#half-human virgil

[virgilsteve]

SAD DAYS!!

Well it looks like it's time for the "waterworks". Well as you can see Vwolf/VirgilWolf is crying! Why you may ask?

Well that's because at this foot in time he just lost his physical body and he's now down to one soul instead of two.

He's still technically alive but more of a spirit and not necessarily a ghost... Which is also why he looks a little different for example: gray skin, completely orange eyes, and the color of his clothes are now more faded than what they used to be.

I commissioned the great artist @Skele_TAM You can find them on Twitter and I highly recommend checking them out there they were so kind and upfront about everything.

Vwolf belongs to: Me

[wolves-etc]

hello please have some "actually a half-vampire just not aware of it" anton au thoughts

(virgil is human and clueless because I refuse for this to be otherwise)

goldblum figures it out and takes anton aside the second time he's brought in for questioning like "dude, are you okay? you got fake fangs instead of using your real vampire ones, you don't need those, you can just— wait, why are you crying—"

(goldblum's either a vampire himself or, to borrow a thing that's too good not to borrow & because it fits the gleefully-open-minded-about-fringe-shit vibe, he dated a vampire once)

@darkfinch had this LOVELY idea for the vampire intiates to stick together as a community post-canon and to my mind, what makes that better here is if most of 'em turn out to be real vampires to some degree - or Something Else, or just Aware of this shit. they're in it for the fun, for the local community, for the "yeah this is bullshit but some of it's fun bullshit and it's funny to see how bad at it the leader is."

when they manage to corner anton (freaking out quietly in his loft) (his whole world shattered in pieces around him) (goldblum gave him a number to call to answer some questions but the poor guy's petrified) half of them are like "we thought you knew and were just trying to blend in!" and half are like "we were trying to figure out how to tell you!!" and it's just this mess of supportive-but-worried chaos.

...and anton, betrayed, off-kilter, already primed to question the programming of the last year or so has some people to help set him on the right track.

this ALSO sets us up for a thing. :) a thing where maybe goldblum looks the other way (an actual acknowledgement by the still-shitty cops in this shitty cop show of how awful the situation is) or there's a terribly unfortunate powercut and a few of the initiates get to pay virgil a visit.

they admit it to anton while very drunk a year or so later and he laughs so hard he cries <3

[an-organized-confusion]

Just because I needed yet another spreadsheet to wrangle the Promethean!AU Timeline a bit more visually...

Some stuff may change, but this’ll help me out as I develop this one more...

Anyways... back to that Disquiet Story I’m writing for this AU’s Janus~

[utytimeline]

I might make some people mad, but I'm gonna say it, anyway.

So, Ceroba's reason for choosing Chujin over Star was because she wanted someone more mature. At least, that's my understanding. Star was playing cowboy and role-playing with his friends while she wanted to settle down and raise a family.

And... yeah, Star had a lot of growing up to do. And he did almost none of it until Ceroba stopped him from shooting us.

Star's main character flaw is his ego, but it's even worse than just an ego. Half the reason he set up the Wild East was to help everyone else. He wanted to bring in money to help his family when the Swelterstone's effects caused a drought; he wanted monsters to get a taste of what the surface is like so they don't drown in despair; and he wanted to make Ceroba happy after she lost both her husband and her child. All of this on top of feeling like he was a "nobody farmer" that couldn't do anything or help anyone.

So Star's primary character flaw isn't as simple as just having a big ego. His primary character flaw is trying to fix others as a way of fixing himself.

Sometimes this is a good thing, tho. I often think of Star as the "papa" of the Feisty Five. He's the protective one, he's the one teaching them ethics (reminding Mooch that they're not supposed to be bandits, playing dead to teach Clover about the responsibility of potentially hurting someone), he takes care of the town, he's made ALL his own money from this town that he built himself (enough that Mooch wants his inheritance, so it's a sizeable amount), he even gave his posse a designated nap time, gave Ceroba a home (and possibly gave her his bed while he crashes on the couch), sews his own clothes, set up all the rules and regulations... and I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Star is not wholly irresponsible. He's not perfectly responsible- he, and the rest of the posse, have a habit of breaking and losing Blackjack's weapons, they're all loud and rowdy, and they have a tendency to forget to turn off their boulder machines out in the Dunes.

So, yeah, Star does still have some growing up to do. But he's got a good start.

As for... everything that went wrong... That was entirely due to Star's worship of humanity. Star fell in love with westerns and with the justice and overall sense of romance that they portrayed, so much so that he not only tried to make himself into one of his western heroes, but he then extended this worship to the first human to ever set foot in the Dunes- namely, Clover. And because of this, Star completely threw everything that was good about himself out the window. He sees a human an immediately decides "this is my deputy," without even really giving Clover a fair chance to see if they even are deputy material. He forgot the safety glasses, got so worked up he forgot how to pronounce "duel," became extremely temperamental, apparently forgot that Vengeful Virgil was scheduled for the train mission that day, locked up a Royal Guard against her will (arguably committing treason in doing so, I might add), and just generally began running over everyone's words and emotions, including Ceroba's.

So when it came down to the Showdown... Star blamed Clover. Star's not an idiot. He knows good and well it's not Clover's fault. It's Star's fault- or more precisely, it's his worship of humanity that is to blame. But the problem is, he's taken it upon himself to guard the feelings of other monsters, to make them feel hope and joy. And he just screwed up and stole all that from them. So he's conflicted, not willing to admit that he has done the exact opposite of everything he set out to do. And since it's his worship of humans that led him to this point, he decides to blame the human.

Hence, the Showdown.

But he doesn't want to do it. He says himself, "Monsterkind's Hero is a title soaked in blood." He loves humans. And he sees Clover as a friend. He doesn't want to kill them. He's not a killer, and he doesn't want to be one. He doesn't believe in it. Justice is one thing, but... how is it just to kill someone that did nothing wrong?

So. Here's where Ceroba comes in. Telling Star he needs to calm down and go back to who he used to be. And Star points out that she's changed, too. Even Ceroba says, before taking Clover to the Steamworks, that she doesn't know if she has room to tell Star to go back to the Starlo she used to know.

Ceroba, tho, is no different than Star (this is the part that I said might make some people mad). Ceroba worships Chujin just as much as Star worships humans.

Ok, look. Chujin was a great craftsman. He built so much- furniture for Dalv, his and Ceroba's house, the space heater at the Honeydew Resort, many other items in use throughout the Underground, Kanako's toys (even programmed a video game for her), and so much more. So much that even Star respects him for all that he did for everyone.

However, there is also much that indicates that Chujin wasn't the best at his job. His only award is "You Tried at Engineering," and it took 14 tries for him to build a working robot. In Chujin's defense, I will say that it is impressive that he did build a working, sentient robot without the use of a SOUL, which is how Alphys made both Mettaton and Mew Mew; however, if Chujin is really such a genius, why did it take 14 tries to get Axis to work, when it apparently only took 1 try for Guardener?

And then Chujin didn't just stop with robotics, but went on to SOUL research. Two completely different fields. (And before anyone starts commenting on Alphys, I just want to point out, yet again, that both of the robots she built did use SOUL power; so, realistically, Alphys never was a great robotics genius, but rather, everything she did was a part of SOUL research- hence, the reason Asgore hired her as the Royal Scientist). But Chujin decided to press on with his SOUL research, despite there being no indication anywhere that he had ever done any such research before.

Now, I'm not trying to say that Chujin wasn't remarkable or a genius. I'm just pointing out some things that indicate that maybe he wasn't quite the genius that Ceroba wanted to make him out to be. And... Ceroba's reaction to his "You Tried" award. She's proud of him. More pride than what is warranted by such an award.

Ceroba said she met Chujin when he pretty much rescued her after she twisted her ankle, fell into a ditch, and laid there for several hours, unable to move. She also said that she had considered dating Starlo before meeting Chujin. So... hate me for this if you want to, but I feel like she may not have the best judgement when it comes to guys. Now, that's not to say she picked losers or creeps. Both Chujin and Starlo were/are sweethearts that care deeply about everyone around them. But the fact remains that Ceroba left behind the guy that she'd known all her life for a guy she just met, just because he rescued her from a bad situation.

And I'm not even saying she made a bad choice! By all accounts- including Ceroba's, Martlet's, and even Starlo's- Chujin was a good, kind-hearted, hard-working monster, and a wonderful husband and father. But... he wasn't perfect. And I think Ceroba, even though they had to have been married at least 10 years, just always had stars in her eyes where he was concerned. He was her everything. She believed he could do no wrong. She believed it so strongly, she was willing to do... many horrible things.

Ceroba's drive to kill Clover started with her love for Chujin. She wanted to do anything to keep him alive in her own heart. And when their child begged and pleaded for a chance to help, Ceroba agreed, because Kanako woshipped her father, too. Ceroba's misguided belief in her husband guided her to do things she would never have done otherwise.

Thus the reason for her guilt. It's not just guilt over killing her own child. It's also guilt over knowing that it was her own misguided worship of a monster that wasn't as perfect as she thought he was, that this was what led her to kill, and to kill again.

Ceroba worshipped Chujin. Just as Starlo worshipped the ground Clover walked on, Ceroba worshipped the ground Chujin walked on.

So when people point to Ceroba's comment that Starlo didn't grow up... yeah. She's right. Starlo needed to grow up.

But so did Ceroba.

One of the hardest parts of growing up is realizing that the people you worship are just people. They make mistakes, and you, yourself, are mistaken for believing they can do no wrong.

So, anyway. There's as much Staroba (Starfox, I call them) hatred as there is love for the ship. I've seen both sides of the argument: Starlo isn't mature enough; Ceroba is insane. Yeah. You're both right. And that's why they're perfect for each other. They both made the mistake of changing everything they were in an effort to continue worshipping their idols. They both went nuts. They were both driven to kill. This is the inherent danger of idolatry, believing so much in something that isn't real, that you will do anything to make it stay real to you.

