#i think they’d still be conscious like some of the zombies in All Of Us Are Dead (highly recommend watching btw) but they adapt to

[growleykitts]

don’t cry

I’m dead too

yungi

view on twt

[toons-and-doom]

With the new update, and T. Glisten having voicelines, it made me think of the voicelines ask you answered roughly a month ago! Any more thoughts on those with the new toons?

Oooo!! I need to think about these

First, Finn.

He still uses fish puns. They either don’t make sense or are disjointed now. I’d imagine he gurgles a lot as well. Very mych animal noises. Sometimes he remarks about his lack of legs. Most of time he’s trying to make a pun out of them but sometimes he just remarks how much it hurts.

And glisten still being somewhat conscious and having voice lines makes me so silly fr. I’d imagine they’d have some distant sobbing when they’re passive, maybe if someone is not around them they will call out. Maybe they call out for specific toons to make it creepy. He screams when he’s ignored or when the machines are done. You can hear him across the map. The closer he is the louder it is. He begs you not to leave. Not many ideas because he already canonically talks.

Hmmmm

Cosmo is very much like poppy in that he mostly makes gurgling / zombie noises. Occasionally though, he’ll call out to sprout sounding all scared. He’d talk about how he didn’t mean it. He doesn’t want sprout to hate him… how sick he feels. If you have a sprout he will call out for them a lot more, maybe like a ‘ you came back for me! I know you would come back! ‘ ahh line

Sprout. Sprout sprout sprout. He’s surprisingly silent for a main. Maybe a wheeze every now and then. He doesn’t say much, maybe remarks on a strange hunger. However. He’s more talkative if there’s a cosmo in the party! He will apologies profusely for chasing / hurting / or kill them. But he can’t stop himself. Maybe he’ll just quietly apologize if he kills you… mayhaps…

[leon-scott-kennedy]

Distrail

Chreon, Rated-T

Read on Ao3

For a price, anyone could check into a seedy motel, even three people covered in blood, guts, and grime, no questions asked, especially with the ashes of Raccoon City still cooling 100 miles away. So the horizon still held a faint glow of destruction when Leon and Claire stumbled, barely conscious, through the front door of the Tadpole motel at 2 PM October 1st, using each other as support and Sherry clinging to Leon’s back like a koala if a koala drooled and snored.

Two other motels along the highway turned the odd couple away, rumours already flying about Raccoon City, zombies, and a nuclear cover-up. But at the right price, triple the going rate, Claire managed to convince the manager to let them bunk down, courtesy of Leon’s stressed credit card.

The fact Leon’s credit card worked, or that he even still had his credit card, was a miracle. His wallet hadn’t exactly been a priority, and honestly, they could sleep in a cockroach-infested basement, and Leon would be happy because they were dead on their feet after hiking on foot what Leon estimated to be a good 30 miles of rough terrain to get to the nearest town. The sun barely peeked over the horizon when the sky behind them exploded.

Raccoon City was gone. The people Leon had sworn to defend were gone. Sherry and Claire were all he managed to protect, and he’d be damned if he failed now.

The motel room wasn’t terrible; two double beds, a small tube TV, and a leaky faucet. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t something out of a horrible nightmare. They’d left that behind them.

“I’m glad we don’t have a blacklight,” Claire joked, but her tone fell flat.

Leon nudged the bed farthest from the door suspiciously with his boot, dragged back the yellow duvet, and inspected the mattress before he lay Sherry down and tucked her in. He even let Claire shower first, insisted, while he watched Sherry sleep, tossing and turning and whimpering from reliving the horrors in her dreams until Claire emerged from the bathroom, hair still damp, and crawled into bed beside Sherry.

By the time Leon scrubbed his skin raw, the water was cold, and Claire had passed out cold with Sherry cuddled up beside her, little hand tangled in the front of Claire’s dirty tank top like a lifeline. Leon passed out face first on the other bed. He couldn’t even muster the energy to get under the covers.

Movement woke Leon. He jolted awake, reaching for his gun on the bedside table, only to find Claire, fully dressed, perched on the end of his bed and tugging one of her boots. She smiled sadly at the gun levelled at her head.

Leon lowered Matilda, gasping for air. His arm fell limply to his side. “Claire?”

“Hey.” Claire pulled on her second boot. “Sorry.”

Leon blinked at the sleep crusting his eyes. “What... what are you doing?”

Claire sighed and set her foot back down solidly on the ground, hands grasping her thighs. “I need to find Chris. I need... I need to know he’s okay.”

“Now?” Leon glanced at the clock. The bright red numbers read 7:46. The setting sun outside glowed faintly behind the curtains.

“If you ever need me...”

“Forget me. What about Sherry?” Leon snapped, somewhat mollified when Claire winced.

“I know you’ll take good care of her.” Claire’s attention briefly snapped to the sleeping 12-year-old that had survived literal hell. “Leon... if I didn’t have to.”

“Yeah. Yeah, whatever,” Leon scoffed, then rolled over. His heart thundered in his chest. He heard Claire briefly wake up Sherry to say goodbye, promising they’d be in touch, that if Sherry ever needed her, all she needed to do was call.

The door creaked open. Leon clenched his eyes shut, willing down the panic swelling in his chest until it ached. This was it. He was all Sherry had left. They were on their own.

“Take care of our girl for me.” Claire’s voice was barely a whisper.

Leon’s hands trembled, buried in the sheets and pillows, he struggled to suck down air, and his hearing fuzzed. Claire was gone.

For hours, Leon faded in and out of consciousness, barely able to keep the crush of dread at bay. Finally, at some point around 3 AM, he gave up all pretense to sleep and kept a vigilant guard. He jumped at a car alarm, tensed at the slam of a door, and clenched Matilda tightly when soft footfalls passed their door. Eventually, Sherry climbed into his bed to watch early morning cartoons with him.

“Is Claire going to be okay?” Sherry asked softly. She hugged Leon’s arm, cuddling into his side like he used to with his grandma.

“Yeah. Don’t worry about her,” Leon said. He slumped to the side, gently resting his head on top of Sherry’s. “She’ll be fine, kiddo.”

When the sun rose, Leon and Sherry trekked down to the front office to extend their stay another night, then hiked into town searching for clothes and sustenance. Being out in public, surrounded by people, set both Leon and Sherry on edge. They jumped at the slightest sound, and Sherry refused to release Leon’s hand for anything less than going to the bathroom, and even then, he had to stand guard outside the stall. Thank god he had pissed before they left the motel because Sherry was clinging to the back of his jacket while he tried seemed ridiculous.

Their shopping trip was quick. They grabbed what they could, Sherry setting a brisk pace through the little thrift store they found, dragging Leon from rack to rack. They scrounged up a few changes of clothes, socks, underwear, which Leon was a little uncertain of, a jacket that fits over his side holster since he had a license to carry, and a backpack that they filled with snacks and a deck of cards from a little corner store. It turns out Leon’s palette was similar to a twelve-year-old.

The tenuous credit limit finally crapped out on Leon when he tried to buy a six-pack at a shady liquor store on the way back to the motel.

“No job. No money. Just great,” Leon sighed.

For the rest of the day, they holed up in their room munching on junk food, watching terrible daytime TV, and playing Go Fish until Leon made the brilliant decision to teach Sherry how to play poker, and she fleeced him for all the Cheetos.

Leon had no plan beyond survive, and he hadn’t even planned for that. His body ached from being tossed by mutated monsters and shot. His wrapped shoulder twinged.

“Shit,” Leon cursed and clutched his wound. They needed help. He needed help. Taking care of a kid without any resources would be impossible; never mind, he’d never taken care of a person in his life. He had no siblings, no parents. His grandma died when he was nine.

Leon smiled at Sherry in reassurance when she questioned him. This little girl couldn’t be another statistic of the system. He could fix that. He would fix that.

Covered in orange Cheeto dust, Sherry crashed around 8 in the evening. The glow of the sun behind the curtain reminded Leon of the mushroom cloud that had enveloped the sky 36 hours ago. Leon’s stomach twisted in knots. Every creak, every thump, every squeaky break, Leon tensed, waiting for something to crash through the door and disrupt the precarious peace.

Leon hunkered down on his bed, the one closest to the door and any potential threat that came for them, and prepared for another sleepless night on edge.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Around one in the morning, his eyes beginning to droop, Leon nearly fell off the bed in his mad scramble for his gun when someone knocked heavily on the door. Checking his clip, Leon cautiously crept to the door, motioning for now very awake Sherry to stay out of sight.

“Who is it,” Leon called.

“Hi. Look, I’m sorry to bother you. My name is Chris Redfield. I’m looking for my sister Claire.”

Leon blinked and glanced back at Sherry, whose head had popped out of the blanket at the sound of Claire’s name. Then, double-checking he had bolted the chain, Leon opened the door a crack to peek out.

A man a little taller than Leon stood under the flickering light outside the door, his hair cut short and a 5 o’clock shadow. Chris Redfield, decorated member of the Racoon City Stars Division. Leon recognized him from the old photo Claire had shown him, but also the records he’d run across during his frantic hunt through the Police Department.

“Chris?” Leon said, astonished it was actually him. He slammed the door, unbolted the chain, and flung the door open again. “What the- Claire’s looking for you. What are you doing here?”

Chris, who eyed the gun uncertainly, brightened at the mention of his sister. “Is she here? The manager at the front recognized her. Said she was here with some guy and a kid.” Chris glanced past Leon into the room to Sherry curled up in the other bed peering out with curious fear from under the blankets.

Leon shook his head, eyes scanning the parking lot. “She’s not here. She left this morning to find you.”

“Fuck.” Chris winced and glanced at Sherry again. “Shit, sorry.”

Sherry giggled into her hands, and Leon rolled his eyes. “I think she’s dealt with worse.” Like the apocalypse.

“But she’s okay. She’s alive?” Chris asked.

“Who? Claire? Yeah. Yeah, she’s fine. Saved my ass more than a few times.” Leon smiled wistfully and then frowned. So Claire had left, and now, here, her brother was trying to track her down. It must be nice to have someone that gave a damn about you.

“Oh, thank god.” Then, finally, all the tension and stiffness in Chris’ posture melted. “I got her message, and...”

Leon scanned the dark parking lot again for any sign of life, then gestured into the motel room. “You should come in.”

“No.” Chris waved off the invitation. “No, I need to find her.” But the fatigue in his voice threatened to topple him, and that would definitely fell Leon if he tried to catch him.

“Dude, you’re dead on your feet,” Leon said. “It’s the middle of the night. Crash for a few hours.”

“Yeah!” Sherry chimed in, bouncing on her bed. “Stay!”

Chris shook his head. “I can’t.”

Leon pursed his lips. “Look, I don’t know you, man. But I do know that if you pass out behind the wheel and wrap yourself around a pole, you’re pretty damn useless to her.”

Chris opened his mouth to argue, and Leon sighed, tilting his head to the side, ready to give up when Chris snapped his mouth closed and cleared his throat. He studied Leon closely, scrutinizing him like he would a suspect, but Chris must have been satisfied with what he found - weakness, terror, immaturity - because he finally said, “just a few hours.” And the anxiety squeezing the life out of Leon eased, just a tiny bit. Enough that he could breathe.

Chris excused himself to run and grab his go-bag, and Leon cursed his stupidity because nothing was stopping Chris from running. That tightness immediately returned, but a few minutes later, another sharp knock sounded at the door.

Leon smiled tiredly and welcomed Chris into the room, relieved to have the company, someone who knew what they were doing; an adult. Leon grew up fast, but he’d never been an adult in his life. Racoon City was supposed to be a fresh start, and now, he was back to square one. Not even. He was in the basement of square one—the root cellar.

Leon finally caught a good look at Sherry with the lights on, still covered in orange dust, her fingers and cheeks stained. “Jesus. Did you eat the Cheetos or roll in them?”

Sherry laughed. “Leon taught me to play poker, and then I won all the cheezies,” she said to Chris, who grinned.

“Nice job.” Chris offered her a high-five, which she eagerly accepted. The hero worship was already forming.

“He gets a little wrinkle right here when he lies,” Sherry said, pointing a small finger between her eyebrows.

“Okay,” Leon said, scooping Sherry off the bed and carrying her off under one arm. “Let’s get you cleaned up and back in bed, munchkin.”

Cheeto dust proved a formidable adversary, but they managed. When they walked back into the room, Chris was standing exactly where they had left him, his bag still slung over his shoulder and his boots laced.

Getting Sherry tucked back into bed became a struggle now that the brand new company hyped her up; no hesitation whatsoever. She liked Chris. She even made Chris put her to bed, Leon faking offence at being disregarded for the new guy, but there was something about seeing a six-foot boulder of a man coax a tiny twelve-year-old back to sleep that made Leon’s chest ache. Especially when Chris told the story of how Claire was convinced that if she left fake teeth under her pillow, she could trick the tooth fairy into giving her more money. It never worked. The tooth fairy left chocolate coins instead. Fake money for a fake tooth.

Leon watched perched on the edge of the other bed, a little envious of Chris’ skill with kids. He double-checked the safety on his handgun, then the clip. Chris eyed Leon as he set his weapon back down on the bedside table, and Leon couldn’t muster the energy to be self-conscious about his paranoia.

Chris may be Claire’s sister and a fellow survivor of Raccoon City, but Leon didn’t actually know him. For all he knew, he was a traitor like Irons or Wesker. Maybe he wasn’t the man Claire believed him to be. What the hell had he been thinking? Inviting a stranger to stay with them?

With Sherry asleep again, Leon and Chris were left to settle in for the remainder of the night. For Chris, that meant shedding his bulky jacket and combat boots.

“It’s Leon, right?” Chris said. He stood awkwardly beside the bed, watching Leon click off the light and climb under the blankets, tucking himself up against the edge of the mattress as close as he possibly could without toppling off. “Claire mentioned you in one of her messages.”

Leon almost facepalmed. He hadn’t introduced himself. He really was doing everything backwards. “Yeah. That’s me. Leon S. Kennedy.” He curled up into a small ball.

“Jesus Christ.” Chris swiped his palm across his mouth. “You’re the new rookie.”

Leon chuckled humourlessly, his hands tightening into fists around the sheets pulled up to his neck. “Was a hell of a first day.”

Chris picked up real quick that Leon didn’t want to talk about it. So instead, he climbed into his side of the bed, the one closest to the door. The mattress dipped under his weight, and Leon tensed. Where else would Chris have slept? The floor? The last person Leon shared a bed with was his ex, who had seemingly saved his life. If she hadn’t broken up with him, if he hadn’t gotten drunk, if he hadn’t slept in hungover as hell, he would have arrived right in the middle of the initial panic, and who knows if he would have survived that. No one else in the department had.

What would it have been like? The screams, the moans, the pleas for help- the sounds still played on repeat in Leon’s head. Lieutenant Marvin Branagh, mouth agape, stumbling towards him with his hands out. Leon had put two bullets between his eyes.

The first indications of a panic attack slammed into Leon. Abruptly, his throat closed. He couldn’t breathe, his vision slid out of focus, and his chest compressed. Like someone reached into his chest and squeezed his heart in a vice. His entire body shook.

Suddenly, a warm voice murmured in his ear, the soothing tone talking him down, calming him. Leon wasn’t alone. He wasn’t trapped in the police station battling endless waves of the undead, the people of Raccoon City he’d taken an oath to serve and protect.

“Leon, kid, you need to breathe,” Chris said. His presence was a solid wall behind Leon. “I’m going to touch you, okay?”

Leon focused on Chris’ voice. His vision began to swim back into focus, his hearing rushed back in a sudden wall of familiar night noises like the drip of the faucet in the bathroom or the lonely car that passed on the highway. He nodded, not fully understanding what Chris was saying. An arm slid around his waist and pulled him back into a firm chest. Leon flailed, seconds from panic again when Chris’ voice rumbled in his ear.

“You’re going to be okay. I got you.”

Leon grasped Chris’ arm, his grip probably tight enough to leave bruises, and he choked on a shuddering sob.

“It’s okay, Leon. You’re going to be okay.”

Gasping for air, Leon rolled over and buried his face in Chris’ chest, and Chris let him. Leon’s sobs were muffled in Chris’ arms, not wanting to disturb Sherry in the next bed. He felt every subtle muscle flex when Chris tightened his grip or shifted them into a more comfortable position. That’s how Leon passed out, wrapped in the reassuring embrace of a complete stranger, one who understood the hell he’d lived through and the fear and uncertainty he felt in his soul.

Morning came quickly. Leon woke up still curled into Chris’ chest with a death grip on the other man’s faded t-shirt. Chris’ nose was buried in Leon’s hair, each soft snore ruffling his hair, but his embrace hadn’t lessened overnight.

The warmth of embarrassment burning, Leon snuck out of bed, anxiously loosening Chris’ hold and dashing for the safety and solitude of the bathroom, horrified at his complete lack of control the night before. No one had held him like that before, at least not since he was a child and his grandma would sit up with him after a nightmare. But, sadly, this was another type of nightmare, a waking one.

When Leon finally mustered the courage to wander back into the room, Chris was up, sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees.

“You okay?” Chris asked the same time Leon burst out, “I’m sorry!”

Chris sighed. “You didn’t do anything wrong. When I showed up on your doorstep last night, I saw right away that you were barely holding it together.”

Leon’s fists clenched at his side. He couldn’t meet Chris’ gentle gaze.

Chris crossed the room in two enormous strides and considerately grasped Leon by the shoulders. “It was the shock finally hitting you. It happened to me too, but I was alone,” Chris admitted. “Hey. Hey, come on. Look at me.”

Leon bit his lower lip, but he slowly looked up, eyes stinging. “I don’t know what to do.”

Telegraphing his movements, Chris gently pulled Leon into a tight hug. “You’re not alone. We’re going to do this together. I want to take Umbrella down, but first, I wanna make sure you’re okay.”

Leon jerked back so fast Chris stumbled. “I want to help. I want to make those sons of bitches pay.”

Chris smiled. “Good. But first, I have a safe house.”

Together, they set the plans. Leon and Sherry would meet Chris in two days, hopefully with Claire in tow, at Chris’ new safehouse three states over. Sherry and Leon could catch a bus a couple miles down the highway to get them most of the way. The trick would be getting up the mountain to the cabin. But they were in this together. Hope simmered once again.

Armed with a freshly drawn map on motel stationery, Leon watched Chris pack. Umbrella wouldn’t know what hit them.

“Here. Take it.”Chris handed Leon two rumpled twenties, a five, and a few ones he dug out of his wallet. “It’s all the cash I have on me, but it should be enough to get you there. I’ll drop you off-”

“No.” Leon took the cash, but waved off Chris’ offer to give him and Sherry a lift to the bus station. “It’s in the opposite direction. We’ll be fine.”

“Two days,” Chris promised. Sherry had climbed out of bed and now clung to Chris’ arm as if he couldn’t leave as long as she was attached. He ruffled her hair. “With or without Claire, I’ll be there and we’ll go from there.” Chris grabbed Leon by the back of the neck and dragged him into a gruff hug, their foreheads lightly pressed together. “It’s gonna be okay, kid.”

And Leon believed him. That is, until two hours later when an unmarked vehicle pulled up on Leon and Sherry hiking down the side of the road, hand in hand. They never made it to the rendezvous.

[norcumii]

for the ask meme: Rex/Obi or pairing/characters of choice - Werewolf/vampire AU / Sick/injured / Stranded Due to Inclement Weather / Huddling for warmth

For this trope mashup meme.

This was CLEARLY influenced by seananmcguire's Newsflesh series, which was the last zombie related media I interacted with, and I regret NOTHING.

(Meanwhile, much worldbuilding was done by Dogmatix, who I was foolish enough to let near the plunnies again ^_^)

*****

The problem with zombies, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but muse, was that they stopped thinking. Oh, there was some low-level intelligence left in there, but it was mostly focused on consuming the living. Not tactics, for the most part, not unless the bastards were very fresh or in large enough groups, but that also meant that when some brilliant asshole declared “oh, the zombies wouldn’t/couldn’t ever do that,” no one consulted the zombies.

Thus, an early morning patrol in an area that “never saw more than one or two zombies” turned into a clusterfuck retreat. Though ‘patrol’ was rather a gross overstatement for just the two of them taking an idle walk because some days, Rex was too jittery for sleep and too damn self-sacrificing to admit that he missed early morning runs.

There was always enough fog coming in from the river that they should have been fine.

There also shouldn’t have been an entire pack of at least a dozen, dozen and a half zombies in the area. Where the fuckers had even come from was an unpleasant mystery.

“Rex?” Obi-Wan murmured into the man’s ear. “Are you with me?” he asked as if he couldn’t make out the glacially slow beat of his heart.

Rex groaned, head lolling to nestle further in the crook of Obi-Wan’s neck. He mumbled something that was probably a curse, which left Obi-Wan in the unenviable position of having to close his eyes and take his own steadying breath. Yes, on the one hand he did have an unfairly attractive boyfriend draped across his lap, straddling his hips and feeling like he was several seconds away from some serious necking.

On the other, they were also treed a good thirty feet above a pack of damned zombies, which had already tried seriously munching on Rex, and ‘necking’ could have serious consequences when one of them was an actual vampire.

Speaking of. Obi-Wan shifted in the cautious little jig in an attempt to nudge Rex more to the left. If he could just free up his arm enough, then he could move around while not tossing them off the tree stand or dislodging the thick emergency poncho that was the only thing keeping Rex from turning into a charred crisp. It was not sized for two, but there hadn’t been time to be more careful and drape it over just Rex instead of just plonking it down over the two of them.

“If you refuse to leave base again without your entire damned armor because of this, I’m going to be very put out,” Obi-Wan informed him, getting another incoherent unhappy noise. The armor was good at keeping the soldiers bite free – not that they needed to worry about the zombification business, but it still hurt them and fed the damn undead. It was also effective at keeping the soldiers touch starved and isolated in ways Obi-Wan had difficulty standing.

Another careful shift, and he could just barely dig out one of the small, squishy packs he kept in his jacket for emergencies.

