he tried to get up off the ground as you were being ushered along. You saw it coming the second his arrogance slips past his tongue. That same taser that had jolted Jake in his side was now pressed into his neck. 

“JAKE!” There was no answer, no response or sign of life as you rounded the corner struggling. “Let go of me!” It was everything he’d told you not to do. “Let go of me!” But you needed to fight. “I’m not going anywhere with you!” It was then again you were hit with that same paralytic as before, a sharp sting followed by a quick burning sensation left your vision darkened and distorted before you were falling to your knees. 

Unable to move and unable to fight. 

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

When you’re little, nighttime is scary because there are monsters hiding right under your bed. When you get older, the monsters are different. Self doubt, loneliness, regret. And though you may be older and wiser–you still find yourself scared of the dark. 

The room you woke up in was dark and all consuming but just from the smell alone seemed cleaner than the grim covered cell you’d just been dragged from. All at once, all the lights were in—blinding you in bright white light. 

“I’m sorry my men had to get so physical with you so soon into your stay with us.” You heard a man speak from the corner of the room. “I’m hoping once we have a chat about what exactly it is you and your comrade are doing here that I’ll be able to tell them to be a little less hostile.” He spoke calmly, level headed. 

“Who are you?” You strained against the restraints keeping you down on the chair you found yourself in. 

“You can call me The Commander.” Was all he said as he stalked around the room. To your surprise the more your eyes allowed the light in, the more you came to realise he was on full display. No dark clothes, no hidden identity. Just a simple man in a simple suit. He looked well kept, clean and shaven. Like he had just come off Wall Street. “And what can I call you in return?” He asked politely enough as he sat down on the edge of a barron desk. 

“Hollywood.” You simply croaked out. He nodded in a sign of gratitude. You were still assessing your situation. 

“You and your friend seem to have been flying a little too far away from home don’t you think?” The room you were in smelt of chemical cleaner and notes of bourbon. The bourbon must have been from The Commander himself. 

“Well the US hasn’t always been known for keeping within its sovereign borders.” You sighed, still coming to. “Has it.” The Commander chuckled at your wit as he stalked towards you. 

“Still doesn’t answer my question Hollywood?” He reminded you as he towered over your still sitting body. He was harsh as he gripped at your face to make sure you were looking up at him. “Why are you here?” 

“The google reviews on your accommodation package need some updating.” You answered proudly. “Only reason I’m here is because the reviews said the rooms were bright and spacious.” It earned it a fist to the side of the face. “Ahh!”

“I’m not a patient man.” The Commander explained as he remained towering over you. “I’ll get what I want and I’ll go to any lengths to get it.” He paused as he bent over to level with you. “Just ask Captain Hewens.” The look on your face must have been enough to tell The Commander exactly what he needed to know. That you weren’t so confident after all. “It’s simple, you give me what I want and I won’t kill your friend.” At the mere mention of Jake your heart rate increased enough to send heat racing to your cheeks as you strained against your restraints. “Bring him in.” The Commander ordered as double doors that rivaled something straight out of an asylum busted open.

The two guards, you’d decided to nickname them dumb and dumber, dragged Jake in. They both carried his weight with one arm each as his head slumped and his head hung low. 

“Oh my god.” You gasped at the sight of Jake before you. He was beaten pretty badly, to the extent where his face was all swollen and cut up. “Jake—“ 

“Nothing I can’t handle.” He made sure to let you know. 

“Now you see Hollywood, I’m in search of information that might aid me in the process of furthering my reach across the globe.” You weren’t all that focused on the explanation you were being given, all you could focus on was Jake at your feet, lying on his back looking up at you. 

“But before we move onto that, I need to know what exactly the two of you were sent here to do.” The Commander walked across the room to pick up a single knife. “And you’re going to tell me just what your government sent you here to do.” The Commander lingered on his explanation as he made his way over to where Jake laid on the ground at your feet, spent and just trying to catch his breath. “You’re going to answer some of my questions and if you don’t I’m gonna slit the Lieutenant's throat.” 

“Don’t you touch him.” Sleep. It's the easiest thing to do. “Don’t.” You hissed as you watched the Commander crouch down to lift Jake's head up by his blood stained hair. Jake laughed in a way you’d never heard him laugh before. It was nearly insane sounding. 

“Jokes on you, I like having my hair pulled.” You caught the moment Jake sent you a struggled wink before he rammed the back of his head right against The Commander's nose. The crack was unreal—it echoed off the walls as he stumbled back a few steps and cupped at his nose. “But usually by pretty women.” Again there was a wink, Jake's arrogance was shining through the imminent peril the two of you were in.  

For a guy who looked as if he’d been beaten within an inch of his life, Jake moved pretty quick. He sprung up onto his feet and swung at The Commander the second he got a chance to. 

You winced as Jake tackled The Commander to the ground, the knife in his handle went sliding across the floor in a spectacular fashion, catching the fluorescent light as it twirled around. 

“Piece of shit!” It was pure anger as Jake let The Commander have it. He straddled the well kept man’s waist as he landed punch after punch after punch. “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?” 

You knew it was over before it even started the second the hospital style double doors opened with a boisterous thud once again. Three men dressed head to toe in dark clothing entered the room with quick haste. One made his way over to you while the other two raced over to where Jake was giving the Commander his all. 

Sleep. You just close your eyes and drift away. But for so many people, sleep seems out of their grasp.

You want it, so bad, but you don't know how to get it. How to obtain such a hot commodity.

“Get off of me!!” Jake spat as he was hoisted off the man in the suit with soulless eyes and an empty heart. “Get the fuck off me!” He was made to kneel as his arms were held out. When Jake had actually stopped fighting his heart sank into his stomach. 

