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sunderwight · 1 month

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Further speculation on Shen Yuan transmigrating in some kind of Beast:

Werewolf Shen Qingqiu.

And like, major emphasis on the wolf, in his case. Not wolfman. Every full moon Shen Qingqiu has to make arrangements for himself to turn into a gigantic silvery-white wolf that retains extremely little of his consciousness, and mostly just seems to want to do Wolf Things, though according to PIDW and all information he has on the matter, he ought to be turning into a violent and bloodthirsty predator.

However, it turns out that the wolf form does retain some awareness from the mind/soul of the human, meaning that the reason SJ's wolf was so incredibly unsafe to be around was because it was constantly trying to process SJ's trauma in wild animal terms. So, it was hostile towards the vast majority of humans and in a heightened state of anxiety, always anticipating violence (and reacting accordingly) whenever something unexpected happened. Matters were not helped by SJ's decision to try and lock himself up for every transformation, which of course freaked his wolf out even more (trapped) and resulted in self-harm as it desperately tried to escape. It was just that SJ interpreted the self-harm as a sign that the wolf was so extremely violent that it would cannibalize itself rather than go a single night without the taste of blood.

SY, who is a lot less traumatized, conversely has a much more calm and curious wolf. Like he's extremely cautious and nervous about the whole thing, because he's expecting it to be violent based on his information, and since he doesn't retain much awareness of his transformations he has little idea of what his wolf-self does. But he also isn't great at locking himself up like the original goods did, and he never really seems to wake up covered in blood or anything? Once or twice he thinks he might have hunted a rabbit, but they definitely were rabbits and not like his subconscious somehow going after children in the middle of a wilderness somewhere, because when he came to the wolf had brought the leftover bunny bits along back to the ruined temple he was supposed to be shutting himself up into.

The new Shen Qingqiu consequently gets a bit complacent about the whole thing. He can only blame himself. Maybe he should have anticipated Luo Binghe, with his boundless curiosity and interest in his shizun, would notice the oddities in his schedule and follow him out one night. Everyone's supposed to believe that he's just going to brothels and engaging in purely mundane debauchery, though, so why would Binghe doubt his story?

But he did, and so of course Luo Binghe ends up witnessing his shizun's terrible transformation into a wretched and hated beast. Stunned, the young disciple stands transfixed (no doubt in horror) in the moonlight. The wolf sees him, and though Shen Qingqiu doesn't retain much memory, he recollects the running, the leaping, the... uh... licking...?

Well. Turns out that even Shen Qingqiu's subconscious wolf mind recognizes Luo Binghe as pack, and thank goodness too, because at least he didn't attack him!

Although after that it becomes an extreme challenge to explain to Luo Binghe why he can't accompany Shen Qingqiu for his transformations every month. It's not safe, the wolf is unpredictable and Shen Qingqiu can't promise that he won't startle or suddenly change his tune and lash out, and even though Binghe's cultivation is progressing in leaps and bounds, the wolf also isn't limited to normal mortal strength. It would be able to track his scent and follow him relentlessly, chasing him down to catch and pin him beneath its massive paws, and... Binghe why is your face so red? Are you feeling alright? If it's too frightening, then let's not describe it any further, but the point is that it's dangerous.

Shen Qingqiu has to put his foot down. In the end, he has his suspicions that Binghe is still circumventing him, as he could swear he sometimes remembers running around the wilderness with company. (Binghe is absolutely sneaking out to go spend time with Wolf Shizun.) But there's nothing concrete enough to be certain. Meanwhile, Luo Binghe has at least agreed to keep it secret (for now -- probably not once the time comes for Shen Qingqiu to be put on trial) and fusses over his shizun, helping him keep track of the moon scheduling and always making sure he has a full belly before he goes into wilderness seclusion (Shen Qingqiu never says, but somehow Luo Binghe guesses anyway that he doesn't like waking up to find that the wolf had a snack during the night...)

Another hazard: lycanthropy in the PIDW setting is a curse. Like admittedly it's kind of a kickass one, but it still has tons of negative associations, most commonly befalling impoverished individuals or travelers who get bitten by wild wolf demons, and survive only to find that a piece of the wolf's spirit has gotten stuck to their own. Cultivators with lycanthropy are often associated with demons and disrepute, like Wu Yanzi, and there are countless tales of them turning on their own people or being revealed as violent, depraved criminals. It's only slightly more acceptable than being a demon outright.

In other words it's not a desirable circumstance.