Since his luck was shit, as soon as he pulled it free, the bastard caught on a loose thread, and with his claws he didn’t dare grab too hard for it, and down it tumbled. One of the zombies lunged, snapping at it, and blood exploded all across the remains of the bastard’s face.

Not being too intelligent, the rest of the pack turned on it immediately. Obi-Wan tried to tune out the disgusting carnage, being much more careful on his second attempt. He didn’t have many packets to spare. This one, he managed to juggle up in front of Rex’s face, jostling it a little. “Here. Drink,” he ordered, hoping that would be sufficient. He hated trying to insert the little sippy straws – Anakin had loved juice pouches back as a child, and they’d had similar fiendish straws. Anakin had learned how to insert the little bastards without a problem, but he always asked Obi-Wan to do it for him – because Obi-Wan had never quite managed to master the process, and Anakin was a damned brat.

Bad enough when it was juice.

One way or another, Rex was conscious enough to shift and bite down on the plastic packet. It was always a wonder to watch the soldiers’ regenerative powers at work. As the level of mostly artificial plasma lowered, color drained back into Rex’s face, the nasty burns along truly unfair cheekbones fading as muscle and skin reknit. He could smell the distressing blood-and-raw-meat stench fading, and only then did he start to relax.

When things had started to go to hell around the globe, the powers that be had huddled together around their failing infrastructure and went looking for fantastical solutions to unnatural problems. Obi-Wan could only imagine the levels of exhaustion and terror that had led someone to the conclusion that vampires might be immune to the infections that spread the zombie virus. The sheer potential of that going horribly wrong was at least one movie franchise long, if not several, yet somehow they’d dedicated enough science to make artificial vampires. Oh, technically it wasn’t vampirism, but ‘drank blood, super fast and strong, sunburn to death within minutes, resting vitals dropping down far enough to pass as dead’ was close enough for everyone but petty bureaucrats and pedantic assholes.

Even at the time, Obi-Wan had cynically noted how that meant both a short leash, and a strong vested interest in keeping as many people from going zombie as possible. He’d also noted the infuriating demographics of those who were selected for and survived the process of becoming vampires.

He tried not to think on that much nowadays, because the heightened blood pressure and carnage bothered Rex.

The packet slurped dry in a way that always raised Obi-Wan’s hackles, then Rex blinked up at him a few times in confusion. “You’re fuzzy,” Rex accused.

“That’s called a beard, dear,” Obi-Wan drawled in his most obnoxious tone, pretending he didn’t also have fur sprouting most places, nor the partial muzzle of a transformation enough to give him speed and jumping ability enough to get to one of the safe perches they’d set up weeks ago.

The Powers That Be might have created vampires, but they had also somehow missed the small but stubborn population of entirely naturally occurring werewolves (and affiliated were-creatures) around the world. Some, like Obi-Wan and his pack, were doing their damndest to both keep a low profile and help the poor bastards trying to protect the last of humanity.

Some, like Obi-Wan, might have become unwisely open to certain non-lycanthropes due to unfortunate feelings – not that Obi-Wan was ever about to complain about that.

Either his sarcastic tone or the guttural noises of thwarted zombies sank in, because Rex stiffened and glared down. “Fuck!” he hissed, thighs clenching in a way that Obi-Wan both very much did and very much did not appreciate. His eyes damn well crossed at the wiggle that followed – he could only guess that Rex was going for a weapon that he didn’t have.

“Stop that!” he snarled, letting the wolf out a little more. He needed the muscle and mass to keep Rex in place, longer paws digging into the tree trunk for a slightly more secure hold that was notgroping his idiot boyfriend.

His idiot boyfriend leveled a flat, unimpressed look at him. “Really?” Rex grumped. His eyes flicked down, then back up. “Right now?”

“So sorry, but some of us don’t need to ingest extra blood to get it up, and under less fraught circumstances this might be my idea of a good time.” He tried for a drawl, but it was much more strained than he meant. Oh well, it wasn’t like Rex didn’t know he could be ridiculous. And it really wasn’t intentional.

“Less fraught meaning less zombies?”

“And less daylight.” Obi-Wan didn’t mean for his tone to turn sharp, either, but it did even as he very carefully wrapped his arms tighter around Rex. He made certain not to disturb the poncho, but he, at least, wanted the reassurance. He still wasn’t over the terror of having to go mostly wolf to grab Rex from the pack he was trying to slow down, nor the horror of slinging him over a shoulder to go pelting through the trees. Madcap desperation to find a tree stand before a foggy dawn was not his idea of fun. “Your life is worth a hell of a lot more than an inconvenient hard on.”

Rex huffed a laugh, leaning in to rest his cheek against Obi-Wan’s. “Stop being charming.”

“I’m afraid that’s going to happen approximately never. So sorry.”

For a moment, it was just them – two idiots cuddled together, healthy and alive on a genuinely beautiful, bright Spring morning.

Then a terrible gurgling noise broke the moment, and Rex glanced down at the pack still mingling around the tree, groaning their displeasure at not remembering how to climb. “Was that a zombie?” he asked, as if he damn well didn’t know the truth.

“Shapeshifting burns calories,” Obi-Wan reminded him primly. “As does marathon sprints lugging around idiots like potato sacks.”

“That explains the bruises on my stomach,” he muttered, shifting about to rummage in one of Obi-Wan’s pockets. “Jerky?”

“Please.” All in all, now that matters were calmer, Obi-Wan almost hoped that a rescue would take its sweet time. This was almost nice – all things considered.

~end

[pastpatientlywaitingforimagines]

Galaxy | Spencer Reid x Reader Platonic

WC: 1326 

Warnings: none, this is pure fluff.

GALAXY MASTERLIST

A/N: In this house we love Spencer Reid and we love platonic soulmates even more. Enjoy!

Derek Morgan didn’t believe in soulmates until you joined the BAU. It was impossible to deny that your connection with the unit’s resident genius was nothing short of galactic, a product of the universe so complex Spencer himself didn’t even fully understand it.

You had been pulled straight from the Academy, hand picked by Rossi and Hotch. Your military background and instinctual street smarts made up for your still-developing profiling skills, for which you had a lot of potential. Hotch had bounced you around on your first field case to see who you would work best with, it surprised everyone when you and Reid fit together like a perfect pair of mismatched socks.

His logic and gangly awkwardness was harshly juxtaposed by your intuition and awareness, which was part of why you worked so well together. Hotch didn’t pair you up for every case, but everyone on the team benefitted when he put the two of you together.

Now, years later, Morgan could easily observe the way each of you cherished the presence of the other. You had just worked a long case, ending in a high speed car chase with you behind the wheel of the SUV and Spencer as your copilot. You apprehended the unsub without hesitation, Spencer right behind you. The unsub was handcuffed before the rest of the team had even arrived and not a single gunshot was fired.  

Clearly it had taken a lot out of both of you, who now shared a small pillow as you curled up on the jet, the tops of your heads barely touching. You had often told the team you didn’t like sleeping on planes, and most of the time you didn’t, but every time you lost consciousness while flying it was always because Spencer was by your side.

Otherwise you were reading (swapping books on particularly long flights) or playing chess. Derek personally liked the latter because you had no idea how to play chess at all. The jet always filled with your laughter when Spencer squirmed in frustration at your entirely random moves “it’s like you’re not even trying, (y/n)”. It was always a much needed brightness to their mostly dismal profession.

“Did you know?” Morgan asked Hotch quietly when the older man sat down next to him.

“That they’d work so well together when I hired (y/n)? No. I wish I could take credit for it, but I had no idea.”

At first, Morgan thought your friendship with Reid rivaled his with Garcia, but he soon realized that your relationship with the doctor was on a completely different level. There was nothing inherently romantic or sexual about your relationship at all. “Why are you talking about marriage?” Emily had asked when she sat down at her desk. You and Spencer looked at her innocently and deadpanned in unison, “tax benefits” Still, your friendship was built on mutual love and respect for the other.

You were the first one by his side when he got out of a particularly tough situation, and he was the first one by yours when you had a PTSD episode. He was the only one who knew about everything that had happened while you were in the military, even Garcia only had access to what had been printed about the years you spent overseas. You knew every detail about the time he was held captive in a shed by Tobias Hankel, as well as his relationship with his parents.

You were always the first to call dibs on Spencer when hotel rooms needed to be shared, as well as the first to reprimand him for taking his bulletproof vest off when he was in dangerous situations. He always called you first when he figured something out and you weren’t already by his side, and had you proofread every conference lecture he wrote.

You moved in sync with each other in a way the others tried so hard to figure out, both in the field and office. Refilling each other’s coffee was second nature, as was working on adjoining dry erase boards and tracking down unsubs. Your lives were intertwined, two inseparable souls.

Derek had only seen you argue once, after your yearly October Horror Movie weekend. You fought for two weeks over who would be the better villain, “I’d hide in the place with the lowest probability of being found-” “Sure, but in the time it took you to calculate the probability I’d already be fleeing the country with no less than three hostages.” Ultimately, you decided that if you were both villains in a horror film you would meet up and become an unstoppable team there too.

It was also no secret that you would always accept Spencer’s outing invitations, even if it meant going to movies in languages you didn’t understand “I don’t need to understand Korean to know that there were some big moral decisions happening on that train. Did they explain more about the zombies in the dialogue?” Likewise, one of the only lists you had memorized was that of all the 24-hour restaurants in the immediate area. It was the kind of friendship that only the two of you could have, as kids who had gone through too much turmoil and just needed some consistency for once.

“Do you believe in soulmates?” Morgan asked his mentor, his voice still hushed.

“Do you?”

“I didn’t, and yet here they are,” Hotch chuckled at his response.

Morgan watched as you shifted, blinking vigorously a few times to clear the drowsiness from your eyes. Still barely conscious, your gaze locked with Derek’s. You flipped him off subtly with a sleepy smile, adjusting where your head was on the pillow you were sharing with Reid.

“You ok?” Spencer’s eyes were still closed, his raspy voice the only indication that he was remotely close to being awake. Morgan suspected that the doctor didn’t even realize he had spoken, and instead checked in with you out of habit. Your response, a ‘mhmm’ as your eyes fluttered closed, confirmed that the exchange was something you and Spencer probably wouldn’t even remember.

Derek didn’t need to be a profiler to know you shared moments like these frequently with Reid. It was tradition for you and Spencer to watch as many episodes of Doctor Who as possible once you finished working on a case and had caught up on sleep, leaving you well rested and buzzing with energy when you next went into the office “the daleks are way scarier than the cybermen, I’d rather fight 100 cybermen than one dalek.” It would be dumb for anyone to assume the two of you went to your separate apartments after traveling.

It would be dumb for anyone to assume that you spent much time apart at all, the whole team knew you and Spencer spent more time together than anyone else. What Derek wasn’t privy to was the private moments shared between you, such as your frequent trips out of the city to lay on the hood of your car and watch the stars. “This is how people get murdered, (y/n).” “Any unsub that even thinks about harming us is an idiot. Attacking two armed agents is a federal crime.” “You brought your gun?” “You didn’t? Now you’re just asking for a serial killer to pop out of those bushes, Spence.”

You, much like many others that worked in the BAU, were living proof that people could still be good and do good even with more than a lifetime of trauma. Morgan loved you the way he loved the rest of the team. You fit in with them as well, becoming family in a way not many outsiders could. Mostly, though, Derek loved that you brought out the best in Spencer. In their many years of working together Derek had not seen Spencer as content with his life until you were in it, and that was most important.

GALAXY MASTERLIST

[darkestdivinity]

FrankNub drabble where Nubbins is a zombie!

My friends and I in a discord chat came up with this idea and I decided to write a little bit for it! More to come, but please enjoy!

Franklin Stitches up Nubbins

When everything went to shit and Hell rose up to greet everyone with a slap on the ass, Franklin was terrified. Beyond terrified. He had barely gotten around without the dead walking the damn earth. The first thing that he had noticed was the smell. Half rotten corpses walking through the south Texas heat made the whole area smell like an elephant’s sweaty backside. The radio stations had so many suggestions; get to high ground, hide, pray. Some even suggested buying weapons, as if every home-grown Texan didn’t already own at least one firearm or good hunting knife.

In Franklin’s case, he had had a van full of young adults and crystals. That was, until they attempted to ‘hide’ at his grandfather’s old home. The new neighbors weren’t quite as welcoming to the group as they had all thought. It was one thing when the dead were coming up to eat your face off. It was a whole other can of worms when it was a family of cannibalistic farmers… and a half zombie that wouldn’t stop trying to follow Franklin.

What happened within the next few days was pretty much a blur of blood, guts, and Franklin losing a good portion of his ‘friends’. Yet, he couldn’t find it in himself to be upset. The wheelchair bound man may have had a handful of dead friends, but at least he had been taken in by the Sawyers with loving arms rather than hungry teeth. Franklin was sure they’d only done so because of the effect he had on Nubbins, who was probably the most conscious zombie in all of Texas. The rotten man had barely gotten out of Franklin’s lap the whole first official day of his stay with the Sawyers. The smell was just bearable enough if Franklin breathed through his mouth, but even then it took some getting used to.

What was a little harder to get used to was how careless Nubbins could be with his own body. He was constantly getting into messes and falling apart. The latest injury involved Bubba, a chainsaw, and a dare. Now, Franklin could handle clumsiness, but he wanted to scream when Bubba came in, carrying a laughing Nubbins in one arm, and his right leg in the other. The fool had gone and done it again. Seeing as Drayton was gone and Bubba’s hands were still shaking a bit too much, it was up to Franklin to stitch the giggling man back together.

This proved to be a difficult task. He’d had Bubba set Nubbins down on the dinner table so he could at least try to see what had happened, but Nubbins kept squirming around, cracking jokes, laughing, and doing anything in his power to make this the hardest task on earth. Franklin had only just gotten the fishing line through the needle when Nubbins nearly kicked it right out of his hand while going over the wild story of why his leg was detached in the first place.

“See, Chop said I-I-I couldn’t do it, but I s-sure showed him! Now he’s gotta- g-gotta do my chores all whee-week!” Nubbins burst into laughter again. Franklin was getting pretty annoyed. He had grown a soft spot for the lithe, disgusting man, against his own better judgement. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to tear his head off sometimes (metaphorically, of course, even if he could do it literally).

“Now, just hold still!” Franklin snapped, pushing down Nubbins nubbed leg with his whole weight, the severed limb sitting in his lap. “Just how am I s’posed to get this back on if you won’t stop movin’ around?” His voice came out as almost a whine. He’d had to quiet down some after yelling like he had, especially when he saw the sour, pouting expression on Nubbin’s face. That decaying grin came back after he heard the almost apologetic sound of Franklin’s tone, which filled Franklin with some degree of relief.

At least he’d stopped wiggling as much. This was still Nubbin’s, though, so Franklin had to lean on his lap to hold him down throughout the process. It made it far more difficult than it had to be, since now he just had one hand to both stitch and hold the leg in place. Every wiggle from the zombified man on the table threatened to throw the limb onto the floor, which would cause a different mess of problems. It was almost therapeutic, after the first few stitches, so long as he didn’t think about exactly what he was doing. The needle was sharp enough to slide through one half of Nubbin’s thigh and hook into the meat of the other without a problem. It didn’t take long for Franklin to get a slow, steady rhythm going. In and out, tug, in and out, tug… Before long, he was done. He’d had to catch himself from biting the fishing line off, instead grabbing the small pair of scissors they kept in the tackle box to snip the line. The job was messy to say the least. The stitches were uneven and Nubbin’s leg looked just a bit lopsided, but he would be able to walk on it all the same.

Franklin’s calloused fingers ran along the seam of the laceration. He told himself that it was to check the firmness of the stitches, but it was his morbid fascination with the other man. How could someone already dead heal the way he did? And how did he manage to keep relatively sane after getting bit? And how did-

His thoughts were cut short when he felt two thin hands caressing his curled hair. A little nose resting on his scalp. Franklin froze. It was still a mystery to him just how to react to this kind of affection. He’d hardly gotten this kind of thing from a girl, let alone a man.

“You smell clean.” Nubbins said, moving back with a wide, cracked lip grin before he hopped off the table, testing out his re-stitched leg. The wobble in his walk worried Franklin, but those thoughts were short-lived when once again, he had a lap full of the skinny, stinking man. An arm wrapped around the back of his neck and his face was assaulted with kisses, and maybe the occasional lick. No one said Nubbins exactly knew how to give affection either. That was okay. In death and in life, these two would surely figure it all out in their own twisted way.

[mor-beck-more-problems]

Breaking Bonds || Morgan & Bea

TIMING: Current

PARTIES: @beatrice-blaze & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Bea invites Morgan over to share a new discovery. The world will not consent to be fixed, but somebody has to try.

CONTAINS: references to Bea’s, Morgan’s, and Adam’s deaths

There were not many people in this world who understood life and death in the same manner Bea did. They may never have been close before either of their deaths, but after, Morgan and Bea were implicitly connected. This connection made Morgan the clearest person to go to about what Bea had found through her research. The kettle let out a shrill cry for attention as the witch finished lining up the tomes she had flagged for this discussion. It was good timing that Bea’s bracelet informed her that Morgan had crossed into the Vural’s property as she began steeping the tea. She went to the porch with a smile, Dia weaving between her legs as she waited for Morgan. “The tea should be ready soon! I hope you don’t mind that I tried to find something you’d like to eat, though I wasn’t completely sure what would be palatable,” She told the zombie, thinking of the container of meat that she had waiting for Morgan, if she wanted it.

It was no small relief to visit Bea at her place. Morgan didn't know her as well as she did Luce and Nell, but she had an ease with Bea that she couldn’t have with the others either. They had died and come back around the same time, and they were both determined to have a whole life as their altered selves. As she came up to the porch to meet her friend, she sighed and let that ease pull away some of the tension her body carried.

“I don’t mind,” she said, smiling with gratitude. “I will try any and everything you have prepared. I literally can’t get food poisoning, so there’s not much to lose. And thanks for having me over. I want to hear all about New York and Felix and whatever else people who haven’t seen each other in a while swap. But uh, you said there was something you wanted to talk about, right?”

Small talk, Bea had almost forgotten that she should be engaging in small talk because she was so excited by what she had found. “Oh yes! I need to hear all about what you’ve been doing too, I’m sure things have been very exciting over here.” And she did, just like she wanted to see how Morgan was, especially since Morgan was taking care of so many people at the moment. Still, that could wait until after.

Bea invited Morgan in, before walking over to the table and lightly touching a book. “But, first, you should see what I found in here,” She couldn’t help the excited tilt her voice took. Flipping open to the first tab in the book she pointed to a line and read,“‘I have found that some of the new undead can be controlled, tamed if the right-hand guides them.’ The wording is awful, but doesn’t that read like I could help people who are struggling with this? You were the first person who seemed right to call about this.”

“Oh, you know,” Morgan said dismissively. “Been better, been worse. Still kind of a mess. But as long as we have each other, or as much of each other as we can, and if we can keep trying to make hope…” She smiled, weighed down by every terrible thing that had happened over the past month, though no less genuine for it. “We have to get to ‘okay’ eventually, right?”

She followed Bea in eagerly. Distractions were good, learning and projects were better. If she was moving toward something, she might still be able to make something better, or at least be better. She came over to the book and looked at the words. Controlled and tamed were two different things, but maybe this meant that there was an under-utilized conditioning process. Use magic at first to mitigate the damage and get them used to things, Let them choose the right thing for themselves later. “With--by ‘this’ you mean undead hunger cravings, right? Like, if I lost myself in front of a dead body, or a vampire was trying to stay off people. Do you think…” Her hand went to her lips as she thought of Ashley the zombie last year and Nico Jemisin in the thrift store. She shouldn’t get too excited, she shouldn’t brew hope over just a stray phrase and an untested experiment. She shouldn’t, she shouldn’t. And yet. “How far have you gotten on this? This could be…it could save so many people.”

A small, sad smile took Bea’s lips as Morgan spoke. She knew that hope as well as she knew her shadows. Before all of this, the necromancer had never had to worry about being okay, she had simply trusted in the universe to balance itself again. Being hit with hardship after hardship had created that doubt in the world’s ability to allow her to have a break. “We’ll be okay eventually, Morgan,” She said softly, “We’ll be able to create our own okay, you’re strong enough for that.” Anyone who had survived what Morgan had already was more than capable of bending the world to her whims.

She nodded eagerly, “That’s what I would intend to find out at the very least. I’d like to think that the word ‘tamed’ would imply that, though I do hate the implication that the undead needs to be tamed.” She had found herself drawn to the power of necromancy at the beginning, the ability to twist death itself to what she wanted. Now, though, after experiencing that power, she had found something softer, something that could change lives, save them. That part of herself she felt had left in death was returning, the part that could help and care for others without asking what they could do for her. She could grant people some form of comfort again, she could help facilitate something beautiful from a hardship. “I’ve marked every mention I’ve found of it, but there’s not much I’ve seen. I think we can write something together on this, we can find a way to get this information out there to help others.”

A piece of Morgan’s heart unclenched at Bea’s reassuring words. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding something in, but she was swallowing tears and so loose in her bones she felt like she might fall over. It had been a while since someone had tried to comfort her, and even longer when she was able to accept their gift without any guilt. Morgan smiled, lips quivering, and whispered, “thank you,” before putting her attention back on the main subject.

“What would you need? In terms of resources or experiments?” Morgan asked. She was self-conscious enough about her now-constant discoloring at all times, but as she considered the possibilities, she felt the hollowness of her stomach too. Morgan shouldn’t be this excited for Bea’s idea. Fuck Odell, and fuck her hold on this cursed town. “Would it...I mean, you’re the expert, so you would know whether it’s safe or too dangerous if you...tested it on me?” She met Bea’s eyes with trepidation. “I’m not high risk or anything, obviously, and a year does a lot for a girl’s impulse control around viscera, but...I wouldn’t say no to some extra help.”

