#many delusions where they are alive and the thought of going back to them is the only thing keeping him going really

[kidfoundonstreets]

I DONT HAVE THE IMAGES IRGHT NOW BUT YOU UNDETRNSAD?? YOU GET ?? YOLU GET? IM MADLY I NLOV WITH YOU TIWLIGHTRCADE MY GOOD FRIEND MY COMRADEMY RIDE ROD IE

[mypoisonedvine]

𝕴'𝖑𝖑 𝖆𝖑𝖜𝖆𝖞𝖘 𝖈𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖇𝖆𝖈𝖐 𝖙𝖔 𝖞𝖔𝖚 | dark!eddie munson x reader

𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖗𝖞 | you always believed that Eddie would return... that he would escape, somehow, from the Upside Down and hold you again, tell you that he would never leave without his girl. well, something came back, that's for sure.

𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖉 𝖈𝖔𝖚𝖓𝖙 | 6.8k

𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 | smut (dubcon/noncon, really it's more like... noncon turned con?), extreme gore/violence, blood, vomiting (emetophobia tw), minor character death, vampire shenanigans, dark-ish eddie but it's complicated?, kinda stockholm syndrome-y, the most fucked up take on a "fix it fic" because it's me we're talking about here

this is a dark fic, do not hit 'keep reading' if any of the warnings would be triggering for you and/or if you are not 18 or older, thank you

You couldn’t count on all your fingers and toes how many times you’d pictured this: him, here; Eddie, on your doorstep, alive.  It hadn’t even been two days and you couldn’t count how many times you’d pictured this.  

“Oh my god,” you gasped, “tell me— tell me I’m not dreaming, Eddie—”

“I’m here,” he breathed, like he’d run all the way to your door— maybe he did.  “I’m here, baby—”

You cut him off as you jumped on him, sobbing as you wrapped him up in a hug.  You didn’t believe it when Dustin told you that Eddie didn’t make it out, and they all thought you were just in denial because you loved him so much.  But you knew… he wasn’t gone.  You would’ve felt it, the moment he left.  You knew he was alive, and you held him so tightly, making sure it was real and not just some delusion of yours.  But he felt real, he felt soft and hard in all the right places, his shoulders were strong and broad as you rested your weight on them— he even smelled the same if, maybe, not quite as good… running around in hell for a few days will do that to you.

There was one thing different that you noticed right away, though.  He wasn’t warm.

“You must be so— oh god, come on,” you stammered, letting him out of the embrace to drag him inside.  “You must be freezing— and so tired— have you slept?”

He shook his head.  He still seemed a little dazed, and you guided him to your kitchen, pulling out a chair for him to sit in.  He collapsed into it, leaning on the table slightly.  His clothes were stained with blood, and you couldn’t decide where to start— should you go for a blanket first, or your first aid kit, or just a glass of water— or would he let you start cleaning his face a bit?  Maybe you could run him a bath?

“Sweetie,” you whispered as you knelt down before him, holding his face in your hands.  His eyes were bloodshot and glassy; he still had blood on the corners of his mouth.  “I can’t believe you’re— you’re here.”

He turned his face as your fingers brushed over his cheeks, and started staring at one of your hands closely.  Slowly, he reached up to it, holding it as he leaned in and pressed his lips against your wrist softly.  You melted inside, and watched him take a deep breath against your skin.

“I-I’m gonna get you a blanket,” you decided, feeling how icy his grip was on your hand.  You stood up, but he held on too tightly for you to get away.  “Lemme go, Ed, I’ll be right back, okay?  I swear— just let me get you the blanket, and then some water.”

He relented, releasing your wrist and watching you cross the room, ducking into the hallway to grab the thick wool blanket you kept there.

“Here you go,” you smiled as you ran up to him again, draping it around him as he stared up at you.  You took the opportunity to give him another tight hug, but jumped back when you heard him hiss.  “Oh, god— am I hurting you?  Fuck, of course I am, you’re still injured— I’m sorry, let me give you some bandages, okay?  I don’t want anything getting infected…”

You trailed off as you spun around helplessly, trying to remember which cabinet had the antiseptic— eventually, you got down on your knees and found it on your second try.  There were bandages and gauze nearby, and you snagged those along with a rag to clean up the extra blood and some hydrogen peroxide while you were at it.

His eyes followed your hands as you set everything on the kitchen table, kneeling in front of him again and wetting the rag with some antiseptic to start.  “Okay, I’m just gonna… lift your shirt.  Really carefully, and you let me know if anything hurts, okay?”

He didn’t actually respond, or even nod, but you went ahead and gently peeled up the bottom of the shirt— the dried blood stuck to his skin, and you winced in fear that you’d made it worse.  But, when you glanced up at his face, it didn’t show any signs of pain… his stare was blank, and focused in on you.

You managed to get the shirt up, seeing more dried blood all over his torso.  “Oh, Ed, they really ate you alive, huh?” you whispered under your breath.  “This might sting a little… but it’ll hurt a lot less than these did.”

You swiped the rag over his skin, watching the stains of blood eventually start washing away.  You kept wiping and wiping, cleaning more and more, waiting to find the bites and open wounds that all of this must have come from…

Looking up at him, you tried not to show on your face that anything was wrong.  His face was still mostly expressionless; you shivered.

“Eddie…” you breathed, cleaning his entire stomach until there was nothing left to do but sit back and look at it— look at the impossible.  “Eddie, there’s no… there aren’t any…”

His torso was clean, all the blood washed away and only skin left— no wounds, no bites, not even a scratch.  Just the tattoos you remembered, the trail of hair leading to his belt buckle, that little scar he’d had as long as you knew him.  But no signs he’d ever been attacked at all.

As much as you never even thought to question Dustin, you wrinkled your brows together and looked up at Eddie quizzically.  When Dustin told you Eddie was dead, you knew he was wrong, but you didn’t think he was lying.  Dustin never would’ve left Eddie behind if he thought there was a chance to save him… right?  But you were forced to wonder how it was possible that Eddie was here, covered in blood and very much alive, if Dustin swore he’d died in another dimension.  “Did… did they…?” you began to ask gently.  “Did they leave you?  Did they try to hurt you— did something happen?”

Eddie shook his head.

“Then… what did happen?  Did the bats attack you?”

He looked confused now, too.  He thought about it for a long time.  “Yeah… yeah, they bit me.  A lot.  And I was bleeding.”

Okay, so it was his blood he was covered in.  But where did it come from?

“And I passed out.  I thought I was dying.”

“But you woke up?” you assumed.

He nodded.  “Yeah— they were gone, and I… I felt really sick, but I was awake.  And I tried to remember where the gate was… and I found it, and then I found you.”

Well, that made a certain amount of sense, but not quite enough.  “L-let me get you some water,” you offered, standing up quickly.  As you turned away, he grabbed you at the wrist again.

“No,” he blurted out, and you sighed with heartache as you moved close to him again. 

“Baby, what’s wrong?” you whispered.  “What do you need?”

“Hungry,” he finally said, “I’m hungry.”

You smiled, because you knew how to fix that.  “Okay— I’m gonna get you something to eat, alright?”

You opened the fridge and examined the contents under the yellow lightbulb’s shine.

“I’ve got fettuccine alfredo,” you listed, “and, uh, shepherd’s pie… half a cheese pizza… strawberry jell-o?”

You glanced over at him, waiting for something to work with.

“What sounds good?” you prompted him.

“Meat,” he answered flatly.

“O-okay…” you stammered, looking back into the fridge.  “I’ve got a chicken breast in here— I’ll cook that for you, okay?  It won’t take long.  I’ll slice it thin and it’ll cook fast, okay?  Does that sound alright?”

He hesitated, but nodded.

It made you feel better knowing you could finally do something for him; you offered for him to lay down or get in the shower while you cooked his food, but he just waited— you sliced the chicken and seasoned it while the pan heated, glancing over at him every couple of minutes.  Thankfully you’d convinced him to drink some water in the meantime, but he nursed it surprisingly slowly considering how long he must have gone without.

“You’re sure you don’t want anything else with this?” you asked, seeming to tear him out of a trance.

“Huh?” he mumbled.

“You know— I could boil some pasta, chop some veggies, something to eat with this?”

“N-no, just the chicken is fine…” he insisted.

“Well, it’s almost ready,” you smiled.  “Smells good, right?”

His nostrils flared for a second, and his eyes darted away.  You knew a no when you saw one… he reached up and covered his nose and mouth for a second, wiping the blood off of his mouth and chin— seemed like a good thing to do before he ate.

Sliding the food onto a plate, you waved a hand over it to hopefully speed up the cooling-off process; you cut one of the pieces of cooked meat in half, to make sure it was white all the way through, and sighed in relief when it was.  Last thing Eddie needed now was salmonella…

You felt like a proper housewife, setting the plate in front of him with a smile, taking your own seat.  “Here you go, bon appetit,” you beamed, placing the fork next to him just in time for him to snatch it up and dig in.

You brought your elbows up on the table and rested your chin on your fist, and watched him eat— maybe a little too closely… but you just wanted to see his eyes light up again!  You wanted to see him acting a bit closer to normal, and you knew how getting some food in your belly could do so much for your energy… especially after this long.

He carefully chewed each bite, swallowing thickly, like he could barely get it down.  You winced.  “It’s not too tough, is it?  Oh god, Ed, you know I’m not a great cook or anything— is it dry?  It’s dry, isn’t it?”

He shook his head, and you rolled your eyes. 

“Don’t spare my feelings,” you chuckled, “you like to lie about liking my cooking— but not right now, Ed, I can make you something else, I can go pick something up—”

You reached onto his plate and grabbed a cube of chicken, holding it with two fingers as you took a bite to prove that he was, in fact, flattering you and it tasted like shit.

But it was fine, actually; sure, not the most compelling dish, but not bland per se and not incorrectly prepared.

As you wondered why he was having so much trouble with it, he started coughing.  You leaned closer, reaching to hold his shoulders, but he brushed you away, turning to keel over towards the floor and cough harder and harder—

When he vomited the first time, you hadn't even noticed yet that it wasn't bile— you cooed at him sympathetically, squeezing his shoulder and trying to hold his hair back, and then froze when another stream of fluid finally caught your attention: black, nearly pitch black.  The puddle on the floor, you realized, was tarry and thick.  You fought the urge to grimace as you yanked your feet away; you didn't want him to feel self conscious, he'd been through enough, but…this wasn't right.

Vomiting on a near-empty stomach is bad enough… it shouldn't have been this dark, nor this plentiful.  He convulsed as another rush came out of his mouth, and you started to cry a little as you grabbed his hand and held it tight.  Your heart hurt to see him like this, but your gut sank with the knowledge that something was absolutely, horribly wrong… 

"What happened to you?" you whispered, not much of a genuine question because you knew he couldn't answer.  You didn't know much about the place he'd been— no one did— and he'd apparently been there for days.  You decided not to ask him what he did to survive, because it didn't matter: he was here.  You almost lost him, and you'd do anything to keep him here with you.  You weren't ready to lose him again.

“I’m sorry,” he finally choked out when he stopped, catching his breath and sitting back up.  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and when his eyes fell on you again, a chill ran over your spine.

“Eddie, don’t apologize— you don’t have anything to apologize for,” you assured.

“Not yet,” he replied, and you tilted your head.

“What…?”

You stopped yourself, because you saw his eyes fall on your exposed neck.  His mouth fell open slightly, his eyes went glassy again.

“Eddie,” you breathed— because you knew, somehow, that you needed to call for him.  That he wasn’t quite… here, even though he was right in front of you.  “We should go to the hospital… you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick,” he promised, “I’m just hungry.”

He leaned a little closer to you, and you stood up quickly.  “I’ll make you something else,” you decided, turning and walking to the fridge again— but then he was behind you, in an instant, so fast that you yelped a little when he pressed up against you from behind.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“I told you not to—”

He grabbed you tighter, and as much as you’d longed for him to hold you again, you instinctively tried to squirm away— but he was too strong.  He’d always been stronger than you… this was different.  This was too strong.  “I’m hungry— I’m so hungry, just… just stay still,” he pleaded.

You whined when his fingers dug into your shoulders, his nose running over the skin of your neck.  “Eddie, I-I don’t… I don’t understand,” you whispered.

“I can feel your heartbeat, I can hear it,” he informed you, “I can… smell you.  You smell good.”

His mouth traced along your pulse, and you knew that this moment could easily be interpreted as foreplay— the compliments, the mouth on your neck, that was all pretty typical for Eddie when he was ‘in the mood.’  The thing was, it was so clearly not that, just from the way his voice sounded, from the way he held you against him painfully tight.  “You’re hurting me,” you whimpered.

“I’m sorry,” he said one more time, “i-it’s gonna hurt less if you stop moving, baby.”

You gasped as he started to bite down on you, much too hard already.  “N-no, Eddie—!”

Your voice broke and fell into silence when his teeth pierced your skin.  The pain shattered over your body like a crack in a windshield; it stole your voice, and when you tried to cry, there was only a silent tear that fell down your cheek and onto the tile floor.

His arms wrapped around you, and you went limp in them.  He stopped suckling at the wound he’d created for a moment, in order to let you fall just enough for him to catch you; he dragged you into the hallway where he knelt down and cradled you, holding the back of your head to keep your neck tilted just the way he needed to make the blood flow fastest.  He lapped at it voraciously, breathing heavier, but slower, than he had before.  Your body naturally tried to fight him, your weak arms pushing at his shoulders every time the pain throbbed in your neck, but soon the energy was quite literally drained from you and your arms fell limp at your sides.

It felt like it went on forever, your vision going blurry from far more than just the tears that filled your eyes, your fingers twitching through the pins and needles as you longed for the strength to push him away and run— but you were paralyzed, everywhere except your heart, which kept beating faster yet weaker by the minute.

“E-Eddie,” you croaked under your breath, the best you could do to beg for your life.  Amazingly, for how little it was, it seemed to work.  He broke away from you, and you saw his face appear above yours— his mouth and chin were soaked in blood, drops that had run down striping his neck.  He swallowed and started to catch his breath.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” he panted, “I didn’t— fuck, I’m sorry… you’re gonna be okay.”

You blinked quickly, trying to reach up to hold his collar— to tell him it was okay, you still loved him, even if you were terrified of him.  He looked like your Eddie again, he had the light in his eyes, the sweetness in his voice you were used to, and you fought through your exhaustion to smile weakly and blink the tears away.  “I’m… so tired…” you let out with each heave of your chest, too weak to really speak— all you could do was make the right movements with your mouth as you panted to shape each breath into words.

“That’s okay,” he nodded, “fall asleep.  I’ll be here when you wake up, and I’m gonna… I’ll explain everything.”

You sighed slowly, feeling your head roll to the side as you went totally lifeless— slumping onto the floor just in time to slip into darkness.

~

You startled awake, grabbing your neck instinctively.  It all felt like some horrible dream…

Until you turned and saw Eddie sitting at the foot of the bed.  “Hey,” he offered sympathetically, leaning closer; you scooted back slightly, and he sighed.  “D-don't be scared of me, please,” he begged, looking heartbroken, which broke your heart, too.

“I’m not scared of you,” you assured, “I just— is it really you?  You’re my Eddie, right?  Not some Upside Down version of him?”

He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck nervously.  “Uh— honestly, babe, I don’t know for sure.  I think we can both agree some things have changed for me in the last few days.”

You nodded.  “Just… tell me what happened.  Or what you remember.”

“Well... after I found the gate... I wandered in the woods, I was so lost and— baby, you can’t imagine how hungry I was,” he explained, pleading with you to understand.  “It hurt, I felt like I couldn’t even walk, it was like something was inside me trying to claw its way out… and there was this, um, deer.”

You choked on your own throat, because you already knew where this was going— if he asked you to guess what happened next, you wouldn’t be able to say it, you would say that you didn’t know… but you did.  You knew, deeper inside yourself than you were willing to look.