[knightcharlotte]

hi, i have been send down a teen wolf rabbit hole, so here are some ideas of what what character would be in a theoratical AU for fable and bound,

fable:

aax: chimera

addie: human

ari: banshee

athena: hellbound

bruin: druid

caspian: werewolf (turned)

centross: hunter/human

easton: hunter/human

fenris: werewolf (aplha)

haley: banshee

icarus: hunter/human

momboo: druid

ocie: hunter and maybe a water kitsune??

rae: banshee and half kitsune??

ulysses: druid or maybe even a dread docter turned good??

ven: human and hunter

bonus round: major gods!

fable: darach or a hunter

enderian: nogitsune / void kitsune

netherum: hellhound

luce: kitsune

bound time!

armor: chimera

ashril: werewolf

avalon: hunter

cosie: human

elwood: druid

erin: druid

gaverin: kitsune

marcel: human

mojave: hunter or werewolf (could go either way)

nemo: human or werewolf (could also go either way)

pietro: werewolf

rune: banshee

sylph: werewolf

taliesin: druid

vast: hunter

virgil: human

thank you for reading my silly little thoughts, if anyone has any other thoughts about this please let me know, i would love to see what other people think :D!

(ive been going insane and may or may not have watched the entirety of season 1 in one day)

(also if you see any spelling mistakes, no you dont/j)

[delimeful]

let my mind reset (6)

warnings: angst, brainwashing, torture, psychological conditioning, references to injury/gore/death, harmful surgical implants, they are really going through it now, lmk if i missed any

-

Where the hours had passed slowly before, now they seemed to slip by all too fast. Every spare moment Roman had was spent in anxious anticipation of the next session and all that came with it.

He had never seen something like the haze used on a person before. Crav’n were invulnerable to it, and he’d only ever witnessed his aunt use it briefly on one of the local fauna once, a harmless and finicky tree-dwelling species about the size of his hand.

(Roman remembered the way Marta had compelled the little creature to pace back and forth, from place to place, wearing its will away until there wasn’t any hesitation between order and action. Then, she’d sent it walking into the nearby pond.

He remembered the way its survival instinct had set in late, the way it began to thrash, and still Marta didn’t call it back. He remembered feeling relieved when his mother stepped in and put a stop to the demonstration, scooping the poor beast from its fate with disapproval etched firmly in the set of her shoulders.

He didn’t remember if the creature had lived through the withdrawal, afterwards.)

Virgil was far from a simple animal, though, and despite Roman’s half-formed nightmares, he didn’t mindlessly succumb to the influence of the drug the first time it was forced on him, nor the second or the third.

In fact, every time the other Humans entered his cell with that unsettling green canister, he seemed just as panicked as Roman, if not more, putting up as much of a fight as he could with a battered body and a wrung out mind. No matter how they tutted or scolded, the other Humans still couldn’t get the mask on him until Roux had him forcibly subdued, which was a tiny victory in itself.

That didn’t stop the drug from taking its toll each and every time.

As horrible as it sounded, the worst part was that the effects weren't painful or malicious in nature. At least that would have been easier to fight against; a logical, instinctive response to being hurt.

No, it was far more insidious than that. The haze dulled pain. First, the physical: it eased away the stiffness of sore muscles and the burning of shocked nerves, leaving only a pleasant numbness behind. Then, the mental: it stalled the production of stressful chemical compounds, replacing them with whatever was needed to trick the victim’s mind into believing they were happy, relaxed, pliable.

Roman had never seen Virgil so unwound, so carefree, and he hated how unnatural the behavior seemed on the Human. It was a miserable experience, finally seeing him without the hunted slant to his posture, and feeling sickened by the sight.

What was worse was watching it wear off.

As though a switch had been thrown in reverse, Virgil would be plagued by a creeping, unrelenting sense of panic and dread, pacing around his cell frantically until a sudden hypersensitivity to touch left him crumpled in one spot, breathing harsh and pained.

Time after time, he was shown exactly how painful withdrawal from even a few doses was, until he was left bracing for it well before the next session had even begun.

“The last guys who had me would have killed for something like this,” Virgil said, nearly panting as he laid out on his back. He had his fingers pressed against his neck, feeling his pulse. His heart was racing so hard that Roman could see the veins pulsing eerily under the skin. A heavy spike of adrenaline, unprompted by anything tangible. “Bet she has at least a few people stashed away just to drain for easy cash.”

He spoke more, like this. Out of turn, about topics that were morbid and pessimistic, as though the thoughts were tumbling free of his mind without his permission. Roman never let his negative reactions to the more grim topics go beyond his ears flickering back; it wasn’t like he had the room or right to judge. They didn’t have very many reasons to be optimistic. Besides, he’d realized early on that the more worked up Roman got, the worse Virgil got in turn.

He still didn’t know the exact details of how Dren harvesting worked, and he was fairly sure he was better off for it. The very idea of setting an entire person aside for something like that was reprehensible, and therefore entirely possible for Marta.

“She said she… she gets rid of Humans that don’t break,” he replied after a moment, the words tumbling freely from him for once. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to turn a profit from it.”

He’d been trying to match the distant, dry tone Virgil had used, but he must have missed the mark, because the Human stiffened, and drew his hand back from Roman’s grasp to press it harshly against his eyes.

Belatedly, Roman realized what he’d just implied. Virgil was one of those Humans trying not to break, was at this very moment barely clinging to his composure, and he’d just been informed he was stuck between two horrific fates worse than death. “I didn’t mean—,”

“‘S alright,” Virgil interrupted, voice rough with exhaustion. “It’s not like I didn’t know. It makes me feel a little better, honestly.”

Roman stared at him, bewildered and still slightly aghast at his own stupidity, and Virgil shifted a few fingers to peer back with one eye.

“At least some Humans didn’t fall for it, y’know? At least some of them got out in their own way,” he continued, a thin thread of hopelessness tangled up in the words. “I was starting to wonder if the rest of space was right. If we were all just destined to be monsters with the right motivation.”

Roman should have been more alarmed at the implication that Virgil felt close to succumbing, that he was nearer than he’d ever wanted to be to a Human on the brink of falling under someone else’s blatantly malignant control, but all he could feel was a painful sympathy.

“You’re not a monster,” he said, and then, more firmly— “Humans aren’t monsters.”

Virgil’s eye widened slightly, gaze intent in a way that would have made Roman bristle in the past.

“They’re just people. They can do good or bad, just like anyone else. And sure, these guys are— they’re not doing good.” A pause, and Roman forced himself to meet Virgil’s stare. “But you have. You saved Patton, and you tried to save me, and you’re— you’re not a monster. You’re a good friend.”

Virgil buried his face back in his elbow and was quiet for a long moment.

“…You’re not so bad yourself.”

—

Roman hadn’t expected Marta to show up in person, not with how much she had delegated to her brainwashed underlings thus far, but arrive she did.

“Don’t fret, ghiva’al,” she crooned to him, passing by his cell with the lightest clink of her claws dragged against the bars. “I’m here to meet your little pet, not you.”

“Don’t—,” call me that, call him that, he wanted to snarl, but his throat closed up so sharply that it sounded a little like he’d choked.

Marta made her stilted croaking laugh, sparing him a glance that might have been pitying if it had bothered to reach her cold, empty eyes. “You always did struggle with words when emotional, didn’t you? Not nearly as well spoken as your mother. What a shame to see that hasn’t changed.”

There was a sharp clacking as an aggressive shudder ran through Roman’s scales, but he still couldn’t find his voice. Not even when Marta moved on to grip the bars of Virgil’s cell, her attention shifting to the Human where he stood warily in the center of the cage.

Roman had learned more than he’d ever thought he would about Human body language over the past few weeks. He knew from the slight sway to Virgil’s every shift that the Human was drained, likely barely keeping his feet.

Still, he was upright to face Marta, his height advantage allowing him to look down at her, and that was better than being crumpled on the ground at her feet. Little victories were all they had now, and they clung to each and every one.

Roux wasn’t there, Roman realized with a jolt, and the knowledge was enough to drag his mind into overdrive, a sudden double-edged hope springing to life in his chest.

Virgil must have already realized, because the way he held himself shifted into something taut and coiled, like he was preparing to lunge forward at the first opportunity, weak or not.

“Back of the cell,” Marta commanded, voice turned brisk and blunt in a way it hadn’t been with Roman. Like she was speaking to a beast instead of a person.

Virgil didn’t move, barely deigned to acknowledge the words beyond a brief flicker of his pupils upwards.

Marta waited, letting the silence stretch for a brief moment, and then clicked her teeth together in a mild reprimand. “The hard way, then.”

Despite her apparent annoyance, the words held a sort of anticipatory delight, and Roman felt the thick tar of dread slide under his scales as he watched her slide a small, triangular remote from a pouch at her side.

When she pressed the button in the center of it, she was looking at Roman.

It was Virgil who went rigid and fell.

Despite knowing it would undercut every lie he’d tried to sell about how little he cared, despite the fact that he was playing right into her claws, Roman couldn’t help but rush to the bars separating them, a shout of horror catching in his chest.

The Human hit the ground hard but stayed chillingly frozen, with every muscle locked into hard lines. He didn’t make a sound until Marta shifted her thumb away from the button, the motion somehow allowing him to finally go limp like a puppet with strings cut.

“Virgil!” Roman managed, though the sound of it was nearly lost in the sudden loudness of the Human’s gasping breaths. He hadn’t been breathing before, Roman realized with a terrified shock.

Whatever Marta was doing, it hadn’t countered Virgil’s natural stubbornness, and he climbed back to his feet with less staggering than Roman would have expected.

His gaze caught on the tremor to Virgil’s hands, the shuddering of his pulse, and he understood. Adrenaline.

The fight or flight instinct, Virgil had called it while talking with Patton. Roman had seen him choose to fight once, at their very first meeting, but even that couldn’t compare to the speed and ferocity of the way the Human lunged now.

Marta didn’t flinch back when he made loud, skull-rattling contact with the bars, but she didn’t blink, either, keeping her eyes firmly locked on Virgil as she pressed the button once more.

Instead of letting him drop, however, she reached out and seized him by the face, claws digging in on either cheek and holding tightly.

Virgil couldn’t so much as flinch away from the pain, and Roman slammed his arm against the door of his own cell with force, furious at his own helplessness.

Marta released the trigger again, and this time, every gasping inhale Virgil took was dosed with her haze. He tried to jerk back, but it was far faster acting straight from the source, and he had barely a moment before his expression dropped to something hollow and smooth, his desperate strength wavering and then extinguishing like a flame with nothing left to burn.

“Down,” Marta commanded, releasing her grip, and Virgil stood in place for a few long heartbeats before his legs collapsed underneath him.

She waved a hand absently down at him, still scattering her haze thick in the air. “There you go. It feels so much better when you listen, doesn’t it?”