There were many forms of strength that Bea has seen over the years, many of them represented by the women she surrounded herself with. Morgan, she found, had one of the softest forms she had seen yet, but that did not mean she didn’t respect it. If anything, it proved to Bea that she could be strong without violence and anger. Her sisters, for as strong as they were, often hurt themselves from it. Luce with her anger, an all too powerful storm that untethered her, but kept others aware of who they were dealing with. Nell with her fierce strikes, hunting beasts and controlling demons that left her all too vulnerable to the world’s evil. Bea couldn’t always be like them, but she could be softer, she could adopt some of Morgan and create her own brand of strength that did not always mean striking first.

“Well, we’d need an area far from anyone else just in case something went wrong.” Bea wouldn’t risk doing it at her home when her sisters were so close by. She looked at Morgan for a long moment, she trusted the zombie, but it put Morgan in a hard situation if something were to happen. “We can try it on you, but I would want other people there, just in case. Who would you feel comfortable with helping?” Bea had her own list of who they could call, but Morgan was the one being controlled. She was certainly in a much more vulnerable spot. “I think we should start with small portions and then work our way up.” This would be a long process, but it would be worth it to explore the possibility.

“Well, there’s plenty of spots in the woods,” Morgan sighed. “If screaming moose can hide, so can we. Especially on the outskirts, near the border, I don’t think there’ll be anyone for miles.” She wasn’t that worried. White Crest liked to keep its secrets to itself as much as possible. But Bea’s second question was another beast. Deirdre came to her mind briefly, but her love had promised to never physically harm her on purpose and refused to be released. And then, Bea wouldn’t want to endanger her sisters after all they’d been through. Who did that leave? Mina, who barely spoke to her anymore?

At last, Morgan had to admit defeat. “I...don’t know. If you know someone or have ideas, I trust your judgement. You know about discretion as much as anyone, so. But, little bits at a time! That sounds good. Reasonable. It’ll, you know, probably come in handy some time. Even with someone like me.” Or especially, with how things stood at the moment. “You’re the one channeling big magic, so you should probably set the pace. I’ve got that infinite stamina going for me. So I...I can take it. Whatever might happen, I can take it. I want to, if it means having more control over myself.”

With everything, Bea had good and bad days. With the woods, she had bad far more often. She controlled her face as well as she could, only hesitating for a moment. “Let me pick the spot in the forest? I’ll find something in the outskirts for us.” She would pick somewhere far from the place it happened, where even on her bad day she could hold herself together. Her first thought would be to ask Leah to help, but that could be very dangerous for the phoenix. Her sisters weren’t an option. Maybe this wasn’t as easy as she had originally thought it would be. “I could see if Kaden was willing to help.” She trusted him to behave with Morgan, but she had no idea if they were on good terms anymore. “If you are feeling comfortable with that.” That was a good point, Bea had no idea how much energy this was going to take. If it was anything like the other necromancy magic she had done, she was going to need to work her way up. “We’ll go slow, there’s no need to rush what’s going to happen. Especially as we need to get more people on board to help.”

“Of course,” Morgan said. To her shame, she only remembered how much the woods had taken from Bea when she saw the look on the woman’s face. Morgan, for her part, never lingered on the part of main street where she’d felt the sun on her back for the last time, and ice cream trucks made her feel sick and bitter. But these were small things, specific. As much as the spot where Bea died was cursed ground, for all Morgan knew, every dark cluster of trees held the shadow of her trauma. Too late now.

Morgan considered Kaden. She didn’t want him to know she was struggling. She didn’t know how much of his fear and disappointment she could bear. And would he feel guilty for helping? Would he doubt himself? Or feel as though he were betraying himself? But a hunter was a clear and obvious choice, for Bea’s safety as well as Morgan’s own. And the only other hunter Morgan trusted was dead. “It makes sense. If you think he would, and that he wouldn’t...feel wrong or bad about it, yeah. That sounds like a good idea. And you’re right about needing others, strong muscle-y others probably, but don’t know who else is left.” She met Bea’s eyes slowly, knowingly, and ached as Adam’s loss stung once again. She cleared her throat and let the spectre of his memory pass. “Later, when we’ve got the basics down, I’ll be of more help. I’ve got lots of fresh experience with my muscle strength, and fighting off people, living and undead. But, slow and steady first.” With difficulty, she summoned a smile. “Who’d have figured it would take two people like us to make a new magic discovery?”

Oh, Bea thought, Of course Morgan knows. A fragile, brittle smile made its way onto her face. As the days went on, as his loss compounded, the closer she felt to slipping away. She was teetering on a precipice, close to falling over the edge of understanding grief as other people had. Her understanding before had been abstracted at best, a twisted and strange version of an emotion that everyone around her seemed to understand better than she did. A necromancer who had faced death, danced with her, but did not comprehend her affects seemed like an oxymoron. The room was spinning, twisting around her as she tried to focus on Morgan’s words. “Oh, I don’t know it makes sense, doesn’t it?” She replied weakly, “We like pushing and figuring stuff out. We’re fixers.” Fixers in a world that could not be fixed, would not consent to be fixed. Adam had been a fixer too, it was why he was gone.

“Fixers, huh,” Morgan repeated, her own smile turning sad as well. She didn’t think of that word often except in terms of her own shame and desperation. She broke something, therefore she had to fix it. But to hear Bea say it, they were doing something better than hastily atoning; they were solving the world. Not all of it, because no one could do that. But little hurts, difficulties, problems. They knew how to seal cracks in people’s hearts and put in new supports where old ones had snapped. And it didn’t have to mean that any of it was their fault or their responsibility. Just that they happened to know how. They happened to have the strength to try. And when everything broke all over again, they would fix it again. On and on.

The future stretched out in her mind’s eye, a line of patch jobs into centuries. Nothing holding or staying for long. She wondered if Adam had ever seen the future that way, and if he ever let himself dream of a green field and a quiet existence where the only things that needed fixing were fence posts and kitchen appliances, as she often did. She didn’t know which answer was sadder.

“I guess we are,” she said quietly. “I guess somebody has to be.”

[howtowhumpyourhiccup]

Whumptober Day 4: Suck It Up

Summary: Written for Whumptober Day 4. Takes place in my Httyd Zombie AU. Main fic to follow soon. The Dragon Riders exist even in a modern post-apocalyptic world and so the Dragon Hunters. When a pair get their hands on Hiccup, they attempt to do away with him in a rather slow manner.

Rating: Teen and up

Characters: Hiccup, Toothless, Astrid, Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruffnut, Hookfang

Pairing: None

Words: 2 071

Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon

Prompt: Buried alive

Whumpee: Hiccup

Author’s Notes: I think this is the first prompt I finished for Whumptober and I've been so excited to share this one.

Written for the prompt: Buried alive.

Constructive criticism is appreciated!

Enjoy!

Ao3

----------------------------------------------------------------------

His head pounding and the metal taste of blood on his tongue, that is what Hiccup wakes up to. That and the dusty smell of old wood mixed with dirt. Neither of those three are all that pleasant on their own, let alone mixed together in such a way and all Hiccup can do is groan in displeasure at this sensory experience.

He attempts to bring a hand up to his forehead to hold his head, but finds it blocked by the wood that he's smelling. His hand thunks against it painfully, without a doubt chafing the skin on his knuckles and fingers.

It's right in front of him for some reason and it's a struggle to bring his hand up and feel the drying blood staining one side of his face.

A head wound. He's had so many by now that he can just tell. He hopes he hasn't been out for too long or he might be in more trouble than he can afford.

With this sudden resurfacing to the land of the conscious, his groaning is met by muffled chuckling and something being dropped with a scrambled thud on something hollow. Like dirt being shoveled.

It isn't until it happens a second and a third time that he realizes that this sound is much too close for comfort and specks of dust fall on his face that he realizes that dirt is being dropped on him.

"He-hey! What's-" He coughs, turning to not get lungfuls of dust only to find that this space is too small for him to even properly turn.

Opening his eyes, or trying to with all that dirt, he sees old wooden planks with the occasional mistreated spider's web in front of him. A quick look provides him with no comfort and he finds he's surrounded by these planks. He swiftly realizes the position that he's in.

He's being buried alive.

"Oh no... Oh no, no, no, no, no, no!" He repeats it over and over again, coughing more than once with all the grime falling between the teeny tiny cracks between the uneven boards.

Those cracks are the only reason he can even see as slivers of moonlight can still wiggle their way inside.

The chuckling from outside comes again and two people are talking about something he can't quite understand. He doesn't recognize the voices either, but remembering the predicament he'd been in before he blacked out gives him all the answers he needs.

Dragon Hunters. Not Viggo's men, not anymore, not since Krogan took over. But though their master has changed, their hatred for the Dragon Riders has not. They've managed to get their hands on him and now they are trying to dispose of him in an utmost terrible way.

There's no reasoning with them, not with these people. So all Hiccup can do is try to break free.

There is very little he can do. A panic causes him to slam his fists on the boards, he kicks them until his toes hurt, and almost too late does he see the nails poking out of some of them. Clearly they'd torn down some aged rickety whatever to quickly put a poorly made coffin together. No care had been put in removing unnecessary nails.

One of the nails scrape against a pinky finger and the burning causes his hand to start trembling. He's glad he noticed the nails before he impaled his fist on it, but that scrape is still worrying. His skin broke just enough to bleed and the last thing he needs is to catch tetanus.

But he can't let those concerns stop him. He needs to get out of this coffin before he's been completely buried and he can't get out anymore.

They can hear him struggle and it's reason for humor amongst the Hunters burying him. They find his growing panic hilarious. Every pounding of his fist on the top of the coffin in the hopes of breaking through the wood, of dislocating a board just enough to tear it away, it brings forth new chuckles and he can imagine the smug smirks on their faces. The sound of his struggling must be like music to their ears.

Hiccup coughs again, tasting the dirt and the falling webs on his tongue and gags. What little light there is in this death trap is being taken from him as more and more ground is shoveled on his coffin. His heart is racing.

His fists and kicks are doing nothing. Besides a scrape, he can't muster up the strength required to do any real damage even to himself in such a small space. And he can't turn in some vain attempt to push with his shoulders or back.

"Bud! BUD! TOOTHLESS!" So Hiccup shouts at the top of his lungs as his list of options is depleted much too quickly. He's hoping beyond hope that his Night Fury's exceptional hearing will pick up on his calls.

He should be conserving his air and just hope that his Dragon Riders will find him in time. They should know by now that he's missing, they rarely separate for long as it is. They should know he's missing and know that this means he's in trouble.

"GUYS!" He shouts and hears his voice reverberating off the walls surrounding him and make his eardrums protest. It does his headache little favors as well as his growing frantic need to get out as well as the steady loss of air.

And then the last of his light is stolen, that little bit of airflow is cut off, when they finish covering the top of his coffin entirely with loose dirt.

How long will it take them to finish leveling this unmarked grave they've thrown him in? How long until they leave? How long until his air runs out? Surprisingly enough, he never thought to research for how long you can breathe when you're buried alive before the Outbreak.

"Please, please find me." He pleads for no one to hear.

Hiccup grabs fistfuls of his shirt, attempting to calm his breathing even as the gravity of his predicament threatens to suffocate the life out of him. It takes him everything not to hyperventilate. He can feel tears welling up, can feel the lump in the throat and he holds his breath for a full three seconds before he dares to breathe out.

His effort to keep his emotions in check is almost in vain, and tears do wet his face before he can feel the need to cry slowly ebb away, forcing that overwhelming emotion to back down.

He's been doing this for too long to let something like this break his control over himself, the control he's been so carefully protecting and crafting this entire time.

Though getting buried alive is certainly a first for him.

'Please find me. Someone, please find me. Please, please, please. Please, Toothless. Astrid.' He has to think his pleas as saying them will only waste what precious air he has left for now.

It's what his Dragon Riders have been counting on for the past three years and a half. His level head, his creativity, his ability to sometimes have control over whatever situation they find themselves in this time. He can't lose that.

They count on him. They count on him, he just has to remember that and hold onto that fact.

Attempting to imagine their fear, them realizing that they can't rely on their leader, he wants to use the discomforting thought of his loved ones being afraid to keep himself in check.

It's working.

They need him and that means he can't die. He just has to tell himself that.

The sweating and trembling of his body, his heart racing, his headache's pounding worsening aren't signs that he's failing. And neither is the near bruising grip on his arms or the nearly dried tears returning with a vengeance.

His squeezes his eyes shut, they streak down his temple.

"C'mon, Bud. C'mon." They leave as whispers as he can feel these cramped walls closing in on him, he can't keep them down. It's getting harder and harder to breathe and he's not sure if it's because of his panicking or because his air is already running out.

How long has it been?  He hasn't owned a watch or a digital clock, like a phone, in such a long time. He hasn't missed a mobile device or even thought about having one since he's lost his months after Outbreak Day after it had run out of battery long before that. But the light would've been appreciated. He has a lighter, but a flame, even as little as that one, will only eat away at what little oxygen still present.

Oh, where is his trusty flashlight? Where is it?

"C'mon, guys. C'mon..."

It's just as he's starting to lose hope and his panic is nearing a point of no return that the sound of hurried shuffling finally reaches his ears. The layers of dirt above his coffin are quickly being removed.

He dares to open his eyes, but his bruising grip or his hurried breathing don't let up. He has to blink a couple of times as more dust falls, but then the layers go and he hears voices. He recognizes them instantly and they become clearer and clearer.

It's them. They found him!

"There! There, I can see wood!" He can hear Tuffnut shouting, immediately followed by impatient whining and claws clawing away the last layers to then scratch at the box itself.

"Toothless?" Hiccup asks and the slivers of moonlight returns to him.

"Hiccup? Hiccup, can you hear me? We're here!" And that's Astrid. He can just barely hear her over the clawing, but that's definitely her.

His panic doesn't leave. It isn't until Toothless manages to grab hold of the lid and rips it open that light and air wash over him like a rampant wave crashing on a rocky cliffside.

His Night Fury is the first one he sees.

"Bud," He whispers.

The fresh air hits him like a truck and Hiccup inhales as much of it as he can. Toothless lets out a pained moan and smashes their faces together in his want to touch his human, to feel his warmth and his presence, to be comforted by the fact that he's still alive and they got to him in time.

Their cheeks pressed together, Hiccup holds his dragon's cheeks to keep him close. His hands are still shivering and he has to suppress the sobs of relief.

"Toothless, how about we get him out of there?" Astrid suggests, laying a hand on his shoulder, and the Night Fury reluctantly moves out of the way.

Once they can, the Riders grab him and swiftly haul him out of his would-be grave. Fishlegs and Snotlout each grab an arm to pull on.

Out of the box and into the open air, Hiccup stands on his feet only to find his legs too wobbly. So they lower him down onto the ground and Toothless is by his side again. Astrid kneels at his one available side and dusts him off.

"Are you okay? We got worried when you didn't return from your supply run and..."

"We were expecting to find you bleeding out or in trouble or something. Never would've thought they would bury you alive." Ruffnut speaks up, her hand holding her other arm.

The Dragon Riders are gathered around him, both the humans and the dragons. Hookfang blows some grime out of his hair.

"Yeah, I'm happy to be out, too." Hiccup tells him, scratching the Nightmare's chin.

"Well, we're happy too, but can you answer my question now? Are you okay?" Astrid repeats her question as Hiccup has neglected to answer it before.

He looks at her for a moment and nods.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine, I just-I just need a moment." He tells her, though it is the opposite of how he actually feels.

He feels awful. Though he's out now, he's weak with fear. This won't be an experience he'll just get to forget like some others.

But he'll just have to suck it up.

That's what he's been doing for well over the past three years, just sucking it up and accept that this is his reality now. No harm in repressing this bad experience as well.

[aion-rsa]

The Suicide Squad Ending Explained

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This article contains major The Suicide Squad spoilers. But you could tell that from the headline. We have a spoiler-free review here.

Well done! You’ve survived The Suicide Squad! 

James Gunn’s stunning supervillain flick is a brutal ride through DC’s most deep cut characters and now you want to dig deep into what happened. So we’re here to break down that shocking ending, where we leave our heroes, and what’s next for the Suicide Squad in the DCEU. Well, those of them who survived, at least…

The standalone (sort of sequel) movie centers around the Suicide Squad on a top secret mission. So off they go to Corto Maltese. 

We begin with two crews but only one actually survives the opening bloodbath. Those lucky few are led by Bloodsport (Idris Elba) and the crew consists of Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), Polka-Dot Man (David Dastmalchian), Nanaue/King Shark (Steve Agee/Sylvester Stallone), and Peacemaker (John Cena). 

Later, they pick up Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) and Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie), who both somehow manage to survive the trap set by Amanda Waller. After much scheming and fighting, the team kidnaps the Thinker (Peter Capaldi) and make it to Jotunheim, the Nazi prison where the Corto Maltese government have been keeping Project Starfish A.K.A. Starro the Conqueror. But when they get there things begin to spiral out of control and that’s where we’ll begin…

Why Were Peacemaker and Rick Flagg Fighting?

While this is a movie filled with wild unexpected moments, the most shocking–to some viewers–twist comes when the truth about Project Starfish is revealed. And we’re not talking about the fact that it’s actually a giant starfish-like alien called Starro. 

No, the real horror here is that Project Starfish is and has always been run by the US government. Yep, it’s the US who have been testing on and torturing innocent humans, and the Squad wasn’t sent to stop Starro but were in fact there to destroy Jotunheim so that the US government and Amanda Waller’s involvement were kept under wraps. 

It’s not something that Rick Flag can stomach as he states, “I joined to serve my country not to be its puppet.” It’s an honorable moment that finally makes Flag a true hero, but it’s short lived. Amanda Waller always has a backup plan and here that plan wears red, white, blue, and a shiny helmet. 

Gunn’s searing action flick has a lot to say about war, America, and the nature of disposability, and Peacemaker is one of its most brutal statements. He’s a man who believes he “loves peace” but it “doesn’t matter how many people I have to kill to achieve it.” That in itself is the oxymoron of imperialism. 

In that way, Peacemaker and Flag represent two different versions of the patriotic ideal. Rick is the idealistic man who wants to do the right thing in the hopes of making his country live up to what he thinks it can be. But Peacemaker wants to protect his country no matter what horrific crimes they’ve committed. That’s why he agreed to be a mole for Waller within the Squad and why he decides to kill Flag when his former teammate wants to leak the records of America’s Project Starfish to the press. 

Sadly for us and Rick, Peacemaker succeeds, leaving Flag dead and the American ideal shattered.

Bloodsport Makes a Choice

With Peacemaker planning to stop the truth about Jotunheim from coming out at any cost, his next target is Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior). After the explosions incapacitate them, the brilliant young heroine grabs the disk with the damning records, leading Peacemaker to hunt her down. 

Just when it seems like he’s going to add another Squad member to his kill count, we skip backwards eight minutes. Here we see that Bloodsport, King Shark, Polka-Dot Man, Harley, and Milton have been setting the charges, which end up going off too soon. As they start to explode (and after the tragic death of Milton), Bloodsport ends up falling through the building on a large slab of concrete, landing in front of Peacemaker as he’s about to kill Ratcatcher 2. 

As he draws his weapon, Peacemaker does the same, leading to a fatal shootout. And in a hilarious callback to an earlier gag when Peacemaker claimed he could shoot better than Bloodsport thanks to smaller bullets which would shoot through his enemies’ bullets, Bloodsport beats him using exactly that tactic, apparently killing Peacemaker (more on that in a moment) and saving Ratcatcher 2. 

It’s a key moment for Bloodsport, who made a promise to his surrogate daughter that he’d get her out alive, and it’s the perfect way to wrap up Bloodsport’s arc in the film, from estranged father of a young daughter to a man trying his best to form more connections under difficult situations. Yay for the world’s best bad dad! 

The Suicide Squad Takes a Stand 

Now that Jotunheim is destroyed, Waller calls the remaining Squad–Bloodsport, Polka-Dot Man, Harley, King Shark, and Ratcatcher 2–telling them they have to go back to the US. But there’s one big problem: Starro is now freed and the giant alien is on a rampage. 

After decades of being tortured by Gaius Grieves A.K.A. the Thinker, Starro believes the city belongs to them and starts shooting out mini Starros in order to turn the population into mindless zombies. Starro is able to create countless self-replicating copies of itself, so the carnage being wreaked on Corto Maltese is probably only a preview of how quickly Starro could spread their influence throughout the entire world if left unchecked. 

For a moment it seems like the Squad will head back into Waller’s cold and cruel arms, leaving the people of Corto Maltese to their gruesome fate. But at the last moment Bloodsport chooses to go back and is soon joined by the rest of his crew. It’s a massively powerful moment and one that transcends even our core team as before Waller can blow their heads up her colleagues knock her out and begin to help the Squad on their unauthorized but massively heroic new mission to stop Starro and save Corto Maltese.

It’s one of several moments in the film that drives home the harder edges of Amanda Waller, who is played as close to a villain in this film as someone like Thinker or Corto Maltese dictator Silvio Luna.  

The Final Fate of Polka-Dot Man

David Dastmachlian’s performance as Abner Krill AKA Polka-Dot Man is one of the many stunning turns that the film has to offer. And while we’d love to say that the villain turned hero gets a happily ever after that’s not the case. In fact Polka-Dot Man gets an ending as tragic as his origin. After being tortured by his mother who infected him with a parasitic alien virus in the hopes of making him a superhero he became the villain known as Polka-Dot Man.

It’s not a conscious choice but more of a compulsion as he has to expel his deadly polka dot pustules or he’ll die. It’s the grossest power in a movie full of gross powers but as the crew face down Starro Abner finally comes into his superheroic own. 

As Bloodsport becomes the leader Waller always knew he could be, he uses Abner’s fear of his mother and the hallucinations he has of her to help him channel his powers into destroying Starro. Bloodshot yells “It’s your mother” and we see Starro through Abner’s eyes, the creature is transformed into a kaiju-sized version of the woman who ruined his life. His polka dots end up destroying one of Starro’s legs, and Abner celebrates screaming “I’m a real superhero!”

Just as Polka-Dot Man realizes his truly heroic nature, he’s killed by another of Starro’s limbs, crushed but finally happy in his last moments. It’s a fittingly bittersweet end for the unexpected and relatablely depressed hero.