“I’ve never even shot a deer before or anything,” he reminded you, “but I caught it with just my hands— I chased it, and it wasn’t even that hard, really… I don’t remember it all that well… I just remember, um, feeding on it for a while.”

“Did it help?”

“Not as much as I hoped it would… I knew, by then, what I really needed.  I wouldn’t let myself believe it, I wouldn’t say it, but… I swear— I came here because I knew you’d know how to sort this all out.  I wasn’t going to… I didn’t want to do that to you.”  He whined slightly, letting his head fall into his hands as he hid his face.  “God, baby, I’m so sorry—”

“Eddie,” you stopped him firmly.  “Did doing that to me… help you?”

Even before he nodded shamefully, you knew the answer, it was obvious: he was acting normal again, acting like himself— if a little more serious than usual.  You recognized this Eddie, even when you were half-dead from the blood loss and knew that he was responsible for it… even then, it was him.

“You’re not hungry anymore?” you continued.  He shook his head.  “Then it’s okay… I told you I’d do anything for you, Eddie, that I’d die for you—”

“I won’t kill you,” he insisted.  “I can’t believe I ever hurt you— I didn’t know how to stop, babe, I really could’ve—”

“Shh,” you soothed, reaching up to stroke his face as his eyes started to water.  “It’s okay, what’s mine is yours.  Even my body— even my… um, my blood.”

It felt weird to say it like that, but it was true.  “I don’t know how long it’ll last,” he whispered.  “I don’t know if I’ll be that desperate again… what if I can’t stop myself next time?”

“We’re going to find you a real meal, Eddie,” you promised, “and maybe there won’t need to be a next time.”

~

“Guess you’re lonely without that freak boyfriend of yours, huh?” Greg snickered.

You looked away, holding your arms tightly across your chest.  “Y-yeah— I should’ve… left him sooner.  I didn’t know what he was doing— him and his, uh, cult…”

“Weren’t you in Hellfire?” Greg wondered, crossing his arms to match yours, which made the puffy sleeves of his letter jacket look even more ridiculous.  “We all thought you were his second-in-command— you helped hide him from us, didn’t you?”

“W-well, that’s why I asked you to meet me here,” you explained, “to apologize… for everything.  I wouldn’t have protected him if I knew he was killing people.”

You hated the taste of those lies in your mouth.  If this all went according to plan, no one would ever have to know you said those things about your Eddie, your angel— but could he hear you now?  It was so dark in the woods at night, so you couldn’t tell if he was in earshot.  If not, that would be in part a relief, but it would also be a problem since he wouldn’t be here to save you when the time was right.

“So, I’m sorry,” you concluded.  “I hope we can… be friends.”

You were looking down at the ground sheepishly, but in the edge of your vision, you saw Greg stepping closer.  “Now, what do you wanna be friends with me for?” he purred.

“U-um,” you choked, fighting the urge to step back as Greg stalked closer.  

“I think you might have a little crush, freak.”

Greg was right in front of you now, his sneakers just beside yours, and you found the courage to look up at him.  He had the most horrible smile on his face, raising a hand to stroke your cheek.  You weren’t much of an actress, clearly, because you couldn’t help but jerk away.

“Aw, don’t be shy now,” Greg frowned, “you’re the one that asked me to come see you tonight… at Skull Rock… alone.  I wasn’t born yesterday, sweetheart, I know what that means.”

You wanted to scream at him, I’m not your fucking sweetheart, but you couldn’t; instead, you stayed still and let his hands reach around to your waist.

Now, we need to establish some… ground rules, you heard Eddie’s voice in your head, memories from yesterday still clear in your head.  First rule is, you give the signal, and it’s over.  You don’t have to be a part of this if you don’t want to.

You were just as sure now as you were then that you needed to do this, even if, yes, it was revolting to have Greg Willis pull you closer and slip his hands far too low on your back.

"You know, I always thought you'd be pretty if you dressed more normal," Greg informed you.  "You know, ditch the ripped jeans and get a dress or something?  You could even be popular… if you went out with me."

Shuddering, you yelped in shock when he grabbed your hips and yanked them forward into his own.  His grin was shining in the moonlight, those perfect teeth in that megawatt smile.  You hesitantly reached your hands up to rest on his chest.

"What do you say?" he pressed.

"U-um, well, Greg," you stuttered, "the truth is, I'm not really interested in going out."

He laughed, and you blinked quickly.  "Damn, alright," he purred, "if you just wanna hook up, I'm not gonna say no to that…"

Second rule, don’t let him touch you too much… or I might try to kill him too early, and then it all goes to shit.

Your hands balled into fists when he kissed you; he tasted like toothpaste and coffee, and you were trying so hard not to grimace or shove him back so you could deck him.  He slipped his tongue in your mouth, far too aggressive, far too soon— you whimpered and pulled him back, the two of you stumbling together until your back was pressed up against the tree.  His hands squeezed your waist, then slipped down to grope your butt; you gasped and broke away, disgusted.  He didn’t seem to notice your disdain, or simply didn’t care, and reached up to brush your hair out of the way so he could kiss your neck.  Of course, when he saw the fresh scar there, he moved his head back.  “Wh… what happened to you?” Greg whispered.  “It was that cult, right?  Did they try to… sacrifice you, like they did to Jason’s girl?”

You pushed his hand away, but he just grabbed you again, tighter— you whimpered slightly and tried to writhe out of his grasp.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he cooed, “I’m gonna make it all better…”

He grabbed your jaw, about to force you to kiss him again, when a loud thud beside you made you both turn to the side; Eddie, finally, had jumped down from the tree and was standing there glaring at both of you.

“Sorry, Greg, but she’s spoken for,” Eddie grunted, pouncing on him.  Greg was well over six foot, star quarterback for the Tigers football team; Eddie knocked him down like it was nothing, sending them both flying back nearly two yards and pinning him easier than if he were just some puny kid.  You yelped and covered your face, shrinking down to sit on the ground.

Final rule, you remembered as you swallowed and forced your eyes shut tightly, when I… do what I do… don’t look.  I don’t want you to see me like that.

Memories flashed in your mind, against your will, of that look in Eddie’s eyes just before he bit you, of the way his voice sounded when he told you how hungry he was.  They were interspersed with memories of your Eddie, the way he used to be— when he would make you laugh and hold you close and make all your fears go away.  You’d been holding onto your dream that that Eddie would come back, but you could hear the sounds next to you— the muffled whimpers, the voracious growls, the… gulping.

You took your hands down away from your face, slowly; you had to look.  You had to know.

It was so dark, it was just shadows on shadows; you were able to make out Eddie’s wild hair first, then the general shape of him— he was straddling Greg, on top of him, and you realized then that the movement was Greg’s legs shaking.  Eddie’s rings glistened in the moonlight, his hand covering Greg’s mouth to stop him from screaming— all just below where Greg’s wide, white eyes suddenly met yours.  You’d never been horrified to the bone before by just one look from a man; you’d never seen a man begging for his life before, either.

Eddie suddenly sat up, tossing his head back, gasping for a breath.  He let his hand fall away from Greg’s mouth.

“Please,” was all the jock was able to weakly choke out, blood sputtering out of his mouth as he spoke.

Eddie leaned down again, and you heard two horrible things at once: Greg’s final, pathetic cry; and the sound of ripping flesh.

The only thing more horrible than that was the silence.  The heavy, abyssal silence of the woods— death didn’t make a sound.  Instead there was just the absence of sound, and the absence of life.

Greg’s throat was still between Eddie’s teeth, but Eddie was sitting up again, flesh dangling from his mouth.  He spit out the piece of viscera, bending down to lap and slurp at Greg’s gushing open wound.  Your eyes refused to tear away, even as Eddie feasted for what felt like hours, even when he wrapped his arms around Greg’s lifeless carcass and pulled his torso up so he could eat without leaning down onto the ground; he pushed Greg’s head back, until there was a horrific crack and his whole head was dangling off of what was left of his neck— Eddie nearly unhinged his jaw to drink from where he’d torn the boy open.

It was finally over when Eddie groaned loudly, a satisfied sigh, and dropped Greg’s body unceremoniously onto the ground again.  Only then did he seem to sense your eyes on him, and he turned around to look at you.  The lower half of his face, even his nose and cheeks, were dripping in blood that looked black in the dark of the evening; his eyes dilated, blown out until they were almost all black— actually, maybe there were all black… you couldn’t find any of that warm brown you were used to.  Even without irises, you could tell that those eyes were piercing right through you, and you froze under their weight.

“Thanks,” he smiled at you.  “You were right, that helped a lot.”

When you said nothing, only starting to cry, Eddie pouted slightly and tilted his head.

“Babe, what’s wrong?”

You dared another look at Greg’s body, his head at an impossible angle from being nearly decapitated, and back up to Eddie; he frowned and let out a disappointed sigh.

“I was afraid this would happen,” he admitted, “that’s why I told you not to look.  It was hard for me to believe that I could do this, too.  But this is who I am now.”

You shook your head, starting to crawl backward along the ground— sharp leaves and sticks poked your hands as you clambered across the forest floor, but you were ignorant to the pain.  “Then you’re not who I thought you were.”

“Don’t do that,” he warned, seeming frustrated as you kept trying to move back.  “Babe, really?  Are you gonna run away from me?”

I’m gonna try.

You fought to get up on your legs again, but they were shaking and your knees gave out instantly.  Resorting to attempting to crawl along the ground, you obviously didn’t make it far at all before he jumped on you; he was so fucking fast, how was he so fucking fast?

You cried loudly and kicked your legs to try to get him away, but he turned you on your back in a second and pinned you down by your shoulders.

“It’s still me,” he promised, but when he smiled at you, his mouth was still coated in blood.  “Baby, it’s still me!  Don’t be scared.”

You shook your head, tears already flowing down your cheeks.  “N-no, Eddie, it’s not.  You’re not a killer— you wouldn’t hurt anyone, ever.”

“Not if I didn’t have to,” he corrected sternly.  “But Greg was a piece of shit anyway—”

“He was a person!”

“You’re the one that picked him!” Eddie reminded you sharply.  And yes, that was true.  You’d seen Greg’s eyes on you more than once at school before, even though you were a freak and he was a quarterback; you knew he would meet you here alone if you asked him to.  You knew he was kind of an asshole— but you hadn’t really appreciated before what it would do to you to send him to his death.  That was your mistake, clearly; you thought you knew what you were doing, but you couldn’t understand it until you saw it.

“Eddie, this isn’t you,” you insisted, “you’re not you— I believed it, because I wanted to so much, but—”

“Stop,” he barked, glaring at you as his nostrils flared.  You shut your mouth quickly, afraid to anger him further.  “Do you need me to remind you?” he breathed.  “Do you need to remember how it used to be?”

He reached down to his belt.  “N-no,” you sputtered, “Eddie, please—”

“I’m sorry,” he sighed, ignoring you, “I haven’t been taking care of you since I got back.  I’ve been… distracted.  I’m thinking clearly now, on a full stomach and all.”

When you reached up and tried to push him off of you, his hands pinned yours down at the wrists, and you shivered as he squeezed them tightly.  “Eddie,” you panted, “y-you’re so cold…”

“You miss when I was warm, huh, princess?” he spat.  “I was so weak then, so… fragile.  Like you are now.”

He roughly jerked your arms up, holding both your wrists in one hand so his dominant hand could run down your body; it settled on your neck, squeezing it just enough to make you tense up and stop struggling.

“I mean, look at you, such a tiny little thing,” he cooed, “you could just… snap.”

You choked on a sob as his hand tightened on your throat.  He growled, low in his chest, and shut his eyes as he took a deep breath.

“I can feel your pulse, you know, I can hear it a mile away,” he informed you.  “It’s so fast now, is that because you’re scared, babe?  You don’t need to be.  I’m not hungry anymore… I think Greg’s gonna hold me for a while.”

He leaned in closer, taking a long inhale right beside your face as you bit your shaking lip.

“But it’s okay,” he whispered, “it’s okay to be scared.  I like it, actually… makes you smell even sweeter.”

His free hand moved lower down again, and roughly ripped your jeans to shreds— and only a split second later, carefully spread your legs, in a bizarre shift to delicacy; you didn’t resist anymore… there wasn’t much use.

“That’s my girl,” he praised, “see?  You remember better than you think.  Maybe it’s me that’s forgotten— it all feels so long ago now… but I’m gonna remind us both how much you need this.”

He wasn’t touching you anymore, he was opening his jeans and pulling out his cock, tugging on himself loosely a few times to make sure he was hard enough.  His tongue darted out over his lips as he looked down at you writhing under him— that, funny enough, reminded you of how it was before… except, you know, for all the blood and that you were in the fucking woods and that you just watched him murder someone with his bare hands— and teeth.  You cried a little harder as he pressed himself up against your opening.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, princess, okay?” he laughed— like it was funny that you were terrified.  “I’m gonna make you feel good, just like I used to.”

But good isn’t quite what you’d call the sharp sting of him pushing in in one go, splitting you open on his cock.  “Eddie!” you shouted; he usually got you ready first, helped you warm up so you could take him— it wasn’t exactly an optional step, with his size.  Your pain didn’t bother him much anymore, apparently.

“Ahah, fuck,” he laughed lightly through a sigh, “I remember this, actually— remember how fuckin’ tight you always were.  Like you never wanna let me go… sweet little cunt holding onto me so tight…”

He gave you another rough thrust with a grunt, and you whimpered, tightening your fists above where he was holding you down.

“So fuckin’ pretty,” he purred, “my pretty girl, so beautiful when you cry for me.”

“S-stop,” you gasped out, even though this was what you thought you wanted— even though your toes were starting to curl.

“I’m not gonna stop,” he panted, “I’m gonna fuck you, and fill you, again and again, until you remember—” he groaned and gripped your wrists tighter— “that you’re mine.”

And you hated that your back arched, that your body still responded to him in a time like this; he moaned proudly, watching you with those impossibly-dark eyes.

“I bet you thought about this while I was gone,” he assumed with a growl, “I bet you touched your lonely little pussy while you waited for me, huh?  Wasn’t enough, was it— ‘cause you need me, don’t you?”

This monster had all the memories of every time you and Eddie were together, of everything that you ever said, everything that made you fall apart, and he was using it to manipulate you… but fuck, he was right.  You used to say it all the time.

“This is how you like it,” he recalled, “nice and deep, right?  You like to still be able to feel me in the morning.”

He held his hips close to yours and grinded against you, forcing the tip of his cock to hit so deep it was like he was in your throat; your eyes rolled back, and he dipped down to lick a stripe up your neck.

“Sweet girl,” he cooed, “my needy little princess— are you feeling better now?  Not so scared, now that you know it’s really me?  Nobody but me could fuck you like this.”

Yeah, he used to say that, too, but it used to mean something different.  He pulled back and gave you a long but fast stroke, and you choked on a cry as your insides clenched.

“Y’wanna come, babe?” he encouraged.  “You’re close, your heartbeat’s getting fast again…”

It was so close, too close, and you wanted to fight it off— but your pleasure was so much stronger than you, just like he was now.  It kept your mind blank and your body weak as you started to convulse rhythmically, fighting against the words trying to escape your throat: the thing you always used to say when you came.

“Say it,” he teased— he remembered, too, what you always used to say.  You hissed through your teeth, but kept it down, even as the feeling started to make you shake uncontrollably and go blind for a split second.  “I wanna hear it, princess, just say it for me.”

You went limp beneath him, the sensation pulling away as fast as it had came, leaving you numb and lifeless— so to speak— as he fucked into you harder.

“I know you love me, baby,” he sighed, “c’mon, just say it.  Isn’t that what you wanted?  To tell me you loved me one more time?”

I’d do anything to have him back, you remembered praying, to anyone or anything that would listen, anything, I’ll give anything, just please bring him back to me.  It all came into perspective then, and your fear abated.  You sobbed harder, struggling under him more— but for a new reason.  “Eddie,” you cried, “please, let me go— please…”

He must’ve known it was different, because his expression changed as he carefully let your wrists go; you reached up and grabbed his blood-soaked shirt, pulling him down into you.