Virgil twitched, a ripple of discontent crossing his face, but didn’t respond. He was shaking relentlessly now, his entire body trembling in a way that had Roman deeply concerned.

“You’re safe with me,” Marta lied, reaching down to glide the palm of her hand over the side of Virgil’s face. “You’re only safe with me. Everyone else wants to hurt you, but I’ll make the pain go away. Always do as I say, okay?”

Virgil didn’t move away, even as her rough skin caught on the wounds her claws had left only moments ago. His breathing grew wispier, slower, until he appeared almost calm, his eyes dazed and distant.

“Let’s try this again,” Marta straightened, and when her hand left Virgil’s cheek, he strained after it for a handful of seconds. “Back of the cell.”

Virgil climbed back to his feet, and Roman closed his eyes as the Human quietly began shuffling across his stretch of cell. He felt all of six winters old again, watching his aunt lead something fuzzy and helpless back and forth, closer and closer to the water’s edge.

“Good. Now, heel.” More shuffling, wordless as a corpse.

How long did he have before Virgil took his own plunge?

—

It took longer than before for Virgil to regain coherence, afterwards.

Roman knew the moment he’d come back to himself, because the soft grip around his hand had instantly vanished, yanked away so sharply that he’d barely registered the movement before Virgil was up on his feet and backing away.

“Virgil,” he tried, and the Human shook his head, the motion harsh, his hands lifting up to grip roughly at his hair in a distressed motion Roman had only ever caught glimpses of back on the ship.

He’d continued to retreat until he hit the furthest corner of the cell, where he slid down and curled in on himself, utterly unreceptive to any of Roman’s stilted calls. Roman caught his expression crumpling into a miserable grimace before he buried his face in his knees and hid that away too.

The silence stretched.

If there were some right words to say here, Roman couldn’t find them. Even if he did, he undoubtedly wouldn’t be able to say them. The helplessness sheared against his scales like rough sand, but how could he allow himself to wallow in it when he at least still had his mind, his existence still unarguably his own?

Freshly taunted by the knowledge that he didn’t have even that much, Virgil remained still and taut and quiet in the furthest reaches of his cell for what felt like a very long time.

When he did finally stir, Roman was appalled to see the faint streaks on his face where his tears had washed away the sweat and grime.

Patton had described Human weeping as arrhythmic vocalizations, much like Ampens, but with a physical manifestation as well. Roman hadn’t known that Humans could cry silently, like a pup gone still and quiet in the face of danger, with only the barest hitching of breath to indicate distress.

The expression on Virgil now was creased into firm lines, but it didn’t seem agonized or crumbling at the edges. Rather, as he climbed to his face, he seemed to hold the same bitter resolution Roman had seen in him a few times before: during the tail end of their first meeting, and after the fight with the raiders, both times when he’d thought he was about to be left alone again.

“Roman,” he started, and then worked his jaw tersely, once, twice. Rather than continue, he held out a hand, palm-up in silent offering.

Things had changed a lot over the course of their captivity, Roman reflected as he reached out and set his own hand in the Human’s grasp with barely a shred of hesitation. It felt like second nature by now, to reach out and cling on whenever his stomach was roiling with stress.

Virgil watched him for a moment longer, and then wrapped his fingers around Roman’s hand and drew closer, slowly pulling his arm up until he had positioned Roman’s claws just above the skin of his neck.

“This,” Virgil said, each word resolute, “is the best place to sever if you want to kill a Human quickly.”

The words took a dull, ringing moment to sink in, but once they did, Roman jerked back sharply. “Virgil, what—?”

For the first time, Virgil held on, keeping his hand pinned in place with ease even as he had to grip the bars with his other hand to remain upright. Roman could see the way the Human’s pulse fluttered under the skin, a heartbeat racing visibly exactly where Virgil had indicated.

“It’s important. You need to know,” Virgil insisted, and lifted their joined hands higher, to his temple. “Head wounds bleed a lot. Gashes up here are valuable because the blood runs down and drips into their eyes, which will work pretty well as a distraction—,”

“Stop it!” Roman demanded, yanking harder as his panic increased. “I’m not going to— stop talking like that! I don’t need to know how to hurt you!”

At the start of their voyage, Roman would have done just about anything for information like this, anything to feel safe on his own ship again. So why was he learning it only now, when each word and accompanying gesture made him feel ill and rotted down to the tip of his tail?

“It’s not— Roman, it’s not about me,” Virgil said, frustration seeping into his voice. He let Roman drag his hand away from his face, but still didn’t let go. “It’s about them.”

Roman wasn’t sure he believed that. “I don’t need to kill anyone. They’re brainwashed, this is Marta’s fault! I know the truth, now.”

Virgil shook his head, ghosted the fingers of his free hand over his implant scar with a distant, sickened expression. “It’s not that simple. I don’t want guilt to be the reason— Look. If it’s them or you, I want it to be you. I want you to make sure it’s you.”

And what if it's me or you? Roman thought, but the words lodged firmly in his chest until he could barely breathe around them.

“They all made their choice,” Virgil continued once it became clear that Roman wouldn’t respond. “They’ve kept making that choice, every time. You have to want to survive, too, okay?”

Mutely, Roman nodded, trying to ignore the creeping sense of horror. He pulled Virgil’s hand back towards himself, fumbled for speech for a long moment before finding the words and hoping they didn’t feel like a betrayal when spoken aloud.

“The underbelly,” he started, and Virgil’s expression— shut down. Every hint of body language went flat like stone, and just as unyielding.

“No.” The word was final, a sentence all its own, and Roman scowled mulishly.

“But—!”

“Roman.” Virgil lifted his other arm over so that he was clasping Roman’s hand between both of his own. “You’re the only one left, right? You told me that.”

The thought was still a wound-like pang in his chest, even after all this time. “Yes,” he admitted. “But, even still—,”

“No way. I don’t want to hear it, man. There’s nobody I would be willing to use it on, anyhow.” Virgil kept his gaze locked firmly on a point past Roman’s shoulder, but his shoulders were set, his voice steadfast.

There was no point arguing. Not now, when the both of them were one wrong move from collapse.

“Okay,” Roman finally said, and forced himself not to protest when Virgil reclaimed the position of lecturer. It was a struggle not to wince away with each gory anecdote, a full guide on the quickest ways to make the Human body stop functioning or even turn on itself.

“Gut wounds are slow to kill, but they can be painful enough to debilitate. There are vulnerable organs here, below the rib cage, and damage to them is difficult to treat without surgery if the wound is severe enough…”

Still, he held himself at attention, did his best to memorize every word.

If Virgil wouldn’t accept knowledge about Roman’s own vulnerabilities as a gift of equal exchange, Roman would simply have to treasure this information with the same dedication that he applied to the rest of their small crew.

After all, knowing all the individual weak points of a Human would make it that much easier for him to protect each and every single part of Virgil.

Virgil wasn’t going to die. Not here, and certainly not by Roman’s own claws. Not if Roman had anything to say about it.

[vitusvital]

If you like these oddly specific things, then you should probably read my book.

A spymaster forced to train with Adristan’s most secretive order. A war commander disgusted by death. A lord damned to repeat history if he cannot master it.

Asriel Veservus is not ready to inherit power. Though he is heir to the noble house dedicated to documenting history, his High Lord father has left him to his own devices. Regarded as a fool, he stumbles through congresses, coasting on his charm as he attempts to find allies in a very fragile political landscape. Rather than attempt to offer wisdom, his father chooses instead to build up Asriel’s half-sister into a weapon.

Rhaella cannot inherit power. As her father’s bastard, she is relegated to relative obscurity, though she has more potential. Her keen senses combined with her low societal status allows her to go unnoticed as the spymaster. The nobles condescend to her, even as they fear the secrets she keeps. While she is content to keep to the shadows, it is those talents that catch the attention of her house’s ally, the justice-keeping House Midar.

Virgil Midar does not want power. He abhors the necessity of violence as their nation sinks deeper into a bloody conflict. Charged with fighting toward peace, he grasps for humanity amongst ambitious and scheming nobles. When his father’s chief advisor begins pushing for Virgil to marry, his focus narrows on ending the war so he can levy the victory against it. His feelings begin to shift when House Veservus’s spymaster comes to his aid with strategy.

With the threat of battle ever-looming on the horizon, they band together to uncover just how deep traitorous blood runs in their houses. Traitors wish to see a tyrannical monarchy put back into power at the expense of the noble houses. Around them, their peers are just as ill-prepared and vulnerable to the corrosive nature of power. The collective future of the nation lies on an uncertain foundation, and it may only take one whispered secret to dismantle the entire thing.

Heirs of Destruction is the first book in The Crownkiller Saga, a new high-fantasy series by award-winning indie author T.N. Vitus.

[analoceits]

here is my insane all the sides are body horror agenda [obvious tw for gore/body-horror ish stuff - under the cut bc. descriptions of gore - no pictures]

logan: he is the only side with completely normal organs and body! completely. normal. down to the inch. he is a living medical textbook. you could take him apart and measure his organs exactly. he promises. hes Tested.

patton: he Looks normal on the outside, and mostly, he is! he looks like thomas mostly. but.. he doesnt really.. bother. with the inside stuff. it makes him squeamish. (logan xrayed him once- and said only one word after. "soup.")

roman: he doesnt let himself scar. no matter how large the wounds he gets are, his skin will be porcelain as always. as well, he looks the youngest out of all the sides. he has no wrinkles or beauty marks. his heartbeat is to the rhythm of whatever song hes listening too.

virgil: mostly fine, except.. whenever he has a panic attack. his rib cage will shift and lock around his lungs. his heart will beat absurdly fast (logan has record 900 bpm once). outside of that, he bleeds so easily - even if he just bites his nails. if patton hugs him too hard, and he gets nervous, his ribs will cave in.

janus: probably second weirdest. his body is always fighting itself, in between snake and human. he gets horrifically sick regularly; with the human half of his body rejecting the snake like a transplant, and vice versa. new scales will tear through his skin and make him bleed for hours. he will crave a mouse, eat it, and then throw it up.

remus: hes covered in scars. his organs are constantly being dissolved, reformed, fusing, and dissolving again. he can and will break all his bones on command. he can do wolverine claws. occasionally he'll get bored and just start. going through rigor mortis. for the bit.