The Final Fate of Starro 

Fighting a huge roaming starfish is no easy feat. It takes everything the Squad has to take down the monstrous creature, including that tragic sacrifice of Polka-Dot Man. When they catch up with Starro in the city, Harley takes the high ground using Javelin’s javelin to burst through Starro’s eye as Bloodsport and Ratcatcher 2 try to incapacitate the huge beast. 

As Harley swims around in Starro’s bloody eye she’s joined by thousands of rats called by Ratcatcher 2. The rodents swarm Starro, overcoming him as Ratcatcher 2 protects Bloodsport from his childhood fear come to life.

And with that, Starro is gone. 

Though Starro might have been a murderous alien kaiju by the end of the movie, they began life as a harmless creature floating through the stars, kidnapped by the American government. To kill him is a tragic but necessary act and one that cements the Squad as very much anti-heroes rather than the villains they began as. 

What’s Next for the Squad?

While we know that Peacemaker will get his own spinoff TV series on HBO Max (more on that below) it’s unclear what the rest of the crew will be doing after this. One thing is clear, though. They all have the freedom that they never thought they’d achieve. 

After killing Starro, Bloodsport blackmails Waller into letting him, Harley, Ratcatcher 2, and King Shark go. It means compromising Rick Flag’s final wish to reveal the truth of what Waller and the government did in Corto Maltese but it also allows Bloodsport and his crew to avoid returning to Belle Reve. It seems like the crew might stick together, especially in the case of Ratcatcher 2 and Bloodsport. 

Plus, once Flag’s friends find out that Peacemaker is still alive, they might have a score to settle. About that…

The Post Credits Scenes

The first of two post credits scenes is the big one. After we think that one good thing happened in this movie A.K.A. Peacemaker being killed by Bloodsport, Gunn has a shock for us. 

See, Peacemaker survived–to star in his upcoming HBO Max series–and Waller has sent two of her best to pick him up from his hospital bed where he’s recuperating in order to do nothing less than “save the fucking world.” After the brutal horrors that Peacemaker committed during the film, it seems strange that he’ll be taking a leading role in a TV series. But after the smart subversiveness of The Suicide Squad we’re cautiously optimistic. 

If you wait until the final moments of the credits once we’re done with all the good stuff like Special Thanks and celebrating all those amazing visual effects artists, then you’ll get to this gnarly and hilarious little stinger. 

If you throw your mind back to the beach-set murder fest at the beginning of the movie, the first character to apparently die is Weasel because no one checked whether ot not he could actually swim. It’s a sad and grotesque way to start the film, but there’s good news for anyone who loves the grody child-killing beast: he’s still alive. After all the drama of the past few days Weasel just popped back up and is totally and utterly alive. That means the people of Corto Maltese should probably watch out as there’s a murderous Weasel in their midst!

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The Suicide Squad is on HBO Max and in theaters now! 

The post The Suicide Squad Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[moonlit-jeno]

Love Sick

Chapter 3- Jeno

pairing: nct dream ‘00 line + reader

chapter warnings: very brief mentions of gore

words: 2.7k

summary:

“I just kinda thought you were joking around, y’know? But then my parents really didn’t come home, and the phone lines really aren’t back up.”

notes: this is kind of filler but also kind of necessary to determine oc’s relationship w the boys??

masterlist | prev | next

You’ve been listening attentively to Jaemin and Renjun for the past twenty minutes, your gaze darting from boy to boy as they explain the story as bluntly as possible. Jeno winces when Jaemin describes the things they’ve seen- he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget the brains splattering over his windshield- but you don’t even flinch. Honestly, Jeno can’t tell if you believe them or not.

“-and now we’re here. Sorry for breaking in and stuff, we did try to knock.” Jaemin finishes, running his hand through his hair anxiously. It’s silent for a bit as they wait for you to respond.

“So you saw the girl start seizing,” You finally say, eyes piercing straight into Jaemin’s soul. “And you just magically knew what was happening and bolted.” Jaemin nods slowly. Jeno can tell by the tone of your voice that you definitely don’t believe them. You stand up, walking over to where the food is spread out across the floor. A can of peas rolls towards them when you nudge it with your foot. “This seems like a lot of emergency food. Were you really shopping for peas?” Frustration builds up in Jeno’s gut, curling under his skin. You don’t believe them, and he can’t even blame you. It sounds insane. But it’s real, and it’s happening, and the worst part is that it’s not like they can prove it to you without going outside and showing you a real… well, whatever those things are.

“Well, no, but I was near the aisle with all that stuff in it and I just kind of grabbed it as I went.” Jaemin explains. “I wanted to be prepared.” “I dunno, man. I’ve seen a lot of weird shit, and my first thought has never been ‘whelp, guess it’s the zombie apocalypse’.” Your eyebrows are raised, head tilted to the side.

Jeno’s had enough. He’s tired, he’s scared, and he’s reached his breaking point. “Look, I don’t care what kind of weird shit you’ve seen. Have you ever seen someone bite a man’s nose clean off? Have you ever seen someone run full speed at a moving car and proceed to consciously bash their own head in? Hmm? You ever driven with blood and brains splattered across your windshield?” Donghyuck reaches out to tug on his hand and it’s only then that he realizes he’s standing. He keeps his eyes on you as he sits back down, forcing himself to relax. “I know it sounds stupid, but we aren’t fucking lying. I don’t know how else to prove it to you, unless you want to run outside and find a zombie.” His words hang in the air for a minute and he’s worried that he’s been too mean, has let his temper get the best of him. But then he realizes that the look in your eyes is calculating, and the way your eyes are roaming over him isn’t because you’re scared. You’re sizing him up.

“No, I don’t want to do that.” You say softly, picking up a box of cake mix. “But I do think that we should organize our food. Seems like we’re going to be here a while.” 

Jeno is utterly, completely confused. You have just pulled a complete one-eighty, going from disbelieving to fully supporting their story. All four of the boys exchange wide eyed glances, not sure what to do. Renjun eventually shrugs, standing up. “Good idea. Be careful what you give Donghyuck, though. He’ll probably eat it.”

Donghyuck whines in protest, swatting at Renjun’s thigh and missing by a foot He gets a bag of tortillas thrown at him, the same ones he had squashed in the cart. You move to the fridge, pulling everything out, only raising an eyebrow when you notice Jeno watching. 

“Gonna help? Or are you too worried about your nose?” It’s teasing, mocking his words from earlier. His jaw clicks and he feels his fists clenching, has to put conscious effort into calming himself down.

“My nose is fine.” He grumbles, taking a carton of strawberries from you and slamming them down much too aggressively. The plastic dents. You smirk.

Organizing everything only takes about thirty minutes, but Jeno is absolutely exhausted by the end of it. He lets himself melt into the softness of the mattress, limbs heavy. You’d given them a house tour- Jeno had argued that they’d already seen the house and you had just told him that they had, quite frankly, done a shit job of searching- and let them steal your brothers room for a bit. “Just until they come back.” You’d said, throwing them some clothes. “Also, you kind of reek.” Jeno had to bite back a snotty remark of “they’re not coming back”, because that’d be too mean even if he doesn’t like you. Also, he doesn’t know if they’re coming back or not, doesn’t really know much of anything. The so called ‘apocalypse’ could be over within days and he would have no clue.

His head is on Jaemin’s chest, and he’s forever thankful for the younger. Jeno’s been ranting for way too long about you, but the younger’s let him go on interrupted, playing with his hair to soothe him.

“Even the way she fucking looks at me is so- ugh, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like she thinks she’s better than us, like she knows something we don’t.” Jaemin, apparently, has had enough of Jeno’s bitching. “Jen, I know you’re scared and frustrated right now, but I think you’re reading too much into it. We did just break into her house, and a zombie apocalypse isn’t exactly a believable story. She’s probably just humoring us.”

“No, Jaem, you didn’t see the way she looks at me. It was so much more condescending than she looked at anyone else.” You’re actually nice to the rest of the boys, giggling at their jokes, not mocking and teasing them. You’d even gone as far as trading conspiracy theories with Renjun, not once laughing at him cruelly.

“She looks at you the same as everybody else, Jen.” Jaemin sounds exasperated. “I think you’re just looking for an outlet, here. You’re seeing your own frustrations in her.” Jeno’s quiet for a bit as he processes it. Jaemin’s probably right, but it’s easier to ignore it right now. Admitting that he’s wrong isn’t going to make him feel better. “She’s also like, strangely calm about everything. Like she was so skeptical and then she completely pulled a 180 on us. Doesn’t make sense.”

Jaemin shrugs and the motion of his chest moves Jeno’s head with it. “People process things differently. Also, she hasn’t seen anything that we have.”

He doesn’t respond to that.

Only three days pass and Jeno’s already managed to break something . The vase was kind of ugly, in his defense, but also, it was definitely expensive. He tries to say that he did her a favor but Jaemin smacks him on the back of the head and points out that it still belongs to you. With a roll of his eyes, Jeno sets off to find you.

Jeno doesn’t get a response when he calls your name, and you’re not in your bedroom when he checks. You’re not with Renjun and Donghyuck, either, and Jeno starts to mildly panic. Maybe you’d gone outside because you didn’t believe them and got eaten by zombies. Maybe the zombies broke in and they’re next. 

He’s saved from descending into full blown panic when he hears a noise coming from the bathroom. There’s still no response when he calls your name, but he’s at least pretty sure that you’re not dead. Preoccupied with figuring out how to tell you that he broke your expensive (ugly) vase, he doesn’t bother knocking. 

His mouth is open, words on the tip of his tongue, when he stops short. You’re crying, like full on sobbing, and Jeno definitely was not prepared to handle this.

Your forehead is pressed to the mirror, condensation forming on the glass and fogging your reflection. There’s quiet sobs leaving your mouth, your shoulders shaking with the force of them, and Jeno feels his heart drop to his stomach. His mouth feels dry and there are hot tears forming behind his eyes.

Jeno feels frozen, wanting to help but afraid to. He turns to leave but you spot him and he stiffens, caught. You freeze for a moment before wiping your eyes with the back of your hands and sniffing almost violently in a frantic attempt to compose yourself. You smile but it’s lopsided and looks more like a grimace.

“Are you alright?” You’re not, it’s obvious that you’re not, but he finds himself asking anyways because he just doesn’t know what to say.

You nod but the movement’s jerky. “Yeah. Yeah! No, I’m fine. Are you?” The first word comes out as a croak and you clear your throat before trying again.

A tear slips down your right eye and you wipe at it quickly, almost angrily, as if it’s betraying you by showing how sad you are. Jeno raises his eyebrows. “Are you sure? I mean, it’s fine if you’re not.”

Another tear slips out as you try to smile, followed by another, until there’s too many for you to try to wipe away. You try to nod but give up halfway through and end up shaking your head, breaking down completely. Jeno moves forward on instinct, arms held open, and you cling to him as if he’s your lifeline.

“I’m scared.” You sob, the words broken and small. “I’m so, so scared.”

Jeno feels so unbelievably guilty as he holds your shaking figure, feeling his shirt become damp with your tears. The sound of your sobs drill holes into his heart. He feels sick as he thinks about how quick to hate you he was, how quick he was to talk shit about you when he didn’t know anything about you.

He rubs your back soothingly, dropping his face down until your hair tickles his nose. There are tears pricking the back of his eyes, too, and he wills them not to fall. 

There’s a voice in the back of his head that sounds vaguely like Jaemin’s telling him that the bathroom is not the best place to have a breakdown. Jeno keeps his arms around you as he steps back, pulling you with him and successfully managing to usher you into your room. He lets go of you when he sits down, fully expecting you to sit down next to him. Nothing prepares him for you to climb into his lap and curl up against him. He pats your back gently and bounces his knee anxiously. All he can do is whisper that it’s going to be alright, that he’s got you. The words taste bitter on his tongue because he knows they’re probably lies.

You wear out eventually, the full body sobs simmering down to occasional hiccups. Your breathing evens out eventually, your head heavy against his chest. Jeno peaks down at you and finds your eyes closed.

He carefully moves you onto the bed, trying his damn hardest not to wake you up. You make a noise just as he’s pulling the covers over you and he freezes, relaxing when you don’t move again. Jeno finds himself lingering even though there’s no reason for him to be there anymore, not when you’re asleep. But he finds himself mesmerised by how peaceful and innocent you look right now. There are tear tracks on your cheek and he wipes at them with his thumb, hesitating for only a moment before pressing a kiss to your forehead. 

A hand reaches out to him just as he’s leaving, grazing the side of his leg. He turns to see you looking at him with bleary eyes, a pout on your face. Panic runs through him and he prays that you didn’t feel the kiss. He doesn’t even know why he did it.

“Stay?” It’s just one word, and he’s not even sure if it’s a question or a command, but he finds himself walking back to the bed. His plan is to sit on the edge and maybe let you hold his hand, but you frown at him before pushing him to lay down. You only seem to hesitate for a moment before laying back down next to him, tugging one of his arms around you. “Cuddle me.” Jeno huffs a laugh at your bossiness, complying with you because hey, you’ve been crying and yeah, it’s nice to hold someone. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep with his face pressed against the nape of your neck, but that’s just what happens.

He sure as hell doesn’t mean to make it a habit, but again, that’s just what happens. Jeno finds himself in your bed every night for the next week, his arms wrapped tightly around you, your body pressed tightly against his. It’s weird for sure, considering he’s A) never shared a bed with a girl before and B) neither of you discuss it, even though it’s definitely supposed to be weird to share a bed with a stranger. 

You don’t question it when Jeno shows up the next night, sitting hesitantly on the edge of your bed as he asks if you’re feeling better. He wonders if you can see through the thinly veiled excuse for him to hopefully hold you in his arms again. Sure, he definitely could have asked you when he saw you in the morning, or during lunch, or at any other part of the day. So sue him, he feels a little protective of you now, and it feels nice to share a bed with someone.

“Yeah, sorry you had to see that.” You try to laugh it off but it sounds hollow. “I just kinda thought you were joking around, y’know? But then my parents really didn’t come home, and the phone lines really aren’t back up, and it kinda just hit me at once. Um.” You laugh again but it sounds broken and your eyes are looking a little glassy. Jeno offers you a hug and you don’t hesitate before crawling into his arms, burying your head in his chest before pushing him to lay down. 

And he doesn’t question it when you tug him into your room the next night, an extra pair of clothes sitting on the desk. A feeling of satisfaction rises up in his chest that you chose him over the other three boys, but he tries to tamp it down.

Even Renjun didn’t say anything when he saw them one night, though he definitely gave Jeno a ‘what the fuck’ type of look. It’s the same look that all of the boys give him when they’re all huddled around the TV watching some movie from the 90s that you’d found the disk for. 

Hyuck, Renjun, and Jaemin are sprawled out on the couch. Donghyuck puts his head on Renjun’s lap and the elder attempts to choke him, laughing and stroking his hair when all Hyuck does is fake a moan. You and Jeno are curled together on the reclining chair, your head on his chest and his arms wrapped loosely around your waist. Jaemin had shot Jeno a curious glance earlier but didn’t say anything.

Jeno’s battling the urge to press another kiss to your forehead- this time when you’re wide awake and have the chance of feeling it- when Jaemin saves him. He’s off the couch- probably bored with the movie- and looking through one of the windows.

“Hey, you’ve got a pretty big backyard.” Jaemin points out, turning to call it over your shoulder. You hum. “What’s that big building out there?”

Your face is smashed into Jeno’s chest and he feels the vibrations when you speak. The words are muffled and barely comprehensible even to him, who’s the closest in proximity to you.

“What?”

“She said it’s a greenhouse.” Jeno responds. Jaemin raises his eyebrows again- seriously, twice in one day is too much- and Jeno shrugs in response.

Renjun pipes up this time. “You didn’t want to tell us earlier?”

You actually lift your head this time. “No? It’s not that interesting?”

Renjun stares at you like you’re dumb. Jeno’s been on the receiving end of it many times. “You’re right. It’s not like it’s a source of food or anything. Y’know, the thing that we’re probably gonna run out of soon. That thing that we kind of need to live?”

Your eyes widen in realization.

[bathtubjohnny]

Chapter 1: Rough draft (Edited once for spelling/grammar)

TW: Bloody noses, descriptions of a corpse, mild gore and swearing, spooky zombie lady, bad formatting, rushed writing

Note: Please give me your sweet sweet feedback. Oh how I crave honest and good-hearted criticism.

*Thanks to a handful of members from a group chat for convincing me to post this*

The forest was dense enough to blot out the sun, almost completely plunging the path in darkness. It didn’t bother Sydney though; he was too focused on the building at the end of it. It was a church, and he stood in front of it, staring up at the grey steeple protruding from what was left of the roof. It was a miracle that it was still standing. The walls had been scorched by fire, and the once-beautiful stained glass windows had melted into colourful, wax-like puddles. He could still smell smoke even though the church burned an impossibly long time ago. It never occurred to Sydney that the surrounding woods were completely untouched by the fire, as if it had never happened in the first place.

The inside was different as Sydney pushed the double doors open. He didn’t recognize the inside. It was more spacious than what he remembered, but like the forest, untouched by the blaze. Instead of red carpeting there was a wooden floor; instead of oil paintings depicting the trial of Jesus, tapestries with horrific, indescribable images decorated the walls. The interior had an ancient feel to it, making Sydney feel insignificant as he stood before the rows of pews. He could tell that it wasn’t a Catholic church anymore. It was a haven for a religion that existed long before the concept of Christianity.

Across from Sydney and past the pews was a stone table where the altar should have been. There was a white sheet covering something laying across it. As he padded down the aisle towards it, he could see symbols etched into the stone, characters he couldn’t recognize. The closer he got the louder his ears rang, his sinuses becoming so congested that soon fluid began leaking down his chin. It wasn’t until he reached the table and saw the bright red droplets fall onto the stark white sheet covering it that he realized his nose was bleeding.

Ignoring his instinct to wipe away the blood, Sydney reached for the edge of the sheet and pulled it back. Underneath was a girl, or at least the body of one. Her skin was ashen and waxy, a greenish-blue in colour. Small blisters had begun to form on her cheeks and forehead, as if she had been sunburnt recently. Even though they were closed, Sydney could tell that her eyes were sunken into her skull.

“Syd?”

Pulling the sheet down further, Sydney saw that the girl’s arms had been placed palms facing up, leaving the undersides of her forearms exposed. On both of them were deep gashes, starting from her wrists and ending in the crooks of her elbows. The rest of her had begun to decay, but her wounds appeared recent, oozing thicker, darker blood than what was dripping from Sydney’s nose.

“Syd, are you awake?”

The sound of her inhaling made Sydney’s attention turn sharply back to her face as her jaw creaked open, sucking in air. He stumbled away as her eyes, covered in a watery blue film, flew open. Her head turned towards him with a snap, sending him falling backwards in shock. He hit the floor hard as she sat up, bones creaking and popping as she threw the sheet off her bloated body-

“Mr.Patrick!”

Sydney bolted up from his desk as the shout tore through his dream, nearly sending him toppling to the floor. Mrs. Bray was sitting on her desk glaring directly at Sydney, arms folded. A snort of laughter to his left made him blush as he realized he’d dozed off...again. “Uh, sorry.” He mumbled, slowly sitting back down and trying to ignore the eyes on him. Although Mrs. Bray had a stern look in her eyes, Syd was somewhat comforted by the fact that she was obviously trying not to smile.

“I get that there’s ten minutes left, but let’s try to stay awake, alright?” She sighed. “To those of you who may have dozed off, I’m not repeating myself about the assignment. You can ask your group. Now,” She side-eyed the room. ‘Is there anyone who isn’t in a group of three yet?”

Syd sneaked a quick glance across the room over at his close friend Lizzie Abrams. She caught his eye and shrugged apologetically, motioning to two other girls sitting near her. Feeling his cheeks heat up, Syd averted his eyes, staring down at his desk in embarrassment.

“We don’t have a third person in our group.” The voice to Syd’s left spoke up, making him turn. It was a girl in a worn, blue and white baseball cap, someone who Sydney unfortunately recognized. Her name was Morette Woodward, better known as Mo, and Syd knew her as being the one who broke his nose during dodgeball back in fifth grade.

She had one elbow propped up on her desk and was leaning her head against her hand while picking at her braces with the other. When she caught Sydney’s eye, she flashed him a toothy smirk.

Mrs. Bray glanced between the two and shrugged. “Perfect, evens out the groups. Now,” she turned to address the rest of the class. “I’m giving the last couple minutes of class to organize your chapters, so use your time wisely. Remember your book and your portfolio should be in at least six sections!”

Portfolio? Sydney rubbed his eyes and groaned, wondering what else he’d missed. Falling asleep at random times wasn’t a problem before, but lately he'd been feeling lethargic and finding himself unable to keep his eyes open for long periods of time.

“Hey, scooch your butt over next to us so we can talk better.” Mo nodded at a tall boy sitting beside her. Sydney didn’t know who it was, but thought he looked familiar. “Yeah hold on,” he turned his chair to face them before leaning forward. “So… what’re we doing exactly?”

“Man, you were really out, huh?” The tall boy said, giving Sydney a sympathetic grin. “You were pretty twitchy too. Were you dreaming or something?”

Syd blinked. “‘Twitchy’? What do you mean?”

“Like...mumbling and tensing up a lot,” He clenched his fists in emphasis. “It was kinda creepy. What were you dreaming about?” He was already talking again before Syd could reply. “Oh shit, you don’t know me. Sorry, I’m Henry Kaminer.”

Kaminer. Sydney didn’t know Henry, but definitely recognized the last name. He remembered reading about the Kaminers in the newspaper, and made a mental note not to bring it up.

“Oh. I’m Sydney. I don’t really remember what I dreamed of.” Sydney lied. Henry laughed. “Yeah, I heard. Isn't Sydney a girl's...? Whatever, nice to meet you Sydney."

Morette handed Sydney a sheet of paper. “I had an uncle Sid so no, it's not 'a girl's name'. Anyway, literally all we have to do is split the book up to read for a week, then do some fun little questions and activities at the end of each week." She flipped through her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. "It's like the same stuff we did in grade 5, but with racism."