“I love you,” you told him, “I love you, I love you so much…”

“Shh,” he soothed, slipping his arms under you and hugging you, “I know, princess…”

“Don’t ever leave me again,” you begged, “never, ever ever—”

“Hey, hey,” he stopped you as your pleas became incomprehensible from your crying.  “I’m not leaving you, okay?”

“Ever?” you added, sniffling, and he released you partially from the hug to smile down at you softly.

“Ever,” he agreed.  “I’m so sorry that I had to go away before… but I came back, didn’t I?  I’ll always come back to you.”

You looked up at him, beaming even through your tears, and reached up to hold his face.  As your palm held his cheek, he looked at you and his eyes were his again, those same eyes that always made you feel so safe.  Your thumb stroked over his skin and he turned his face to give you a small kiss on your wrist; you gently grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled him down into a real kiss— sour and metallic with blood, which you chose to ignore.

“I love you, too,” he mumbled against your lips, “and I missed you so much.”

“I thought I was gonna die without you,” you admitted, and he stopped kissing you to laugh.  “What’s so funny?”

“I thought I was, too,” he replied, looking into your eyes again, “and babe— I think I did.”

[pix3lplays]

Even though I am on break. I just want to say thank you for your words. In exchange, I will give you an idea.

I had thoughts of Yandere Aha. Aha blesses people you are going to date as a way to get closer to you. Your future partner starts to be more crazy and ecstatic. Your partner then receives a mask and it says that if they wear they can stop the delusions. They wear it as soon as they wore it, they sealed their fate and became a puppet for the Aeon.

I like to think that when someone wears a mask from Aha. Aha can posses them.

Yeah, of course, take care of yourself and take your time, thank you for the idea~

How did you know I am so normal for Aha~

My first aeon love oh my gosh I’m so normal about them and this idea…fun piece of Pixel lore: I am unwell over Aha.

Notes: I had to do some research for this one…I will probably go with the idea of Aha just…taking over reader’s partners, but interestingly enough Aha can actually shape shift into a human…I wonder what they’d look like in a human form.

ANYWAYS gonna take this idea and play with it, sorry it’s not exact but it’s giving me thoughts, and based on my research I think Aha would be powerful enough to do what I’m describing?? It’s hard to say exactly how the powers of the Aeons work so I make some assumptions, and Aha has even been described as less powerful as some of the other Aeons but…they’re still an Aeon…they still DESTROYED an entire planet. I’m telling you these Aeons are SCARY…

I believe Aha refers to themself in the third person in the games so…that’s what I’m going with.

Not a fic not headcanons but a secret third thing

Totally made something up for what Aha sounds like

Cw! Yandere themes, Aha using people as puppets/vessels, body horror, Aha breaking peoples’ minds, stalking Aeon-style, horror elements, violence, death

-Yandere! Aha x reader-

You didn’t care for the Aeons. Maybe that’s what attracted Aha to you in the first place? You weren’t a Masked Fool…you haven’t been blessed by an Aeon…you were just a regular person, maybe a little jaded with life but…you were doing okay for yourself.

You still remember him…your first partner. He was so sweet, loved you so much…gave you a bit more of a fervor for being alive and living. You can’t remember anymore how long you were married to him.

Who can say exactly what changed…but you would wager it had something to do with the Masked Fools. He had the unfortunate privilege of running into them, you didn’t know what happened, but he hadn’t been the same since.

Could you have even helped him if you knew? You’re not sure. But you felt it every time you were together. An unwanted presence in your bedroom…a feeling like so many pairs of eyes on you, no matter where you went…a faint tugging at the back of your minds, the tiniest touch of insanity ripping at your psyche…the faint sound of bells in the distance that you forced yourself to dismiss. It was nothing. Just the wind, just the wind.

Your husband’s decent into madness was quick and painful.

You came home one day from work and your husband was waiting for you. Just standing so still, in the kitchen, head tilted at a slightly unnatural angle, a smile spreads on his face when he sees you, a smile too wide…

It makes you stop in your tracks.

“Honey?”

He comes closer, you back away, his movements…they are not human…it’s subtle but NOT human.

“What’s the matter, dear?” he asks, dragging a hand along the dining table, as if that would help make his movements appear more human. It just results in him accidentally knocking a glass off the table, just cementing the idea in your mind that something is DEFINITELY wrong and that is NOT your husband.

You back into the kitchen counter, your eyes not leaving your “husband” while you reach for a kitchen knife.

“Stay AWAY from me! What ARE you and what have you done with my husband?!” you demand, angling the knife at him.

The creature laughs. Laughs hard, the sound of your husband’s voice fading away and turning into a cacophony of voices. You know that laugh. The one you dismissed as a mere daydream, just a side effect of an overactive imagination…

That sensation that felt like a tugging at the back of your mind returns.

You know what this is.

THIS is the creature that has been stalking you and your husband all this time.

“Aha is just borrowing his body…” the creature explains, getting closer and closer to you. “Aha is just-”

You don’t let them finish. As soon as they’re close enough you swing the knife, and the creature catches the blade with your husband’s hand, gripping tight enough on the sharp side of the weapon that his fingers are bleeding while Aha grins even wider at you.

They click their tongue at you mockingly, pulling the knife out of your hands, giving their own bleeding hand a shake, amused at the fact that they were in such a frail, mortal body. You watch the blood splatter onto the floor.

“Attacking your own husband,” the Aeon laughs…“you’re much more heartless than Aha anticipated. How…”

Using your husband’s body, the Aeon cups your face, coating one of your cheeks in blood. Writhe all you want, their grip is strong.

“Fun,” the Aeon says, grinning. “Aha looks forward to seeing more of you…Aha will be watching, as long as you continue to be entertaining…”

“Leave us ALONE!!” you shout, and with that sickening laughter, the Aeon releases your husband, who looks at you with wide, terrified eyes before collapsing onto the floor.

He didn’t remember any of it. There are gaps in his memory, black spots of inky blackness when Aha took over…the only sensations being the pain of being twisted from the inside by the Aeon.

The two of you turn to the Masked Fools for help…nothing comes of it. You shouldn’t be surprised that you were only met with laughter, or them saying, “if it is true…consider yourself blessed.”

Right…some blessing.

At first your husband stuck beside you but…the presence of Aha was really destroying your married life.

At first Aha would only take over your husband on occasion…stay a short while, and leave just as quickly.

But soon it was becoming more and more frequent…soon your husband had more memories of darkness than of you. Soon you were begging Aha to just LEAVE YOU ALONE while the Aeon held you in the body of your husband, stroking your hair and cooing to you in many voices.

He couldn’t take it anymore, and really…you couldn’t blame him…

You still remember when he said he wanted a divorce.

You don’t know why he bothered to take you to the opera that night, just to tell you the two of you were through at the end of the performance. You’re walking together, and when you get to the large staircase on your way out, you sense it. Aha’s presence. You try. Try to grab your husband’s arm but it’s too late. Aha tripped him up, forced him to slip…and fall all the way down the stairs. You and everyone else could only watch helplessly. He landed at the bottom of the stairs with an ungraceful sound…

It was a long fall…he was dead.

You were suddenly alone. You locked yourself away for a while…your only company being the faint sounds that told you Aha was watching.

And when you finally let yourself live again…you set limits. No more love. You wouldn’t let Aha hurt anyone else because of you.

So the Aeon will just have to be more aggressive with you.

Soon it didn’t matter anymore. As long as you were anywhere where there were people, you were guaranteed to run into the Aeon, in the body of some poor soul who would be permanently damaged from the experience. Aha no longer had the patience to be gentle.

Avoid people all you want…soon it was the Masked Fools chasing after you, trying to see Aha for themselves.

You tried to tell them they’d just be hurting themselves by associating with you but…no one will listen. More puppets for Aha…

Really, you lose regardless of what you do…you could just isolate yourself. Never hurt anyone again. But you wouldn’t even be living.

Or accept that the Aeon will just keep chasing you, trampling anyone they pleased, learn to live with it, that you’re unwillingly the cause of so much pain…

If only you knew that the solution was so simple…

Just submit.

You can’t outrun an Aeon.

[elvendria]

Clean

(re-releading this because it got hidden the first time)

AU Eddie Munson x Fem!Reader

Part Four

Summary:

You return to Hawkins after a few years in the middle of the night during the summer with your 4-year-old sister in tow, thinking the two of you could fly under the radar and settle in at Forest Hills Trailer Park. You thought you could get by without bumping into your old enemy, Eddie Munson, the town freak.

But you weren't always enemies, in fact, there was a time when you two were closer than anything.

Eddie dreams of making it big, you just dream of making it out of here alive.

Look, take willows age with a pinch of salt, I have numerical dyslexia but it'll make sense I swear

\\enemies - lovers//

There's some trigger warnings for stuff to do with willows birth, that's all I can say without giving away everything

((Warning I'm not from the US, so bare with me when it comes to states and such))

18+ MINORS DNI or I will be busting kneecaps, E.D, physical abuse, child abuse, runaways, the reader Joyce's ex-step-niece, Will and Johnathan's cousin, Joyce is Queen, Wayne is King, slow burn, gambling addictions, the reader is 20 and Eddie is 21, Chrissy is the villain but we stan Grace. Reader has a small scar on her lower torso. underage drinking, allusions to smut, no details of smut for obvious reasons, eventual smut in upcoming chapters, brief mention of Y/N

WC : ~5511~

part one part two part three part four

It was coming up to the middle of August, which meant one important thing was due to happen. The pinnacle of the year, the most sensational holiday of all time, the biggest event to ever rock the town of Hawkins.

"It's my birthday it's my birthday it's my birthday!" The little rocket herself was zooming around the kitchenette, hair a whiz as you walked out, rubbing sleep from your eyes. You reached your hands out, holding her shoulders to keep her in place. 

You were seriously gonna need to encourage her to join track or cross country or something.

"Tomorrow it is, but today we need to get you some birthday clothes, so how about we go to that shop in town? The one where all the fairy tale people give their clothes?" It was a thrift store; you were almost certain Willow knew that, but you weren't about to crush the delusions of a soon to be 5 year old. Especially one that's starting kindergarten in a matter of weeks.

Oh god, she's starting kindergarten. In weeks.

You pushed the thought to the back of your mind, the last thing you needed was to be an emotional wreck in front of her. Joyce had helped you with documentation for enrolling her, but it had never really set in. And it wouldn't. Not today.

Her little eyes lit up as you said that, and her bouncing started up again, causing you to grin and roll your eyes. You loved this kid, and her ability to be excited about anything.

"Come on then munchkin, let's hit up the fairy tale store.''

When you reached the store, you hopped from the car and almost bounced up the sidewalk, a bundle of joy and giggles and sunshine. Willow was adamant about getting something pretty and sparkly for starting school, and once again your heart tugged in your ribs.

4 years ago, you were holding her in your arms, cradling her as she cooed up at you, flexing her fingers and scrunching her nose a little. She was perfect to you, you knew that the second you held her in the hospital, moments after her birth. 

And now, she was running off to get sparkly pink shoes to go with a tutu she wanted to wear on her first day. Something to match the fairy wings you already told her she couldn't wear. One of the many meltdowns you've managed to navigate in the past few weeks in the run-up.

Entering the store, you were hit with a new but familiar scent of clothes and dust, the room light and airy and full of clothing racks. Row by row of different colours hanging side by side. You wondered about them, oftentimes finding your imagination ran away from you.                         

You would hold up blouses, covered in dainty flowers, and imagine a woman wearing this to a job interview. You pictured her leading a room full of men, becoming so powerful that she no longer needed the shirt because she had a full wardrobe now. 

A pair of shoes, leather old and cracked. You pictured someone spending every day of their lives keeping them in pristine condition until they were too old to keep them clean.

Or a white linen dress, that reached your knees. The kind that flowed out and moved delicately. You could see yourself, walking the aisle of a small chapel to see a tall dark-haired man at the end of it, ring-clad and- 

No, no you couldn't go there, you couldn't imagine what your life might've been if Eddie hadn't fucked everything up.

You decided you'd get the dress anyway because it hugged your curves just right. Willow was having a small party, organised courteously by Wayne. He had become like an uncle to her, the way he had for you. You'd wear the dress there, just something simple and plain.

Browsing the racks, you found Willow holding a raglan t-shirt, with black sleeves and a white front. It had a design that wasn't her usual style, but she seemed... drawn to it like she'd seen it before.

"You like that shirt honey?'' The design was okay, and realistically she could wear it to school without scaring the other kids, it's not unlike something from a storybook.

"Well, if you like it, let's get it then!" You scooped her up in your arms, balancing her on your hip as you walked through the store, pointing out other items as you played your little game with her, before heading to the counter to pay. 

It wasn't expensive, one of the many joys of a thrift store, but when you saw the guy behind the till ring up the white dress you felt your chest lurch, like you wanted to pull it back. A voice in your head that forever lingered there whispered to you.

You're not good enough

It'll never look right on you 

You're too big to wear something like that

Your skin felt hot, you hadn't had those thoughts since a few months after Willow was born, and they hadn't led to the greatest of outcomes. But you were better now, you had to be, especially for her.

Paying, you pushed it all down, heading back to the car so you could get home and out of the blistering heat that seared through your shoes. The rubber soles felt like they were beginning to melt off, and you wanted to get back to the trailer so you could take a cool shower and a nap.

Okay, maybe the cold shower wasn't directly related to the heat.

It seemed that no matter where you went in Hawkins,  the air conditioning was always broken. Whether it was your car, your job, or your home, the heat followed you like a curse. Although having lived in Nevada for a few years, it was safe to say you were accustomed to it. 

What you weren't accustomed to was the lack of air. At least in the desert, there was a bit of a breeze, albeit it was usually coated in sand and grit. But here in Indiana, it was like the heat hung heavy in the air. It lingered in every breath, every movement. You could feel it like droplets clinging to your skin as you walked.

The whole aspect of hanging up laundry in the scorching sun was maybe not the best idea. The lifting and bending and stretching to hang up bedsheets and clothes were making you sweat like crazy, your shirt and jeans stuck to your skin. But you didn't care, all you wanted was for everything to be perfect for Willow's birthday.

You had just finished hanging up your bedsheets, stepping back to get something else from the basket on your hip when you looked down, two black combat boots sticking out from underneath them.

"Been wanting to see you tangled in your sheets for a while, didn't think I'd have to wait till laundry day though."

You hated that you could tell his voice anywhere, that you could tell it was him from his breathing, from the way he made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. You hated that you never wanted that feeling to end.

"What do you want?" You were talking gruffly, arguing with a fitted sheet before just throwing it over the line, catching a glimpse of him as it flew up.

"I want to talk." He pushed past the sheets until he was standing in front of you, his dark brown eyes like small storms. 

You moved away from him, balancing the basket on your hip as you began putting up Willow's clothes, stained from an argument with a juice box that nobody won. "I don't know what you mean, there's nothing to talk about." Okay so you were being stubborn, but you couldn't help it.

"Oh really? So you dropping to your knees in my job to suck me off meant noth-" Your hand flew up, covering his mouth to prevent him from saying another word. If his eyes didn't give away his enjoyment at your reaction, the smile pressing into your palm sure did.

"That never happened, you hear me? It was a mistake." When you were sure he wouldn't talk again, you removed your hand from his mouth, only for him to grab your wrist and hold it near his face, breathing hot on your skin.

"So what was it then, a mistake or something that never happened? Because I've got the imagery ingrained into my mind pretty damn hard." His eyes bore into yours, and you despised how weak your knees got. He shouldn't have this effect on you, you promised yourself he wouldn't.

You tore your hand back, ignoring him as you continued to hang clothes up, your shirt riding up on the front. You hadn't noticed until he spoke, until he pointed out something.

"Where did you get that scar?"

Your breath stopped, your hands stilled, and your mind began to race for an answer. No one had ever spotted it before, you always kept it covered.

"It wasn't there before you left. Did... Did your dad do it to you?" 

If only he knew how wrong he was. 

Flashback to 4 years ago

"There's been a complication." 