[skeletinmoss]

Ruffled feathers

Chapter 2: The avian's nest

Previous chapter | Next

Ships planned: Prinxiety, Logicality, Dukeciet

Patton and Virgil are brothers in this one

Thanks @lovelivingmydreams for being my beta

Virgil wasn't sick for too long. And after speaking with Emile he was much easier to deal with. He still hissed at anyone who got close to him though, even his brother. He hated being vulnerable and certainly didn't want to be treated like a baby.

« Being sick sucks,» he decided observing his brother's work from the height of the tree.

« Is that so? You must be glad it's over then,» Patton briefly looked up from his creation and quickly returned to gathering. It didn't look like much yet, but it began to look like a circle. Virgil huffed from his observation point.

« Are you making a nest?» he asked confused. « You think it's safe enough here?» he already knew the humans were going to freak out about it.

Avians made nests for two reasons: they either felt really safe or really stressed. In particularly bad situations avians made so-called panic nests. It was usually a couple of twigs and leaves, or, as they both did, from anything they found at hand (one time Patton made it out of cutlery). Panic nests looked rightfully awful and the word 'nest' mostly meant it was kinda circular pile of things.

What Patton was making looked nothing like that. It was going to be a proper nest about two meters wide judging by the lines Pat drew on the floor. This meant he wanted to make this his sleeping place. And he even did it in the open where everyone else could see.

« It's mostly so we can get more comfortable,» he blushed looking for the sticks he could use. His brother growled in disapproval, « You don't even have anything soft for it.»

« Yes, I do! I have moss!» he pointed at the floor, «And our wings will start to molt soon.»

« Eh. A so-so nest. Not sleeping in the mossy bed,» Virgil hopped on the ground and strolled past the construction.

« You sleep on the floor!» Patton argued.

« Yeah. And that's why I'm not making a bed out of it,» bit the black avian before disappearing behind the door.

Bathroom was Virgil's favorite place. It was warm and shiny. And oh boy did he love the shiny stuff! He made a mental note if ever going to build a nest he will steal that bigass mirror.

He started at it for a minute. There was a scar on his nose left from a muzzle, two more on his hands from the handcuffs and one on his neck from the electric collar. They looked kind of badass, but held dark memories. He looked skinny, but not as bad as before. A proper feeding could do wonders, and he hoped that he could get his muscles back too. He was sick of being weak.

He took off the hoodie, struggling a bit to get it off the wings. Pants went down next, and he plopped into the warm water face first. Wings, still dry, held him him on the surface of the water as he did little to no movement, drifting in the middle of the pool. He tilted his head just enough for him to breathe and relaxed.

It looked like a corpse. And it scared Roman half to death. He sprinted out of the door, through the hallway, past the confused Logan, past the not so confused Janus, into the enclosure and into the bathroom. But before he could pick the body up, it moved disturbed by the sound of splashing water. He did however drag the avian out of the water.

The rescued was not pleased with it and declared so with a strong bite. Roman however was reliеved, « You can't just drown yourself!»

Moody stuck his tongue out.

Roman frowned at his bratty patient. «You looked dead! Did you think that wouldn’t make us worried?»

The avian seemingly tasted the thought. He grabbed Roman by his shirt and walked back in the water, not even bothering to hide his naked body with his wings. He once again settled on the water's surface. His wings were now wet because of him jolting from Roman's touch, so he sank deeper than before. But his head was still afloat and Roman calmed down after he realized it was simply the way he relaxed. Moody squinted his eyes from the comfortable warmth and purred quietly.

« You're an absolute nightmare,» the rescuer huffed dramatically. He observed the avian a little intrigued. It's been a while since he was this close to him. Moody hadn't allowed himself to relax near anyone other than his brother and now he was swimming near him seemingly unbothered.

« Your wings look better,» Roman couldn't help himself but to comment. To his delight the avian in question blushed and started daggers at him. « What? It's true! We definitely need to thank our fawn friend for that thing he gave you,» he declared.

The actor pushed himself out of the water and sat on the edge. His clothes were soaking wet now, but it wasn't something that bothered him at the moment. He couldn't take his eyes of the beautiful feathers. Now looking at them he noticed how wobbly they looked. It wasn't just because of the water, they looked more messy when they should be. They were ungroomed. It would have been understandable if Moody was on his own, but he had a brother. Didn't they groom each other?

Now thinking about it he remembered what Logan told him. Right… Patton didn't have any claws, and his brother simply couldn't reach his back to do it on his own.

« Can I touch them?» he asked finally.

A hiss was the obvious answer.

« I can groom them, you know,» he tried to justify. There was a hesitation before the next hiss, a true master of pretending to not understand the language. Now Dark and Stormy moved further from Roman not quite interested in letting an untrusted creature near his wings. It made Roman frown.

He wasn't frustrated, no. He was angry actually, but not at the avian. Each time he tried to help, Virgil would hiss and try to get away. And it was all because of how he was treated before. It was infuriating! Who can do something bad to a creature this beautiful?! Or any other creature for that matter, not just the beautiful ones. It was so wrong and inhumane!

« I will make friends with you,» Roman half jokingly threatened, and had to go after another loud hiss.

Later, when Virgil finished his bath, he went out to now three people working on the nest. There was a couple of boxes with some soft materials like animal undercoat, feathers and cotton fiber. Patton was currently looking through the box with twigs, Logan helped making the base of the nest and Princey was mostly being a hype man and helping them both. Still in semi wet clothes.

« I told you I got soft stuff for it,» Virgil's brother pointed out smugly.

The black one huffed at that. « You mean THEY got it,» he argued.

Patton's wings shot up flustered, nearly hitting the nerd in the face. His darkwinged brother smirked and stuck out his tongue. There was a moment of silence between them until Patton stood up. Another moment. And then suddenly they both ran: Virgil for the trees and Patton after Virgil.

« Come here, you smart butt!» yelled Pat trying to catch his brother who climbed away as fast as he could giggling to himself.

Eventually they both reached the top and Virgil didn't have anywhere else to run. « No, stop! I'm sorry!» he laughed as his brother got him in a head lock and started to ruffle his hair.

The humans watched it with amazement. It was nice seeing the avians coming back to life. They probably didn't have much opportunities to have fun and banter like that in captivity. To think only two weeks prior they hadn't even talked in front of anyone.

« They are nice,» Patton said more quietly, releasing his brother from his hold. « Don't you want to talk to them?» he wondered.

Virgil took his time to respond, « What if they are still hiding something? Princey absolutely hates me. We're clearly doing something to upset them.»

« I don't think they are upset,» Patton replied. « Not at us at least. They give us nice food and we can move how much we want, they take care of us,» he brushed Virgil's hair.

Storm cloud sight and hugged his legs. « You can talk if you want to,» he relented. The smile on his brother's face lit up his soul.

« I'll ask them if we can go outside!» Patton suggested.

V shook his head at the helpless optimism. « Don't get your hopes up,» he warned, but Patton was already on his way down.

« Can we go outside?» this was the first official thing any of the avians said to their saviors in the human language. The conversation before it was short, but the older brother clearly allowed for it to happen. The whole team should have discussed this and given an answer later with all of the details figured out. But looking in those innocent blue eyes all Logan could say was « Yes, of course.»

Both birds got a little surprised at the answer.

« R-right now? Can we do that right now?» Patton's wings folded behind his back in anticipation. He tried to make himself presentable and obedient as if a little walk outside should be earned.

« If you won't fly away I don't see any reasons not letting you. Clear air is good for health, as people say. And our goal is your recovery.» Logan allowed and Prince nodded.

They should have discussed this with the team first. They should have predicted that something like this would happen.

Virgil tried to fly.

And he fell, of course. They couldn't have reacted in time. The avians were just walking and enjoying the grass and the trees, and the wind outside when the Black one suddenly started to climb higher with a surprising speed. His wings unfolded to their full size and a moment later he was in the air.

The landing was not as rough as it could have been if one of the humans just jumped of a tree. Wings still allowed for some gliding. But it was heartbreaking. Very heartbreaking. And Virgil showed just how much with the enraged scream that left him.

His brother slowly went up to him and hugged him.

They stayed like that for a while before going back into the enclosure.

Tag list: @aphandgflover @yourdragonwitchroyalty @warcats-cat @aevhee

Let me know if you want to be in the tags. Preferrebly in the post

[forest-falcon]

The Butterfly Effect

Chpr 9

⚠️ Trigger Warning for whump and angst.

🧡💙🩵

John brought the space elevator to a smooth halt just above the caldera.

He wanted to get a birds-eye view of One before he touched down.

The elevator door opened, and the astronaut made a conscious effort to coordinate his limbs; the additional gravity about as welcome as a new Fischler Enterprise venture.

John cracked his joints.

"Alright. Time to fly."

The astronaut leapt from the elevator and his jetpack deployed.

*. *. *.

Kayo flailed midair.

There was no time to think, only feel.

Her stomach seemed to drop faster than terminal velocity.

Darkness was swallowing her as light flew from view.

A hand grasped her wrist.

"Kayo. Glad I caught you!"

"John!" Kayo gave an incredulous half-laugh.

"Am I glad to see you!"

"Hold on..."

John guided the two of them back to the relative safety of the poolside.

As soon as his boots touched the ground, Kayo wrapped her brother in a Virgil-esque hug.

"K-ay!"

Kayo indulged herself the human contact a moment longer, before the sound of a jet engine could be heard approaching the island.

"Protocol Phoenix."

John had practically exhaled the words. Relief and disbelief was etched in his features, as though he had forgotten that he himself had summoned them.

"Here. Help Scott."

John shed his jetpack and ran to meet the carrier approaching the beach.

With feline accuracy, Kayo caught the pack.

Hold on Scott, I'm coming.

*. *. *

"Scott? Scott? You with me?"

Scott stirred, his brain registering the noise, but not the name.

"Scott, it's Kayo. Come on, sleepy head, no snoozing on the job. Can you open your eyes for me?"

A muted moan rattled around his ribcage.

His head hurt.

He was vaguely aware of his eyelashes flickering. Jeez...the last time his head felt this bad, he'd sampled some of Gordon's homemade moonshine. The memory curdled his stomach and he whimpered.

"You're okay. You're okay. I'm with you."

Kayo's slender fingers were resting on his face...on grazed cheekbones. It didn't hurt, not really. Not compared to the other injuries his body sported; but there was something in the sensation that registered as uncomfortable; an invasion of personal space that had him pulling away from her touch.