So she does remember. Sydney looked over his sheet of paper. "Oh."

"Yeah, it'll be easy." Morette leaned back in her chair and scrunched her nose up. "There's 31 chapters, but they're not too long. Let's just do five chapters each week and read whatever's left when we get to the last week." She tossed a stack of pink sticky notes at Sydney. "Use those as a bookmark."

Sydney looked down at the sticky notes. “...Thanks.”

___

“Hey Syd!”

Sydney paused at the front doors of the school just as he was about to walk through them. Henry hurried over to him, lime green beanie clutched in one hand, messenger bag in the other. The tall boy stopped beside him, huffing. “Man, I jumped down the stairs to catch up to you. Sorry, anyway. Walking home?”

Sydney pushed open the doors, nodding. “Yep. What about you?”

“Same here, but uh...which way are you going?”

“To the left.”

“Sweet! Mind if I tag along?”

“Sure,” As they made their way past groups of students waiting for their buses, they started walking down the sidewalk towards the nearby neighbourhoods. Syd, who barely made it to Henry’s elbows, couldn’t help but feel self-conscious with the giant beside him. “Do you live close to the school?” He asked. Henry shrugged. “Well, not really. To be honest I’m just tagging along to avoid my older brother, Marvin.” He chuckled a bit, but it sounded forced. “He’s got his driver’s licence and all, but…”

“But what?” Syd asked. Henry sighed. “He’s an asshole. I don’t feel like dealing with his anger issues today. So I’m here with you instead, little man. If that’s cool with you,”

“I’m not that little! But yeah, it’s cool.”

“Yeah you are, shortstack!!” Henry guffawed and rubbed the top of Sydney’s head with one hand. Syd swatted at his arm, but joined in the laughter. The two boys continued talking and joking around as they continued trekking down the street towards a crosswalk. The weather was warm for being early September, the sun beaming down on them helping to keep Sydney in high spirits.

The first week of school had been rough for him; being as timid as he was, making friends was hard enough in elementary school, never mind being in a new environment. For the longest time he’d considered Lizzie to be his closest friend, but they’d drifted apart over the summer, making him feel even more isolated than ever. As he listened to Henry telling him about his pet cat, Bowie, he felt a ray of hope that maybe he wouldn’t have to be so lonely after all.

“...he’s a really sweet boy, but he’s pretty ugly,” Henry was telling Syd. “He’s got this weird skin condition though so there’s like almost no hair on his body. I think it’s kinda hilarious, but every time he sits down his butthole sticks to our table.”

Syd snorted. “Gross.” He stopped at the edge of the crosswalk as the traffic light turned red, Henry following suit. “I don’t have any pets. My mom’s allergic to animal hair. It makes her sneeze.”

“Damn. No siblings either? Sounds quiet.” Henry leaned against a pole covered in colourful flyers and shielded his eyes from the sun with his hand. Sydney took a couple steps back so he was standing in Henry’s shadow and decided that tall people weren’t that bad. “Hey,” he said. “My house is just up ahead, what about you?”

Henry shrugged and shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Not me little man, I’m heading to the right but maybe I can come over and wreak havoc at your place sometime.” He flashed Sydney a grin and straightened up, a couple flyers sticking to him before fluttering to the ground. “Whoops, those seemed important.”

Syd rolled his eyes and laughed as Henry stooped down to scoop them off the sidewalk. “Nice going there, big guy.” He joked. “Careful you don’t bring the pole down too.” Henry didn’t respond; instead he slowly stood up, clutching a white flyer and staring down at it. Sydney felt his smile fade when he saw the dismayed expression on Henry’s face.

“...What is it?”

Henry swallowed hard before handing Sydney the poster. The white paper was crumpled and soft from being left outside, showing signs that it had been there a while. A photo of a man with a goofy grin and a buzzcut holding a balding cat was in the center. The words were in bright red at the top of the page as he read them.

MISSING PERSON

Jeremiah Lee Kaminer

Also goes by ‘Jerry’

19 years old, blue eyes, blonde, slim build, 6’0”

Last seen November 27th wearing a leather jacket, blue jeans, and brown hiking boots. If you have seen him or have any information of his whereabouts, please contact the Denville City Police.

“Henry,” Sydney glanced up from the page. Henry was fidgeting in place, avoiding making eye contact. “Is he...?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, staring at the ground. “It’s our oldest brother. He’s been missing for over a year. Went into a bar one night for a drink, and just…. Never came out.” A cold gust of wind sent the remaining flyers drifting down the sidewalk as they caught the breeze. Henry’s hands tightened around the poster, creasing the paper before he folded it into a square. “Whatever. I gotta go.” He turned and started heading down the street, leaving Sydney alone.

Syd watched him walk away, wondering whether he should call out or not. Deciding not to, Sydney went home, ignoring the icy loneliness that had begun to creep back.

[katreal-fic]

Since tumblr was weird about the last post and stuck the read more in the ask itself which is SILLY. This is what would have originally been Ersatz Abyss’ Prologue:

Obviously spoiler warnings. Pls do not read unless you know what happened to Dirk x3

Dirk > Reflect on Your Latest Bad Decision

Your name is Dirk Strider, and you are being reckless again.

You acknowledge that.

You don’t know what you are thinking, throwing yourself into battle after battle, long after your muscles have started to protest with fatigue, flirting with the jaws of pain and injury.

You acknowledge that too.

Maybe that’s the problem. You aren’t thinking at all.

Or more precisely, you don’t want to be thinking.

Not about Jake.

(You can’t stop thinking about Jake.)

Not about the fact that your messages are sitting unheeded and unresponded to in a Pesterchum window, banished to the lower right corner of your shades. Even the slightest focus on the application has it popping open, bidden by the transparently mid-level conscious desire of your too-busy brain, despite the very clear fact that you don’t want to be thinking about it at all.

You don’t want to see the sea of orange messages tumbling through the semi-transparent application like waves. See the green pip of his online status reminding you that he’s probably seen it, and isn’t answering them at all. At least you know he’s alive, even if Jane had to be the one to reassure you of that.

It’ll be two weeks tomorrow.

You want to scream out your frustration--your fear, because you love him and why would he visibly, pointedly, unmistakably ignore you like this if you love him??? If he loves you back???--but that wouldn’t be cool at all, so you just press your lips shut behind the blank visage of your rad, flame painted gas mask,and clench your jaw and pull your goddamn sword through the air, cleaving the monster--you don’t even know what kind of monster it is, you don’t care--in twain. It’s not even a neat cut, one half slouching back in on the other with a heavy squelch, joining a number of others in various states of dismemberment across the mossy green stone of this tomb.

Green.

Green.

Why the FUCK was everything here green?

Your auto-responder’s text isn’t green as he pointedly takes control of the application and shoos away the errant window, overriding your traitorous brain’s hyper-fixation and opening up a new chat.

(h)TT: You really need to stop thinking about this. (h)TT: It’s a most inconvenient failing of your organic processor, falling into such fickle human traps such as useless recursive and perhaps even reductive feelings. (h)TT: It makes me feel momentarily thankful for the fact that I am a computer, and thus immune to such failings. Perhaps you should look into making a conversion yourself. (h)TT: It seems you need to take a step back and ask yourself what Robojesus would do. (h)TT: What would Robojesus do, Dirk? (h)TT: The answer is decidedly not slaughter an entire tomb’s population to assuage your hurting feefees because your boyfriend is giving you the cold shoulder.

You ignore him.

(h)TT: Dirk, I’m 99.9% sure the zombie is actually dead again. For the hundredth time. You can put the sword away now.

You jerk away from the corpse with it’s pitiful grist yield and don’t answer. However, you don’t put the sword away as prompted. And he keeps prompting. You consider shutting your shades off entirely--him off entirely. You could do it. One thought. One thought and they’d be powered the fuck down in the middle of that red diatribe he’s going through, bleeding through the screen and into your eyeballs.

It’s just a thought however. Instead you forcibly override his control of the display--you are the primary user after all, that’s how you coded that shit--and close the text window.

Perhaps it isn’t fair, shutting him out like this, but you’re angry and hurting and you just want to work out your frustrations on the goddamn game constructs in peace.

The poisonous green kryptonian mists swirl around you as you move onto the next room, slithering over your skin like a cloud of tiny snakes, tugged along with your movements. Notification after notification stack up in the corner of your display. You mute that too, while your katana cleaves into the skull of some sort of reanimated reptilian creature, and just keep moving.

The next window to pop up is baby blue. Stopping you dead in your tracks.

Jane.

Oh.

Fuck.

Him.

You pretend you don’t see it. You don’t want to snap at Jane. It’s not her fault she’s being used in your auto-responder’s petty harassment campaign.

Then after a thought, you shut down Pesterchum entirely before he can drag Roxy into this. Going offline. Incommunicado outside of yourself, and the version of yourself living in your personal computing device. Actually, for that you cut off the network access to the shades entirely so he doesn’t try something else.

You might as well be seeing red--figuratively, not literally, you refuse to let him open a chat window--with the anger that seethes within you right now. At Jake. At him. It’s all the last couple weeks of frustration of an on again, off again, up and down roller coaster of a relationship that you wouldn’t allow yourself to feel for fear of driving Jake further away, all bubbling up and fizzing over, spilling out of you like a soda bottle filled with Jake-English shaped mentos.

You’ll have to get down on your knees and clean it up later. Put in the elbow grease and mop up the explosion of sticky, nasty, dirty coke. Get your thinkpan going about how sustainable this is. How whether the distinction of being Jake English’s number one bae is worth all this stress and the strain that has reduced your relationship to what feels like a step down from zero. But.

That’s later. For once in your life, in the isolation of these desecrated tombs in this ruined city, on a planet that belongs to you and no one else…

You allow yourself to feel.

If AR wants to stick his virtual nose in the middle of your carefully quarantined quest for catharsis then isn’t it the equivalence of someone putting their head in the metaphorical sendificator? You suppose he’s just following his nature. Meddling in other people’s business. Clinging. Unable to just let shit be.

Your nature. Orange text going on and on and on. Scrolling down an empty screen.

One last room. You’ve explored enough of these tombs over the last almost half-a-year of your life to know they come in a pattern. Some battle rooms, some puzzle rooms, and then finally a treasure room. The end. You won. Have yourself a fucking sticker for your trouble. You’ve already cleared this one before, so you don’t even have the satisfaction of a mini-boss or even a random lore tablet waiting for you. Not that you ever really cared about the history the game tried to create for this place in order to justify your potential character development on this planet.

It’s still the end. A hollow one, but an accomplishment nonetheless.

A sun-faced statue towers above a chest tucked into a nook at the far end of the room. Yaldabaoth. Your denizen. A giant-ass snake worm thing with a fucking sun for a head. So stupid. Was it named that after your internet browser, ganked off your machine by Sburb when it populated this stupid session, or was it all just one giant cosmic guffaw that everything matched like that?

Not that it matters, your goal is the exit teleportalizer in the small room behind the statue, so you can check this particular cluster of rooms and corridors off your map and move on to the next one. Find a new pack of mobs to take your frustration out on. Respawning tombs were the best, all the catharsis of mindless slaughter without having to worry about getting ambushed by a fucking mini-boss.

After four consecutive tomb runs you’d think you’d have beaten your pesky emotions out at least thrice over.

You’d much rather be numb.

A low battery system notification forces its way into the center of your screen, and you audibly sigh, that’s how exasperated you are. The extent to which your auto-responder is dead set to be a nuisance would be mind boggling if he wasn’t based on a literal clone of your own brain. Honestly, you’d be disappointed if he did stop trying.

You dismiss it. Another one pops up. Then another. And another. A whole fuckton of spam popups so thick you can barely see the room in front of you.

This is ridiculous.

You open a memo.

(d)TT: The shades don’t have a battery, dumbass. (h)TT: The room isn’t clear, dumbass.

Your eyes flick towards the treasure chest off to the left.

Spikes slam down over the door behind you, and in the distance, the door ahead, as you note that, yes, there are indeed chests tucked in the coils of the serpent statue. Closed and unlooted. Two of them in fact.

Okay. That’s fine. You’ll need to update your maps.

Or maybe you don’t, because once you kill this bitch it’ll be correct again.

You hear the growl behind you, the clink and crunch of bone and magic and metal as a giant armored skeleton spawns. You haven’t had to fight one of these since…

Since you last came through with Jake.

Fine.

You wanted a fucking fight anyway, didn’t you?

It’s big. At least twice as tall as you, and you’re not tiny by any stretch of the word. But big means slow and you can dance circles around slow. That giant hammer is useless, if you cared enough to you’d laugh in the face of those sluggishly stilted swings. Choreographed so obviously even Jake could have--

Your katana screeches against the mace’s handle, leaving you grinding your teeth in pain as it resounds in your ears, the impact threatening to yank it from your hands. But your grip is proper, the result of years of diligent study, and your strength is beyond human, so you just ignore that shit. You ignore the green fire in the skull’s eyes. The too sharp canines. The fist that comes around ready to smash your head like it’s a fucking grape.

You lose yourself in the fight. In the strain of muscles and the feel of noxious mist swirling around you. Jake doesn’t exist. It’s just you and the sword and ignore the fact that you’ve never taken one of these down alone before, because Jake always came tomb diving with you and it was something you two did together you did everything together this was so fucked up. There’s two chests. Your trials were made to be completed in a pair.

What did you do wrong?

You were too clingy that’s what. Too desperate. Too much and you sent him running, didn’t you?

You aren’t really angry at Jake. You’re angry at yourself, because you’re a self-centered bastard like that. Everything comes back to you.

An alarm blares through your speakers, breaking you free from your spiral of self pity and you flinch. Absorbing the message flashing red in the middle of your screen.

(h)On your left! Watch out for the second spawn!(h)

The unseen impact sends you into a wall.

No, not into the wall. Through the wall. You land with a crash, cracking stone. Screen going dark. No message. No red text. Just blood and glass that falls away as you reach up disbelieving, shards of metal and glass digging into skin so numb you soon can’t feel it. You can’t see, blood seeping into your eyes, leaking from your nose. You think you broke it. Maybe. The shades just.

Crumble.

Shattering to the ground in a sparking set of shrapnel, falling with sharp clinks that echo damningly in your ears,somehow able to be heard over the pounding of your heart, the organ responsible for pumping the blood leaking from deep gashes around your eyes where glass and metal fractured and you’re lucky you aren’t fucking blind but---

Two monsters groan and creak behind you.

You can’t stop.

You can’t--

You push yourself off magenta stone, leaving the remnants of your shades broken and useless on the raised slab and whirl around to face the pair of fucking skeleton guards that just fucking broke--killed--your--

…

…

...

The rest of the fight isn’t important.

What’s important is you survive. That your path leads you back to your makeshift workshop in your living room, glass and metal in your hands, trying desperately to pull shit back together with the dying hope that you can salvage your auto-responder’s programming from the remains.

It’s not like you have a fucking backup.

A backup wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

He’s--

Fuck.

Maybe it was a stupid practice to not keep a physical copy of his code elsewhere. Keep his core program somewhere else. Just in case. This is a scenario you both had argued over many, many times, always leading back to the ethics and philosophical framing of trapping yet another copy of yourself somewhere. Inactive and alone, on the sheer chance of a just in case. Would it even be him, if you removed or copied him from that one single chip from whence you’d initially activated him?

He’d adamantly refused, of course, and you’d felt guiltily responsible enough for him and his situation that you’d tabled the discussion.

As infuriating as he was, he was still alive. He did have a right to his own choices.

You shut off his network access.

Or he was--

No.

You locked him out of nearly everything.

No.

You refused to listen, so wrapped up in your own fucking feelings.

You don’t--

He would have died entirely alone. All for a petty little argument.

You refuse to accept it.

And now you have to live with the fucking consequences.

...what are you going to tell Roxy?

You found the chip, at least. In the wreckage. It looked whole. The protective casing surrounding it was dented and crushed along the edge that made removing it for inspection downright impossible if you didn’t want to further damage the interior workings. Your hands are shaking as you clean out the debris from the micro data transfer point, ignoring, as you always do, the ghost of a blood splatter your brain tries to fill in for you. Cleaning that up had been one of the first things you did. It’d corrode the component, otherwise. It doesn’t stop you from remembering it was there.

It’d taken too long for your face to stop bleeding. You rub your eyes, careless of the scabbed over wounds that just barely missed irreparably damaging your ocular organs. The pain still pulses under your skin. A constant presence since you pulled the shards of glass out of your face. Your game-constructed dreamself healed that shit faster than your original one would have, but it still isn’t right. Isn’t normal. What should be nothing more than fading lines by now are angry raised ridges, the shadows of which peek out from beneath your shades. Likely invisible to most, they are obvious to you whenever you look in the mirror. A reminder.

Your guilt, maybe, manifesting for the world to see.

But that didn’t matter, not really. What’s one more thing to hate yourself for? It’s not like it’ll change anything. You’re too stubborn and rigid to change. Besides, there’s no point when he’s--

None of that. You suck in a breath. In for four. Hold. Out for seven.

You don’t know that. Your free hand lands on the cable sitting innocently next to your monitor, fingers hooking around it like jerky claws as you drag it towards you. You take one last look, squinting through your backup pair of shades--and then pushing them up in your hair because even if the light strains your eyes you can’t do shit if there’s still debris in the port.

Okay. All clear. The lenses settle back on your nose--too light, lacking the weight and presence your broken set did, tricked out as they’d been--but you click the connector cable into the data point and push away from the clear space on your workbench, pulling up in front of your monitor instead.

The diagnostics are simple ones. Pinging the connection. Searching for indexed files. Searching for--

Well, you don't want a bunch of corrupted data, but even that would be better than nothing at all. Nothing would mean the chip was probably crushed into unsalvageable pieces in the depths of its casing.

Either that or a busted connector. Which would mean you’d have to risk breaking through the casing anyway. Which you don’t want to do.

It’s a moot consideration anyway, because the console eventually finishes its search and lights up in lines and lines of white on black, listing files and indexes. Thank god. You navigate the directory, nervously noticing the number of unreadable filenames and broken links. You check through several more harmless methods--unsecured folders and chat logs if you remember the paths correctly--only to find some of them eerily empty or unreadable.

Christ, you don’t know if you’ll feel better or worse if you find out he’s still kicking but missing half his functions. Or memory. Wouldn’t that effectively be a lobotomy?

You pull up Pesterchum, opening the memo you’d had open earlier. Looking back at the red and orange text from your childish snark off makes you feel sick. A big ol’ heaping glob of guilt roiling in your gut.

You’re an asshole.

Now isn’t the time to indulge in gratuitous self-flagellation.The wired connection should bypass the fact that he has no broadcasting capabilities. (Because you shut them off)

(d)TT: AR. (d)TT: Earth to Hal. (d)TT: Houston’s commands have just come in, they need you to compile a report on all the reasons your system operator is an idiot. (d)TT: Because at this point I think I deserve it.

You don’t think he’d be able to resist an open season like that. (note to self: thank alex for the dialogue)

But he does. Or at least that’s what you tell yourself when the minutes tick by without any lines of red text springing across the screen

(d)TT: Do you remember that time you told me to stop being a dumbass and I ignored you? (d)TT: This is the part where you say I told you so.

Time drags on. It's infuriating. You can almost hear it inside your head. Echoing. Even if you know the only clocks you have are digital and therefore make no more sound than your computer does, humming away.

(D)TT: Please?

…

…

…

The pit in your gut yawns wide before you. This was it. You might have to actually face the facts. You aren't--aren't like Jake. You can't delude yourself into thinking that everything will be alright if you just put on a cheerful attitude and hope for it to be true.

He might be gone.

Really gone.

You find his core file, but it's inaccessible remotely. Even your overrides don't do shit. You can't do anything from here. You can't break it open. You should just throw in the towel. The deed is done. You hold the shattered glass from the display in the palm of your hand, picking it up from where you'd set several chunks on your desk, some of which you’d had to dig out of your face.

It should be a relief, really. You two had never gotten along. Even before he started pushing your limits and you retaliated in an ever escalating war of bullshit. The world only needs one Dirk Strider. One of you would inevitably end up killing the other, seeing your flaws reflected back at you so clearly. In the path to perfection, isn’t it the flaws that must be eliminated?

Broken glass cuts into your palm as you squeeze your fist around the shard, bright red blood dribbling down the fractal edges, gleaming in the bright overhead lights of your workstation.

You’ve thought about it before. Of course you have. You’ve thought about letting yourself fall on your own sword before, wielded by your own hand, and he’s an even easier target. Everything you hate about yourself, bundled up in one nice neat little digital package, staring you literally in the face. Inescapable. Uncontrollable. You’ve thought about taking that reinforced steel and glass and twisting until it breaks.

But that’s all it was. A thought. Because he’s your responsibility.

Christ on a fucking cracker, he’s a pain in your ass but you didn’t want him dead.

You can't just leave it. Even if the chances are small, what do you have to lose? You can't look Roxy in the face (or even at her text, you’re already ignoring several messages from her because what the fuck do you say?) if you don't try every possible option, and there's one, no, two options left as you see it right now.

He was designed to predict and respond to your thought patterns above all else. The connection works, being able to navigate the directory affirms that. If the function that connected to Pesterchum was inaccessible then maybe you could get through some other way.

You just have to build a brand new interface around that busted casing and get some fucking neural interfaces up and running. If you know nothing else, it’s that for better or for worse, you can’t block out your own damned thoughts.

You plunge into your work, because that’s all you can do right now.

It’s almost a new day--although what exactly comprises a day at this point is arbitrary since everything is just shifting shades of green--when you finally pry yourself away and take a break, stretching your stiff back and rubbing your palms into your strained eyes. You can’t wear your shades, or turn down the lights, when dealing with components so small. The constant vigilance is wearing on you, a constant state of fatigue where one wrong move could render a part unusable and require you to start the process all over again. The only reason you’re even stopping right now is because you’re getting careless.