On this day of all days, that was not what you wanted to hear.

"Is everything okay?" You grabbed for your mom's hand, fingers clasped and clammy.

"She's going to be fine, but we need to operate, her blood pressure is spiking and she's losing oxygen. If we leave it any longer we put her at risk of a heart or brain condition." The doctor spoke quickly, stepping back and in turn scaring you further.

All these words that you didn't want to hear.

After that, it was a blur, the sound of squeaky wheels and the bright lights causing you to remember very little else about that day.

Back to the current day. 

"Hello? You're just staring at me now and you look a bit nuts."

You were frozen solid until he said that, quickly rushing to pull your shirt down, covering your scar. You didn't show it, not for insecurity reasons, but purely because having to explain it was so much worse.

"I'm fine, I have to go." You hadn't finished with the clothes, but you needed to go, you needed out of here. "I need some air."

"We're outside." Eddie held your bicep, not gripping it tightly, but the touch alone was enough to stop you. "Please… talk to me." 

What could you do? What could you say? The man you've loved your whole life was standing before you, looking at you like you were a bird, ready to fly at a moment's notice. You felt like you could, like at the smallest breeze, the slightest movement, you would be gone, flying to brighter skies and away from this pain.

"What do you want from me? What more is there to say? Have you found a part of my dignity you haven't crushed yet?" Your words were venomous, uncontrolled and spiteful. Your mother would be proud.

He stood there like a deer in the headlights, looking at you with his lips slightly parted. You wished you never looked at them, wished you never fell into his sticky maple eyes and got stuck.

"Ever since I met you, I knew we were going to be good for each other. Wayne saw it too, even my Dad said it when he was in between highs. I never saw it… not until freshman year." He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly seeming nervous to speak.  

The air around you both grew tense and muggy to the point that you weren't sure if it was the conversation or the heat. 

"That's when I knew it. That's when I realised that…"

He lingered, his eyes downcast and refusing to meet your own.

"Realised what Eddie?" You were quieter than you were meant to be, softer and more gentle than you were mere moments before. You knew this wasn't going where you've always wanted it to because there's no way it could.

It was as if all the air had been pulled from the world. Your throat was dry, almost like you had crossed a thousand deserts with no water. "Eddie…"

"Yes?" His eyes were hopeful, maybe because you'd answered him, maybe simply because you said his name. Whatever it was, it made it so much harder to say what you were about to say.

To look at him was to see the embodiment of a breaking heart. A heart Eddie didn't even realise still beat. He had been mad at her for so long, that he figured his heart had become as calloused as his hands. 

For some reason, this made you mad. How could he look so… so… perfectly broken, when it was you who had endured the pain and suffering that he had dealt you?

"When you stopped the letters, when you sent them back unopened, I went through every fucking stage of grief there was. I accepted that you didn't care, and I got better Eddie. I got clean. You were the most addicting, fucked up thing in my life and I got better, I got clean from you." You were panting as you spoke, chest heaving as every word carried more and more weight, yet somehow relieving all of it from your shoulders.

"Christ I've loved you for as long as I can remember and you never cared because you're an entitled selfish asshole who only thinks about himself! Moving away was the best thing to happen to me because it opened my eyes and showed me that you were never going to love me back." You were sobbing now, cheeks red from your tears.

He didn't speak, he didn't say a word. He just started at you. You needed him to talk, to show you that he listened to you, that he understood how angry you were, but all he did was stare at you with a neutral look on his face. You wanted him to be mad, you wanted him to yell at you till you felt it in your lungs.

"Jesus Eddie, fucking shout at me, scream, saying something don't just stand there and look at me!" You shoved his chest, but he was like a solid wall, unmoving.

You thumped on his chest with your fists, looking, no, begging for some sort of reaction. You didn't even realise Eddie stepping towards you, hands clasped around your wrists to stop you from hitting him any harder. You didn't notice him almost pressed against you, not until he had cupped your face, thumb hesitantly tracing your bottom lip before speaking in a hushed whisper.

"You know… you're as beautiful as the day I thought I lost you forever." 

You barely had time to seek out his eyes with your own before he kissed you, soft and needy, unlike the first kiss between you when you came back. Unlike the kiss in the garage. No, this kiss was something else, it meant something else.

It was as if a windstorm had opened around you. A rush of adrenaline surged through your veins. Your hands instinctively weaved into his hair, pulling him closer as his palms rested on your skin, delicately placed between your shoulder blades and the small of your back.

It was the type of kiss you'd read about in stories or watch in movies. Where the protagonists' problems all vanish in an instant from the touch of two pairs of lips. You were oblivious to your surroundings.

Maybe you shouldn't have been.

Eddie pulled away for air, looking at you with a heaviness in his eyes. "You walked in one day wearing this yellow sundress, and all the guys were staring at you. I felt this intense rage like I wanted to make sure no one looked at you like that except me."

You were confused, and it must have shown on your face. His lips were slightly swollen, and you were guessing yours were the same.

“You asked me and I never answered you." Tucking a piece of hair behind your ear, he looked at you with a fondness you've never seen from anyone before. "I realised that I just don’t think I can see myself with anyone other than you for the rest of my life.” 

You couldn’t explain the feeling that spread through you. You knew this shouldn’t happen, there were so many reasons you two couldn’t happen. You had worked so hard on yourself, convinced yourself that all your problems lay in the hands of a 16-year-old boy from a backwoods town in Indiana.

But now… now you weren’t so sure. You weren’t sure of anything anymore.

“Eddie, I…” You were cut off by a voice calling out, a high-pitched noise calling out for him. You’d recognise that sickly sweet screech anywhere.

“Eddie baby? Where are you?!” Chrissy called out from the front of the trailer, unable to see the sight of you together from where she stood. 

“Eddie you have a girlfriend.” You placed your hands on his chest, unsure whether to push him away or pull him closer. There were so many things you had to tell him, so many things that needed to be said.

“Only if you’re saying yes.” His voice was quiet, making your heart thump as he leaned back down. You thought he might kiss you again, but instead, he leaned in, whispering in your ear. The feel of his breath on your skin made you shiver despite the heat outside. 

“And I’m hoping you will.” He pressed a final kiss to your cheek, leaving you unable to comprehend what just happened as he disappeared behind the clothesline once again.

You were so completely fucked.

Chrissy wasn’t stupid.

Well no, let me correct that, she wasn’t entirely stupid, despite her dumb cheerleader personality. 

She knew when she was losing, and ask anyone who’s ever been up against her and you’ll find out that Chrissy was a sore loser. 

Despite his efforts to hide it, Chrissy knew from the day the girls’ car broke down that Eddie was distracted. She’d always known he wasn’t interested in her for anything more than her flexibility and eagerness to have sex with him, but this was something different. 

She knew from the day in the garage that they were fucking, it didn’t take a brain surgeon to know what a blowjob sounded like. She had been standing behind the wall for a minute or two before making her presence known, wanting to give the girl a chance to at least make herself look presentable.

Ever since that day Eddie hadn’t touched her, hadn’t even wanted her to touch him. She was losing him to some white trash lowlife and there was nothing she could do. 

Except for one thing.

Chrissy had a flair for ruining lives and getting her way. In a way, she was quite proud of what she could accomplish when she set her mind to it. And she was one hell of an actress too, given that she was able to convince Jason Carver that ‘no, he didn’t have a micropenis and yes, he was the best thing to happen to the Hawkins High Tigers.’

And so when she saw Eddie pull up outside and not immediately rush in to meet her, she ran to the window to see him going over to another trailer, her trailer, she felt her blood singe her veins. No one took her toys from her, no one stole what was rightfully hers. At least not until she was finished with it.

She walked out the door, intent on confronting them when she saw the kiss, the kind that she’d never gotten from Eddie or anyone for that matter.

And then she saw the kid's clothes, and her plan fell right into her lap.

Scurrying back into the trailer, she pretended to cry as she picked up the phone, finding the number in the phone book.

“Hello, hi, I hope I have the right number...”

The day of Willow's birthday was here, but you couldn’t sleep that night, your mind too active with thoughts of the previous afternoon. You didn’t know how someone could sleep when they had all this… emotion building up inside of them. You spent the night staring at your ceiling, and as a result, you were exhausted before the party even began.

Willow had donned her new t-shirt and a pair of black jeans you’d packed when you left. She looked adorable, even sporting a plastic princess crown you bought from the dollar store, waving the matching sceptre around like she was giving commands. Which she was.

“Look, Willa, I will get you a slice of birthday cake when the guests arrive, how does that sound?” You kneeled before her, hands on your thighs as she sat up in the soft brown lazy-boy armchair. She had been calling out for one all day and it was slowly turning your brain to mush.

She let out a little hum as if she was thinking it over, before answering with an enthusiastic “Okay!”, before going back to watching cartoons.

It wasn’t long afterwards that people started arriving. And by people I mean Eddie, Wayne and some of Eddie’s friends. Apparently, they were good with kids.

You remember some of them, particularly Steve Harrington, because who could forget the kid who came in freshman year of High School and immediately made the varsity basketball team? But the others you weren’t sure of. Yeah, you remembered faces, but names escaped you.

“Hiya, I’m Robin.” The girl came up to you, hand outstretched for you to shake. She had one of those friendly faces, an almost sunny disposition that radiated onto you. She was the only one you didn’t recognise, and you didn’t mind all that much.

Next was Steve and Nancy, your eyes going wide as they walked in and smiled at you, saying hi. You were almost certain they didn’t know who you were when you left, so seeing them in your dingy little trailer was quite a shock.

“I’ll be honest, never in my life did I expect to see the Steve Harrington standing in my doorway to come to a kids' birthday party.” You huffed a laugh, stepping aside to let them in. It was like a fever dream, watching the most popular guy in your sophomore year moving to sit on your couch, helping to blow up some balloons without ever being asked to. You remembered when he and Tommy H would give the nerds wedgies, Steve keeping lookout while Tommy stole someone's lunch money.

You also vividly remember Eddie breaking Tommys' nose when he tried to grope you at a school dance, but now probably wasn’t the time or place to bring it up.

A couple of kids showed up, early teens at best, all sitting on the floor. You knew some of them from being Will's friends and even babysat a few of them once or twice. Each of them came up to hug you, Will being last. His arms gripped you tight as if he was worried you’d disappear if he ever let go.

“It’s alright bud, I’m here, I’m not gonna leave again.” You squeezed him back, oblivious to the stare Eddie was giving you.

It was like your words were speaking to him directly. Like you were reassuring him that you were going to stick around. His heart beat rapidly in his chest, his palms sweaty against his jean-clad thighs. He didn’t realise how worried he was about this whole situation until it was presented to his face. He’d lost you once, almost overnight. He’d been in this situation before, where you were just out of reach, slipping through his fingers.

He was determined that wouldn’t happen again.

You released Will, turning around and meeting Eddie’s eye. Normally he’d look away, maybe even make an awkward cough, but this time… this time he held your gaze, lips turned up ever so slightly in the corners. It made your insides flutter just seeing it.

“Okay, who wants cake?”

The party was going off without a hitch. Willow loved the tea party set you got her as well as the crayons and colouring book from Will. She’d even made sure to give everyone a cup before plonking herself down on the ground, waving her little wand ceremoniously to announce that they could start their tea.

But her favourite gift was one that made you tear up a little, only a small bit, but teary nonetheless.

“Hey Willa, I made you something, it's called a mixtape,” Eddie spoke gently, holding his hand out to help her up before lifting her onto his knee. It warmed your very soul to see them like this, even if the truth of it all lingered in the background. 

“What's that?”

“Well, it’s a bunch of songs that your sister and I used to listen to when we weren’t much older than you.” As he said that, he stared across at you, that same gentle smile returning. You remembered those days like they were yesterday, lying out on the dried patch of grass that passed as his lawn, listening to whatever tape you two could find. It was always a hit or miss, sometimes it would be some weird music you weren’t sure of, but other times… other times it was music that would seep into your bones, would melt over your skin like a fine film, coating you in a layer of bliss and peace despite the thumping bass and squealing guitars.

 You sat and watched her turn the gift over in her hands, watching as Eddie took her over to the stereo to show her how to use it. Soft notes filled the air first of all as Close to You by The Carpenters started playing. It wasn’t your usual style, but it was memorable for you. 

It was the song that played when you first realised how much you cared about Eddie. When you turned your head on that dry yellow grass, to see him staring right back at you.

You let time slip away, listening to the music as Willow came and grabbed your hand, wanting to do that dance where she just swung your arms back and forth. You were so involved with her that you hadn’t even heard the knock on the door until someone pointed it out to you.

That was when the dread kicked in.

You couldn’t explain it, you weren’t even sure why it had come over you suddenly, but with every step towards the door, your hands got clammier and clammier until eventually you pulled it open. It was then that you could’ve sworn on it, would’ve bet on it, that your heart now resided on the floor across the room. 

A woman stood before you, 40’s at least, blonde wispy hair turning grey at the roots. And behind her, stood a strawberry blonde she-devil with a grin so wicked it would make your skin crawl.

“Hi there, I’m Sandra with Child Protective Services, I received a call and would like to have a quick talk.” 

It didn’t take long for everyone to clear out, leaving only Eddie behind to see what was going on, and to console you if needed. He wasn’t going to leave you, not when something like this had landed in your lap.

“So it’s just you and…” Sandra flicked through her notes before speaking again. “Willow, is it?” 

“Yes, it’s just us here… I’m sorry I need to ask,” You shot Chrissy a look, your answer already cemented in place with every inching step she took towards Eddie. “Who called you?”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential information that we can’t release at this time.” She flicked through more notes before landing on what she was apparently looking for. “It says here that Willow was born in Nevada, is that correct?”

“Yes, she was born this day 5 years ago in Summerlin Hospital.” You rubbed your arms, wanting desperately to hold Willow, but for some reason, this demon of a woman wouldn’t let you.

“And is her father in the picture?” 

You froze, not entirely too sure how to answer that without spilling everything. You weren’t ready, and you’d never be ready, so how were you supposed to cough up now, in front of people who had no business in knowing? “We um… we left my parents in Nevada, they were… well they were abusive towards me growing up, I didn’t want that for her.” 

You thought you’d managed to get past the question, maybe even diverted the topic of conversation. If you could even class this a conversation, more like an interrogation.

“That’s not what I asked you, I asked you was Willow's father in the picture.” 

That was when you saw it in her folder, a copy of Willow’s birth certificate with only one name on it, scribbled messily by a nurse who had no business working in a hospital.

Then, just when it was all going horribly wrong, it got a whole lot worse.

“But Willow is her sister, they have the same parents, your question doesn’t make any sense.” Eddie piped up from the corner, and it took all your might not to tell him to shut the fuck up.

“Please allow her to answer the questions herself sir, your being here is a privilege, not a right.” If only she knew how wrong she was. If only she knew that he had every right to be here.

That was when the tears fell when you knew you couldn’t hold back the secrets any longer. You turned to Eddie, cheeks stained as all you could do was mouth “I’m sorry.” 

“No, her father wasn’t in the picture… we fell out of contact after I told him I was pregnant. But he’s back in it now.”

It was as if you were standing in a glass bowl, and suddenly it shattered around you, your whole world came crumbling down around you. You looked at Eddie, watched as it dawned on him what you were saying, staring as he worked the dates back in his head, face gone pale.

“Wait, I’m sorry I was called under the pretences that you had taken Willow from her parents. Are you telling me that Willow is your child?” Sandra looked at you, handing you a packet of tissues from her cracked leather bag.

“Yes, Willow is my daughter.”

After everything had come to light, it didn’t take long for Sandra to decide that there was no need for any inspection as it seemed that Willow was in a fit and loving home, something you could’ve told her from the start. You stood outside the trailer, Eddie and Chrissy just behind you as you watched her navy Pontiac drive off in a cloud of dust.

And as soon as she was gone, you turned to Chrissy, palm connecting with her cheek in a fit of rage.