"Scott, try not to move for me, okay? It's very important that we keep your neck and head still."

His eyes finally opened.

"There you are."

Kayo offered him a warm smile. A smile saturated in love and reassurance. A smile that told him that he was going to be okay.

"-ay?"

Eurgh, his mouth was dry.

"I've been called worse," her expression shrugged, but her hands remained steady.

"Head."

It hurt. He still didn't know why. Where were they? Building collapse?

"You've been in an accident."

"Air?"

"Air?" Kayo parroted.

"I'm not sure I follow. Your oxygen stats look good... Or do you mean you were flying in the air?"

"Wh-w-where?"

His lungs felt like they were out of sync from the other muscles it took to breathe.

"Oh! You're home Scott. Well, the pool...kinda."

Scott blinked at her.

"Not your finest landing."

Landing.

Like a circuit finally completed, the jigsaw fell in place.

He'd been fixing One's overhead locker when the call came in.

Some pot-holers had managed to get themselves wedged in a remote location and needed assistance.

Gordon and Alan were already out in Four, and Virgil was off rota, so; One was required to safely extract the group.

His mind had switched to rescue mode. Muscle memory fulfilling the required procedures to launch his Bird. Truth be told, he couldn't remember stashing the Toolbox he was using in the very locker he had been fixing, but his head injury attested to the fact that he had.

The mission proved to be a straightforward one. Honestly, the GDF could have taken it; but given the limited information they had to go on, they weren't to know.

With no visible injuries and paramedics having arrived on scene; Scott fired One, and headed home. It wasn't until she made the switch to horizontal flight that the toolbox had shifted. In any other locker it would have been fine, but...stupid is as stupid does. He'd shoved it in the faulty one.

...which promptly opened.

...allowing the contents to rain down on top of him.

Judging on colour alone; the wrench was the offending item that had clipped him. The grease rags had mercifully missed.

What happened next was all a bit of a blur.

All he could really remember was wanting to make it home to Virgil.

"Vir-gil?"

"We'll get to Virgil. Right now, you're my priority."

"Pri-rity?"

"Yes. John and the rest of Phoenix are heading to him now."

Scott felt his veins turn to ice.

"No, no, no... Virg-l!"

Kayo's hands were fussing around him.

He pushed the aid away. This was his fault.

He did this.

Kayo attempted to thwart his thrashing.

"Geroff me and help Vir-"

"Sco-"

"VIRGIL!"

"-Shut the hell up Scott and listen!"

Two cat-green eyes pinned him.

"One is compromised. You not listening endangers us both, get it? I'm not leaving you, so either you let me do my job, or we both die here."

Scott's brain cowered. She meant every word. Kayo, like the rest of them, was loyal to a fault. She wouldn't leave him.

Sensing his outburst had passed; Kayo began fastening the foam blocks around his head.

She was staring him dead in the face.

"Help is coming."

Now he understood. First responders make for the worst patients. Best he could do was to trust her.

"Okay."

"Good."

Kayo exhaled slowly.

“John's activated Protocol Phoenix. The carrier has already arrived and John's gone to meet them.”

Scott blinked groggily. If Protocol Phoenix had been activated, then this was an even bigger fuck-up than he'd first thought.

“Phoe-nix?”

“Yes Scott. We rise from the ashes.”

"God, that's cheesy."

"Attaboy. Now let's get out of here."

[employee052]

OKOKOK HERES THE AU IDEA

ive been revisiting Detroit Become Human bc of my partner playing it recently, as well as me reading some connor x readers that gave me this idea directly, plus adding in some other games that i feel like could fit, i had this idea:

(its not refined atm n hella rough draft so please ignore shit that doesnt make sense)

[CW DEATH]

The Narrator is an experimental Android named VA427 "Virgil", made as the ultimate assistant and sent to work at some office building

He follows the boss around, doing tasks given by them and walking around the office helping the boss manage it while they stay in their office

This is how he meets Stanley, an employee who is usually reserved around everyone except for Virgil.

He takes a liking to Virgil, signing to him and having chats whenever he passes by, and Virgil loves it.

The two grow close. Virgil likes Stanley because he treats him with respect and listens to him, Stanley likes Virgil because he's not judgmental and can understand sign language

However, as their friendship grows, the boss begins to assign more work to all his employees, causing most of them to be overworked with a few accidents involving people passing out on the job

Stanley is no exception, he stays late and does every task asked of him, Virgil is worried but keeps doing it since thats his task, however this is when he starts to deviate.

He starts questioning things during his time working, and realises his attatchment to Stanley

Stanley falls over one day at the office after staying overtime for a month straight for 3 additional hours.

Virgil runs in to help him as everyone else walks around him like its not a problem. Stanley dies shortly after in the office.

Virgil goes to call 911 when the boss stops him, telling him that its not neccessary and to dump his body in the basement.

if the police found out about the treatment of their employees, they could be sued, so the boss has elected to hiding the bodies and covering up their deaths.

Virgils furious, mourning the loss of his friend taken too early and the only person who treated him nicely. But the boss doesnt budge

they throw Virgil and Stanley into the basement together. Locking them in with a pile of dead bodies and all items that other dead employees used.

He goes to find a few spare computers and manages to find a way to hook himself and stanley up to it.

Connected to the PC, stanley's body and mind is uploaded. However, its not fully, since stanley was dead for a while before being uploaded, it only retains a few memories. primarily that of being in an office, and having a wife and an apartment, but not having the exact memory of who or what they looked like.

Virgil creates a VR world for stanley to live in. at first he had attempted to create sprawling stories for him just as stanley told him in past conversations, but Virgil hasnt really explored the outside all too much given he lives at the office.

He shifts the VR world so its centered around the office. He cant tell stanley he's dead either, so he acts as though hes simply playing a video game.

the next few years/decades are just the narrator falling deeper into the role of making stories for stanley and getting too into the video game idea. releasing the game offically however with stanleys consciousness only on his PC in the basement of the office.

during these years, is where im combining some aspects from portal blue sky and half life.

while virgil falls into the role of the narrator and is in the basement of this office with stanleys decayed body, the black mesa incident happens.

aliens come in, vorts n shit, and then the combine come in and take over. virgil doesnt ever see this bc hes safe in the basement.

decades pass by, then after a long while, an explorer wanders into the ruins of the old office building

they eventually find the basement and the narrators body hooked up to the computer and stanleys skeleton beside him

this explorer would take the keyboard and begin playing the game, until virgil, now the narrator, realises that its not stanley

however, so much time has passed and so little of stanley was saved that hes simply a dead man walking, an echo of a dead man, a memory

after a long time where the explorer and the narrator talk, the narrator agrees to end the vr simulation, he keeps it in his memory banks, but he agrees to not fully trap himself in the simulation to keep stanley going. hes gonna lay him to rest

getting up, the narrator finds his body to be alien to him, hes forgotten that he even had a physical form, and through the years of being put on sleep mode to allocate all processing power to the vr world, his bodys also decayed a bit

the synthetic hair doesnt grow, but begins to fade in its colour

his eyes dont work as well considering theyve been on standby mode, they still work, but theres a permanent blur to him that means he needs glasses

the synthetic skin on his face and hands only begin to sag and wrinkle

the parts of his body that dont have synthetic skin and are exposed from the rips in his clothing have rusted, the office building's basement being almost like the skip button where a break in the roof causes some water and plants and animals to enter and eat away at his body. making it rusty and making him slower to move

the explorer and the narrator leave the building, and take refuge in a small town of other survivors quite similar to eaden in blue sky, where the explorer lives

during the narrators stay here, he struggles to move past stanley, being focused and obsessed with him for decades before being brought out of it.

and here comes the whole reason why i got this au idea:

the narrator goes back to the vr simulation with stanley and the office, and shifts it.

what was once an office becomes a refurbished memory zone. with a desk for him to write in whenever the explorer sleeps and a place for him to calm down when tough things happen. its the closest he can get to a mind palace

however, hes not alone in here, he makes a small area for stanley to live in, he will never leave him and his mind, but hes moved on, hes past that grief.

he visits stanley in this new mindscape of his from time to time, to give an update, to just remember him, but he moves on.

the rest of the au would just be the narrator learning to take control of his life again, trusting the explorer and becoming more integrated with the townsfolk, managing his rusty body, and re-exploring his old hobbies that he forgot about.

ik i already posted the designs, but with this context, heres virgil and the narrators form before and after the parable

[idontknowreallywhy]

Resurface 27 - Resurrect

(Story so far)

I mentioned a bit of a rollercoaster before the end didn’t I…?

Sorry Allie…

💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚

Day seven of being dosed up on haloperidol and Virgil felt like a bear woken midway through hibernation by the smell of bacon. Everything but his stomach and that nagging sense of the world moving on outside without him was dragging him back towards blissful slumber. And yet he was SO VERY BORED of lying around doing nothing and that made him moody and petulant… in a drowsy, ineffective kind of way.

Grandma wouldn’t even let him have proper coffee, and no amount of the insipid-brown, barely-caffeinated dishwater he was given in its stead even touched the edges of the lethargy.

It was displeasing.

He’d had a couple of short holocall chats with a Dr George Clifford, highly recommended by Patricia who was consultant psychiatrist to half his family. Scott and Gordon were both keen he talk to Patricia herself, both clearly of the view the woman had Powers unavailable to the rest of humanity. John and Grandma were less convinced it would be appropriate. For Virgil’s part - the idea of talking about Scott to someone who Scott had actually properly talked to, who likely knew more about Scott than he ever would? Well it made his teeth itch.

Clifford seemed to know his stuff, however. He’d been unfazed by the sleepiness and unfinished sentences and had given emphatic reassurance as to Virgil’s prospects of a full recovery PROVIDED he addressed the issues that triggered both episodes. The conditional element made the reassurance hard to swallow, emphatic or otherwise, but he’d nodded and said he’d make a start.

When he was properly awake and able to form coherent sentences anyway. Which felt like it might be never the way this was going.

Scott had seemed to understand the caffeine-deprived rant about how the infirmary made him want to systematically remove his own skin and took pity. Eyeballing anyone who might possibly object (well, Grandma, and she just smiled knowingly) big brother had escorted Virgil slowly upstairs so he could at least be Ursus Iratus by the pool rather than stuck in the bowels of the earth.