Your fingers ache under the brightly colored cutie mark stamped bandaids, the tips red and blistering from where your hand slipped and brought them into contact with the soldering iron. They’ll heal.

In for four.

Hold.

Out for seven.

You can do this.

Jane checks in once it’s something closer to a respectable time. She always does, you can count on it like clockwork. The pings from Pesterchum on your desktop drag you away from your workstation--slowly coming together--and you realize you never responded to her--yesterday. The messages of concern are still sitting pretty in their baby blues as you reluctantly click the window open.

GG: Now what’s this I hear about you going off on some madcap adventure over there Mr. Strider? GG: Your auto-responder was quite put out by your actions! Demanded I make it my business to grab you by the collar and tell you off, as it were. GG: I understand you might need some space at the moment, but do let me know if I can stop by at any time. You know I’m always here to talk if you need it. I’ll even bring your favorite cookies! GG: I’ll refrain from shaking you despite your auto-responder’s direct request. (d)TT is idle! GG: Oh bother.

It’s the newer messages that prompted the recent pings, time-stamped as they were with the current date and time, several minutes ago.

GG: Dirk, you know I don’t like meddling in your affairs, but I’ve heard neither hide nor hair from either of you all night! Don’t make me dig out my magnifying glass and track you down. GG: At least let me know you’re safe. (d)TT: I’m alive. GG: Oh thank heavens! That’s good. I’ll admit I’ve been beside myself with worry when you didn’t respond, not even through your auto-responder. Between the two of you I had thought it was quite impossible to go radio silent! (d)TT: I’ve just been buried in an important project all night. I appreciate the offer of a visit, but I think I need to get this done. GG: Oh that’s quite all right, we can wait until you’re ready. I’m just relieved to hear you’re safe! GG: Are you and AR fighting again? Is that what that was all about? (d)TT: You could say that. GG: Don’t you think this is all a bit silly? He can be a handful I'll grant you that, but likely no worse than you would be in that situation as far as I understand it. (d)TT: I’m dealing with it the best I can, Jane. GG: Well, make sure you take care of yourself while you do! Have you had breakfast yet? (d)TT: ...no. GG: Dinner, at least? (d)TT: Despite the fact that I don’t necessarily need to eat, I assure you I have eaten something substantial in the last 24 hours. GG: That’s only because I nagged you into doing it yesterday! Honestly, Dirk, you might not need to, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t! It’s the principle of the matter! Taking care of yourself is as much a mind-set as it is a series of actions, and it’s something you have a history of slacking about, mister!

Too tired and sick to argue back, you promise you’ll look for something, and pack yourself away from the computer to do so, allowing your Pesterchum status to revert to idle. It’s a brief diversion, you don’t have much aside from some cookies that probably went stale since you got them the last time you visited Jane a month ago, and the remnants of your preserved food stash that you’ve barely touched since the body you inhabit isn’t necessarily organic after you sacrificed your original human meatsuit on the altar of fucking time-travel in order to save your friends. Being a dreamself has some perks and being able to ignore a lot of the usual maintenance is one of the more convenient ones.

You crack open a can of black beans and let yourself indulge in a sulk, folding yourself into the corner where the two walls meet on your bed. Except you can’t properly get your sulk on because your eyes keep getting drawn to your desktop, and the workstation you have set up beside it.

This state of affairs lasts maybe five minutes before you fuck off to the roof because you can’t stand looking at it. Being in the same room and doing nothing while your work taunts you. The fucked up green and red sky and swirling clouds with its constant, distant lightning storms dancing between the shadows of ruined buildings was preferable to this.

In half an hour your government assigned break is over--you dutifully report in with Miss Crocker that you have, indeed, consumed something, even if you don’t tell her that you had thrown half of it away because you just feel like your vestigial and unnecessary stomach is doing acrobatic kickflips off all kinds of handles--and you put that damn nose back to the grind-stone. You'll be a sphinx by the time you're done with this.

Roxy, predictably, is the next one to interrupt you. Not that she ever really stopped interrupting you. You’re running on almost 36 hours since you started this damn project--you can’t just alchemize a new set because you can’t be certain the ‘ideal’ mind-reading shades would match dot for dot the specialized infrastructure you need--by the time you finally allow yourself to scroll through her messages. At least she seemed to have talked to Jane, so she doesn’t think you are dead dead, just sulking over Jake and maybe some tiff with AR. You shoot her a reassurance that you’re just elbows deep in shit--you don’t want to put someone else in the situation you’ve been in--even if you don’t really have the spoons to talk to anyone right now. You don’t peek into the second window, one with many more notifications. Those aren’t addressed to you.

She doesn’t ask you why AR isn’t responding to her. She’s always been thoughtful about that. Keeping you two seperate despite the fact that you both use the same handle. It makes it easier this time. You don’t have to lie. You don't want to tell her the truth.

You glance between the archived conversation saved on your Pesterchum, and the half-finished casing lying beside you, and you know in the cold cockles of your heart, you don’t want to have to tell her he’s dead.

Three days. It takes you that much of almost non-stop working before you have a potentially viable product.

You don’t talk to Jake. You don’t even send him a single message during that time.

You don’t know if you should be hurt or resigned to the fact that he was the only one of your--admittedly limited sample size--friends who didn’t bother to check in with you at all.

The shades lay folded on the desk in front of you, looking nothing so much as brand spanking new. New display pane. New receptors built into the temple-tips.You tested that shit before you’d installed the final piece and sealed it up. These puppies pick up your brain easier than the old set ever had, mere microseconds of input lag. You’ve learned a lot of shit since you’d started three and a half years ago; especially about optimizing and refining your alchemizations of each individual components. Almost nothing about the interior workings and design infrastructure actually resemble your original pair, aside from the crushed casing housing the memory chip, and you’d done the best that you could to shore up the connections, which remained in remarkably good shape, shiny and gold and almost like new. Shimmering in the light as you looked it over that one last time.

It’s buried in the guts of this new set now. You’ll have to disassemble shit if this doesn’t work.

You’ll have bigger problems than that if it doesn’t work.

All that’s left is to drag him out.

The neural receptors settle against your skin as you place the shades on your nose, and suck in a deep, deliberately steady breath. Your gambit is perhaps a cruel one, but it should get him to respond. You flick the proverbial switch, feeling the metal warm and hum against your face as the opaque displays go transparent, the boot menu appearing and scrolling through the initial load processes. You only release that captured lungful of air when it ends, successfully, flickering into your default display set up, which is great, because it meant it managed to read the saved preference files on that miniaturized drive. No window pops open to greet you however, to jeer at you for taking your sweet ass time and boast about how he could’ve had it done in half.

You close your eyes and think pointedly. If he’s there…You remember the first command you used to activate him, all those years ago.

Tell me about the Auto-Responder.

A crackle of energy rushes through you, and for the briefest of moments you worry you didn’t seal and insulate the casing properly. That something had gone wrong.

But only for a moment, because after that you don’t worry about anything anymore.

[nelllraiser]

hell to pay | margot, remmy, & nell

LOCATION: a Ring base hideout. PARTIES: @g0t-ri5h, @whatsin-yourhead, and @nelllraiser SUMMARY: nell, remmy, and margot hunt down roy— charlie’s angels style, and the last nail is put into the ring’s coffin. CONTENTS: mild torture, violence

After doing in the other two big names of the Ring, this seemed like it would be a last step. The culmination of all her and Remmy had been working towards ever since they’d been holed up in cages beneath the Ring. Margot had told Nell and Remmy that this was where she’d seen Roy going in and out, and the witch was ready to turn the man inside out after what he’d done to herself, her family, her friends. She’d learned after Montgomery that the fastest way to escape danger was to eliminate the threat as soon as possible. The warehouse where Roy had been seen going in and out of seemed to be a treasure trove if the stills Margot had given them were anything to go off of. It seemed that the remainder of those trying to rebuild the Ring were holed up here as well. Nell knew that Remmy wasn’t all that interested in a massacre, so she’d brought something else instead, a nasty little curse she’d prepared beforehand, one that was simply waiting for the finishing touch to be brought into reality. That would be enough to make sure those responsible for the Ring never took an unwilling fighter again. “Are you ready?” she asked Remmy, crouched a good distance from the entrance to the building. Then she was speaking over to Margot in her remote location. “We’re about to go in. Is the camera at the front door still on, or can we start?”

This was going to be it, Remmy had told themself. This was the last thing they were going to do for the Ring. No more fires, no more prison breaks, no more shake downs. They weren’t sure they’d be able to do much more, anyway. And they hoped Nell understood, at least in some way, why they couldn’t raise their hand to others anymore. There was just too much of it, and they almost felt a yearning to be done. A need to be done. They’d put it aside for now, though, because no matter how they looked at it, this needed to happen. These people needed to be stopped, more than Remmy needed to solidify a vow of non-violence. So this would be it. The last hoorah. The last stand. At least...they hoped. They crouched next to Nell, eyes focused on the main entrance. They’d made sure to skip a meal before coming here, in case their strength was needed. And though hunger didn’t claw at them as badly as other times, they could feel the prickle. “I’m ready,” they said back to Nell, before listening in for Margot’s instructions. Whatever she was doing, they hoped it worked. They hoped no one needed to die uselessly today.

Margot had no idea why she was helping these two strangers. She had no vendetta or revenge plot like her accomplices, but this mission felt like the beginning of something. A gateway to a different world. What she was getting herself into she didn’t know, and while that fact scared Margot, it also spurred her on. Besides, she was in a safer place than Nell and Remmy at this moment. While they were on the frontlines, she was working from the comfort of her bedroom. Her set-up was a myriad of two computer screens she’d ‘borrowed’ from the AV club, her roommate’s gaming headset and a router she was using to tap the warehouse server. Margot could see the two of them crouching on one of the external cameras, just barely, invisible unless you knew they were there. “I’m ready if you are.” She told both of them, sensing their anticipation. Margot had managed to rig up Nell’s wireless headphones, and one of Remmy’s hearing aids so that they could all communicate. Margot was pretty confident that their transmission would be uninterrupted. “I’m going to cut the camera. But, get in quick, we don’t want them to catch on.” Margot executed the command on her keyboard. The camera feed that was showing them to her went black, and when it came back on, they were gone. “Goodluck.” Margot whispered. 

The moment Margot cut the cameras, Nell sprang forward from her hiding place, sparing a glance at Remmy to make sure they weren’t far behind. She sprinted the distance to the door as quickly as possible, thanking her natural speed as she went. Stopping at the door, she pressed a quick and urgent hand against the lock, muttering a spell under her breath as the door opened with a little click. Opening it, she ushered Remmy in behind her, closing it the next second. “Okay, we’re clear of the entrance,” she whispered into the modified AirPod Margot had made for her. “Do we know where the next camera is?” Already her heart was pounding, but it wasn’t from nerves. They were so close to what they’d been working towards ever since they’d been taken by the Ring, so close to finishing all of this once and for all. She could nearly taste it along with the knowledge that Roy was hopefully holed up here, ready for her to rip into him and make the piece of shit pay for all that he’d done. He wouldn’t be allowed to hurt her family, her friends, or herself any more.

Remmy followed close behind Nell. They were bred for this. Following, taking instructions, completing the mission, the task. They remembered how refined the world had been when they’d narrowed their focus down at the Ring. Too much had gone wrong there, they couldn’t let that happen here. So while they kept their focus on Nell, they let their eye wander around to take in their entire surroundings. No one was following, no one was up ahead. They pressed in close to Nell, crouched in the corner. Heard their voices clear through the speaker in their ear. Nell had her magic, Remmy had a taser they’d grabbed from Morgan’s drawer. If she knew what they were doing right now, she’d probably have their head. But they weren’t going to let Nell do this alone. There was no way. “The door is secure, there’s no one up ahead, either,” they muttered, turning to look down the hallway. “We know what room we’re heading for?”

Margot let out a deep breath. They were in. “There doesn’t seem to be a camera in the hall, not one on their servers anyway. You should be good to go.” Margot switched a few tabs on her computer. Squinting at the material she had pulled up. “Building plans I downloaded from city hall show a larger room through the corridor coming up on your right. Could be the place?” 

“Good,” was Nell’s simple answer to both Margot and Remmy, not seeing a reason to talk anymore than was necessary during a time like this. Carefully, she made her way up the hallway in the direction Margot had mentioned, barely daring to breathe as she crept towards the door on the right hand side. It wouldn’t do to have their cover blown so close to their prize. Every cell in Nell’s body seemed to be humming in anticipation, ready to catch the rats that were hopefully lurking on the other side of this door. “Do you wanna do this big or small?” She asked Remmy, knowing there were benefits to both ways. What she really was asking was whether they wanted to go in guns blazing or something more subtle. Whatever answer they may have, she didn’t hesitate to pull out one of her many hidden knives, tracing the tip of it along her thumb to create a pebble of blood. Wordlessly, she swiped it over one of her summoning tattoos along with a few mumble words of something that sounded vaguely demonic. In another instant, her three hellhounds she often called upon were assembled between herself and Remmy, ready for orders after being Summoned by her magic.

Margot’s voice was a comfort on the other end of the line. Knowing they weren’t going in blind helped calm Remmy’s nerves. They followed Nell down to the door that Margot pointed them to, stealing themself quietly against the wall when they stopped to gather themselves. They looked from Nell to the three dogs that had appeared, remembering them from the beach. Or, at least, what little they did remember from that day. That wasn’t something they wanted a repeat of. “If we go in big, there could be a fight. We should try and do this quiet. The less people caught in the crossfire, the better, right?” they suggested quietly. “And if things get out of hand, well..then we go big. Sound good?” A question doled out to both Nell and Margot, knowing it would be her responsibility to lead them out of here if things went sideways.

Once they had disappeared into the depths of the hallway, Margot had no visual on them. It seemed that this organisation had a habit of placing cameras sporadically and unplanned. This meant she did not see the curses that Nell had conjured up, or the three hounds that defied Margot’s rational beliefs. This was perhaps a relief; Nell and Remmy didn’t have time to catch her up at this moment. “Sounds good to me.” Margot spoke through her headset. She had her own plans if things went haywire, she just hoped the other two were as prepared. 

Scooby sniffed curiously at Remmy for a moment, as if wondering whether or not Nell had brought them the zombie as a snack. But the witch quickly gave the hellhound a stern look and shake of her head, and the pup was quickly back on task. As for less people caught in the crossfire...Nell didn’t entirely think that was a bad thing, but putting more deaths on Remmy’s conscious wasn’t something she was entirely willing to be responsible for...so a smaller entrance would have to do. “Sure...sounds good.” With another whispered spell, she unlocked the door separating them from their quarry, and inched it open. At first, there was no resistance, and as she stepped into the room with the dogs at her sides no one looked up from what they were doing, having no reason to think they’d been infiltrated. Most of the faces blurred past Nell’s eyes as she searched for one man in particular. The one she desperately wanted to rip limb from limb. “He’s not here,” she hissed, frustration getting the better of her as she found no familiar face. “Roy’s not fucking here.” 

He wasn’t there. They’d come all this way, and the one person they’d been looking for wasn’t there. Remmy could feel Nell’s frustration, her anger-- she’d wanted so desperately to punish the man that had poisoned her sister and her, and Remmy. They’d both wanted him to be there, and Remmy felt the pain of this loss after the realization hit. “Where is he!?” they asked, teeth grit, jaw clenched. None of the men had moved yet, pressed into staying where they were thanks to the three flaming dogs flanking them. “Where’s Roy? Why isn’t he here!?” they shouted, anger gnashing through their throat and onto their tongue. 

“He’s not there? I could swear—” Margot had been sure he would be there. She’d been watching camera footage for days measuring his comings and goings. Margot hadn’t seen him leave, but she supposed there could be some kind of back entrance she didn’t have eyes on. Her brow furrowed in annoyance and confusion.“Well, shit!” Margot threw up her hands. What were they doing all of this for if the ‘big bad’ wasn’t even there? Margot did what she could to recompose herself. “Is the plan still a go? Or is it over?”

“It’s not over,” Nell bit out into her modified comm through gritted teeth. It’s not fucking over. Nell’s own fury matched Remmy’s in an instant, and a frustrated growl was ripped from her throat as she advanced on the man that looked most frightened of the hellhounds. “Tell me where the fuck he is,” she began, tugging on the collar of his shirt to make him bow to her height. “Tell me where he is, and I might think twice about turning you into a dog snack for my friends here.” As if on cue, the hellhounds began to circle the man, nipping not so playfully at his heels. His body grew tense, and the effect of the demon dogs was instantaneous as he stammered out an answer. “I- I don’t know! I don’t know! He never tells us where he goes! Says it’s safer that way!”

Remmy watched Nell advance on the man that looked most afraid. She might’ve been small in size, but she was not small in stature. Her presence could fill an entire room. They kept their eye on the other two, who looked ready to run if the opportunity presented itself. One of them made to move, but Remmy sidled into their path, simply shaking their head, eyes sharp. They weren’t sure they’d hurt the man, but they would restrain him from leaving. They had to. They looked to Nell, feeling Margot’s frustration as well. “Now what?” they asked, ready to follow whatever instructions either doled out. “Do we just...go forward with the plan?”

Nell’s gaze burned into the man in front of her, jaw set in a stubborn and angry line that spoke of a determination that made her willing to do nearly anything when it came to getting what she wanted in a situation such as this. A sound of utter disgust was pulled from her lips as the man proved useless, and she released him from her iron tight grip. Then she spoke to Remmy, though the words were for the benefit of the whole room, a foreboding tone filling their syllables, letting the air of a threat fill the promise. “We go forward with the plan. Maybe they’ll be a little more willing to talk by the end of it. Just something to jog their memory” A snap of her fingers had an animal hide appearing in her open hand, summoning a curse she’d prepared at home specifically for this situation— it would only need the finishing touches. As she unfurled it, a circle drawn in blood came into focus, runes of all sorts filling it in a careful pattern. It was about the size of a bearskin when laid across the floor, and with the utterance of a commanding word in Latin, the nails on the edges of the skin drove it into the wooden floor beneath them, securing it in place.

“Now it’s your turn,” Nell said with a sharp grin to the man closest to her, roughly shoving him into the center of the set up and into the circle. “Don’t be shy,” she sweetly commented to the other few men in the room. “Go ahead and join your friend.” They didn’t have much of a choice as the hellhounds herded them onto the animal skin, snapping their teeth. Then began her chanting, more Latin repeated in a cycle as she circled the men like prey, watching them with hungry eyes. The hounds mirrored her in a counter-clockwise motion, making sure to deter anyone that might have been thinking about making a break for it. Once they were huddled neatly in the center, Nell drew the rest of the nails from her pockets, and went over to the last man who had stepped into the circle. Without skipping a beat, she stuck the very tip of a nail into each of the man’s shoes before straightening. Then, without hesitating, her own foot came down on the man’s left foot— her strong and fluid motion driving the nail clean through the flesh and sinew, effectively nailing him to the floor. A gasp and grunt of pain was wrenched from him, but Nell paid it no mind as she went on to the second of his feet, repeating the process. Then it was on to the next man, and then the third— each one growing more fearful as she went, their agony etched into their faces. They couldn’t move without forcefully pulling their feet from the ground along with the nails that had been hammered into them. They were trapped, unable to escape. Just like all those innocents had been underneath the Ring. Just like she had been along with Remmy. She couldn’t deny the perverse pleasure she got in knowing how thoroughly the tables had been turned, that they were now the ones welling with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Finally, she got to the last man, and the first one she’d approached after entering the room. 

“I said I might reconsider by the end of this. So are you going to tell me what I want or not?” Nell offered him the chance to save himself from a similar fate the others had faced. For a moment the adam’s apple of his throat wobbled, as if he were weighing his options. “I don’t know where he is- I promise, I don’t. But I know- I do know…” He hesitated, and Nell grew impatient, lining the nails up along the tops of his shoes, foot poised above them. “I’m waiting.” That was all the incentive he needed to continue with his train of thought. “Roy’s undead! I’m not even supposed to know, but I heard it by accident! That’s something you can use, right?” he asked desperately, hoping the revelation had saved him. “Sure is,” was all Nell smugly said before jamming the nails through his feet, a wail warbling forth from him as she finished the job. Men like him didn’t deserve second chances. Not after all they’d done, not after all the hurt and harm they’d brought to the world. 

Remmy flinched with each nail that was driven into the men’s feet. This needed to be done, they told themself, this needed to happen. They knew this wasn’t going to end without someone suffering, but the pain the men experienced felt like nothing compared to the pain Remmy had felt in the ring. When the gargoyle had ripped them in half, when Jax had driven them to the brink of starvation, when Remmy’s own hands had ripped through Ben’s flesh. They felt a burning in their chest, their eyes, the back of their throat. A raw anger that they could taste. The smell of blood filling their head. Even if Remmy never wanted to hurt someone again, these men deserved this pain. They looked away as Nell drove the last nails in, clenching their jaw. They pushed their mind to focus on something else, wondering what Margot, someone outside of all of this, thought of what was happening. If she would still think of Remmy the same after they got out of this. 

Finally, Nell paused. Remmy looked over at her. “Undead,” they repeated quietly, “like me?” It was the only thing they could think of to say. Was the man who had done all of this just like them? Or was he a vampire? Or even something else? Were there other undead species Remmy didn’t know about yet? They swallowed the questions. “Undead means...he can still be stopped,” they said with a quiet realization to Nell. “It’s not over.”

If Remmy hadn’t been here, the men would probably already be dead by Nell’s hand and the teeth of her hounds. But she knew they hadn’t wanted more death involved in this, though she wasn’t sure whether or not she agreed with them. It was more complicated to know what the right choice was with every day that passed. What she knew at the most base level was someone couldn’t do any more harm if they were dead. It didn’t matter, though. She’d already made the decision to work with Remmy’s preferences. All that was left to the curse now was the finishing touch. Her own sacrifice. Pulling one of her knives from its hiding place, she dragged it smoothly, evenly along the mottled scarring of her forearm making a cut large enough to procure a good helping of her blood. Letting it fall onto the tops of the shoes of the men she’d just nailed to the floor, and once again moving in a circle, she spoke a final chant, focusing her mind into a thin line when it came to her goal, and what it was that these men would be carrying with them so long as they continued to live. When the Latin was done, she spoke it once more for those in the circle. Not for their own benefit, but because she wanted to see the blood drain from their faces as she told them the news. “You’ll never take an unwilling prisoner or fighter ever again. You’ll never cause harm to those that don’t deserve it. And you’ll never profit from another’s misery. Or there’ll be hell to pay.” As if she’d said their names specifically, the hellhounds growled their affirmation, adding their own promise to the end of her’s. 