“How dare you do that, how dare you try to have her taken from me? What have I ever done to you? I’ve stayed out of your way, I have done nothing towards you that warrants you being that spiteful, that hateful.” You went again, lunging at her, and you would have made it if it weren’t for Eddie grabbing you.

“Thank you, baby, I thought she was going to actually hurt me!” Chrissy said in her whiny high-pitched voice, pouting out her bottom lip as if to show that she was about to cry.

“Let me get this clear for you. We’re done. I never want to hear from you, hell I never want to even so much as see you again. We’re through.” He set you on the ground as Chrissy looked on shocked, annoyed that her stunt hadn’t resulted in lives being ruined while her own prospered, before spinning on her heel and walking away in a huff. You could only feel the terror and rage beginning to grow inside of you as he turned you to face him. “And as for you, I think it’s time we had a talk. A real one this time.” 

You wanted to protest, you wanted to kick and scream and cry and dig your heels in. You couldn’t have this conversation, you wouldn’t.

“What is there to talk about, your psycho bitch of an ex tried to have my kid taken away and failed, end of story.” You went to walk inside, stopping in your tracks when he spoke again.

“Our kid.”

Hearing him say it, like actually say it, wasn’t what you expected it to be. Instead of a ten-tonne boulder crashing onto you, it felt like a weight had been lifted.

“When were you gonna tell me Willows my kid too?”

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Only one more chapter to go!!

@vintagehellfire @1paire2vans @introvertedmouse @ms1oftheboys @ashlynnkennedy @poisonedluv @302rocks @micheledawn1975 @corrodedcoffincumslut @f-cklife @chloe-6123 @hellfirexwhore @caseyqdilla @alyisdead @winchester-angel @sunflowerabyss @badluckgirl @blackb4ts @tlclick73 @eddiemunsonsgf2 @rozxartaki @emilyslutface @them-cute-boys @ilovetaquitosmmmm @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @captainonaboat @lottie-90 @adaydreamaway08 @munsonmunster @thecomfortgoth @uglypastels @ghost-proofbaby @trashmouth-richie @blueywrites (im honestly just tagging people i would really like to have read this.)

[atomic--peach]

Her Grace's Handmaiden Pt 23

(Cersei Lannister x Fem Reader, brief one sided Lancel Lannister x Fem Reader. Disclaimer: While Lancel's age is unstated in the show, in the books he is canonically 17. However, since the show ages everyone up by 2-3 years and we've been going by Show ages instead of Book ages so far , Lancel in this fic would be 19-20.

SMUT: male masturbation )

AO3 version: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48276340

Lannister Reign over the continent seemed to be solidifying with every passing day One Baratheon brother dead, the other cast back into the sea. Jaime was off fighting for control of the Riverlands against the Stark pup. Joffrey on the throne with his grandfather as Hand to the King, and Cersei looming over all shoulders, waiting for something to do.

She needed a distraction. Something to take her mind off the thoughts barreling through her brain.

There were the usual concerns, of course. Her dreadful little brother. The Stark Girl, who was more use to them alive but sulked around the keep like a kicked dog.

Speaking of dogs.

She shook her head.

Don't think on that, there's no point to it.

And yet she couldn't stop herself. She pictured you that night, standing in the darkness of your quarters with knowing eyes that looked almost eager for the Queen to get closer. Cersei couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if she had forced you into the Holdfast with the other ladies.

You'd still be here, of course.

But that look you gave Cersei. A look to chill the blood of even the most hardened of warriors. It was the look of a predator just waiting for its prey to move into the perfect position.

But that was nonsense, Cersei knew that.

You were devoted to her, even in anger. Each time Cersei sent you away, you had always come back. You never would have left her Queen's side if you hadn't been forced to.

This was the delusion Cersei labored under for weeks, even now despite the idea being brushed off by everyone else.

She brought her distress to her father and Joffrey, and both looked at her like she had grown a second head.

"Forgive me." Tywin squinted slowly as if he didn't understand. "But it is my understanding that upon marriage, a wife becomes as one with her husband both spiritually and legally. Lady Clegane is the man's wife, therefore there can be no issue of kidnapping."

"All the same" Cersei fumed, outraged that they would not see sense. "He should be found and hanged as a deserter. If we find him, we find Lady Clegane."

"We are at war" Joffrey scoffed, "We do not have the spare men to send after a stray dog and his bitch."

Cersei wanted to pull his ear for that. She had been unprepared for the harsh change in her dynamic with her son. He no longer listened to her and did not seek her advice or her counsel.

When he discovered the truth of Robert's many bastards, he sent the city watch to slaughter them all, grown and babes alike.

When Cersei heard of this, she was stunned. Yes, it solved the issue of the truth Jon Arryn discovered, but it also gave those who resented Lannister presence a rallying cry against Cersei and her family

"The Queen Slaughters Babies" Tyrion had said with a dark smirk.

Tywin insisted Cersei at least try to keep some kind of control over her son, but the boy king resisted with every attempt.

That made it sting all the more when Tywin himself succeeded where Cersei had failed with her child.

Tywin had him settled, more willing to thin before acting, and betrothed to Margery Tyrell, whom Cercei resented and watched carefully.

If you were here, Cersei thought, you would know what to say to cheer her. You would call Margery a snub-nosed little girl and laugh with Cersei at the very idea of such a welp replacing her.

"She could never hold a candle to you, Your Grace" you would say, cheeks rosy and eyes smiling. "Rose or not."

Why had you left? Cersei knew why, she wasn't stupid.

She did regret what had happened. You had wanted that baby so badly. I should have just had that dog put down, Cersei thought to herself, that would have been enough.

Yes, it would have hurt you, but you would have gotten over it. You would have had your baby to look after, and Cersei by your side.

Cersei allowed herself to linger on this alternative path, as it was so much more pleasant than her current reality.

Cersei would have moved you closer to the royal quarters, perhaps even into her rooms. The babe would be attended to by a nanny and wetnurse, as all highborn children were.

I could have given them more, Cersei frowned.

A head start for the boy, he would have been set to be someone's squire. Perhaps Jaime's. From there he could take on the role his father had taken, sworn sword to the King's children. Or, on the off chance the boy had been small, unfit for the battlefield, he could have even been sent to Oldtown to be educated.

Would she have loved him? Cersei wondered. Not as she loved her own children, surely. But, he would have been the apple of his mother's eye. I would have cared for him, Cersei decided firmly, not loved, but cared for.

And how well you would have thrived as a mother. You were so good with little Tommen and Myrcella, it would have come naturally.

After The Hound died, what would be done with you?

You could remain forever a widow, that would be the preferred route. You could not be trusted not to love, and in Cersei's view, it was only natural for everyone to fall in love with you eventually.

If the silly fool had been smart enough not to fall for her first husband, none of this would have happened.

If you did remarry though, it would have to be a weak man. One who did not ask questions and did not interfere.

She had thought the Hound good at not interfering. Perhaps Cersei had been blind to it, but he had never seemed resentful of your affections for your Queen. But why else would he have stolen you from the Keep in the Night like a common thief?

you must be so worried, Cersei realized.

Did you know they had won? That they were still alive?

The poor dear was snatched up and swept away like a maiden in a story, she thought fretfully, you must be so confused and frightened.

Enough of this. Cersei slapped her palm to the smooth table top she sat at, nursing a goblet of wine. If they would not do anything, she would.

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

"You asked to see me, your grace?"

"Yes, come in." Cersei eyed the sell sword up and down. To consider this man a knight would be an affront to the very notion of chivalry, regardless of the "Ser" they put before his name.

"I find myself in need of some help." She began. "I have a problem, and the crown has made it clear they will not intervene, so I am seeking outside assistance."

Bronn nodded understandingly. "May I ask as to the nature of the problem?"

"My favorite, The Lady Clegane, do you know her?"

"Know of her, the uh…" He tried to find a word he could get away with in the present company, "the pretty one the Hound married. I saw her."

"She was kidnapped by her husband from the keep the night Stannis attacked the city. I want her brought back, and I want that barbarian's throat slit."

Bronn considered this. "That can be arranged. It'll take some asking around though, not many men would be willing to track down a man that big and that good with a sword. And they'll be asking for a pretty penny to do it."

"Money is of no object, I assure you," Cersei smirked. "I want her brought back alive and unharmed."

"I'll find the man for the job, your grace." Bronn smiled coyly, "Of course, there is a matter of a finder's fee…"

"Find me a man who can do the job. If he comes back alive with Lady Clegane unharmed, you will be rewarded handsomely." Cersei assured him.

Bronn's grin widened at this, "I will start straight away, Your Grace."

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

Lancel stared at the ceiling over his bed blankly.

His wound still burned with infection, and his brow was damp with feverish sweat.

The Maester said he would have died if not for the quick dressing of his wound. He had you to thank for that, he thought fondly.

He made good his vow to Clegane and told his father to find him a wife that could get him out of King's Landing, and Kevin Lannister acted swiftly, glad to see that his son was finally taking adult responsibility seriously.

But while the Frey girl Kevin had betrothed him to was kind and plain-faced with noble intentions, Lancel's mind could not help but stray.

He hated himself for it. It was an affront to the gods, disrespectful to the man who had covered his crimes, and dishonored the very lady his affections yearned for.

His soul was still wracked with guilt, how he had been the one to summon you to Cersei's chambers that night. He had no way of knowing what would happen, he told himself, no way at all.

And even after what happened, when he confessed before you and your husband the Queen's crime and his unintentional part in it, though he might die, and if he did it would be well deserved.

But instead, you bore him no ill will, neither of you did. You had even taken valuable time to tend to his wounds when he was injured. "Come with us" you had urged him, and he wanted to follow so badly.

But his honor would not allow it, nor his pride.

And in the end, they won, despite everything.

When the battlefield cleared, Lancel found he could not judge Clegane for what he had done. Win or Lose, nothing would have changed for you. You would still be trapped, your son would still be dead, and you would have to look into the face of your child's killer every day.

He could still picture the beach, war raging only a few hundred yards from them as you held his hand in yours.

Even in plain wool, stripped of any court finery that might have disguised you for a snobbish highborn, you were still so beautiful.

Had Clegane not been there, had they been alone on that beach, would Lancel have dared to kiss you as he had so wanted to in that moment?

It was horrible to think, he knew that. You were a married woman, with a husband who not only loved but respected you. And you were his senior by ten years or more, what could you ever want with someone like him? Little more than a boy in tin armor with a toy sword when compared to The Hound.

As he pondered in the darkness, the arm on Lancel's good side began to move over his hip to rest on his lower stomach. Absentmindedly his long fingers played at the edge of his waistband.

He wished you were here. You had been so kind, so attentive when you nursed his wound as he sat on your bed. Even in the midst of the pain and the noise of the battle still ringing in his ears, the touch of your hands on his body was startlingly gentle.

He imagined how soft your touch had been on his face, all those times you had cupped his cheek gently, in the cellars by candlelight, in the garden surrounded by flowers. How those soft hands would feel against his bare chest, nursing him still with those sad eyes. How you'd press a cold cloth to his brow to soothe his fever.

"My poor Lion" he could hear you breathe, "Let me take care of you."

He gasped as your small hand gripped the length of his shaft and stroked him slowly but firmly. He did not protest, only whimpering with need as you leaned over him to plant a kiss on his brow. Your chest hovered just out of his reach until you drew him close and laid his head on your breast.

"Sweetling." You coaxed him gently, "You must rest, let me help you."

He nodded in agreement and very nearly cried out as you picked up the pace, lavishing tender attention on his sensitive tip each time your fingers pumped his cock.

"Please" he whined, face buried in the warm softness of your breasts as the sensation overwhelmed him. The beckoning smell of your hair, the musical tone of your sweet voice. "Please. I need you; I need you; I love you. Please."

You laughed lightly at his gasping chant, watching his hips buck against your hand.

"I know, darling, I know. Just breath. You're doing so well, so close."

His release came quickly, and just as soon as you were there, you were gone. Your warmth replaced by a cool pillow; your small soft hand replaced by his own nimble fingers.

Even as he traced the sensitive tip of his cock, drawing out more jerks and whines, Lancel felt a wave of shame wash over him.

But more powerful than shame was desire. The desire to sleep, the desire to dream. Perhaps you would visit him again tonight if he was lucky.

[youngstarfishphilosopher]

A question for the child reader lookalike would Alistair get flashbacks to when he was alive and his own kid was alive as well whenever he sees them and I probably can guess when they are playing with Travis and around Ben he gets real angry.

This gave me an idea:

××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××××

The night was young as the sounds of people chatting and music playing filled a rich home known as Crump Manor.

The owner of this home was none other than Alistair Crump: A man known by his wealthy statues and cruel, unkind nature.

He was known for hosting lavish parties and banquets whenever he so desired, always being the center of attention. And usually following him as he went through these events was a tiny young child.

This tiny creature was Alistairs' pride and joy. They would often spend their time near Alistairs' side, the two of them chatting, playing together, and sometimes just standing next to each other in comforting silence.

As Alistair walked around the party, it took him a good few moments to realize that his child was not with him. The only reason he hadn't noticed sooner was because he knew that his child was often shy during parties and didn't really speak that much.

This put him into a panic. The child was so small, and there were so many people here that could have easily hurt or trampled the poor thing over.

His panick soon turned into relief, though when one of his servants found them in a giant comfortable chair in one of the private areas of the manor. They had been found sound asleep.

Gently picking them up, the child slowly opened their eyes as Alistair carried them down the hall.

" . . . Father?" Yawning, as they rubbed their eyes, the child then asked. "Where are we going?"

" Well," Alistair answered sternly, " I am going back to the party,but you are going straight to bed. I knew it was a bad idea letting you stay up past your bedtime last night."

The child did not argue, seeing as they were too tired too, only yawning before rubbing their eyes and letting out a small little "yes sir . . ."

Now, in their pajamas, the child was tucked into their soft, warm bed by their dad. Their last words of that evening simply being " Good night"

Alistair thought of that memory as he carried you from a giant chair in the hallway to the living room where you had set up shop in the mansion.

For these past few weeks, it had felt like multiple long forgotten memories all suddenly crammed back into His mind at once when you entered the mansion. You looked so much like them, liked his pride and joy he had so long ago.

He knew his child was never coming back. They were long gone and at peace in the region beyond: A place where,because of his past sins,Alistair will never be able to go.

But he wasn't about to allow the delusion to stop consuming him.

Setting you down on the couch, Alistair gently tucked you in, wishing you a good night and heading off. Just like he used to do all of those years ago.

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As for your second statement: Yes Alistair would probably get mad. But there wouldn't be anything he could do about it before midnight.

And even then,he would have to be discreet, seeing as he doesn't want the dream team to know your sentimental value to him.