It seemed to be working. The edges remained fuzzy and grey but the bright sunlight and the sound of the sea were bringing the majority of his brain back online. He began to wonder if, finally, he might be able to hold a train of thought long enough to have a half-decent conversation.

He glanced over at Scott who hurriedly switched on his trademark Encouraging Smile and tried to pretend the Troubled Eyebrows hadn’t been deployed in Virgil’s direction seconds before.

Virgil bit his lip and tried to hide the sigh. He certainly wasn’t ready for That Conversation yet. Nor was he entirely sure what it was going to be about… exactly… except that clearly Something had been said that he couldn’t remember and his brother was chewing it over like a starving coyote might keep returning to Grandma’s meatloaf surprise…

Selfishly, at the moment, Virgil didn’t really want to know. Well he did, in the same kind of morbid way one pokes at a wound. But he didn’t have the mental energy to know. Last time he’d been this sick he’d done something awful and his relationship with Dad hadn’t ever quite been the same afterwards. The idea that the same could happen with one of his brothers? If he even started to think about it a nausea roiled that he knew had nothing to do with the medication and everything to do with the what if he’d ruined everything?

Maybe if they left it long enough he’d never have to find out?

Ha. He snorted softly. As if Scott and his mental cyclone would ever let something he was worried about slide with time.

Virgil himself was possibly not a brilliant example of someone able to let the past stay in the past either.

Maybe it was genetic?

A distinctly Alan-flavoured screech of rage pierced the humidity of the afternoon and it seemed as if even the seabirds swooping over Mateo were silenced in shock.

Virgil and Scott looked at each other across the pool, the quirked eyebrows of amusement wavered simultaneously as a quieter voice drifted out from the kitchen, quieter but urgent, soft but tainted with panic:

“Breathe! Allie, please it’s ok… please, look just wait. Let me help… no, put it down! Let go, please you’re hurting…”

The first time Virgil was really aware he’d moved was when his shoulder collided painfully with Scott’s as they both tried to run through the narrow doorway at once. The reinforced glass continued to shudder with the echo of that mistake as they remembered how to work together, spun 90 degrees and sidestepped smoothly through into what seemed to be an entirely empty room.

The expected kerfuffle was strikingly absent - all was as it should be. All except for the bright yellow smoothie crawling across the counter top and the gleaming red spots splattered across the tiled floor.

“Alan?! Gordon?!” There was a fragile edge to the Commander’s voice that usually didn’t appear until many hours into an overwhelming Situation. The response came from low behind the kitchen island:

“Could do with a little help over here, Scotty…”

Gordon sounded pale.

That was enough to galvanise Virgil into action and firing on perhaps 3 out of four engines he took one barefooted step forward, noting absently how the floor sparkled brilliantly in the sunlight…

Scott yelped and pulled him backwards, nearly toppling the both of them.

“Glasssssssssssssss…”

The elongated hiss persisted as Scott’s mind raced for a solution and sidelined irrelevant concerns like finishing words.

“Stay.”

Even at full capacity Virgil couldn’t have disobeyed that tone of command.

Scott pressed Virgil’s shoulders down as if trying to ensure his feet were properly glued to the ground and then ducked back outside. A little mild cursing preempted the contents of the pool toy cupboard flying out on to the deck and within moments the two largest foam floats returned though the door, closely followed by his brother. The first quickly became a path to the far side of the counter and the other was flung to the floor only a split second before Scott’s knees landed on top of it with a strangled “ALLIE, WHAT THE HELL?!”

Virgil crawled along the mat as quickly as he could and peered over Scott’s shoulder to see Gordon, jaw set hard and his hands clamped around Alan’s wrists. Their baby brother, colourless and trembling clutched the jagged remains of a tumbler in his bloody fists. He looked up into Virgil’s face, gasped and whimpered:

“‘m so sorry, Virgil, I’m so so sorry.”

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

[transgenderer]

As humans spontaneously decay from body into soul in a process known as necrosis (vulgar: death), their consciousness is displaced into a lower frequency Ley Line (in the physical realm this attraction is felt as “gravity”). Groups of souls tend to cluster together to create stable spiritual structures know as a cthonopolis (vulgar: underworld) via the unconscious act of remembering (a process theorized to be a lower frequency form of creation/emanation). Explorations within these structures have for centuries revealed subterranean realms of eerie half-remembered buildings and vegetation. It is believed organic bits of this material have evolved to become the native fauna known as demons. 

At even deeper frequencies spiritual fission occurs (discovered by the Judean physicist Isaiah Baramoz in 1878). A sector of this region known as Gehenna was first claimed by the 1st Judean Republic in 1884, followed by its annexation a year later by the Roman Province of Pluto due to an inherited claim of the Kingdom of Hades (absorbed into the Roman Empire in 1834) over a suspected lower frequency zone. 

The Roman government relied upon Demonic aid during the annexation, resulting in the spread of Satanism (named after the Shaytan, an Infernal word for a social class of soul owner within the Demonic economy) into the physical world. 

This would lead to the Easter Uprising of 1916 as the spirit of Yeshua Bardavid conquered Gehenna (renamed Tartarus by the Romans), Sheol, and large chucks of Ashphodel for the Kingdom of the Father (a powerful hegemony directed from a 1st level tripartite God-association) after his torture and execution by the Roman Empire. A bloody civil war followed, resulting in the Roman Empire becoming the Universal Saint’s Sacred Republic (U.S.S.R.) and its ban of Satanism. 

The first physical human within a fission Ley Line frequency was Roman cosmonaut Dante Alighieri in 1961 during the Virgil missions, although a popular conspiracy theory has spread claiming it was faked by the Vatican to win the Realm Race against Aesir-occupied Midgard. 

really good!

[ascenari0]

these are notes from my SaSI Human AU and this part is making me HOWL cause I’m imagining Virgil falling on it and snapping it in half

[a-small-batch-of-dragons]

Hypermobility

Okay wait I have a prompt!!! If you wanna So I've been reading a lot of fics recently that are in space aus, with the whole humans are deathworlders concept (idk how this is common across my fandoms but it is so I'm binging them lol). And I had an idea based on recent irl events. – anon (long ask, cut for brevity)

inspired by my lovely @ghostofasecretary who has trained all of our friend group to look for hypermobility on account of our schlorpy joints :)

Read on Ao3

Warnings: none

Pairings: loosely implied analogical i guess, but as with most of my shit can be platonic or romantic you decide

Word Count; 1809

Remus glances up to see Virgil staring at Logan like his abdomen has spontaneously ruptured. He sees Roman out of the corner of his eye do the same. Virgil swallows heavily. "L," he says slowly, "what the fuck is wrong with your arms?" "Nothing is wrong with my arms, what are you talking about?" "Elbows don't bend like that!" Ah. So there was something wrong. Remus was right. Take that, human etiquette manual. Wait, shit, something's wrong with Logan.

Roman clicks at Remus as he comes onto the lab floor. Remus clicks back as he logs onto his station, sighing as he looks at the absolute mess someone's fucking made of the logs—seriously, it's only been one quarter cycle, how are they this fucked up already?—and Roman immediately leans over to see what he's sighing at.

"Wait, what's that?"

"Some xetron made an absolute fucking disaster out of the hadron logs."

Roman winces in sympathy and his carapace shifts. "Are you gonna do yours before you clean that up, or—?"

The last part of his question gest interrupted when Logan comes onto the floor, waving a brief hello with his fingers instead of his antenna—because humans don't have antennae, which was a pretty sharp learning curve for both of them when they'd been so confused as to why this human was refusing to talk to them or even show his feelings, they'd had a few apologetic shifts before Logan realized what was going on and explained everything—and raising an eyebrow when he noticed them clustered around Remus's station.

"Is there something wrong?"

"The shift before us messed up their hadron logs."

Logan rolls his eyes. "You'd think that for life forms insistent that their gravitational curves made them more naturally prepared for graviton scans, they'd have a better sense of how to record them properly."

"You're spellcasting on the acolytes, Logan."

Logan frowns, glancing at his tablet, before the equivalent phrase pings on the screen and he hums. "Ah, I see. Yes, well, if you'd like my help at any point, I only have the routine gamma sweeps to do this shift, so I should be amenable."

"Oh, I can do it, it's just a pain in my thorax."

Roman chuckles and heads back to his own station, probably to sneakily-not-so-sneakily ask some of the others on the shift who are fucking competent what the fuck happened. Remus gets himself ready to dive into the long and tedious work of redoing the spin increments and calculating the proper uncertainties for the right variables—honestly, do they even look at the readouts? It has the layout right there! And it's not like the other logs are invisible! Just look at the rows two microns above the empty one you're supposed to be filling out!—and manages to sink into a rhythm for the first half of the shift. Granted, he's absolutely muttering about how stupid it is that they aren't even calculating the basic momentum, let alone the angular velocity to account for the other celestial bodies in the middle of the waveforms, but it's fine, and Roman keeps up his running commentary of the molecular analysis machine that takes its sweet-ass time to do even the most basic of scans, and every so often he'll hear a small huff from Logan as he corrects their probe's trajectory, but for the most part, the lab is a quiet and serene place to be.

God, he can't wait until he gets rotated back to the engineering department full-time.

Like, yeah, he likes spending time with his brother, and the human's cool—he's really funny when he lets himself be, like his wit is drying than the mountain deserts on Cre-Ativa, and his facial expressions are fucking plat when their superiors are being xetrons, but there's only so much he can take of this quiet where not much happens. And he has to deal with the idiots who don't know how to format hadron logs correctly. This is the third time he's had to correct a typo that's rendered the rest of the calculations useless.

"I'm honestly about to recommend them for a review of the training course, that's how fucking serious this is."

"Maybe there's something wrong with how the keyboard is adapted for their limbs?"

"That would explain some of the typos, not all of them. And it definitely wouldn't explain why there's a massive formatting change about halfway through."

"Perhaps there's a shorthand they're using for some of the notes that we don't know about, and they're forgetting to correct them at the end of their shift."

"Yeah, but then they should tell us that, instead of—" Roman trails off and Remus looks up.

Logan is…stretching, yes, that's the right word. His limbs are extended over his head and his back is arched, but his upper limbs are…bending. Not like the way they normally bend, they're bending…too much? Not enough? The wrong way? Yeah, that's it. The wrong way.

