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lattekatte · 1 year

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Survivor’s Guilt AU, Chapter 1

i’m really nervous to post this but fuck it here we go. i wrote this back in july and never posted it until literally right now but kept thinking about it and i am going to write a chapter from adam’s perspective of what happens with him after this cause the story isn’t finished obviously. also this was before volume 4 when we found out that adam was an alternate all along so this was going off of the assumptions about adam’s nature that were kind of prevalent at the time. anyway here we go

Winter Break, 2009.

Jonah’s head hurt. He felt the throbbing at his temples along with a red-hot sensation in his swollen eyelids as acrid tears irritated his eyes and dripped into his open mouth through gritted teeth. Wordlessly screaming internally against the incessant whispering in his mind, he pulled the car over with a jolt of the brakes and grasped at the door handle, half-falling out of the open car door onto the pavement.

The road smelled freshly paved with pungent asphalt, reflecting an unwelcome white light into Jonah’s stinging eyes: the headlights of an approaching truck. Jonah felt a spike of terror as he rolled himself underneath his parked car, narrowly avoiding the front wheels of the large pickup truck as it crushed sticks and pebbles of asphalt inches from Jonah’s soft hands pushing his body out of the lane. Scrambling out from under the mechanics of the car onto the side of the road, his hands clawed into coarse dirt and grass, digging rough particles of cold sand into his nail beds as he pulled himself out and away from the street.

Dehydrated from crying and dizzy from the adrenaline, he allowed himself to crumple onto the ground. The blood rushing through his ears raced through his head with an audible hissing noise, like static, putting a loud pressure on the inside of his head, like he’d just sprinted a mile with no water. Louder still was the rapid echoing and amplification of thoughts ricocheting off of the sides of his brain: you left him behind, you left him to die, you’re going to hell. He let out a strangled sob at the thought of Adam still in that house with no way out. If Adam hadn’t already been killed, the only other option was that his death was happening right now, at this very moment, with his only means of escape collapsed on the side of the road miles away. The worst best friend in the world.

Jonah lay face down in the cold grass, heaving sobs past the lump in his throat. He felt like throwing up, tasting bile that wasn’t there. After a long time, he was too exhausted for the frantic racing thoughts to continue, explosive whispering transitioning to morose silence and a painful kind of brain fog. A split second later, through this despondent haze in Jonah’s mind, the voices cut sharply from inside his head to outside. Outside, and right in front of him; emitting like radio static from a figure that came into focus as Jonah lifted his head.

The figure was tall, and proportioned in a way that made Jonah go cross eyed trying to piece it together. Dressed almost angelically, with starkly pale skin and long blond waves of hair, it seemed to shudder in and out of focus. Its eyes looked drawn onto its face; the shapes of eyelid, iris and pupil geometrically aligned with each other. It was staring at Jonah, and emitting the same whispers that had haunted Jonah since he left Adam less than half an hour ago. It arranged its teeth in a smile, and spoke to Jonah without moving its mouth.

“You left him to die.”

Coming from the unmoving lips of this alternate, the phrase sounded less like an accusation and more like a sentence from some terrifying holy court. You cannot un-abandon a friend.

Jonah stood up sharply, only to fall once again on his knees before the angelic alternate. He couldn’t stop himself from crying out, at first just a guttural scream, which made the figure take a few steps back. Slowly at first, Jonah’s wails changed into something more recognizable as “Is he alive? Is Adam dead? Is he dead?”

The angel said nothing.

Jonah had never been religious, but out of something analogous to complete desperation, he clasped his hands together so tightly that his nails drew blood, and he prayed in front of this mockery of an angel, and his prayer was a scream that tore its way through the raw tissue of his voice box: “Please, fucking please, bring him back! Let him come back alive!”

The angel took a step, barefoot in the sparse grass, towards Jonah.

“I’ll do anything! Anything you want me to do! I don’t fucking care! Kill me if you want, but bring Adam back!”

The angel tilted its head to one side, like a curious nocturnal predator. It took another step toward Jonah, and then suddenly, like it was ambushing a small animal, it made a swift motion downwards. Jonah closed his eyes and flinched away, preparing for the worst.

Nothing. Cautiously, he opened his eyes to see the angel kneeling on the ground inches from Jonah’s own kneeling position, grass staining its white robe where it touched the soil beside the road. Jonah’s dizzy gaze met the angel’s, and as his vision evened out to match the angel’s unwavering stare, the eyes looking into his own melted from pure black irises and uncannily wide eyelids to the same dark shade of umber as Jonah’s, sparkling with the same swollen redness of tears. Jonah gasped sharply, the cold air hitting the back of his throat like ice water, and fell back, hands against the rough soil. He tried to wrench his eyes away from the gaze that now matched his own, but found the eye contact impossible to break, as if it were a physically locked bond between them.