[smokerkeiji]

so its the middle of the night and i'm rereading one of the earlier sections of the yuri zine and i come back to this quote, "sometimes when looking at my self is as painful as staring directly into the sun, my solution has typically been to study the reflection in the moon" and it all just sort of hit me. holy hell. inside mari. to study yourself through another pair of eyes, in her case. this language unlocked so many different ways of understanding inside mari that i just started scribbling on my ipad until next thing i knew an hour had passed and i ran out of white space and how did i even get here? anyways. here is the batshit insane looking page where i dumped all the thoughts i'm going to attempt to organize them here? this image is just so funny to me now i thought i should include it.

the horror of Looking at your own self.

a lot of yuri zine talked about reading and interacting with yuri as a form of self identification. and how those bring up both good feelings (gender validating) and bad feelings (confronting yourself and your regret and your shame for whatever reasons you may have). both as a consumer of this media but also found within the characters themselves in the stories we read. considering how the big reveal of the entire story is about how. in an attempt to identify herself, mari was forced to truly look at herself. something she literally couldn't handle. throughout the zine, the authors all in one way or another touch upon the idea of how uncomfortable it is to confront yourself. to look at yourself. its shown through jennifer and needy's relationship in jennifer's body, which i hadn't thought about but one of the essays in this zine explains it so well. it's shown through when readers see too much of themselves in certain characters. this feeling of discomfort exists both in and out of the texts we talk about. and how this sort of leads into the understanding that yuri is "the relationship to absence, to projection." the yuri that of inside mari is how she absents herself as a way to allow herself to love Yori (to love girls in general). (i want to emphasize how in allowing herself, it implying the norm for her was denying herself, stopping herself, punishing herself for feeling the way she did) because the whole time, the mari we see is just mari the whole time. not komori body swapped into mari's body. the mind warping mental gymnastics she goes through to live this sort of delusion allows her to be a boy who's just trapped in a girl's body. it allows her own self to love girls and accept this because. it's not mari thinking these things, it's komori who is a boy so. it's allowed. this also speaks to Shuzo Oshimi’s thoughts on being a girl. the ways mari goes about identifying her self while at the same time struggling with the mere act of Looking at her self is so yuri. i'm going to come back to this after i talk about Identity for a little bit hold on.

what is it that mari yearns for? what is it about gender?

mari's fragmented identity splits into three parts: fumiko, mari, and komori. her attachment to komori, the male identity she takes on stems from her hetero-patriarchal understanding of the world. she envies him for being able to experience sexuality and love girls in ways she feels she can't. but she ultimately abandons this identity too and exists as something separate from all three. or something that combines them all? the story ends with her alive and finally happy with herself. her attachment to komori's identity is less about his masculinity or maleness so to speak, but what she really desires is to love other girls in the specific (romantic, sexual) way he is allowed to in this society. her yearning is lesbian. i read her experience playing with gender not as her struggling with her own gender identity, but instead i felt that her beef was with the social performance of it all. i think she's a girl who doesn't feel connected to the daily practices and rituals that signal femininity. explaining why she sort of.. forgets how to do makeup and dress herself when she exists as the clueless komori inside mari's body. she uses him to liberate herself from these expectations. maybe i'm just full of shit. maybe her gender is just lesbian after all. another essay in the yuri zine talks about how yearning is gay. yearning is queer and yearning is lesbian. that yearning isn't limited to wanting to be with someone, but wanting to be someone. to live life the way they do. which hey. is literally what mari ends up doing in this story. what she yearns for is a reality that cannot exist (or rather, one that she cannot confront/reconcile with yet) she cannot look at herself, so she absents herself in order to allow herself to pursue her own desire. she felt like she couldn't pursue her desire in her current self, in her current standing as a girl in society.

what does it mean to feel like a person? to feel human?

i need to watch that interview everyone talks about "yuri made me human" because i already feel that truth in my core but i don't even know what the hell they're talking about in that interview. from the zine, "is the fantasy of yuri about finding a way to become a person. when you don't feel like one?" yes. but. what does it mean to feel like a person? in mari's case, which person? her First person? the one that died with her grandmother and replaced with a new name and identity by a mother she cannot understand or bond with? her Second person? mari? the person she grows to hate? the one that is forced to perform these ritualistic practices that signal femininity but is never allowed to desire it for herself? her Third person? komori? the depressed pathetic sexually frustrated hikikomori who is too stupid to see how good he has it* that he doesn't have to fend off boys who only objectify her? that he can have a girlfriend and kiss her and hold her hand in public without punishment? the komori that ultimately broke under the heavy weight of the truth that is not her. she is not him. she is no one for a while. yuri is everything and yuri is nothing. in fact, when mari is in that coma or whatever, yori desperately wants her back again, wants her awake, and she begs “don’t disappear” until she wakes up into someone again. someone for yori. but most importantly, someone for herself (the first time i read this, i felt sort of disappointed? that yori and mari didn’t get to live together forever but those feelings didn’t last long... i don’t actually want that for them. in fact i actually really love that they were able to reconcile their feelings for each other and also end on a note where yori goes to school and mari seems to actually be happy and secure with her own self) anyways. she struggles to connect to her fractured identities until through her growth as a character she not only starts feeling like a person but becoming one, probably for the first time.

inside mari is fascinating to look at and unpack from a yuri pov. i loved thinking about how this too was yuri, that she envies komori for his ability to pursue and love women. the way she projected onto him. the way she wanted something nonexistent and intangible. the way she yearned through imagining she existed as something other than herself. the way she shattered when faced with herself. the way she existed not as a participant, nor an observer. the way she loved yori so much she became everyone and no one.

in conclusion please read yuri zine and please also read yaoi zine 1 and 2 they are genuinely so good. bless the minds of everyone who worked on these.. the yaoi yuri theorists i look up to.... there's no real conclusion to this ramble. i hate conclusions. i'm done. good night...

[tvimagines221b]

Imagine: The Master Kidnapping You Because He Wants You and Him To Be Reunited As A Family. (Part Two)

It felt like the world was spinning around you. While you had been so focused on The Doctor and your friends, The Master was focused on some delusion. A delusion that you and him were destined to travel together. To be united as some sort of family. Why? Because some time ago, long ago, The Master had saved you from from the Time-War. Rescued you from a horrible and painful death. He sent you to Earth, where you grew up amongst the humans. Sheltered from your true nature. You were only an infant during the Time-War, now you were all grown up, and still traveling with The Doctor. You swallowed, your gaze meeting with The Master’s. He gently held your arm, a soft but unfamiliar expression in his eyes. “Y/N… You and I are family. We always have been. For so long we’ve been separated, but we don’t have to be anymore. You could travel with me. We could go anywhere and everywhere. No one could stop us.” He said, softly.

“What?” You blinked.

The Master looked down. “I know… I know I haven’t always been the best man. I know… I know that I’ve made mistakes and done horrible things. But…” He looked back up. “But rescuing you, was never one of them.” The truth was, the best hated being alone. And you were the one person in the whole universe he wanted in his life. “I missed so much of your life, Y/N. I either wasn’t there, or I was so caught up in my battles with The Doctor. But I want that to change.”

Was he insane? Was he really saying these things? “What? No! No! Why are you saying these things?”

“Because… Because it’s the truth, Y/N.” He said. “Come with me. Travel with me. Leave The Doctor and her petty human companions behind. I…I want to protect you.”

“Protect me?” You scoffed.

The Master hated to ever show his emotions. But, he always thought about what his life would be like, if the Time-War never happened. If you grew up on Gallifrey, and he could be there to raise you. To watch you grow up. There were so many possibilities. “I have always cared about you, Y/N. And as time went on, there wasn’t a moment where I didn’t think of you. If…if you were alive and okay. If you were happy…”

You couldn’t speak, or even think. You couldn’t process what he was saying to you.

Was this happening?

A/N: Someone please do a RP with my OC and The Master with me 😭

[found-wings]

evermore is such a q!phil song especially rn- I'm a bit busy rn so I can't dissect the Full song but I'll grab the bridge and brainrot as much as I can because holy shit especially with the storyline happening rn this song has never been more him and I Always accept the opportunity to appreciate a taylor swift song

-

"Can't not think of all the cost

And the things that will be lost

Oh, can we just get a pause?

To be certain we'll be tall again

Whether weather be the frost

Or the violence of the dog days

I'm on waves, out being tossed

Is there a line that I could just go cross?

And when I was shipwrecked (can't think of all the cost)

I thought of you (all the things that will be lost now)

In the cracks of light (can we just get a pause?)

I dreamed of you (to be certain we'll be tall again)

(If you think of all the costs)

It was real enough (whether weather be the frost)

To get me through (or the violence of the dog days)

(Out on waves being tossed)

But I swear (is there a line that we could just go cross?)

You were there"

-

OHHHHHHHHHHH THIS POOR CROW IM PUTTING HIM THROUGH THE WRINGER AND SQUEEZING OUT EVERY BIT OF ANGST POSSIBLE BECAUSE GOD. CAN HE FIT ALOT OF THAT.

okay especially with the story rn, I am 100% connecting the beginning to his feelings to chayanne and tallulah. the fact that every choice he makes even when they're gone, could be affecting his kids with the way that the federation 100% has them and are not above punishing innocent bystanders for other people's actions. all he can think about is his kids, all he wants is to be with them again. at this point his priority isn't even to keep them Safe or to leave the island, he just wants tangible proof that they're alive and to be there with them and AAAAAAA it hurts !!!!!! he would do anything to get them back and the feds knew that and def punished him so severely to make sure he'd wanna stay in line for anything else they'd do in the future ;;;-;;

and taylors parts of the bridges duet?? oh for sure that's phil while he was trapped, literally no way, locked in a place where in his sleep it's delusions of his life before where he was free to do anything he wanted- to waking in a place where he is the most imprisoned he's ever been is just so painful and the bridge describes the thoughts of unreality and searching for something tangible to hold onto so perfectly AAAAAAAAAA I NEED SOMEONE TO GIVE HIM A HUG ‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ - 💿

OH MY GOD 💿 ANON PLEASE, WAAAH

I cannot properly put my thoughts together rn but gods I‘m listening to the song rn AND IT HURTS SO MUCH BUT FITS SO WELL

Phil just wants his two children back!! Please, I WILL CRY

Also for some reason, I can‘t quite tell why, but the part of

„And I was catching my breath

Barefoot in the wildest winter

Catching my Death“

Gives me such.. idk, odd vibes in relation to Phil?? Like it gives me slight vibes of Phils dreams of his Hardcore world(s) and how it could be viewed as him kinda.. processing things?

It doesn‘t quite make much sense to anyone but me probably ( #sick with too many thoughts WHEEZE ), but dreaming of being free, doing whatever he wants to. Building, breathing, flying and living, with death being the only thing that could ever stop him.

Dreaming of a world like that was his only escape of reality, because the situation he was in within the birdhouse felt like death for him. His two children are gone and god knows where, having been baited into a trap with a promise of slightest hope of finding them, his wings clipped with him being a downed bird basically inside a cage with no clue on if he’d ever go free again, if anyone would ever even find him - if anyone even cared. This was basically him watching himself die in a way

Or maybe I‘m looking too much into it WHEEZE

[lvstharmony]

I hope I don't sound stupid even as an adult.

It hasn't been three years fully since I talked to them, I seemed to have caught feelings for a mutual as they showed some level of interest in me. Now that I look back it I realize that my perception of the situation was very faulty: it was as if they were the world to me, but to them, I was just someone from the world.

I acknowledge my own incorrect understanding of the situation where my view of the situation and the matter in whole was bound by my feelings and emotions. It's my heart indeed, I don't want to beat myself up for it because it's the only "alive" part of my body, right?

I needed some closure that I craved in years, I boldly followed my instincts and went forth to talk to them again. It was, however, not so bold when they failed to recognize me: not even by the simple pseudonym I went with.

I'm left to think how delusional I was to ignore their red flags and believe that they changed—when, in fact, nothing came out of nothing. The same improper language and rudeness. It was like I didn't recognize this person, who used to feel like home, at all?

"But the heart has its own memory and I have forgotten nothing." (Albert Camus)

I pity myself in whole. I knew I was going to be wrong about them but my heart got too fervent about falling again, the closure was necessary to seal the wounds again for the last time so they heal. And I'm healing. Their existence does not bother me in the slightest, it's about me. My life is about my true identity and happiness. My peace.

Regardless of what I now see in hindsight, my heart bleeds to the thought that one person is so susceptible to forget a human so easily; so easily that that deep conversation at 3 a.m. can be swept away with the wind despite them heeding my words and following them as they were very true to them like biblical verses. How can one forget a lingering lesson at 3 a.m. that way? Did I not mean anything? Was I that negligible that they don't recall my name, at all?

My heart has its own memory and I haven't forgotten them yet, they've forgotten me because I was never in their heart in the first place.

What an eerie world to live in. Words hold so much value and don't hold anything—both at the same time. And the only thing that's pressured to not hold value about itself is my heart.

I wish sensory interaction wasn't the only way of leaving imprints on people, just for that imprint to be erased off by time.

When does the heart forget? The bruises, wounds, and sutures heal up...what about the forgetting?

When does the heart truly ever let the past be past and relinquish its reign over its memory? Is there an end to these nightmares, that were once daydreams?

When?

No, you don’t. Not to me. For I have been in your shoes one too many times before in the past.

I‘m glad to read that you’ve grown, and that you’re rather rationally emotional about it? I hope you can comprehend what I mean when I say that. You seem like someone who’s been quite patient with life, enduring distress over distress. So you indeed should not beat yourself up for it, it makes you human. We have to go through certain things to grow. Just like seeds, we must go through dark, cold and lonely times, so we can flourish and reach the sunlight, don’t we?

—

Following your instinct and especially in that matter, was the right decision. For the other part: Wow, I understand how bad that must’ve stung. When our mind puts someone really high up our priority list and you realize that it’s one sided, that’s incredibly painful.

Maybe they were delusions, or maybe you were just blinded by the huge attachment you’ve had towards that person. Breaking it is a very hard thing to do, so do not be so hard on yourself anon. Not only that, even if the attachment wasn’t as strong as before, your brain remembers it and so there’s that hope that a person may have changed.

And hope is one tremendous thing, isn’t it?

Also, I once heard the sentence “It’s hard grieving someone, who’s very much alive.”, and reading your message reminded me of it.

But back to the following your instincts part. Like I mentioned, it was the right decision, because you definitely deserved the closure you were seeking for that long. It was definitely needed, so that it finally hit you that they were never meant to stay in your life, and that’s okay. But it was meant for you to reach out and feel what you had to feel; the shock, the pain, the realization, and everything else you must’ve felt. Them not feeling like home anymore, despite the pain, is actually a huge blessing. It allows you to move on and heal, and as I read further, you’re healing and I’m really glad to know you are. You deserve that, really. A blessing in disguise, for despite the healing, you’re emptying the space they’ve once resided in for someone else. For someone that will see you just as you see them, for someone who loves the way you love, and is deserving of you and your love. You really seem like a patient person, so keep going and have patience.

—

Hm, I see. I actually think that your unconsciousness lead you to follow your instincts, you saying that you knew you were going to be wrong about them. To get the closure you were in need to, perhaps.

And yes, I get you. It may not be the person itself, rather the whole situation and the bigger picture.

It’s a hard thing to understand, and some things are ought to not be understood, unfortunately. And even if we tried, sometimes we just don’t understand things. All we can try to do is to not overthink it, it just makes us sick. Some things are better left untouched. A lot of things, actually, for our own peace of mind. You said it’s about your true identity, your happiness and your peace. Don’t self sabotage by repeating these questions in your head, for we won’t get the answers to everything in this life. For your own peace of mind, don’t try to cling yourself onto why people can and do what they do, it’s nowhere near in your favour. While you stress yourself, most of them just go on about their life. And I know that that’s exactly what stresses you. And that’s the hard part, to let it go.

However I do want to add that another reason we shouldn’t go that far into thinking, is, because no matter how obvious something appears, not everything is as we think it is. We will never truly know what the other person thinks or feels if they don’t tell us. Doesn’t matter how good your intuition may be, you can’t always be right every single time. We won’t know how much they remember, if they even remember, nor if they’d ever tell us. Everything has its reasons.

But to your other questions, they sound like ones you would scream into the void, not expecting a reply back in return, for you know the answer deep down. However, they’ve reached me, not the void.

A heart does not forget, specifically not the sincere ones. The heart carries an enormous weight, everything we’ve lived through laying piled up somewhere deep within us. Some are buried that deep, that we don’t remember everything. The heart forgets in three cases. When something didn’t mean as much to us (sometimes even unknowingly), when something that meant a lot to us gets replaced by something even more meaningful, or, when something meant too much. The agony of when something or someone that meant the world to us becomes a part of our past, is sometimes a lot to bear, so our unconscious protects us by locking it away somewhere deep down.

Your other question I cannot answer, as I’m looking for that answer myself.

Yes, there is. But the “When?” truly is a question you scream into the void.

Keep taking care of yourself dear soul.