Logan notices they've gone quiet and looks over. "Is there something wrong?"

"You're, uh," Remus stammers, "are you—okay?"

"Yes, I'm perfectly fine, what is it?"

"Nothing, nothing."

He and Roman exchange a look—the first rule in the human etiquette training manual was if they get weird, just roll with it for a reason—and get back to minding their own business. Admittedly, some of the errors do make more sense now that he's looking at it like it's some kind of shorthand he doesn't know yet, but that wouldn't explain why some of these variables are straight-up wrong and why they wouldn't bother to tell him what the shorthand is so that he's not trying to do the work of two shifts in the time of one.

Something he does appreciate is that the way the shifts in the lab are set up, opposed to engineering, is that sometimes there will be people whose shifts halfway overlap with theirs. So there's always at least one set of people that are staying in the lab while a changeover is happening and then there's not that risk that the equipment will be left unattended. Apparently they learned that lesson the hard way when the molecular exhibitor decided to go into overload in the five minutes where there wasn't anyone logged in, and nearly destroyed the matter wave projector on the station next to it. The justification was in the name of safety, but really everyone knows it's just so the higher-ups know exactly who to blame when shit goes awry.

Whatever the case may be, the door slides open to reveal the other human down here, Virgil, yawning as he makes his way over to his station.

"Hello, hello, everyone."

"Hi, Virgil!"

Virgil winces. "You are way too chipper this early in the morning."

"It's past the circadian half cycle, Virgil."

"Yeah, and?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to acclimate to your schedule on your own time," Logan says, stretching again, "even though I'm sure your caffeine tolerance has—what? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Remus glances up to see Virgil staring at Logan like his abdomen has spontaneously ruptured. He sees Roman out of the corner of his eye do the same. Virgil swallows heavily.

"L," he says slowly, "what the fuck is wrong with your arms?"

"Nothing is wrong with my arms, what are you talking about?"

"Elbows don't bend like that!"

Ah. So there was something wrong. Remus was right. Take that, human etiquette manual.

Wait, shit, something's wrong with Logan.

"Logan? Do we need to take you to medbay?" Roman's already rushing out from behind his station. "There's a pack in the corner, I can—"

"Oh, for—relax, all of you, I'm fine."

"Uh-huh, yeah, fine, that's what I'd describe elbows that bend all schlorpy as, yeah," Virgil says, "what the—does that not hurt?"

"What? No, it doesn't hurt, look, your joints—"

"My joints suck ass but at least they're fucking bending the amount they're supposed to!"

Remus isn't quite sure how human joints are capable of such a surprising and invasive act, but never let it be said he's not curious. "Your joints are capable of performing anal suction?"

"What the fuck? No! It's a turn of phrase!"

"Oh. Disappointing."

"Ignore him," Roman says, "Logan, are you sure you're—"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine, I'm just—oh," he mumbles, prodding at his tablet, "what's the word for this in Common?"

"There's no word for schlorpy elbows, Logan—"

"Yes, there is!" He pokes around for a few more seconds before he lets out a noise of triumph and says something that the translators don't translate.

"It's what?" Virgil just shakes his head when Logan tries again. "I don't know what that means, bud."

Logan sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Okay, let me try it this way. What's it called when you are in a state of heightened energy and it leads to outbursts of things like running around, or talking too loudly, or being high-strung?"

"Remus," Roman offers helpfully.

"No, Roman."

"Are you talking about being excitable?"

"No, there's a specific word for it. It also serves as a prefix for being too much of something, or an overabundance of something."

"Too much—do you mean the word hyper?"

"Yes! Yes, that's it. And then what's the name of the thing that some people hang over cribs that have little stars or animals?"

Virgil stares at Logan for another moment. "You mean a baby mobile?"

"Yes, but only the second word."

"Mobile?"

"Yes, that's it. Then put the two words together—"

"There were probably so many other ways you could've said you were hypermobile, L, I'm just gonna put that out there—"

"Well, it got you to guess it, didn't it?"

"It's too fucking early for this shit."

"Again, it is afternoon—"

"Shut up."

Roman looks back and forth between the two humans, still twitching as though he's going to be asked to sprint for the medbay at a moment's notice. "So…is Logan…are you alright?"

"Yes, for the fourth time, I'm fine. Virgil's just a little excitable, that's all."

"You try being normal when joints are doing unexpected things," Virgil mumbles, more to his caf than anything else, but he reaches behind himself to pat Roman's carapace. "He's fine, his body just does that."

"But you said it bends the wrong way, how is that fine?"

"There is a thing known as hypermobility," Logan says, "it…oh, dear, it basically means that certain joints will bend…more."

"He's not hurt, that's pretty much all I know."

Roman looks like he's about to protest but Remus just clicks at him. They exchange another look as the humans settle back to work.

Humans are weird, just gotta roll with it.

These hadron logs, on the other hand—

"I'm gonna punt these flimflobbers into the next star we see."

"Can I help? They fucked up the carbon dating program as well."

"How do you fuck that up?"

"Ask them, not me!"

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[delimeful]

nothing in this world (i wouldn't do) (6)

warnings: captivity, restraints, panic attacks, unethical science, experimentation, wounds, injury and blood mention, character being kind of an ass, fear, bird ex machina, lmk if i missed any  

-

Virgil woke up to find he was surrounded by darkness and completely unable to move.

Seeing as the last thing he remembered was being poisoned into unconsciousness by a demon slayer with mad scientist leanings, this was about as far from reassuring as an awakening could be.

For a disoriented moment, he tried to check for the baby crow, which mostly just involved him listening closely for any loud, raspy-voiced swearing. Naturally, there wasn’t any, because he’d blacked out and the slayer very clearly hadn’t wanted Roman’s bird anywhere near him.

Bizarrely enough, he felt a little morose at the baby crow’s absence. Maybe because she was the only creature who had figured out that despite being a monster, he wasn’t actually a threat to humanity.

Or maybe it was just because being immobilized in a dark, silent place was totally freaking him out, and he would have taken any company so long as it meant he hadn’t been locked away forever or buried alive.

(Could he still die from a lack of oxygen? Would he be stuck underground, conscious and alone, for the rest of time? He couldn’t even call out for help.)

His body was unresponsive, and nothing his brain was coming up with was remotely helpful, so Virgil focused on his breathing, trying to keep his count steady as he inhaled and exhaled air that could be rapidly running out—

By the time the slayer entered the room, Virgil had already hyperventilated himself into unconsciousness a few times, each time utterly convinced he was dying.

The man didn’t bother saying anything to him or even sparing him anything more than a glance, simply walking around the space and lighting several lamps at a brisk pace, but Virgil felt a vast, sweeping sense of relief fall over him regardless.

He wasn’t buried. He hadn’t been left alone to rot away in the dark.

He was… extensively strapped down to a waist-high table in the center of the room?

A significant amount of his relief started to fade. Right. He’d been caught by a slayer who wanted him dead or worse, and was now entirely at his mercy— assuming he even had any for demons.

There was another person in the room, too, and they scurried about so quickly that it took Virgil a few moments to identify them as the wary stranger who had sent him to go find their brother. They were wearing the same uniform as the slayer, now, which answered basically all of Virgil’s potential questions about the situation.

“Subject ABN-V3, Log 1,” the slayer started, and Virgil’s eyes flicked over to him curiously. “The subject regained consciousness approximately half an hour after halting the regular wisteria toxin doses, indicating remarkable poison resilience, comparable to a Lower Rank.”

There was the distinct scratch of hurried writing, but the slayer’s hands were unoccupied as he circled Virgil’s prone form. The younger slayer must have been an assistant.

There was a muted pressure on his hand, which refused to even twitch, even as the pressure grew heavier. The slayer hummed, pulling away. “In contrast, regeneration ability appears relatively slow. Internal organ function has resumed, but exterior nerves and muscles remain paralyzed.”

His organs had been paralyzed?! Virgil’s breathing stuttered, and he wrestled with the instinctual panic for a moment. His lungs were clearly working now, so he should just keep breathing and not pass out again.

When he looked back over, it was to the sight of the slayer staring directly at his face with a detached sort of curiosity. That composed mask of his may have dropped for a few moments in the clearing, but it was fully repaired and glued in place now.

“Do you have anything to say?” he asked, which was a little startling.

Virgil blinked at him for a moment, and then very quickly recalled that blinking was about all he could do. His hands weren’t cooperating with him, and even his head felt too heavy to shake or nod at the moment.

An irritated rumble started up in his chest for a moment before dying out, and he heaved a low sigh, already exhausted. He’d burnt through all his default terror while panicking in the dark, and now there was barely anything left to scrape up for his impending dehumanizing death.

The slayer only watched him impassively for another long, silent stretch of seconds before turning his attention away.

“Subject’s nonverbal behavior remains consistent with previous encounter,” he narrated, which succinctly explained why he’d bothered to verbally prod Virgil in the first place. “No secondary manifestations present in the room. We’ll proceed with direct regeneration testing while the paralytic is still in effect.”

There was a metallic clink, and Virgil’s gaze flicked over to a tray covered with tools he could only guess at the purpose of. Most of them were sharp-edged.

At least he wouldn’t be able to feel them. Yet.

The slayer picked up a thin blade, and Virgil squeezed his eyes shut, in an attempt to not have to see whatever was being done to him.

The narration of that calm, clinical voice couldn’t be as easily blocked out, so he found out regardless.

—

His healing factor had improved a lot since being turned into a monster, but it wasn’t anywhere close to the level he’d seen from some of the other demons he’d fought, so he wasn’t surprised to find that the first thing he felt when the paralysis began to wear fully off was pain.

The wounds weren’t serious, at least. He hoped that didn’t mean they were saving more lethal ones for when he could actually feel them, but he wasn’t optimistic about his odds.

(Unsurprisingly, it seemed like most demon slayers really hated demons.)

The slayer seemed strangely perturbed by the way the methodical injuries he’d inflicted hadn’t healed yet. Apparently, vastly accelerated healing was the norm for most demons, so this was just another way in which Virgil was a freaky outlier. Virgil could have told the slayer as much himself if he’d been able to sign.

Not to say that he’d regained all his vocabulary. With his limbs strapped firmly down, his post-poison communication was limited to signs that he could form with just his hands, and no accompanying movements. Fingerspelling was tedious, but at least it was possible.