The angel spoke again, and it spoke with Jonah’s voice and its own, two voices merged into one: “Do you blame yourself?” and, simultaneously, “You should blame yourself.”

Jonah tried to push himself backwards again and broke the eye contact, tears crashing back in a tidal wave to the corners of his eyes, but the angel reached out to him out of the darkness with a birch-white arm and grasped his face with a pale platinum hand that felt strangely warm against Jonah’s skin, the way metal gets warm after immense friction. The angel guided Jonah back towards it, tilting his head with its hand and holding his jawline in a way that was almost comforting.

Jonah wanted to scream, but his voice broke with a sob as his eyes were fixed into the angel’s eye contact once again. Completely exhausted both mentally and physically, he gave in to the angel’s control.

“It should have been me,” he whispered.

Softly, almost kindly, the angel concurred, “It should have been you.”

The guilt that Jonah felt was strong, but stronger than the acidity of guilt was the gravitational pull of acceptance. Jonah’s body went slack, and the angel took him into its arms and laid him down in its lap as it sat cross-legged on the short grass.

“Do you wish to take his place, Jonah?”

Jonah, for reasons unbeknownst to even himself, nodded.

The angel sat silent for a while, then held out a closed hand to Jonah, who opened it. Inside was Jonah’s pocket knife, the small one with the faux pearl handle that he kept in his glove compartment for emergencies. Adam had bought it for him at a flea market in Mandela County several months ago.

Jonah took the knife from the angel’s palm, and regarded it for a long moment through bleary eyes. Finally, he raised his head to meet the angel’s eyes, and this time it was him holding the eye contact.

“Give me your word,” Jonah said, “that you’ll bring Adam back. The real Adam. Alive.” He pointed the knife forwards towards the angel’s chest in a final attempt at a threatening gesture, knowing full well he could do nothing, that he was harmless.

The angel, holding the eye contact, melted its eyes from the velvet brown that matched Jonah’s irises to the slate blue-gray of Adam’s shining eyes. “I give you my word.”

Jonah sat up, slowly. There was a strong flavor of dread in his mouth and an even stronger conviction of what he was doing solidifying itself in his mind, like iron filings clinging onto a magnet. The rest of the world started to fade from his view into mist, matching the gray-dark of the night and the road. He felt a sense of clarity, seeing himself from the outside, silver-blonde hair soaked with tears trailing over soft mahogany skin, a trembling hand deliberately being raised as if by a crane operated in Jonah’s conscious mind, bearing the bright silver blade as cargo to its intended target, and he didn’t want to do it but at the same time he did. He owed it to himself and to Adam, of course to Adam.

For Adam’s sake, he pushed his train of thought away from the memories of little Jonah eating raspberry lime popsicles in the backyard, hugging his parents at his fifth grade graduation, holding on tight to his favorite stuffed tiger and running around in the grass. For Adam’s sake, he refused to give himself the time to let his life flash before his eyes and to regret what he was about to do. For Adam’s sake, he ignored the mental image of little Jonah crying and afraid as an older version of himself taught him to fear the end of his life, blade pressed against little Jonah’s neck.

With a lump in his throat, Jonah turned away from his childhood self, and he looked into Adam’s blue eyes. They looked back at him, kindly, from the porcelain face of the angel.

“I’m coming back for you, Adam,” he choked out, and pushed the knife into his neck.

Jonah woke up – wait, woke up? – on the grass, with a warm hand on his forehead. It felt like the only source of warmth in the world, pouring heat into his freezing body. Save for this feeling of heat on his forehead, he was completely numb head to toe, his lips and fingers blue and his face bloodless. As the warmth spread from his forehead to the back of his head, he felt that his hair was cold and wet, sticking to his scalp like red metallic mud. As he regained his sense of smell, the stench of iron and dirt gradually registered in his brain as the smell of blood, lots of it. He knew that this blood had to have come out of a living thing, and before it could dawn on him that he had been that living thing, the warmth spread to his neck.

It intensified in a split second, becoming a white-hot scalding, burning heat, and Jonah screamed. The scream broke the fragile flesh that had already been split open, letting loose a flood of choking hot liquid into the boiling agony of his throat. He took a sharp inhale, a million tiny swords and knives embedding themselves into his vocal cords, and as he tried to restrain himself from screaming again, another hand clamped itself over his mouth. In total shock, Jonah froze, eyes widening in a stunned and agonized state of suspended animation. The hand that had been on his forehead moved quickly down to his neck, applying pressure from its palm onto Jonah’s throat, and the pain vanished, like a candle being blown out. He felt the sensation of his skin shifting and reattaching to itself, closing the wound that had been inflicted there.