[venusvxen]

okay so i got like moderately high yesterday n literally felt like i lost my mind n was questioning the validity and f the law bc i felt like everything that i was thinking about was fake…

i felt like my mind was alive n what i mean by that is that it kept going on and on and on and on and onnnnn and i felt like none of those thoughts were mine but instead a being talking through me and wanting to talk to me… and i kept doubting if this was even the case or a hallucination n my mind making it up but then i clocked that for me to doubt that that’s even possible is to turn my back on all the hard work i’ve done to reach this point w the law

anyway i rlly have a new way at looking at god playing as human now.. one of the main things that struck me and kept going through my mind was neville’s saying of “god dreamt to become man so that man could dream to become god”… i felt like i was waking up? hence why my mind felt alive bc i felt like it was the being itself talking to me and i was listening as opposed to in the past where i would try to get in the state of beinf that being… does that make sense

while in that state i was hyper aware that the body i was in was not mine…. it was sooo weird… because i wasn’t myself.. or at least the self that’s typing this.. i was the being within.. which is why i felt so uncomfortable in my body for a bit because it was like me clocking that… that’s just A Form i’ve taken?? whatever i’ll elaborate on that more later.. but i’ve had so many diff epiphanies while in this state of being pure consciousness.. it wasn’t the void at all even tho at times all i saw was darkness but i wouldn’t say it was the void it was just me hyper aware of my true self and my material body n the material world not getting in the way of that.

a part of me want to chalk this experience up to delusion so bad but i’m literally on this side of the internet and the strides i’ve taken with reading neville and falling and getting back up is quite literally so i could get to this point and have these weird awakenings.

one of the main things that struck me during that state is how if we are awareness and nothing but awareness then everything and i mean everything that we’re aware of is real and comes to fruition. this means that even your most invasive intrusive thoughts r real in a way but you write them off as not real which is why they materialize. furthermore as pure consciousness we are wandering to multiple diff realities multiple times a day by imagining diff things. we are god in imagination…. it struck me while in that state that human values mean nothing to this being within.. which is why we attach human states and human ideals to our i am.. i’m not explaining this the best i’ll probably do a wholeeee other post about this… but if we were constantly in the state of just being god and experiencing whatever and never came down from that we would prob hurt other ppl because god isn’t bound to human morals… the concept of god and bad only exists when you re enter the state of being.. human and even then the state of being _____ because that’s why some people are “good” while others are “bad”… that DOESNT MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL GODOSODKS ILL MAKE A WHOLE POST ON ITJEKSKD

but it basically made me think that that’s why it’s so important to not essentially shoo off our human self when we’re in these communities and not think of it as trivial.. it’s there to ground us and make sure we’re not like a untamed wildfire….

but another thing that kept striking me was why am i even in this form in the first place? and the answer i kept getting was that god dreamt to become man so that man could dream to be god ..

essentially meaning that in our human forms we each have different goals and aspirations in this form and goals and aspirations is the part of the human experience i mean think about it.. god doesn’t have any real.. goals.. he can just snap his fingers and be whoever he wants to be.. so in order to get the true Human Experience we have goals we work towards.. which is why some of you may want different things from me… we all have things we desire at our core and higher and higher versions of ourselves we should a strive to be which is why none of us may want the same things at our CORE… it makes our experiences unique.

but at the end of the day.. when we actualize all of this we’ll ask ourselves.. what next? WHICH I THINK EDWARD ART REFWRFED TO… after you achieve all your goals and make all that money you’ll ask yourself.. what next… and that’s when you start looking up.. not to more material possessions because you’ve attained them all but towards your real self.. bc it’s almost like you as god have achieved everything in your human form and you’ve cleared this level almost.. you came down here to experience this and put yourself in this state and felt what man feels and you had a good time but now it’s time to come back home and that’s when man awakes and realizes he’s god and goes forward from that..

i feel like my mind is a bit broken.. i hope some of this made some sense and i hope y’all gain some wisdom from this.. i have to clock in for work now i’m 4 mins late cus i typed this but i rlly feel like I Get It now… idk

[alexisnoir]

I had the most terrifying encounter in my entire life!

I have a neighbor. She is few years older than me. I knew her and her mother who has passed away few years ago. She also has two older sister but they don’t keep contact with her and she with them.

She has mental illness with delusions and something else however I don’t know the specific terms for the illness. That’s beside the point. Everyone who lives in my block of flats knows she’s ill and needs to take meds. She’s not taking them because she has no job ergo no money. Now she has no electricity or gas (thank God for that!) so in turn she doesn’t buy meds and is not in her right state of mind. She’s sometimes happy, sometimes sad, angry, doesn’t talk to you, talks to herself and does bizarre things like watering the grass even though it is raining. 

Today however I was riding the elevator and the elevator stopped on the floor she lives on, she walks in, has angry look on her face. I say nothing to not set her off accidentally by sounding too happy or to impolite.

We both walk out, she first I behind her. Right in front of the elevator are mailboxes for the residents. There were some advertisements on top of the mailboxes. Suddenly she swipes the ads down angrily and comes right at me.

She holds me with both of her hands tightly and yells at me if I know what I have done. Mostly she yelled about me killing 20 of her family members (she doesn’t have that many family members), called me by a different name. I spoke to her, slowly, gently calling her name. I spoke to her to calm down, that it’s okay, I’m not called what you called me, you’re scaring me etc. When I said that the name she called me is not my name she of course yelled at me to tell her what my real name is, who am I. Stuff like that. If not for the neighbor that walked in with his dog from the walk, I don’t think she would “snap out of it”. The neighbor said nothing, I did mouth to him to help me but she yelled at him to leave us alone, not to get involved. He was elderly and could’ve been scared himself but I think him walking in might have stopped her from her spiraling thought process and for her to let go of me and walk out. 

I am bloody scared. I knew of her anger attacks for years but that was back when her mother was alive, she made sure she took her meds but even with meds she was sometimes unpredictable but not violent toward anyone.

I seriously need to think through if calling for a psychiatric hospital intervention from me, not her family member would be answered. I have a witness she attacked me, so there’s that but will that be enough? That happened about 3 hours ago (around 6 am). She has episodes where she’s absolutely normal, talks normal but later she is not.  

What to do? 

[dandelion-wings]

Whyyyyy won't you write the test subject au!?

I am literally so hooked already, I need more than just scraps of information about it.

Don't get me wrong, I do love using my own imagination and can very much just expand upon this au in my own mind, but there's just something more relaxing about getting to read about it.

I by no means aim to pressure you into writing it! I accept that if you really can't be asked, but please just answer me these, dearest Tumblr user dandelion-wings.com:

- please describe what they did to him at the Akademiya. I sound like a sadist when I say this (I promise I'm not) but I love reading about the torture characters go through because it helps me understand their pain and trauma better.

- does Kaeya meet Diluc again? In the first part you did say Kaeya ran away to Sumeru age 11, so I assume that follows canon event, which means he had been in the Ragnvindr household for some time before capture. So does he recognise Diluc when he sees him again? I've imagined this whole emotional ass scene where they see eachother again for the first time in six-ish years and it made me tear up.

- does Crepus live in this au? (listen. I am a sucker for ragbros and their family, okay!) I assume the Ragnvindr household reacted in some way when Kaeya went missing, seeing as he was a somewhat major part of their lives. Maybe Diluc's birthday plans were different and he never died to the delusion and Ursa the Drake. Perhaps he is still alive and Kaeya recognises him and then Crepus promises to bring hell upon whoever left his son in that state.

- I assume Kaeya makes a good recovery. Does he still join the Knights? I'm not sure they'd let him in with only one arm with missing fingers, but then again it is the nation of freedom so who knows. What does he end up doing?

Many thanks, I love the au,

Friend of the stars <3

Mostly because I have so many WIPs and AUs already (including an entirely different one where someone removes Kaeya's fingers), and I work too jobs, I cannot write all of them! "I'm not going to write this" is a mantra against things I do not have the time to write even though I want to. XD;; It may well go into the warm-ups rotation, tbh. The other reason is that it's a lot darker and iddier than I usually post on main and I always get very anxious about idfic/kinkfic stuff (if I hadn't been so compelled to try and exorcise it with the Compressed Version that totally did not make me stop thinking about the Longer Version I probably would not have posted about it at all). Like, I spent a very serious five minutes looking at this ask thinking, "man, this is going on main, should I sanitize it any" before deciding that the of-questionable-taste parts are essential to my enjoyment and, so, well. I am not going to.

Which means that the rest of this is under a cut and trigger warnings for that first answer include, along with the requisite medical experimentation, dismemberment/mutilation, suicidal thoughts/actions, and sexual abuse/trauma.

The highlights of the research team's activities:

To start with before anything else because this is ongoing and general: confinement, obviously, constant restraint (growing increasingly severe over time, c.f. the shock-collar, which is movement-sensitive and just kept getting turned up over the years), and a caloric intake just barely sufficient for continued functioning, because it is harder for a starving person to fight back. Also, at least once the curse was induced, they did not at any point use anesthesia/pain relief because "pain response is an important scientific datapoint."

I haven't decided how they eventually did manage to induce the curse, but initial attempts were straight-up torture, in the hopes that sufficient negative emotion and/or fear for his life would trigger it. You can insert whatever you like here, but I personally am a perennial fan of waterboarding and near-drowning.

When it did finally trigger, it was first visible in his right eye, which promptly got removed for analysis. Fortunately for him, Anatoli wanted to see if it would spread to the left (it has, thus far, not).

It then started manifesting in his right hand, spreading up his arm (if this sounds a lot like the specifics of Cursed Transformation: I went with very similar mechanisms, why build from the ground up when I've already done some thinking about it), and as soon as it was established above his right wrist, he lost the last two fingers on both hands for a side-by-side comparison. It continued to spread, both up the arm and, once it reached the shoulder, appearing patchily elsewhere on his body. There were more tissue samples taken consistently over the next four years; most of them were smaller than whole fingers, but some were fairly significant chunks (he is probably also short a toe or two but Anatoli had his extremity data at that point, he wanted a variety of sites).

Despite the starvation diet, he did hit puberty in here. At which point both the sexual abuse and additional mutilation show up, because Anatoli's chief research assistant and second-in-command decided to "conduct tests of his sexual response as the curse progressed," which was 100% a "if you write it down you can call it science" excuse for rape. Which, because he was being very consistently dehumanized here (it is significantly easier for most people to carve into a terrified child if you convince yourself they're a monster, not a person), she pulled off in part by treating him more like a person than anyone else in the lab, which did not help him trust Lisa later on.

Concurrently he was both hitting a growth spurt and developing actual powers to go with the curse, and Anatoli was already considering castration with the hope that it would, as in animals, make him more docile. Discovering her 'research' made him decide, not that maybe he should fire his chief research assistant, but instead that he didn't really want to risk being accused of breeding monsters, and. so.

(One of my guilty pleasures in whump-rescue fic is the Rescuee, with no idea what their rescuer is getting out of this, offering them sexual favors as 'repayment,' and this is my idfic so that 100% happens here. And then Lisa's rebuff fucks Kaeya up in its own way because he associated the chief assistant leaving off, some time afterwards as he got too old for her tastes, and immediately dropping all pretense of seeing him as a person, with further advancement of his curse moving him from the 'human, thus desirable' to 'inhuman, thus no longer desirable' category. So at least initially it read to him as, Lisa talks a good game, but clearly she doesn't think he's human enough to touch like that anymore either.)

Incidentally 'I am no longer human enough to even be worth being touched (in ways I didn't like but that I've nonetheless been taught to associate with humanity)' was the main trigger for the first of the three suicide attempts in Anatoli's custody. Others followed, because every time the curse intensified there were more tissue samples, and more restraints on him, and horrible tests of his powers and general physical capabilities, and so on.

At some point they made him kill animals and, later, hilichurls (and Kaeya knows exactly what hilichurls are) to see what he was capable of. A lot of the power-testing was Bad in general because he didn't want to help, and so the efforts made to overcome his sullenness on the subject were very much of the 'push him until he loses control' variety. He still has a lot of Issues around handling animals. :)

Taking most of his right arm off was actually not for Anatoli's research. Anatoli and his team were all Spantamad; he was acquainted with an Amurta researcher who wanted a sample. That Kaeya was starting to grow claws on the remaining fingers of that arm, and that the Cryo veining was most vivid there and the Abyssal powers were clearly linked directly to it, and that those powers were growing stronger and threatened to eventually overwhelm the wards they were capable of, were... significant contributing factors. Half the reason Anatoli allowed Lisa onto the team, despite her associations with her very anti-human-experimentation mentor, was because she had a Vision and was significantly better at magical wards than anyone else interested. And it looked like they were going to need that sooner or later.

To answer the second and third questions together, I honestly have not thought tremendously far past the return-to-Mondstadt part of the plot, but we have determined that he does not meet Diluc at that time, because things in Mondstadt progress as in canon, including Crepus' death. And the timing is such that, after Kaeya has chosen Mondstadt (Lisa wanted Mondstadt, but gave him options because it seemed clear that he needed to feel like he'd made a choice) in large part because he has fond memories and a desperate hope that Crepus might have some sympathy, Lisa and Kaeya arrive in Stone Gate in time to hear that that Dawn Winery is closed because it's in mourning for Crepus, and its young master has recently passed through going the other way. :>

Though the household did react to Kaeya going missing those six years ago! Crepus spent months upon months in Sumeru hiring everyone he could to scour the place, and Kaeya knows that because Anatoli went out of his way to wipe out his test subject's trail in terror that Crepus might have the leverage to get the Akademiya to make him give him up. Which is why he'd hoped Crepus might, at the very minimum, give them shelter and/or give Lisa some money, despite the whole 'Abyssal taint' thing. He was banking very, very hard on 'even if I can't repay Lisa for getting me out myself, Crepus can afford to.' Finding out that he'd just died, that Kaeya had just missed seeing him alive, was devastating and triggered suicide attempt #5.

TBH I am not sure he makes a 'good' recovery per se! It depends on your definition, but like, while he does spend a good few years getting help unpicking his trauma, he still has plenty by the time of game start. I don't think he joins the Knights directly, as a knight; I don't know exactly how things wrap up (theabysscomeshome and I have talked through to the Dramatic Final Confrontation of what would be the second fic if I was writing it, but not the aftermath), but while Lisa becomes Ordo Librarian once the risk of extradition to Sumeru is cleared up, if Kaeya joins at all it's in some kind of auxiliary role.

Lisa does get him a catalyst early on, and he learns eventually how to channel his Cryo through it so he can disguise the source, and thus is fighting-capable, but in all honesty this may be another AU where he joins Benny's Adventure Team, because he fucking loves Bennett. Whenever he says something that he thought was normal and everyone else looks horrified by, Bennett blithely responds with some almost-as-horrifying anecdote of a bad-luck incident. Bennett lets him help with his chores and equipment maintenance, and whenever Kaeya fumbles things because he has all of three fingers, Bennett blames his own bad luck and apologizes for it. Bennett, all of twelve years old at the time, full-on attempted to fight the celebrated Captain Jean Gunnhildr for the sake of Kaeya's freedom. Kaeya mostly gives up on killing himself as a solution to every problem because he realizes it's entirely possible that Bennett will blame himself, and that would be intolerable.

(Bennett's reaction to Diluc, when he returns, is way more similar to Kaeya's initial reaction to Razor than Kaeya thought he was actually capable of.)

So, yeah! I don't know entirely where it goes, but I don't think he's a standard Knight in this AU at any point. (Among other things, he flat-out refuses to fight or kill hilichurls.) He may end up being on-call for them in some capacity, he may become an adventurer with Bennett and just drop any useful info he picks up into Lisa's ear to share with Jean, he may end up a library assistant, I'm not sure. And he does, regardless, do the same 'using his linguistic knowledge/Abyss associations to gather information on the Abyss Order's movements' thing for them. But even with the catalyst he honestly doesn't meet physical-capability standards, and he doesn't want to be directly within a command structure, so I don't think the Knights are right for him.

[gunsli-01]

Hi bestie hope you're doing well

Any new shidou theorys you have?

I'm doing alright for the most part. I hope you've been doing well too. Though @apatchworkstar would be better to go to for Shidou theories. She hit the nail on the head when she said he'd be getting Delusion Tax this trial. My thoughts are scattered across a lot of things right now. Especially when it comes to Milgram.