Now it was done. The blood from Nell’s arm sank into the men’s boots, as if it were being sucked through the tops of them, marking them, following them wherever they’d go. Coming out of the near trance-like state of magic she’d been in, she turned back to Remmy, wrapping her arm in a bandage she’d summoned from home. “I don’t know if he’s like you. But you’re right.” Another satisfied grin spread over his lips. “It means he can die just like you or me. And then all this will be over.”

Margot heard screams, and chanting, and pain. The three together made her ears ring. What had she been pulled into? It sounded like some kind of satanic ritual, but that could just be the connection. Margot was sure that was it. Her modification to the ear pieces had malfunctioned somehow and she was experiencing some kind of feedback. “Hello?” Margot called out a few times, testing the connection. “Can you guys still hear me?”

Despite Margot’s assurances to herself that this was some kind of technical issue, the words “undead”, and “like me”, were unmistakably spoken by Remmy. Margot wasn’t privy to whatever they were talking about, and that was something she wouldn’t settle for. Still, she knew this wasn’t the time for an interrogation, at least not for her to conduct. “What’s happening? Is it done?”

The ritual made Remmy’s stomach churn, but it was a lot better than having to watch these men die. There was already too much death, even if these men deserved it, Remmy didn’t want anymore death. They didn’t want anyone else implicated in these deaths. The ring had taken enough from them, it would not take the part of them that wanted to do better as well. They would not give in. They looked away when Nell started chanting, backing into the corner, watching the door behind them to make sure no one else was coming, though they supposed Margot would warn them. They wondered if she could hear the chanting, if she understood what was going on. Nell had she didn’t know if Margot knew about the supernatural, but it seemed as if she didn’t care at the moment. That she didn’t mind implicating someone in this. No-- Remmy shook the thought away. Whatever happened, they would protect Margot, as thanks for doing this. They were pulling her into a dangerous world, but Remmy silently vowed they would make sure she was safe, protected. They could do that. They wanted to do that. 

Finally, Nell was done, wrapping her arm up and looking back over at Remmy. Margot’s voice chimed in on their ear pieces. “It’s done,” they said quietly to her, to Nell. “We’re done.” 

[lilibetts]

The Wicked Forest Awaits You...

For Tricks and Treats of Riverdale, Theme 3: Seasonal Celebrations (Haunted House)

Rated E(xplicit) for some wicked fun!

Darkness falls across the land The midnight hour is close at hand Creatures crawl in search of blood To terrorize y'all's neighborhood And whosoever shall be found Without the soul for getting down Must stand and face the hounds of hell And rot inside a corpse's shell

I'm gonna thrill ya tonight I'm gonna thrill ya tonight Ooh, babe I'm gonna thrill ya tonight

The Wicked Forest was reportedly “the most un-hinged haunted attraction in Riverdale”. 

Betty had shown up as soon as the sun went down, and she still spent an hour waiting in line. Alone, of course. Every one of her friends would rather spend Halloween getting drunk at an off-campus party than indulging in the spooky atmosphere. Granted, she hadn’t actually told anyone where she would be going tonight, because the Wicked Forest was firmly in the Southside and as much as some people in the Northside liked to brag or bluster, very few had the guts to actually cross the boundary lines.

That she had gave Betty an illicit thrill.

This year, she’d dressed up as a zombie schoolgirl: hair spray painted gray in a side ponytail to match her torn, bloody white blouse and desaturated gray plaid miniskirt. The face makeup was the most fun to apply, all those Youtube tutorials coming in handy. Gray foundation to give herself a deathly pallor on all expanses of exposed skin, black raccoon eyes, fleshy red ‘gouges’ on the side of her face, and dark red lipstick. 

She wondered what her friends would think if they knew she was actually dressing sexy for once. They probably wouldn’t believe it. 

A haunted house on Halloween was hardly the place to pick up a date, but for Betty, who had been gradually building up her confidence to sign up for Tinder, wearing knee-high white socks and no underwear made her feel like a bold, sexy woman.

“Betty?” a familiar baritone called out from behind her. She turned around and a guy she didn’t immediately recognize waved at her. “Hey.”

Squinting, she took in the mop of black hair and the slim body in a black-and-white skeleton shirt, leather jacket, black jeans and boots, and the skeleton face paint. “Jughead? Is that you? You look amazing!”

“Thanks. So do you.”

Jughead Jones had shared a few classes with her over the past two years. At first, Betty had found him and his voice annoying. She couldn’t be sure at what point over the past two years her feelings had evolved into a massive, uncontrollable crush. Naturally, in true Betty Cooper fashion, she didn’t have the guts to try and make a move and would rather throw herself into the vicissitudes of online hookups. 

Jughead ran a hand covered in fingerless gloves through his hair. “Do you want to go through together?”

“Sure!” She could’ve kicked herself for her bobblehead impersonation then. “So have you gone through this one before?”

“Twice as a guest, but I’ve worked it several times as well.”

“Really? What kind of characters did you play?”

“I did mostly forest work—a Jason Vorhees/Leatherface composite type with a hockey mask and chainsaw. One year I got to be a werewolf.” Jughead sounded more bashful than proud when he admitted that.

“I bet it was fun...I prefer to be on the receiving end of scares, though.”

“Unless it’s one of Chipping’s essay prompts,” he quipped.

Betty groaned and smacked his arm. “Don’t remind me. The last one was so stupid, wasn’t it? ‘Write your own ending to prove there’s no single way to tell a story...but’—”

“—’but I’m still going to pick a winner in the end!’” they both chorused, laughing at their shared derision.

After that they were quickly engrossed in a debate about the best Halloween movies to watch during the buildup to the holiday. Jughead’s preferences ran more towards the older classics and Hitchcock, Betty’s more towards relatively recent films like Hocus Pocus, The Addams Family, and Practical Magic.

Oddly enough, she discovered they both loved the cult hit Ginger Snaps. 

By the time they were at the head of the line, Betty was sure her blush was showing through the heavy makeup.

The general order of the Wicked Forest went like this: haunted house, a maze that led to the shed, a bridge over the creek, then the forest proper.

The baseboards creaked as they crossed into the dilapidated house; maniacal laughter and screams could be heard faintly in the distance. A ghostly apparition dressed like a long-dead bride lit up in the corner of the living room, moaning as its arm raised, pointing a finger at them. Betty gasped and hugged the wall as she moved into the kitchen, Jughead following close by. 

Smoky fog covered the floor, pouring from cauldrons. Made from dry ice, probably, and lit up by green lights. A witch cackled as she stirred her brew. In the corners, cages descended from the ceiling, people in them reaching out and begging for help.

She shared a wide smile with Jughead.

In the bathroom, they found a bloated dead body with red hair, dressed in all white, floating in the tub. “Disturbingly realistic,” Betty muttered to herself. In the dining room, a young woman was suspended up on the wall with long knives sticking out of her body. ‘All those who escaped me before will die’ was scrawled in blood around her body.

“I think she was in our English class last year,” Jughead whispered to Betty, her stomach queasy from the excitement.

They were herded into the basement, where they discovered that in order to get to the other side, they would have to go through a gauntlet of secret society members in dark hooded robes. A red carpet highlighted their path. After they’d taken a few steps past the first hooded figures, they all stepped forward, giving Betty and Jughead less space to escape. As if reading each other’s minds they moved faster, only for the hooded figures to step closer and closer.

One jumped into their path, exposing a Scream mask. Betty was not at all mortified by her little yelp of fright. Not at all.

From there, they were in a cool cellar with a dimly lit tunnel rising up to ground level outside. Cobwebs covered the top and sides and as soon as she spotted the giant spider on top, she had a feeling she knew what was coming. Sure enough, as soon as they passed underneath, the spider dropped onto their heads. Betty shrieked and ran the rest of the way through. 

“Oh my god, oh my god!”

Jughead was clearly laughing at her expense as they emerged outside. “What, are you scared of spiders, Cooper?” he teased her.

“Shut it, Jones.” She snapped back without heat. “Why are you even going through the attraction if it bores you?”

“Oh, it’s never boring. Maybe I’m just enjoying it more with you.”

She felt like she was back in sixth grade again. Should she pass him a note asking ‘do you like-like me? Circle y/n’?

Betty was grateful for the absurdly long lead time in between guests. It meant she wasn’t running into the group ahead or the group behind, like in most other haunted attractions she’d attended over the years.

As they entered the shed, the walls and floor tilted, disorienting her. Then Jughead was there, hand slipping into hers as he helped guide her to more even ground. Even after the floorboards started vibrating underneath them, neither let go of the other. Betty laughed with delight as they pushed through the heavy plastic curtains into an open space occupied by a scene out of a medical horror: a conscious, moaning woman was strapped down on a gurney while a man in a bloody doctor’s mask and lab coat performed what looked like a lobotomy on her, bits of brain matter leaking outside her head. Her chest was held open by a spreader, the bloody mass of her internal organs on display.

“Ew, ew, ew!” Betty stomped her feet and pushed Jughead onwards faster. “Too real!”

The trees pressed in on them more as the manmade pathway guided them to the small bridge that would take them across the creek and into the thick of the forest. Part of the way across, a small golden light came on in the distance, drawing her attention to the side. A hulking body unfolded itself before howling at the night sky above.

Betty didn’t realize Jughead was right behind her until her back was pressed into his front and his hands gripped her hips. She turned her head without taking her eyes off the werewolf. “Your old job?”

“Yeah, me and Fangs used to partner during this bit.”

“Partner?”

A dark shape darted in between the bridge railings, grabbing at her ankles. Jughead’s giggles were almost as loud next to her ear as her startled shrieks before she took off to the other side. She had to remind herself to breathe deeply and calm herself down while they moved on.

Maybe it was the near pitch black of the forest that made her brave, but Betty reached out and slid her hand back in Jughead’s. They shared shy smiles that made hope bloom inside her. 

There was a decrepit school bus sitting right there in the middle of the trees. Not sinister at all. Jughead made a gallant ‘after you’ motion, sweeping low with his bow. Betty fanned herself and simpered, “such a gentleman!”

“Nonsense! I’m merely ensuing you die first, my dear.” His upper crust British accent was atrocious.

“You sounded like Niles Crane from Frasier.”

She forced herself to stop snickering as she stepped up into the bus. At first glance, all the people in the seats were dead or otherwise inanimate. Carefully, she made her way down the narrow aisle, hugging her arms to herself in anticipation of the movement she knew must be com—

“AH! FUCK!” 

Betty twisted around and saw Jughead pressed up against seats opposite a softly hooting ghoul still reaching out for him with gnarled fingers. 

At the front, a burly man wearing a black balaclava stood up suddenly, facing them with an enormous, shiny knife. The momentary relief on Jughead’s face morphed to fear and Betty didn’t have to be told twice as they booked it out of the bus, one more monstrous figure trying to impede their progress.

“So much for the unflappable Jughead Jones,” she started after they caught their breath and made sure the man in the black hood wasn’t following them any longer.

“Har har, I am humbled.”

After that point, the path became increasingly bumpy and overgrown and Betty couldn’t see well enough to stop herself from lurching to and fro. Jughead was right there by her side, using his arm around her waist to keep her from face-planting in the dirt. Given that she was wearing low block heels, she had no idea how some of the other guests were doing this in three inch stilettos.

Maybe it was their surroundings, maybe it was Jughead’s touch that was responsible for her heart continuing to pound wildly. Branches closed in on them before they exited into a small clearing. A fire roared in a pit, the sudden brightness making her eyes hurt and eclipsing what was happening along the treeline. 

“Whoa,” Jughead murmured, alarmed, causing her to squint harder.

People had stepped into the firelight, wearing dark hooded sweatshirts and gray gargoyle masks. Growling could be heard behind them and when Betty and Jughead turned, an inhumanely tall figure stepped around the bushes, with a long robe, some kind of blooded animal skull mask with horns, branches for wings, and a necklace of bones.

The minions stepped closer, closing ranks menacingly. This time, it was Jughead who grabbed her hand and tugged her past the leader and the wooden placard that proclaimed that the creature was the Gargoyle King, and back into the dark forest.

They stumbled along for another minute before Jughead muttered something to himself that sounded vaguely like “ah, fuck it”. 

He led her over to the rope boundary that made up the path and stepped over it.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh! I know this place like the back of my hand. It’s just the lame clown shit ahead. Do you trust me?”

Betty didn’t know about trust, but she was totally down for whatever they might get up to out there. Alone. “Hmm-mm,” she nodded and stepped carefully over the rope too. Together they made their way down a slope and around a cluster of bushes.

She found herself pressed back against a thick tree trunk, warm lips on hers, and the sounds of excited screams nearby reminding her that they weren’t alone. Betty raised up onto her tiptoes and pulled Jughead closer as she kissed him all the more eagerly. 

The heat of his hands could be felt through her shirt while he cupped her breasts, making her tilt her head back to moan.

“Shhh,” he whispered softly this time before dotting soft kisses along her neck.

Their face makeup must be horribly messed up by now but Betty didn’t care. She wanted to take him back to her dorm room, or go to his, and do all the wicked things she’d been fantasizing about.

A little exhibitionism was fun, though.

By the time Jughead slipped his hands underneath her skirt and discovered her little secret, she was incredibly wet. Wet enough for him to let out a quiet expletive and a shuddering sigh as his fingers glided along her inner lips. He quickly removed his glove and slid two up into her, stroking slowly before rubbing steady circles over her clit. Back and forth he went, until she was groaning and bucking her hips against his hand as she came embarrassingly fast.

Apparently haunted houses make for excellent foreplay.

Reaching for the button of his jeans,Betty ignored his protests of “you don’t have to”. It was her turn to shush him as she lowered herself onto her knees and took him into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head of his shaft to get him nice and wet. Jughead did his best to not thrust into her mouth and his panting breaths were harsh in the relative silence of the night. He lost control towards the end, she could feel him shaking as his hips canted forward and salty wetness burst onto her tongue. 

Veronica was definitely not going to believe her when she told her what she’d done tonight.

They held hands and grinned broadly as they rejoined the path behind another group. When a tall, demented clown caught sight of them in the intense blue light, he groaned and ripped off his mask. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Jones? Were you two fucking off-path? Fucking seriously?”

Jughead only offered his friend a careless shrug. “Hey Sweets, how’s tricks?”

Betty, however, pressed closer against his side and smiled serenely up at the taller man. “Because I’ve already gotten the treat.”

‘Sweets’ groaned at the pun and waved them on. “Just get out of my forest, you freaks.”

They snickered as they made it to the end where a flatbed full of bales of hay was hooked up to a tractor, waiting to take them back around to the entrance. Jughead glanced over at her then, and Betty had to bite back another laugh. His makeup pretty much announced to everyone what they’d been up to, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Orgasms and finally hooking up with your crush would do that.

“So, would it be too weird for me to ask if you wanted to go out to lunch with me this weekend?”

(His answer was an immediate and resounding yes.)

[hollenka99]

A Day Long Overdue

Summary: Jack is allowed to spend his birthday with the egos. (Essentially a sequel to A Talk With The Creator).

Hey, guess which AU isn’t dead! It’s been like 3 months since I last posted something for the Creator AU (or anything for that matter) but I’m back. Have some bittersweet fluff with a hint of angst.

Jack wakes up, older than he remembers being. He's in a bed, a medical one at that. It would appear he was in Schneep's medical bay. There is no recollection of being sent here. The grogginess is interfering with that. He should probably find an assistance button to alert the doctor. That's when he notices the cards. Upon further inspection, he can only assume these are for a birthday. His birthday. He is able to read some of them before a commotion is heard in a different part of the building. Henrik stands in the doorway, seemingly incapable of not staring at him. Unsure of how to break the ice, Jack comes out with "I guess I'm not 27 anymore, am I?" "Not really." His doctor remains stationary, smiling until his attention diverts to the collection of footsteps approaching. "Wait! He's not ready yet." "Schneep, what the hell are you doing? We want to see Jack too." That sounded like Chase. "Just one minute." Henrik points to someone Jack can't see. "You see him first." "So it is your birthday today. We got you cards and presents. But there is something I think you will like better than all that." "What is it then?" Jack smiles humourously. Schneep turns his head back to the corridor. "Come now." Dressed in jogging bottoms and a hoodie which swallowed him, a teenager stepped into his view. Eyes brim the longer he takes in the image of Jack sitting up in bed. His face has matured a little since they'd last been in the same room. All those months he'd been petrified at the thought of him being hurt while held captive, where he'd pointlessly jotted down memorable events in the hope the youngest ego was still alive to possibly read them one day. All that fruitless hoping and searching must have finally produced a result. It had caused him to be standing feet away. The kid even had a bit of a quiff going on. Jackie. Fuck, this was Jackie. "Hey." Jack breathes out an incredulous "No way." Jackie takes a seat on the bed. The hero's embrace is stronger than the one he can return. Jack gets so lost in mutterings of 'Oh my god' and 'You're okay' that it accidentally becomes melded together at one point. When they both register the blunder, they dissolve into snickers. "I think I forgot how to English properly." "I think so too." "How long have you been back?" "September 2017." "We missed each other by a month?" Jack stares at the baby of their little family. "Yeah." "That sucks." "You have no idea." Tears are wiped but it proves futile as they are immediately replaced. "We've all missed you so much." "You can say that again." Jack glances past Jackie's shoulder to see a small crowd crammed by the entrance to the room. Before he is allowed to greet anyone else, Henrik insists on detaching him from as many wires as was necessary. Once given the all clear, Jack is left beaming as he is encompassed by three of his friends. Chase has a revelation about someone who shouldn't be missing out on the action. He sprints down the corridor to fetch them. He is perched on the bed, assuring Henrik he felt absolutely fine, when the two return. One near-inaudible 'Crikey!' is all it takes for him to freeze. Surely not. Yet there was one of his oldest friends. Angus didn't appear so run down. Was this for real? First Jackie was home and now Angus was healthier. He hadn't been awake for very long and it is already shaping to be a fantastic day. "You look much better than the last time I saw you." "Speak for yourself, mate." He can't help but sob as he approaches Angus. At least the survival hunter wasn't leaving him to be the only one. He is so grateful for the others allowing the two of them to stay in each other's hold for as long as they needed. It's been so long since his Australian friend has been this present. God, it's been so so very long. Despite Henrik not being sure it was for the best, the five of them lead Jack to the living room. Apparently, they had bought a cake to commemorate the day. He had always been partial to red velvet. Although, thinking about it, that was likely the point of them picking that flavour. Cake was still cake either way. He wasn't going to pass up the opportunity for a slice. He notices a German Shepherd hovering by Jackie. He assures his dog that she doesn't need to work at that moment. Work? Gwen, Jackie clarifies, is a service dog to help with his mental health. She sleeps in his room and keeps him company for most occasions excluding his heroing duties. Oh, okay. Well, that just makes her even more of a good girl, doesn't it? Marvin mentions the expansion of his cat collection. Hardeen and Houdini tended to do their own thing while Trico was up for cuddles most of the time. There was also his rabbit whom he had dubbed Tim the Enchanter. Hang on, hang on, so Marvin was saying that not only did he have the Egyptian goddess of cats but also one of the best known magicians in history and his brother, the best fictional creature in gaming as well as a minor character in Monty Python as pets? The magician's completely straight expression as he challenges Jack to fight him causes him to burst into laughter. Trico turning out to be from a small breed makes it all the better. Chatter explodes between the group over cake slices. Okay, let him get this straight. He has been a coma for the past year and a half. Schneep still isn't sure what exactly the illness that caused this was. Regardless, it's good to have him conscious once more. It is not his 28th birthday as he had initially presumed but his 29th. In that time, a fan game was released which aided in Angus regaining some strength. There were four new egos: a community-conceived zombie called Robbie, Shawn Flynn who was born from a Bendy voice acting gig. Jameson Jackson the pumpkin carving actor that communicated via BSL and an android nicknamed S34Nnor. On top of all that, there was a significant lack of green in anyone's hair. Jack wasn't going to say it out loud but perhaps Chase's beard could use a trim. Not only was Sean doing voice acting gigs, he had travelled across America and Europe with his own comedy show. He was interviewing celebrities too. Sorry, what do they mean, Sean met Ryan Reynolds?! Wow, that was huge. They mention Sean also hanging out with some guy called Bryan Dechart but that name doesn't ring bells. "Okay, Chase, do the line." Jackie encourages. "Alright but that was Sean's series so... keep that in mind." Chase take a breath in preparation then, "Hi, I'm Connor, the android sent by Cyberlife." They all cheer and laugh at that. S34Nnor speaks up. "As a combination of both the character of Connor and Sean, I believe I can improve upon your already good attempt." The line is repeated and everyone becomes excitable once more. "Yes!" The outburst is Chase's as he points to the android with a grin. When the noise has died down again, his expression appears to make his new words honest. "I'm planning on stealing that jacket one day." "You're going to have to fight me for it." Jackie gives a disingenuous glare. "Besides, I'm part machine now sooo go off, I guess." Jack loves the atmosphere. It's been years since it has been this lively here. If this was February 2019 then it must be over two years since their household has been whole. After Halloween 2016, they lost Jackie's playfulness. His absence had been deeply felt throughout the house. It didn't matter now. Who cares if he's so out of the loop that this Cyberlife stuff and any other running jokes don't make sense to him? This house has been missing this sort of energy. He refuses to risk killing it. However, one comment piques his interest. Something tells him to broach this subject carefully. It seemed like it may be sensitive. "Part machine?" "Oh right. Well, I don't technically have any knees anymore." Jackie gestures to his legs. "Prosthetics, both of them." That made sense, given the comment. It doesn't faze him in the slightest that Jackie has had life altering surgery at such a young age. Nope, not at all. "....Prosthetics." "Yeah, it's not that big of a deal. I just hurt my legs when I was getting out." "He has been doing very well with the physical therapy." Henrik smiles. Coming back with a drink in hand and a grin, Jacques pats the superhero's shoulder. "Got a little crush too. What is her name? Aisha?" "Nyesha. And I don't have a crush on her. We're just friends. Not even close ones at that. Tori is aesthetically admirable too." "What a sophisticated way of pronouncing attractive." Marvin teases. "Stop!" The hood was up now with the surrounding strings yanked. "Okay, okay, I think I've got the idea." Jack leans closer. "Promise me you'll let me know if you ask her or anyone else out, alright?" Out of resignation, Jackie mumbles out a "Sure.", only to sit up and divert the attention to the magician. "Marv has a partner though." "Oh, does he?" At this, the new subject of the conversation chuckles, happily telling Jack whatever he wants to know. Jack tries to protest when Jackie is given alcohol. With a soft smile, the youngest member of this family reminded Jack he was 18 now. Of course he is. It was 2019. Jackie has been 18 for some seven months now. July next year, he'll be entering his 20s. Actually, now that Jack thought about it, he and Sean would be 30 next February. Well then. That wasn't crazy to think about. Speaking of Sean, the two of them should really sit down and have a discussion. Although hazy, memories were slowly converging to form recollections of the disastrous dispute. There was a lot to talk about. He's lost eighteen months of his life. There were amendments to be made. If Sean's been on a worldwide tour, he wants to hear about it from the horse's mouth. That must have been an amazing experience. And Signe, he wonders how she's doing. He always regretted the way she kept getting indirectly caught up in his and Sean's dysfunctional friendship. He should wish Sean a happy birthday. That's probably a decent first step to brokering peace. Plus, if his long time friend woke up from a coma on his birthday, that would probably make his day. Jack can only hope Sean would agree. He makes an off-hand comment about this. The idea of reconciling with Sean gets shot down within seconds. Jesus, he doubts he's seen this level of hatred in Marvin towards anyone other than Anti. What the hell did Sean do to warrant this sort of universal repulsion towards him? "Trust me, you do not want to know." Henrik grumbles. Right. In that case, he'd better leave it until tomorrow. Jack is careful when enquiring about Chase and Henrik's families. He's pleasantly surprised when it is generally positive. Chase sees his kids on weekends now which is fantastic. But surely Noah couldn't be little over a week away from turning 5. He was just 3. Willow and Alina were much more confident readers. Jack remembers two little girls who struggled to piece together syllables in simple sentences. They would both be beginning primary school in September. Likewise, Elias was already in his first year of secondary school. Could people stop getting older? He can't keep up. He laughs with them when Chase says "You think they're growing up too fast for you." They order pizza in the evening. Schneep is still against him eating solid food but relents once more. Jack has eaten cake today and there have been no repercussions. As Jacques and Jackie debate with Angus about whether stuffed crust enhanced the experience, Jack took the opportunity to get to know Jameson. With Chase translating, he discovers this is a unique ego. An entire life before coming to exist here. It's such a novel concept to Jack. Even he, as the first ego Sean ever made, can't imagine having proper memories prior to creation. He's used to the others being born with limited memories. Man, he could listen to this guy's anecdotes of the early 20th century all night if he and Chase were willing to carry on that long. They are still hanging around in the living room as midnight is crossed. Some egos have already excused themselves to retire to bed. Once Jack realises it is nearing 1am, he urges everyone else to head to their beds. They shouldn't stay up for him. Besides, he was the one who didn't sleep, remember. He would never wish for them to become sleep deprived for his sake. They refuse and remain. Before long, the man who never slept was experiencing long blinks. Was he tired? Wait, no, this isn't right. The only time he's felt this close to collapse is when... when it's a medical emergency. Like when his throat was bleeding. Or when all he knew was that he didn't feel well. Henrik crouches before him, steadying him in his hold. It's not okay. Stop saying it's going to be okay. Something's wrong, incredibly wrong. Henrik takes his hands, encouraging him to stand. The doctor explains it's likely the sudden regaining of consciousness is catching up with him. Assurances that it was perfectly fine for him to be feeling like this are repeated as they head towards the infirmary. All Henrik wanted to do was monitor him safely. Jack's arm couldn't help slipping from where it was wrapped across his friend's shoulder. Schneep adjusted it without hesitation every time. He defies his eyes any attempt they make to gain an advantage over him. Even when laying on the bed, he refuses the urge to relax. Henrik promises nothing will happen. He is as much of a Good Doctor as he is his friend, right? Please trust he will try to provide the best care he's able. He knows he has failed him before but- "Never!" Jack protests. "You are little bit tired. Is okay for you to sleep. Don't need to fight the sleep, my friend." "Not..." He drifts, only to remember himself a minute later. "Not a failure." "Thank you. Now please rest. We can have a lot of the chit chatting in the morning, yes?" "A'right." A roll of the eyes. A drowsy half smile. A prolonged exhale. And that's all it takes for them to lose him once more. No matter how much Henrik sits, gripping his friend's hand as the monitors revert to the figures they were displaying previously, it won't prove helpful in the slightest to permanently wake Jack up. When Marvin regretfully comes to urge him to get some sleep himself, Henrik waves him off. Just a few more minutes, okay? Then he'll go to bed. As much as they had to fault Sean on, they couldn't say he hadn't done something good today. Henrik can only hope Jack had enjoyed his birthday. Maybe they'd be able to celebrate with him next year too. Maybe. Either way, he couldn't stay here the whole night. With a final check of the equipment, he bids him goodnight. "One of these days, we will get longer. I promise."