The hand returned to Jonah’s forehead, and he fell into a black anesthesia.

Jonah woke up again, still on the grass, entirely paralyzed. Not even his eyelids would move, completely still across his eyes like two heavy weighted blankets. He tried to sit up, to open his eyes, to open his mouth, but it was as if the cord between his mind and body had been cut, like trying to flick on a lightswitch when the power is out.

The angel– the alternate– was standing over him. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel its presence there, an obelisk of radiant horror. Acknowledging its presence formed a pit in his stomach, but he also felt an unfamiliar draw towards it that he couldn’t rationalize. He fought against this pull, struggling to breathe with the stiffened muscles around his lungs. A pained sound escaped him as his ribs cramped, sending a spike of discomfort through his chest. The angel reacted frighteningly quickly, stooping down to place a hand on Jonah’s upper torso and releasing the paralysis in his lungs, allowing him to intake a sharp mouthful of air. As Jonah’s breathing stabilized, he scanned his body for feelings of any injuries. He focused his attention onto his chest, trying to gauge how fast his heart was beating. It wasn’t.

Before Jonah could even register this, he felt the angel settle down next to him, the hem of its robe rustling his hair as it folded around the side of Jonah’s head. It placed two fingertips, still strangely warm, on each of Jonah’s eyelids, and opened them.

Jonah felt the sensation of being pulled through thick cloth, like he was being forced through the very fabric of spacetime.

When his eyes opened, he found he could move again, and he dug his fingers into warm, dry carpet. Confused, he sat up, feeling the solid surface of a floor where a moment before there had been dirt and grass and frost. Breathing heavily, he scanned the space– small, with gray walls and a beige carpet– for the angel, for any other sign of life, alternate or otherwise. Although he still felt the imprints of the angel’s fingertips on his eyelids, there was nothing and no one to be seen.

There were no windows in the room. The air was stifling, with no circulation, dry and warm, and Jonah got the distinct feeling of being enclosed by the earth. Sitting up on his knees, he struggled to hear a sound in the cloying silence of the room. The quiet was deafening, like white noise. Like static.

The silence was suddenly broken by a wail that made Jonah’s stomach drop. Though distorted beyond its previous quality, it was all too familiar to him. It repeated again, a few seconds later, and again, and again: the warped sound of a cat’s cry. He was in the basement.

“Oh no, no no no no,” Jonah’s voice quavered. He spun wildly, standing up too quickly. “Adam? ADAM!!”

The recording of the cat resonated like a foghorn in Jonah’s brain, only causing him to panic further. It wailed again and again, like a broken alarm, low and threatening and pervasive. Jonah stumbled and fell, his body hitting the carpet with a thud, flinching as the wind was knocked out of him. He opened his eyes to a staticky white light, directly in front of his face, emanating from a box in the darkness ahead of him. With a startled gasp, he scrambled backwards, away from the TV. As he watched in horror, the cat sound lowered in pitch and stretched out, one continuous droning of absolute terror. And suddenly, the TV shut off, plunging Jonah into darkness, the tenor siren of the cat remaining, dropping sharply in pitch and quality once again, one long screaming sound in the dark basement.

The panic in Jonah’s lungs drained the air from every part of his body, grasping hands of vacuum pressure forcing their way through his torso and out through his mouth in a sharp spasm of air. The pressure of his fear was palpable and all-consuming, painfully crushing his body into the carpet and digging nails into the crevices of his subconscious mind. The atmosphere itself had him pinned to the ground, rendering him absolutely helpless against the sentient, ambient terror enveloping him. He struggled in the gravitational restraints of his own form, a last desperate effort to escape the feeling that was overcoming him. Hot tears streamed down his cold face, flowing over the surface of his skin like warm water from a tap, generating a sharp tingling sensation like pins and needles that spread over him entirely. Nothing hurt anymore, but Jonah screamed for his life, writhing against the visceral shifting feeling spreading throughout his body, fighting the strange comforting lull that had started to seep into his consciousness.

For as long as he could, Jonah resisted the change, but finally, all at once, he felt the last bit of his strength slip away. The pressure pulled him under and covered him completely, and it dissolved him until he was unrecognizable.