“S-L-E-E-P,” he’d signed when the slayer had been theorizing on his apparently deeply unusual slow healing. “L-O-N-G.”

It took a few repetitions for his captor to pay it any mind, but once he did, his expression immediately creased with doubt. Virgil let himself look irritated about the reaction, because really, what was the point in pretending? He was screwed either way.

“If hibernation periods could heal demons, there would be longer stretches of inactivity between attacks,” the slayer said, frowning down at him. “It would make my job much easier if that were the case, but it isn’t.”

Since when was Virgil the representative for all of demonkind? He’d barely even spoken to other demons, since generally their interactions tended to start and end with them trying to kill each other. This was his supernatural sleeping schedule, not theirs.

Generally, he only slept like that when he was injured. If he wasn’t hurt in a fight, he didn’t get tired. He signed as much to the slayer, and earned a disbelieving scoff for his efforts.

Virgil had only been dozing lightly so far, seeing as he was currently trapped and about as far from safety as he could possibly get, but the disbelief rankled, and he huffed before pointedly closing his eyes as though to prove it.

He thought maybe the slayer wouldn’t allow it— there probably wasn’t much to scientifically observe when your subject is sleeping— but to his surprise, the man only noted down the behavior and then left.

It took a good part of the first day to force himself down into genuine sleep, but being left alone in a quiet space was close enough to his usual cave naps that he eventually managed to sink into the heavy unconsciousness of one of his impromptu hibernation sessions.

A full week later, he snorted into wakefulness to see the slayer had unstrapped one arm and was inspecting the smooth skin where the incisions had been previously.

This must not have been the first time he’d removed a restraint to see if Virgil was faking his beauty rest, because his head shot up with keen alarm the moment Virgil’s eyes fluttered open.

He released Virgil’s hand and drew a thin, needle-like dagger from his side in the same moment, presumably a breath away from poisoning him back into temporary organ failure.

Virgil barely even registered the movement, his eyes still crusted over with sleep. Half-awake and triumphant, he blearily inspected his completely-healed arm and then promptly signed, “I told you so.”

“Return your arm to the restraint,” the slayer instructed, his voice brooking no argument and his gaze assessing.

Virgil made a sour face, rubbing at his eyes. “Don’t you have cuffs?” he asked, turning slightly so he could tap his free wrist to his strapped down one for the last sign. “I could at least sign in those.”

“The restraint. Immediately,” the slayer replied, firm as stone.

A low grumbling growl of complaint started up in Virgil’s chest, but there was no way he could get free of the other restraints quickly enough to try and escape, and he really wasn’t looking to get his organs shut down again for no reason.

Besides, the assistant kid was still there in the corner, watching him with wide eyes, and he didn’t like the idea of scaring them.

Fine. He’d go back to his stupid nap then.

With a petulant scowl, he closed his eyes and stuck his arm back out and allowed the slayer to pin it back into place and tighten the straps over it. He flipped him off afterwards, though, just to make things clear.

It was quiet for long enough that he pried his eyes back open suspiciously. Both of the slayers were staring at him like he’d just started abruptly juggling fish or something, and he raised his eyebrows in a display of irritated bewilderment.

For once, the slayer didn’t have some snappy annotation to spout, only glaring down at Virgil with his jaw working like he was gritting his teeth.

Was he really that pissed off that Virgil had been telling the truth about his healing? Why?

“Professor Logan—,” the baby slayer whispered, faltering when Virgil’s gaze flicked their way.

“That’s enough for today,” ‘Logan’ answered, stepping away from the table. “We’ll speak elsewhere.”

Virgil only barely managed to stifle an incredulous noise as the two of them left, putting the lights out as they went. They’d never bothered to take their rude and often horrifying conversations about him elsewhere before. Maybe he should try being right about things more often.

—

“Bastard!”

Virgil’s eyes flew open at the muffled call, his head feeling much clearer after sleeping off the last of the poison’s symptoms.

It was quiet and dark all around him, as always, and for a moment, he nearly convinced himself that he’d imagined the noise entirely.

Then, from outside the door, there was a raspy squawk and an audible ruffling of feathers. “Fiend! Fiend?”

… Just how determined to swear at him was this bird?!

He couldn’t exactly respond, and he wasn’t sure why he would want to. Logan had reacted extremely negatively to the bird existing in the same space as him last time, and he wouldn’t wager that the slayer’s attitude had changed in the past however many days.

Still, the crow was clearly looking for someone, possibly even him. He could hear the distinctive pitter-patter of little taloned feet scurrying back and forth on the floor, with the occasional inquisitive swear thrown in.

After a few long minutes of this, Virgil gave up on trying to go back to sleep, unable to tune the little creature out. He may as well try to answer in the limited way he could.

It took entirely too long, but he managed to purse his lips and whistle a long, low note.

The clicking of steps stopped dead, and then grew abruptly louder, the bird’s faux-speech taking on an excited tone.

The baby crow audibly scrabbled at the doorway for a few seconds, before evidently managing to worm her way under the door gap. From there, she made short work of the flight up to the table, where she immediately perched directly on Virgil’s forehead and peered upside down at him.

“Scourge!” she announced gleefully.

Someone certainly hadn’t learned her lesson about fraternizing with big scary demons. He whistled an amused note at her, fingers twitching in an impulse to reach up and ruffle her feathers before he remembered his situation.

Right. No bird-petting for monsters, he guessed.

The crow— wasn’t her name Fluffbutt or something?— seemed to notice the movement, though, and she traversed down Virgil’s arm in little hops. He still couldn’t really reach her scruff of downy baby feathers from this angle, but he gave it his best attempt.

Fluffbutt pecked him harshly, which, rude, and then she turned around and started picking at the straps holding his forearm down.

… No fucking way.

Virgil craned his neck to look over at the bird, his disbelief slowly melting away as he saw that yes, the crow really was tugging and prying at the corded knot holding the restraints in place like her life depended on it.

It was slow going, but as she steadily worked at it, Virgil could tell that progress was being made. He wiggled his arm testingly every so often, usually getting bit for his efforts, and after what felt like hours of agonizing waiting, he finally managed to pull through the last threads of the restraints.

He only had one arm free, but that and some time was all he really needed. Fluffbutt reclaimed her spot on his forehead, watching as he quickly tore at the restraints on his other limbs.

As it turned out, quickly sitting up for the first time in days was a bad idea. Virgil rode out the surge of dizziness and pushed to his feet, pacing back and forth in the small room until he was confident that his legs had remembered how to function well enough to get him out of there.

A simple test of the handle revealed the room had been locked, and Virgil wasted a few minutes poking through the unsettling number of medical tools in the room before realizing there was no way they’d left the key in here with him.

He could probably kick the door down if given a few tries, but the more noise he made, the more likely it was that Logan would find him mid-escape and put him right back in those restraints. Virgil had no illusions on how a second match between him and the uncannily quick slayer would turn out, which meant that stealth was currently his best friend.

He turned his gaze to the wall, wondering if they were flimsy enough that it would be better to try and punch a hole through one of those, but before he could decide further, he heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

Shit. Plastering himself against the wall, he waited tensely for them to pass by— only for them to pause right outside the doorway. There was the distinct click of a key being inserted into a lock. Double shit.

The door swung open, and the assistant slayer had just enough time to look up and see the empty specimen table before Virgil leapt at them.

Don’t freak out, he would have said if his hands weren’t currently occupied with covering the slayer’s mouth and dragging them bodily into the room. Instead, he made a series of low chuffing sounds from deep in his chest, which helped absolutely nothing about the current situation.

“Scourge!” Fluffbutt crowed, her contribution equally as unhelpful.

Hurriedly booting the door shut with his foot, Virgil only had a moment before the baby slayer gave up on trying to pry his hand away and instead went for the sword sheathed at their side.

Since letting them do that was basically a one-way street to getting decapitated, he risked releasing them for long enough to tear his claws through their belt and yank the sword free, sheathe and all, before tossing it into a corner with a muted thud.

“PRO—,” they started, and Virgil slapped his hand back over their mouth, hissing lowly in the closest approximation to a shush that he could manage. They responded by glaring and biting him, which he really should have expected after living with teenagers for a few months.

It only took a glance around the room to find a suitable cloth from the cache of cleaning supplies, and Virgil wrangled the baby slayer into a headlock for the handful of seconds it took him to assemble a makeshift gag and shove it in their mouth.

With the slayer now unable to raise the alarm, Virgil paused for a moment to think, his whole body jittering with sudden adrenaline. The easiest solution would obviously be to strap the slayer into the convenient demon-proof restraints readily available on the specimen table, but he really didn’t want to do that. The kid was already panicking hard enough, the last thing he wanted was to make them think he was going to experiment on them or something.

Instead, he tore a larger piece of linen into strips and wound them around the slayer’s wrists a few times before knotting the end of the faux-ropes intensively around one of the table legs.

The slayer started yanking against the makeshift restraints the moment Virgil stepped away, their cries muffled but still audible enough that he should really be escaping sooner rather than later.

Luckily, his cloak had been dumped on a nearby shelf with the rest of the meager belongings he carried with him, mostly ignored after Logan had finished snooping through it for bones or something. Virgil ignored Fluffbutt swooping noisily around his head as he slung the comforting weight back around his shoulders and pulled the hood up, and then stepped back around the table towards the door.

The baby slayer seemed to think he was headed for them instead, their gaze very obviously wide with terror as they scrambled ineffectively to get away from him. He stopped short, guilt swamping him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he signed, backing up a few paces to try and give them some space. “I just want to get out of here, okay?”

The kid stared at him, chest rising and falling as rapidly as a sparrow’s. He sort of wished he had heard their name at some point, but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. As it was, he didn’t even know if they knew sign, let alone how to calm them down.

He sighed, lifting his hands up to his shoulders in a gesture of nonaggression, and edged around them to finally get to the door. Fluffbutt settled on his shoulder, apparently content to be identified as a little feathered demon-associating traitor. 

The hall was blessedly empty when he stuck his head out to check, and so he waved a small farewell to the kid— almost certain that they would wriggle out of those haphazard bonds within the hour— and closed the door after himself.

The key was still sitting there in the lock, so he twisted it to relock the room, and after a moment of thought, dropped the key and kicked it under the door so that the kid wouldn’t be stuck if nobody else came by in the next few hours.

He’d done it. He was out— mostly, anyhow.

Now, all he had to do was stay out.