There you were—strapped to the chair with one of the men holding a gun to your temple. Jake watched as your bottom lip quivered and your eyes welled with tears. You’d cried so many tears. 

“I’ll start easy shall I?” The Commander spat blood as he rose to his feet and fixed his suit jacket. “Names, I want both your names.” His tone had changed, The Commander was angry, no doubt about it. “Don’t answer and I’ll kill her right now, right in front of you.” 

“Don’t tell them anything.” Jake looked at you like you were the only one in the room. “I’m right here, it’s okay.” 

“WHAT ARE YOUR NAMES!” 

“I’m not telling you shit!” Jake swore time stood still as he watched the guard behind you move the gun from your temple and fired one single shot into your upper thigh. Your screams could have burst his eardrums as you cried out in shock and pain. The realisation set in quickly that they were serious—it wasn’t just a bluff. Jake and his actions had gotten you shot.

“I’ll give you one last chance to tell me exactly who you are before I blow her fucking brains out right here right now.” Jake's knees felt weak as deep crimson began to seep into your flight suit. This was real, holy shit this was really fucking real. 

“My name is Lieutenant Jacob ‘Hangman’ Seresin, and the woman you just shot is Lieutenant Y/N ‘Hollywood’ Y/L/N.” Jake explained as guilt flooded his broken and battered system. He stayed kneeling on the ground before you as your painful cries filled the silence. 

“Good.” The Commander was satisfied enough. “Someone run their files, I want addresses, stations, friends and family names, you name it.” He added as he gestured for his guards to let Jake go. “Let her go.” He nodded before the man with the gun lowered his weapon. You felt like you could breathe once again. “Someone get me a suture kit and rubbing alcohol.” 

It was all getting blurry, the voices, the room. Blood was pouring out of your thigh at a rate you recognized to be dangerous. Jake moved over to where you sat, now unrestrained. He assessed your thigh before placing his hands on your cheeks to wipe away your tears. 

“I’m so sorry—“ It was an apology bathed in the deepest of sympathies. The Commander watched as Jake kneeled between your legs. It sparked an idea inside his mind that would make it a hell of a lot easier to get the information he needed. 

“I hope you’ve got steady hands there Lieutenant Seresin.” The Commander snickered as he rolled his cuffs up. “Wouldn’t want your partner bleeding out.” It didn’t take Jake long at all to figure out what was happening, because the moment he was handed the suture kit? He knew he was going to have to get used to your agonising whimpers. “Try not to make her scream too much, I’ve got a fucking headache.” 

“I’m really tired.” You mumbled as your head fell forward against Jake's shoulder. He did his best to hold back his own tears as you worked to cup his hand over the bleeding. The other held the back of your head as he turned to kiss your temple softly. “Jake—“ 

“It’s okay, I’ve got you.” He spoke as softly as ever as the Commander and his insurgents left the clean near sterile room. Leaving just you and Jake behind. “I’m gonna fix you up, don’t worry, you can rest.” 

“Mmmm—don’t ever try to be a hero again.” Jake nodded as he let out a painful sob. This wasn’t what he had signed up for. This wasn’t part of the mission parameters. 

“Just stay with me Hollywood.” Sleep, it didn’t always come easy. But once you face your demons, face your fears, and turn to each other for help–night time isn't all that scary. “I’ve got you.” It was the last thing you heard before everything went dark. But you felt a comfort, a warm embrace that kept you safe. 

Why? Because you realised soon enough that you weren’t all alone in the dark.

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

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[snakebites-and-ink]

Soft whumper + conditioned whumpee has to be one of my favorite combos. It's like fluff but f***ed up.

[buckrecs]

been feeling a little down lately and was wondering if you know some fics where bucky comforts reader?

Bucky Comforts Reader

masterlist | req masterlist

Hold Me by @buckyalpine

Bucky comforts you when you’re having a bad day.

Sad by @softlyspector

The reader, who has struggled with depression all her life, slips back into that deep sadness. Bucky is worried and tries his best to help.

Bad Day Comfort by @wkemeup

Eclipse by @wkemeup

When a mission leaves you empty and broken, Bucky is determined to heal the wounds that linger deeper than the cuts on the surface. 

Nightmare by @sleepypanda27

Bucky comforts you after you have a bad nightmare.

Sad by @sleepypanda27

When you aren't feeling your best, Bucky is right there by your side.

Heartstrings by @sleepypanda27

When Y/n thinks that she is not good enough, Bucky proves her otherwise.

Late Night Talks by @buckychrist

When a night takes a turn for the worst, there’s only one person in the world you want to talk to, and you find him laying down in the bedroom next to yours.

eyes on the screen by @kinanabinks

bucky comfort where we watch some sitcom like family guy and just chill with some kisses at the end.

I’m Here by @foreverindreamlandd

Bucky supports the reader during a depressive episode.

Dropped Pens & Bee Stings by @foreverindreamlandd

Reader is having a day where nothing seems to be going her way. Nothing some TLC from her mans Bucky Barnes can’t fix.

Together by @sgtjbuccky

In where you’re feeling like the world is collapsing against you, and everything you do in life is never enough. You feel inadequate to everyone around you, but Bucky is here to remind you that you’re the greatest there is. 

Nobody Else by @the-bau-quinjet

Reader is stressed about college and Bucky is there to help.

under the weather by @dirtychocolatechai

Failure to Launch by @thenhewaswrongaboutme

You go radio silent for a day, and Bucky comes to check on you. He doesn't know exactly what you need, but he tries his best to help.

Imagine by @t-lostinworlds

“hey... you've been crying.”