[author’s note: fuck]

#SO BASICALLY. SO BASICALLY GABRIEL IS A BASTARD AND IS LIKE OH YOU FEEL GUILTY OVER LEAVING ADAM TO THIS FATE? YOU CAN EXCHANGE YOUR LIFE #FOR HIS AND JONAH IS LIKE OKAY AND THEN ADAM WAKES UP NEXT TO JONAH'S CAR AND IS LIKE YO I WAS JUST IN THE BASEMENT WHERE THE FUCK IS JONAH #AND JONAHS AN ALT CAUSE ADAM WAS GOING TO BE AN ALT BUT HE WAS SAVED AND THEN ADAM GOES BACK TO THE HOUSE FOR JONAH CAUSE HE'S A GOOD FRIEND #WHICH I WROTE BEFORE VOLUME FOUR CAME OUT AND WE LEARNED THAT ADAM BASTARD MURRAY WOULD NEVER RISK HIS LIFE FOR JONAH!!!!!! AUGH #CAUSE THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN JONAH'S SENSE OF SELF PRESERVATION AND COWARDICE CONTRASTED WITH #HIS SELF SACRIFICING ACTIONS TO SAVE ADAM FROM THE FATE THAT HE WAS GOING TO FACE AND CONTRASTING THAT WITH HOW ADAM WOULD ALWAYS BE WILLING #TO GO BACK FOR HIS BEST FRIEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! VOLUME FOUR FUCK YOU /LH #deep breaths. okay #writing #tmc #mandela catalogue #survivors guilt au

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kakusu-shipping · 1 year

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I am so sorry I am being so annoying with Self insert fanfiction recently but I don’t really mean that because this is my blog and I do as I please and also @probably-some-goat is encouraging me so you all can blame him.

Mountain’s Peak

In which I am the first of a future 3 total humans to climb the Himalayan Mountains in not nearly enough clothing

It was warm. So warm. Emile’s eye cracked open slowly to stare at a blurry ceiling he’d never seen before, or maybe he had, there was no way to know without his glasses. The bed below him was solid earth, a layer of scratchy hay separated him from the cold stone floor. He started to sit up, and a voice spoke to him from the corner of the room.

“You awake!” She chirped, too far to make out any details, “Good good.” She leaned over, patting the robes piled on top of the human in a makeshift blanket, “Warm? More warm?” She questioned, tilting her head.

Emile sat up slowly, glancing around his makeshift floor bed until he found his glasses folded neatly beside the folded robe that’d become his pillow.

With his sight returned Emile could finally take in the room. It was small, with a single roaring fire and a window currently covered by a long red cloth that spread across the floor. Over the fire place hung the humans clothes, his thick orange sweater, jeans, socks, and fluffy boots, all drying from the cold. Under the blanket he’d been wrapped in yet more robes, thin fabrics not made to keep a human properly covered in the Nepal mountains.

Finally, he turned his attention to the owner of the voice that’d greeted him. She was beautiful. An Omnic with big LED eyes in an almond shape with three sensors placed in a small triangle on her forehead. She was sturdily built, with a near solid armored frame that left no hinges exposed and cylindrical arms ending in ball jointed wrists and legs that grew thick and ended flat after the knee joint, all signs of an Omnic built for the medical field, built for precision and careful work, with the strength to lift up to 300 pounds of human and equipment if need be.

“Ah, our snow bird has awoken.” A voice spoke at the door, low and soft. Emile hadn’t realized he’d been staring at his nurse until he was forced to look away from her to the tall, white clad Omnic at the door.

“ma- MASTER MONDATTA!” Emile threw his make shift blankets off in an attempt to stand to greet his idol, or at the very least sit up properly. Oh he was just as radiant in person, sleek white plating covered the Omnic’s face, his shoulder and neck supports exposed as he appeared to be missing the upper half of his chest plating, along with the protective plating on both arms, exposing the wires that would act as a nerves system that allowed the Omnic to reach out to Emile and put him back to rest.

“Easy now, little one, you must rest.” Mondatta spoke calmly as he sat on his knees beside the humble little human, who couldn’t stop shaking in his presence, “Reya has told me you are suffering a rather sever case of frostbite, it would be best if you remained still for a while.” He calmed, taking Emile’s hands into his own. The young human stared at his finger joints as they wrapped around his fleshy palm, watched his thumb smooth over his knuckles.

“Aoita making hot food. I go check.” The nurse, who Emile assumed to be Reya, patted Mondatta’s shoulder as she stood and began her way to the door, before tuning to motion to a kettle in the fire, “Hot water, rag, gently.” She made a motion of wiping her hands, and then she was gone out the door and around the corner, off to the kitchen to check on Aoita.