I had been waiting to see Mahiru's cd art to work out some thoughts when it came to the prisoners' doors. It seems the verdicts impact how immaculate a prisoner's door is. When Futa's door came out i believed that the graffiti on it more represented the victims of his actions and the centered word Pressure was being used to represent the gazes of the audience.

The only things on Futa's door that seem representative of him is the coloring of the word Pressure and the flammable warning label. So, I wanted to see Mahiru's door to see if this would be a consistent thing. Which seems to be the case.

Mahiru's door is pretty but looks to be a place that was abandoned a long time ago. Areas of it appearing stained and rusted over with plants coiling around the entrance. The most interesting thing about Shidou is how his door compares to Mahiru's.

I think the thing that best describes the feeling their doors give me is the quote from the beginning of Pandora Hearts, "Someone once said it was a dark place that swallowed everything up, but it wasn't as if there was never any light there."

If Milgram has compared Mahiru to the sun then Shidou would be the moon and that's perfectly represented when their trial two cd art is shown side by side. Shidou's face is surrounded by a calm pale glow of light remniscent of the certain serenity one would only find during the time of day where yesterday isn't quite yesterday and today has yet to become today.

Just like he says in Throw Down "I don’t feel scared because I don’t know." He's calm because he doesn't know. There's a serenity in ignorance that has been overshadowed by the idea of fearing the unknown. Yet, there are many times in a person's life where they'll find solace in not knowing something because sometimes not knowing something is better than acquainting yourself with it.

Like with Shidou he says, "I finally understand the value of what I've been robbing people of." Yet, understanding such a thing certainly wouldn't bring a person peace. Throw Down is all about how one's morality and trying to do the right thing is a delusion people hold onto in order to comfort themselves.

Something drenched in so much subjectivity that what another person finds wrong could very well be right to someone else. The back and forth between those states of understanding. Understanding that all ethics is when cut down to its barest form is humans trying to delude themselves into believing they've done the right thing through reasons created by humans. It's just a higher level of justifying one's own beliefs and choices. So, just as easily as it can be picked up, it can also be thrown down.

It only means what the individual wants it to mean and we all pay the tax for believing what we believe eventually whether it's a delusion or not. Sorry, got sidetracked there. The thing that showcases this sun/moon comparison between Mahiru and Shidou are the plants on their doors. Shidou's are withered and wilting as though they haven't seen sunlight in ages despite the glow around Shidou himself. While the ones gripping Mahiru's door are clearly still alive as a warm light shines down atop Mahiru's head.

Shidou tends to be associated with flower preservation. So, him having dead flowers isn't surprising. He's shown to enjoy preserving things even after they've died in Throw Down. This could easily represent how Shidou isn't really interested in things outside of a superficial perspective. How he wants to preserve only the good aspects of his partner or harvest only the best parts for them.

This leads into the double meanings behind the prisoners covers. Each song that a prisoner has covered so far has had a double meaning. Delusion Tax for Shidou for example could allude to him deluding himself into believing he had more of a relationship with the person he was allegedly trying to save than he did.

However, it also plays into his delusion around being a doctor. Thinking that just if he studied medicine, he could save people and do right by society. Something heavily displayed in the lyric, "That's right, for all these dirty delusions let's settle the bill with this dirty money."

So, I have two theories. Shidou was definitely organ trafficking to make money on the side of being a doctor. However, why he was doing so still alludes me and how he was being provided with the bodies is also incredibly suspect.

The first thing that could have happened is he was a shady doctor who worked with criminals on the side and sometimes helped hurry organ collection along by botching surgeries. Yet, one day when he was called in to get organs out as usual it was someone he knew on the table. However, Shidou doesn't seem like the sort to get into something like that without there being some way for him to gain as well.

So, he could have also got into it to get access to organs himself to help someone he cares about with a layer of protection if he were to slip up one day. It's not that difficult for him to give organs he found unfit to any shady organization who may want them for some semblance of protection. Though to be honest Shidou is a bit of an outlier to me. It's a bit hard for me to relate to him on any level because he's just so flippant about even recognizing himself.

It's like he just doesn't care regardless of which way his verdict goes and only started to care about being innocent in order to keep giving medical aid to other prisoners. So, I'm at this point where I know he's bad but he clearly values human life and I'm interested in knowing what would make him begin to wonder what the weight of a life is in Throw Down. Because at least to me to come to the conclusions Shidou has about ethics well it shows that at a point he really did care about those things and I want to know what made him throw that away.

Though he could have also never cared about those things. Like he's hard to read which is why I said I probably wouldn't be voting on him unless there are some very concrete revelations. I'd need to see his song a few times and have the voice drama translation before giving a deliberation on him this trial.

Ah he's rather difficult because slippery cold people like that are hard for me to deal with. It just feels like he doesn't care about much and he's just taking things as they go like he gave up long before ending up in Milgram and that's a difficult type for me. He could also just be a cannibal which at this point seems like a bit of a low hanging fruit.

I feel like his music video is going to be really fucked up though. I'd really just have to say Shidou is too much like Jack Vessalius for me to really get a feel for yet or make an opinion on. It seems like he just reflects what the person he's speaking to wants to see. I don't know what he cares about or stands for and how easily he switched from vote me guilty to vote me innocent is questionable.

To anyone that has read Pandora Hearts that may be taken as an insult for those who haven't I'm basically saying Shidou has yet to show his true colors and I don't know if he ever will. He seems fake as hell to be honest. Like I know Kazui is meant to be the one good at lying but Mahiru and Shidou seem really good at hiding their true selves.

I hope this makes sense. I was in a bit of a rush. I really want to see what Shidou cares about and not what he believes society would want him to care about and I still haven't seen that so he's just a difficult case for me...

[scalpelsister]

its oversharing hour on tumblr. cr3 spoilers below but im not tagging this bc i dont want it in the main tags. (again, really oversharing on this one, don’t reblog obvi haha, but feel free to comment or whatever)

god i have so many thoughts. too many thoughts. i think most people know that I am a laudna stan + have def done my fair share of projecting onto her w/ mental illness (schizophrenia and a little bit o ptsd). Like as part of schizophrenia, I experience cotards- for me specifically I often have both delusions and hallucinations surrounding my body rotting, or about me being undead- this was something that started in my second psychotic episode ~ 2020. I connect with undead characters, especially ones who show any sign of goodness, because I often perceive myself as being literally undead. Seeing an undead character in my favorite show- especially after seeing Sylvanas Windrunner being utterly fucked over and villainized wrongfully- was such a comforting thing for me inherently. Like Laudna was a source of hope for me- shes undead, shes weird, people might judge her for being weird or monstrous, but shes loved so deeply. Like it was a reassurance that people like me could be good and kind and be loved and have friends. That there really was hope for traumatized corpse people after all (again, keep in mind, that the last traumatized corpse person I connected with ended up having the writing team say no actually, shes evil for being a traumatized corpse, and deserves to take her own life and go to hell).

My energy rn is not letting me word things how I want to, but I can’t stress enough how important it was to see an undead who had severe trauma and heard voices in her head and was weird and off putting to most people who didn’t try to get to know her. To see her unashamedly love weird morbid creepy shit and see her embrace at least some of her weirdness. And to then see her be genuinely, deeply loved (esp by another woman. hashtag lesbianism or whatever), and be appreciated for being who she is, not despite of it. Like idk maybe its the trauma / abandonment trauma in me showing, but seeing Imogen go back to her, seeing others be unafraid to share a bed with her, seeing others show concern about HER rather than fear of her when Delilah shit happened. Like the amount of times I’ve opened up about my voices- not even bad things they say, but just having them to be met with ‘are you like... homicidal? like are you going to hurt me?’ or the gem of ‘yeah I care about you but idk if I can trust you now that I know that. You will never be allowed around my future kids if I’m not there, because you’re dangerous. Like thank you for sharing but I’m going to go now and think about it before you hurt me or something’. Like its such a low bar but shes honestly the only character I can even think of or name that wasn’t villainized or hated or otherwise had the narrative imply their life was meaningless / wrong / they where better of dead just for being like me. Like I know this may not connect with many others but its so alienating and isolating to see other people like you demonized again and again and again in fiction and seeing the same message of ‘the death of people like you is worth celebrating’ all over the place. I can’t possible put into words how meaningful it is to have even on character break that mold. To hear /anyone/ much less one of my fave actresses on my fave show (which-has been my favorite since long before I experienced cotards to clarify) that being like this and just being alive and trying to love others regardless was worth celebration. That there is hope and love waiting in the future.

I think thats why her death is hitting me so hard. I just want to see ONE character like me make it to their happy ending. Just one to say that my life doesn’t have to be a tragedy.

And I think thats why people are pissing me off SO BAD by insisting she will come back alive / not undead, that it would so cool and fun to see all of that erased. I don’t want that to be erased. Its utter total bullshit to say it would be more interesting or more impactful to see her ‘properly’ alive and not have voices anymore and forget her loved ones and how much they love her. I want her back as she was. I don’t care if others think shes broken or gross or that she should get to be alive again or whatever. She’s been alive this whole time. She’s had a soul this whole time. There’s nothing fucking wrong with her, stop trying to fix her or uno reverse her being different. It was already interesting and meaningful that she WAS different and that it wont go away and that that’s fucking ok and doesn’t make her worthless or bad or unlovable. Shut the fuck up please.

[evelynsfics]

Everything was loud. Far too loud.

The wind breezing by and bringing with it a horrible, uncomfortable summer heat, unaware yet dreadful of the stinging scent of death soon to bleed through.

The bugs, going about their lives blissfully unknowning, or maybe uncaring, of what's about to happen far away from any sort of supervision or guarding gaze.

The roses watching, expecting.

They walk together, one next to the other as they sway under the sun, groaning and complaining about the heat. Friends perhaps? Dressed in colorful summer clothes and old shoes one would take to work in the fields instead of going for a walk. They walk loudly and without a care about the beauty and piece they are disturbing.

One complains that they should have come at a better time, if not a better day. The other, a taller girl, tells him sharply to shut up.

"It was your idea. You where the one that got impatient and dragged us all down with you." She tells him, voice full of annoyance.

For someone looking in, they'd think she was the leader of the group, rational and logical, stern, perhaps, the perfect person for the job. No, she was just as impulsive as the rest of them, and as much as she blames the boy, she wanted to go just as much, blaming him was easier than admitting to weakness. Or so she thought, drowning in a mindset that wasn't even her own.

What a tragedy it must be to unwilling inherent a way of thinking that will only get you hurt. It's all she's ever known, and while brimming with loneliness and sorrow, it was better to fall back into a comfortable silence. Change scared her, the thoughts that came and went were easier to deal with, and she didn't need anyone, they only weighed her down. She could trust only herself, she could count only on her own skills, everyone else would fail.

That way of thinking ate her alive. It slowly chipped at her mind until it was beyond irrational with fear and regret. How sad, to end one's own life before it even began.

They walk, loud and obnoxious. They walk, unaware. They walk, full of energy, even in the exhausting heat. They walk, alive. "Oh what they'd give to go back." Right? That's what you'll say once it's all over.

The gates are tall, impossibly so, tall and menacing, they loom over anyone who passes by. The rose bushes outside, wild and free, stand guard. They watch, they wait. That is their job, to keep count of how many walk in, predictably, never to walk out again.

Even as the gates stand tall, they do not stand proud. The rust, coating the delicately spindly iron laughs like a mockery. The gate stood and survived wind after wind, rain after rain, the cruel hand of time that never stops scribbling away, yet it didn't come out unscathed. It survived, but sometimes the people passing wonder if it would have been better if it didnt.

"It can't be salvaged," they said. "A waste of time and money, if you ask me." Another agreed. Time and time again, they said we can't fix it, they left unsaid that we wish we could tear it down.

Everyone wishes to stop hurting. We all wish we could go back, fix all our mistakes and live as we were meant to. If only that was possible, how many would die for it? How many would go willingly and how many would be forced in just so others could have their wasted happiness back? We all promise and swear we wouldn't do something so vile to another breathing, living being, but faced against something so fleeting, so blissful, would we be as strong as we believe ourselves to be in our most lovely delusions?

The wild flowers that grow around know the secrets kept inside. They hear the whispers, they see the dancing lights, they know what goes on as they know what happens during the summer. Glass shatters as it breaks from the old windows only to fall bellow, then, years later, forgotten, it crunches under worn out work boots stolen from tired parents by eager children to explore a place they've always been told to stay away from. Curiosity, or perhaps, temptation, overtakes any caution left behind by all the bedtime stories and fairytales.

The roses, tired yet watchful, are a beautiful sight. Gentle colors and soft glances, they where her favourite. Someone once said they aren't actually wild roses, no, someone planted them long ago to bring a bit of comfort to those visiting, but soon ended up joining them. Then, the roses survived when their friend couldn't, forever in an agreement to bid farewell. Arguments soon followed, words spat in hateful bouquets, promises broken and left to rot in dirty mud and resentment.

It ended like all the others before it, in sorrow and loss. Forever standing as scar upon the people it once adored.

Time, is horrible thing, really. It doesn't care about how hard you wish you could have just a little more time to see, to feel, to experience, it's only duty is to pass, and pass it does. It takes and takes and takes and takes and takes until there's nothing left, for at the very end, only it'll be left. And it knows, it knows that's the only outcome that'll come of this, yet it doesn't want to stop. Or rather, it convinces itself it doesn't want to, it convinces itself that's its it's own choice, because in reality, the truth that it simply can't stop, hurts more.

Of course, that's how life goes. People come and go, some you see again. You bump into them at the store, you stay and catch up, you rekindle the friendship you lost oh so long ago. Some you hear about from friends or strangers on the street talking about their horrible new boss, knowing you'll never see them again, and some, some you see as a name engraved on a stone, deep within the rusty gates, behind the wild roses and held so gently in white and red, like specs of blood on fresh snow and ash.

They where kids, i know. Still, to be spared once was already unheard of, to be spared twice would be just a delusional fantasy spoken in hushed whispers and poorly held back giggles.

They weren't careful, some might say.

They went looking for trouble and found it, other, less empathetic people will say.

That's how life goes. You never know who goes next, the old man down the street says. He's seen alot of things, heard even more, his years speak of unfortunate knowledge of life and it's ways.

"If only...they stayed home like i told them..." The weeping woman spits through sobs, a shirt clutched in her frail, deathly pale hand.

She soon will die too, with the only good thing in her life gone, she simply doesn't have a reason to stay and fight anymore. They won't find her for a few days, her neighbors will only check once the smell becomes unbearable. They knew what was going to happen, yet they thought if they just didn't think about it, it wouldn't matter.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't effect them beyond the loss of a neighborly good morning or a short conversation at the store. So they don't care. They don't. That's just how it goes.

And so time keeps moving. The walls close more and more, the rust spreads as the years pass, becoming more and more noticeable, the roses begin to wilt, their colors fade, exhausted.

And so, the people gather, many summers later. Some had been there to see it be built, their pride and joy. Some, heard stories from their grandparents, stories of loss and misery, a warning always in their eyes to never get too close. Some, newer to the town and its cruelty, simply wished for something to do, something to kill the boredom of a slow life in a slow little town drowning alone in an endless sea of fields and untouched earth.

They take it down, a scar upon the town, a scar upon people's lives. It no longer stands there, not... physically at least, but even after its long gone, the people feel it. They feel it there, still. At night, when it becomes too tiring to talk anymore, when the rush of a night out fades, sometimes in the shower, when there's nothing left but one's own thoughts. They all feel it, for it will never go away.

A scar upon the people, just as the rust was on it. A scar upon the land, the foundation still clings to the earth, unwilling to let go. The land has been left on its own, no one wishes to buy it, no one wishes to help.

Sure, some tried, but once they realized just how much work was needed, just how in over their heads they where, a silent, unspoken goodbye was the last thing it would know.

Its been too long now, there's no hope left, there's nothing to be gained. And so, its left to rot in its own loneliness, forever a scar upon those that fought, and lost.