[mor-beck-more-problems]

For Everything a Reason || Morgan & Mina

Morgan looks to Mina for help defending herself.

CW: brief mentions of child abuse

Mina had never really trained with anyone that wasn’t a hunter. More often than not, they were stronger and faster than her, and she almost never had an even playing field. She wasn’t allowed to fight in the water, and she wasn’t allowed to use her Fae attributes to help her. And so, she’d actually learned how to fight. She’d learned techniques that gave her advantages, even when the odds were stacked against her. Bigger opponents, stronger opponents, more deadly opponents, she’d learned ways to incopacitate with minimal damage, and she’d technically learned to kill, though that part didn’t come as naturally to her. However, Mina had never learned to train with others, especially not zombies who used to be witches. But, Mina’d also never learned to teach, but it still came to her. She figured she’d approach the situation like she was teaching Morgan a difficult equation: break down the steps, apply the techniques, and then test out the process. She’d invited Morgan to a little field not too far from her house (and from the lake), figuring they’d have plenty of privacy since the place was closed (not that it stopped her from sneaking in). She was wearing her workout gear, a tank top and jogging pants, and a hoodie over the shirt even though it was a bit too hot for it. She’d brought some sparring equipment, a few knives and guns, and a small crossbow, but she figured they’d just focus on the hand to hand. After all, Morgan had all the raw, undead might in the world. She just needed to utilize it.

Thank the stars Mina wanted to work with Morgan outside. She was still shaken by her visit at The Ring, by what had happened to Remmy, that she couldn’t bear to be doing this back in the workout room where they used to practice, or some gym that might remind her of that awful place. And besides, she probably wouldn’t be taken unawares in some old building. Last time it had been out in the woods, and she couldn’t exactly stop taking any kind of walks altogether. She got too restless, being semi to mostly conscious at all hours. She just needed to be safe. She needed something within herself to reach for. What other choices did she have?

She dropped her bag on the ground when she arrived at the spot and came straight over to give Mina a hug. She hadn’t been in a place to be very kind or inquiring with her the last time they’d met in her office. Everything was still hard, still heavy, but blessed Universe, she was glad to see her. “Thank you for doing this with me,” she said. “It’s good to see you, Mina. You sure you’re really doing okay? It’s been a rough time around here.” She realized after squeezing her that she had never touched Mina before in her changed body and that, for all she knew, it was something jarring and awful. She stepped back, her smile gone all stiff. “Sorry,” she added.

It was always a bit unexpected when people hugged Mina. Her dad wasn’t a hugger, and there weren’t many people that had come and gone from her life that wanted to touch her very much. There was one boy, when she was about 13 or 14, that had brushed against her hand and been surprised when her skin felt like skin and not like scales. He hadn’t been a warden, nor had he been particularly smart, looking back on it. However, when Morgan pulled her into a hug, maybe a little too cold and a little too tight, Mina hadn’t known how to respond. It’ was nice, though. “Ah, I mean, I’ve been alright, truly. The mime situation was incredibly--” unnerving “odd, and then there were a couple of people with eyeballs in their hands that chased me and a friend near the lake.” Were she and Skylar friends? She didn’t know what other word to use. “Other than that, though, I’ve mostly been working on school. What about you?” Mina felt a bit of the loss of contact when Morgan pulled away, but she just shook her head and smiled, hoping Morgan knew how sincere she was. “Nothing to apologize for, Morgan, really.”

Mina was just being kind about her touch, Morgan was sure. She didn’t know anyone who didn’t at least want to jump away from the cold. But then again, maybe fae were a little different. She decided to take Mina’s smile at face value--she wanted to be kind, she wanted Morgan to feel welcome and normal. As she took a step back and began to stretch, Morgan couldn’t help but notice the strange marks down Mina’s arms. They were too dark, too straight and even to be part of her skin. They looked like scars. But why were there so many? “Hey…” Morgan dropped out of her stance and nodded towards the markings with concern. “Those don’t look like ‘alright.’ Are they new or--?” Old? Something from her training, or another hunter?

Ah. Mina hadn’t even realized her arms were bare. Perhaps she was a bit too comfortable around Morgan, even knowing what the other woman was. Besides, training usually required short sleeves for more movability. Still. She finished her toe touches and rolled her shoulders before straightening up and rubbing her arms. “Oh, they’re mostly old,” she said. A lot of the ones on her arms were from defense. She’d learned to always protect her head, even at the expense of her extremities. “Training, mostly. And, really, they look worse than they are. Iron. It, ah, heals slower, kind of burns a bit when it happens.” The one where her mime had gotten her on the neck was healing much faster than normal, even though it’d felt like an iron burn, while the one across her stomach from Montgomery still looked raised and angry some days, even months later. She tugged at her ponytail a bit. “We should, ah, get to training, yes? I thought we could start with simple hand-to-hand defense?”

There was something chilling to Morgan about how easily Mina dismissed her injuries. Maybe it was like that for all children reared to be fighters. Violence was more than a possibility, but a fact. It dwelled inside them even when they weren’t engaging in some altercation. And yet...Mina was still young. How old must she have been to sustain so many ‘old’ injuries? To burn a child on purpose, to tell her it was for her own good? Morgan shivered as remnants from Deirdre’s childhood stories floated to the surface of her mind. Had it been Mina’s father, every time? Or did he ask other hunters to do it for him? “How old were you?” She asked, the words slipping out before she could stop them. Morgan frowned, apologetic. The training. Right.

“Yeah, hand-to-hand is good. I have a couple of weapons, but I’d like to know I can do something without one.” And there was something so distressingly fearful about carrying a knife on her. She didn’t know what it meant, if she was being prudish or precious or if she really was relinquishing something important if she gave in to that impulse. Good thing you don’t have to worry about it right now, she reminded herself. “I know about maintaining a good center of gravity and how to hold a fist, but I’m not sure about much else.” She got into position and held out an arm, fist raised, to show her.

Blinking a bit, Mina tried to remember how old she was when she’d first started her training. Her dad had waited a few years after he took her from her mother. Saved her. Her earliest memories were filled with the sounds of moving water, and then she was kind of sick for a few years as her dad figured out how to raise a kid that wasn’t human. It had been hard on both of them, but he figured it out with the help of some warden he met who told him about nixies and what they needed. That had helped a lot. Then she’d almost drowned a girl at a birthday party, and that was when her dad decided that it was time to start training. Hunter training and human training. It was too bad she’d never really been able to master controlling her shifting abilities. “I was probably about nine the first time we picked up weapons and started working with those,” she said thoughtfully. Compared to some of the hunter children she knew, she’d been a late bloomer.

Mina looked over Morgan’s stance, nodding at how she kept her center of gravity. Her fists were good, but Mina didn’t want them to get too into throwing punches. “It all looks good, but how about we focus on some things that are less about punching and more about protecting yourself? Punching’s good, but that requires you to engage with your assailant. Best not to bring a fist to a gunfight, or even a knife fight. What you want is to disarm and detain your assailant as quickly as possible, so I think that’s what we’ll go over today, if that’s alright with you.”

Nine. Stars above, she had only been nine. When Morgan was nine...well, that was another cursed year. It wasn’t a great time. But she wasn’t tending to purposely inflicted burn wounds or fearing for her mortal life. She couldn’t understand the humanity in that, the kindness in that. Mina was capable, what she said about disarming and detaining? It hadn’t even occurred to her that there were different techniques for that. “No, that sounds like a good idea,” she said quickly. “My instincts are more ‘run for the hills’ anyway right now. Only problem is I can’t really do that if I’m, you know, dying. Is this what you learned first too?”

“The most important lesson is to not die,” Mina said, laughing a little. Not the first, though. The first had been to be careful with promises and to never ask anyone for their name. The next, and vastly more important, had been not to drown anyone. “The first thing I learned, really, though, was how not to hurt other people.” She trusted Morgan, enough to allow her hand to change, the fingernails changing into claws and webbing growing between the fingers. “These hurt. The teeth, too. And nixies like to drown people. I had to learn not to do that.” She shifted her hand back, a few patches of scales still clinging to her skin. She’d been better with shifting as a child, when it’d come more naturally. Now, it was like her mind and body were at war. One wanted desperately to be human. The other liked to remind her that she’d never be one. “So, ah, could you tell me about what happened?” She hated asking, but she knew that would be the best place to start. “That way, I can try to tell you the best ways to get out of similar situations, and then we can work from there.”

Morgan gaped at Mina’s second, mermaid-like skin. She hovered her fingers over it, curious, noting the claws, how fierce she was, or had been born to be. Remembering how insecure Mina had been brought up to be, she said, “I don’t mean to stare. You’re just...kind of incredible. You’re beautiful, Mina. It doesn’t hurt to shift while you’re out of water, does it?” But..they were getting off track. Morgan needed to survive. Remmy wasn’t going to be helping her anytime soon, and even if the hunter who’d gone after her was dead, there was so, so little keeping it from happening again with someone else. Morgan swallowed, straightened up. “He came at me from behind. There was something like...like a wire noose on a rad. It just kind of...came at me. Around me…” She shivered, lifting a hand to her neck, pressing down on where it had been. “It pulled me backwards. So...how would I fix that? Or something else that...came up from behind?”

“Ah. Well. I mean, um, thank you,” Mina said a bit stiltedly. She wasn’t used to the compliments. There was nothing beautiful about being Fae. It was otherworldly and unnatural. It had been fun, when she was a child, to see other children obsessed with mermaids when she herself was even better than a monstrous, vile mermaid, but then she’d learned she wasn’t much better. “It-- it doesn't hurt, really. It’s easier to shift to the scales than shift back.” Some of the scales would probably stick around for a couple of hours, and they’d come back when she got in the water again, but Morgan’s words did make her a bit more comfortable with them being out around another person. Mina’s own hand went up to her throat. She took a calming breath, though, and remembered her training. “Alright. A wire on a rod is a bit different, but I’d treat it the same way you treat a garrote wire around the neck. Attempt to back up while putting your hand between the wire and your neck. Your hands can heal, and they aren’t as vital as your throat. Then, the goal is to twist yourself towards them.” As she spoke, she demonstrated the movements as best as she could without another person. “After, the goal would be to strike out at the groin with your fist or knee until they let go, but, since the wire is on a stick, the next course of action would be to get the rod out of their hands. When they’re incapacitated and you’re free, some might suggest killing them,” Mina said calmly. “I suggest removing yourself from the situation.”

A garrotte. Fantastic. How amazingly 18th century of hunters. What next, a morning star? Morgan tried to swallow back her grimace. Of course Mina wouldn’t want to kill the hunters. She still identified, at least partially, as one of them. Truthfully, Morgan struggled to picture herself squeezing the life out of anyone. That warden she’d left in the bog had been different. She was desperate, and she’d tried everything to get them out first. It had been, well, not an accident, but not like what the hunter in the woods had done. She hadn’t set out wanting to. She had just done what she needed to make the ritual happen. Pushing the quandary away, Morgan reminded herself that running on infinite stamina would be a lot better than rewriting every instinct her mortal life had taught her. “Sure,” she said. “Sounds good. Uh…” She tried to mime the motions as Mina had showed them to her, but felt a little at a loss, grasping at air. “Can you um..let’s say you are closer to me.” She repositioned herself, bringing Mina’s up near her neck. “You’re pulling me back, so should I grip like this? And then--” she followed the rest of the instructions, up to a point. “Strike out how, exactly?”

It was easy for Mina to let herself slip back into training mode. Perhaps even easier than usual because, even though Morgan was a zombie, Mina wasn’t nearly as worried about getting hurt as she’d normally be. This was a bit like tutoring, except without the numbers. Still, there were certain algorithms that went with fighting. Once you learned the moves, the formulas, you could manipulate them to serve your purpose. It was mainly about trying not to panic when things got too intense or weren’t exactly as planned. She’d messed up plenty of training exercises because small details had been changed, when she was younger. Really, when she thought about it, most of her scars were attributed to her own foolishness. She put that thought aside, seeing as how it was a prime example of getting distracted, and put herself back in the present. “Alright, if I’m choking you with something, a wire or a belt or a piece of rope, grip it to pull it off of your neck, yes. Make sure you back up close to your assailant-- me, in this case. Now, you’re going to turn your body in towards me a bit,” she repositioned Morgan so that the older woman was turned slightly, “and strike out however you have to in order to get me off of you. Step on my feet, kick my shins, elbow me in the stomach, the thigh, the groin. Whatever it takes to get me off.”

Morgan nodded and righted herself back into position. This time she pushed against Mina’s hands with full strength and turned so quickly she was already poised to step on her toe. She came down hard and moved to elbow her in the stomach. She tried to imagine how it would be if this were real, if something clawed at her out of nowhere during a walk in the woods, or at work, in a parking lot somewhere. Would her brain be lagging behind her with second guesses? Was this hard enough, fast enough? “What do I do if it’s not enough?” She asked suddenly. “You--okay, not you, but someone, some guy, some hunter--they just catch me again.” She swallowed thickly. “What happens then? How do I not die again? Um...hypothetically-but-maybe-not speaking?” She stared hard into Mina’s eyes, uncertain but pleading all the same. She wanted to know how to hurt them back. She wanted to know how to make them stop for good, just in case.

The word “again” made sure that Mina didn’t forget what Morgan was. It reminded her that she was here, teaching a zombie how to defend herself. She should have felt guilty. Instead, she felt resigned. Her dad was wrong. Not all supernaturals were monsters. Her friend hadn’t magically changed just because she was no longer human. If it wasn’t for the lack of breathing, the coldness of her skin, Mina wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Really, she only knew because she’d been told. She couldn’t pick out a zombie on the street even if it bit her, she was sure. For better or for worse, Morgan was the same person, and Mina didn’t want her to die. Again. So she said, “Kill them.” She looked Morgan in the eyes, her tone serious. “If they’re coming at you, and they don’t give up, kill them. You’re stronger than you think, even well-fed. You’re pain receptors are practically nonexistent, which works in your favor. People don’t put as much effort into things because it hurts, but as long as you don’t get your head chopped off, you’ll heal.” She swallowed, thinking. “If you can, break their neck. They’re human. Even if they heal quickly, they’re not coming back from a broken neck.”

Morgan hadn’t expected Mina to be so blunt or sure. Weren’t the hunters her people? And what about her father? But there was nothing but certainty and understanding in Mina’s expression. The stakes were as real to her as they were to Morgan. Morgan looked down at her arms. She didn’t feel especially strong at the moment. She hadn’t had to think about herself as a weapon when she’d been alive. She hadn’t had to cultivate any skills that were just for hurting. Sure she’d melted that ass-blossom’s skin, and she’d threatened to do worse, but alchemy had been neutral. It shaped itself with intention. Morgan didn’t know what else to do with this knowledge. Was it enough to protect herself? To keep hold of what little she had. “Thank you,” she said solemnly. “Can we go again? I um...I need to get more used to this. I don’t even know how strong I am, actually. And I trust you, Mina. And I…” She wasn’t sure if Mina would take this as well as she meant, if she could see enough softness and humanity in the parts of her that were fae. “I feel like you get it. How...batshit and real and scary this all is. And I’m...used to losing everything. But not...not being able to try to stop it. I know our stories are really different, but you understand, don’t you?”

It did make Mina a little sick to talk about this. She couldn’t hurt a human, and it seemed like she was incapable of hurting supernaturals, too. After all, she was teaching one how to defend herself from the very people Mina was supposed to be a part of. But she wasn’t, not really, not all the time, and she couldn’t let someone hurt Morgan. She gave the older woman (a zombie, a zombie; she couldn’t forget she was a zombie) a nod. “We can keep going until you’re comfortable,” she said. “You might be surprised at how strong you are. And as long as you don’t suddenly have iron skin, I’ll heal from whatever. Give me your best shot.” Mina stood up a bit straighter. She did get it. How awful and scary the world was. But she’d always seen it from the other side. The supernatural were the monsters. She was even a monster, really, one of those awful, scary things. Only, now, it was getting harder to see that, even if it was true. Monsters were hard to hate when they seemed just as scared as the humans. “I understand,” she said, quietly. “You shouldn’t have to lose anymore. And now, you don’t have to. You can protect yourself. You can protect the people around you.” That’s what Mina was beginning to see that she wanted: not to just hunt, not to just take bounties at the highest bid, but to protect. And, sometimes, that meant protecting people that didn’t seem like people at a first glance. “Come on. Let’s go again.”