Mondatta gently pulled the kettle from the fire, unaffected by the metal’s obvious heat as he poured the boiling water into a bowl near by and dipped a rag into it. Gently, one by one, the Omnic massaged warmth by into Emile’s frosted finger tips, encouraging his blood to flow naturally by running circles on the human’s palm with his thumb as he gently wrapped each finger in the damp part of the cloth before drying them back off.

“Where did you come from, child? You are not from the village outside our monastery, nor the one at the base of the mountain.” Mondatta asked after a moment, Emile barely caught his words, instead mesmerized by the monk’s skills.

“Ah.. K-Kentcuky, sir... America..” Emile answered honestly, still staring at the joints in the Omnic’s fingers.

“That is quiet a long way to travel. What brings you here? Vacation with your family?”

It became apparent then that Mondatta assumed Emile to be a lost child, which was perhaps a fair assumption, as the human was only just barely 15, and looked much smaller than others his age.

“N-No sir! I came here to- to meet you!” Emile took his hand from Mondatta’s, looking the monk in the face. As he took a deep breath to build up his courage, “I- I want- I want you to take me as your student!” Emile declared as much as he could with his shaking voice and pounding heart. He gripped tightly to the collar of his robe to hold himself steady, it felt as though he needed to hold his chest, lest his heart escape. “My- My parents are.. A-Anti-Omnic, sir.. They don’t believe in your cause... But I do! And I want to support you! I want to offer you my aid and- And learn from you!”

“Your aid?” Mondatta tilted his head in curiosity, “What exactly are you attempting to offer me, child?”

“I- I grew up in a machine shop, sir. My father’s life work revolved around Omnics; Making them, repairing them. Even after the crisis we stayed afloat but running a repair shop, gr-granted only for.. Omnics who where... o..owned...” Emile felt the shame of his upbringing sink in, the grip on his robes tightened, “I-I’ve never met an Omnic I couldn’t repair! I’ve memorized every assembly book my father owned, I know I could fix and- And heal any damage that could come your way, sir, so- So please,” Emile bowed his head to the monk before him, holding tightly to his collar, “T-Take me as your student. I want to help you make a peaceful world between our kind.”

Mondatta stared at the top of Emile’s head for a moment, pondering his offer. The correct choice would be to call the authorities and send the child home. He was a minor, most likely here without his parent’s knowledge, possibly on stolen funds directly from them.

Yes, that would, morally, be the correct choice.

Mondatta put his hand to his chin, and tilted his head the other direction, “It gets rather cold here at night, and you packed rather lightly.”

Emile sat up, “I saw advertisements for the mining operation in town! I’ll get a job and buy warmer clothes!”

Mondatta gave a hum, “We do not have food supplies here, and most of the buildings do not have any heating, or a furnace.”

“I’ll be fine! There’s edible weeds growing in the hills, and I know how to start a fire safely!”

“I am not sure we have a proper place for a human to use the bathroom-”

“I can hold it!”

Mondatta’s thoughtful facade cracked, the monk broke out into cackles, bringing the human before him into confusion. A hand, warm from hot water, with smooth joints and golden plating placed gently upon Emile’s head, ruffling his snow white hair gently.

“Of course you may stay, my student.” Mondatta spoke with a smile in his tone, “No job or “holding it” required. We take care of our family here.”

Tears sprung from Emile’s eyes, his entire body shook joyfully and anxiously. In a sudden move he wrapped his bare arms around Master Mondatta, pressing his face to the remaining half of the Omnic’s chest plate, sobbing out thanks and praise, promises to repay the monk, and the entire Monastery, with his skills as a mechanic.

After a long time of crying, some hot soup by a lovely Omnic with a thick southern accent who asked to be addressed “Aoi”, and a little more care taken to Emile’s frostbite, the human realized something rather important.

“How did you get here?” Mondatta repeated his question, placing a thicker, almost quilt like robe on the human’s shoulders.

Emile nodded, “I remember seeing the Monastery, the lights in the windows but.. I don’t remember coming inside.”

“Ah. That is because you lost conciousness outside the monastery walls. Brother Zenyatta was the one to find you collapsed in the snow, he brought you to me.”

“I see... Please introduce me to Brother Zenyatta! I have to thank him for saving my life!”

Mondatta once again hummed, this time truly thinking on it. Though Zenyatta was a member of the Shambali, he wasn’t as keen on humans as some of the others who wandered the monastery halls. In fact, he was rather against interacting with them.

Perhaps then this is what one could call an opportunity. After all, Zenyatta did bring the human in, as Emile said he saved his life when he certainly didn’t have to. Perhaps this is human was a gift from the iris, one to help set Zenyatta on the right path.

“Alright then,” Mondatta nodded to himself, confident this was a good choice, “Tomorrow we shall pay a visit to Zenyatta.”