And yet, for some reason, Luo Binghe is reprehensibly lapse in his protections against lycanthropy. Shen Qingqiu has told him all of the precautions he knows against it, and yet it's almost like Binghe keeps doing the exact opposite things! Listen, wolves are cool. Shen Qingqiu knows that. He's actually kind of fine with turning into one, since it seems to be less of a ravenous beast situation than he'd feared. But there are still social consequences to this kind of a thing! Luckily, it doesn't actually matter much because even with his uncharacteristic youthful irresponsibility, Binghe's heavenly demon blood protects him from ever being cursed. The only way he'd get lycanthropy would be if he deliberately let a werewolf bite him and then just refused to excise the curse, and even then, he could purge the tainted wolf spirit from him just by force of will whenever he wanted.

Seriously, though! It's only when Shen Qingqiu points out that Luo Binghe is going to make people suspicious with all his negligence towards basic precautions that Binghe finally smartens up about it.

(Luo Binghe, out in the woods during a full moon: Wolf Shizun please bite me? Bite Binghe? Then we can be together every full moon! Look here I'll stick my hand in your mouth... just, just chomp down... no don't lick... *sigh*...)

Anyway, the plot still goes mostly the same, except that when Shen Qingqiu put into the water prison it's the full moon. He expects this is part of Luo Binghe's plan against him -- Binghe probably couldn't reveal the lycanthropy without also admitting he'd known before and helped hide it, but this way, Shen Qingqiu can just get caught as a wolf by the palace guards. But Luo Binghe's just been so frazzled and distressed by everything that he genuinely forgot what phase the moon was on. Shen Qingqiu's expecting a lot of things when he wakes up after transforming in the Water Prison, but being back out of the Water Prison and snuggled up to the protagonist's chest wasn't on the list.

Turns out that after his confrontation with Luo Binghe and the Little Palace Mistress, Gongyi Xiao went to check on him and found him transformed. After Gongyi Xiao alerted the rest of the palace, the Palace Master determined that Shen Qingqiu being a werewolf was as good as a confirmation of guilt, and had the wolf dragged out to be killed. Luo Binghe intervened, Shen Qingqiu took off, and between one thing and another the whole night was spent with Huan Hua and Cang Qiong cultivators trying to catch him (for different reasons).

Of course it was Luo Binghe who eventually cornered the terrified wolf, at which point the wolf actually, finally did bite him. But when Binghe failed to react, it whimpered and went back to its usual behavior, and let Binghe lead it out of the city and off to its usual territory near Cang Qiong. The wolf then proceeded to act like an overjoyed puppy whose owner had finally come back from war, until Binghe broke down and sobbed himself to sleep. It must have curled up onto his chest afterwards.

Shen Qingqiu is deeply embarrassed, but... somehow Luo Binghe doesn't seem to be taking revenge on him?

He's going to need to treat that bite wound soon, though.

Binghe.

Binghe, you are going to treat that--

#svsss #bingqiu #scum villain #long post #scum villain's self saving system #luo binghe you can't be a half demon AND a werewolf #even though it's really cool #because of reasons #people already called you a gary stu on the forums you don't need to give them this kind of ammunition #not that he was ever beating the allegations anyway but that's not the point

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flowercrowngods · 4 months

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🤍🌷 @stevesbipanic and @the-winged-doe asked to see ugly unpolished unrefined words, soo—

cw & tags: past major character death, grief, attempted time-travel fix-it(s), eddie&robin besties || potential wip

Eddie takes a long drag of his cigarette, the biting hot smoke hitting the back of his throat and clawing its way into his lungs, going as deep as he allows and leaving a permanent mark that brings neither relief nor calmness tonight. His fingers shake where they’re pressed to his lips, but the rest of him is unmoving where he sits on the front porch of their new trailer.

It’s quiet out here. It’s always quiet in Hawkins these days, the city a fucking ghosttown.

And he knows it’s not because of the one they lost. He knows it’s not because of him. But still the emptiness is stark and the silence oppressivem more so than it ever has been.

Everyone still looks for him, months later. Dustin still begins to speak, cutting himself off mid-sentence, and Robin still stands with enough space to either side, like she expects him to just show up and invade her space like the home he made for himself in there.

And somewhere among all that is Eddie. With his very own history. Or, non-history, as it turns out. But history and non-history leave wounds alike, and the memories feel just as real. A small mercy, at the end of the day, for them to feel real when they’re all he has left anymore.

He takes another drag, not quite exhaling before he obliterates the cigarette and fishes for a new one before the butt even hits the ground.

Fumbling with the lighter in his pocket, he only gets as far as placing the butt between his lips before a hand snakes into his field of vision to snag it from his mouth.

“Hey,” he complains halfheartedly but makes no attempt at getting it back, watching instead as Robin comes up to sit beside him, grimacing at the stink of tobacco that must be heavy around him.

“You’re disgusting,” she says with no real heat behind her words.

Eddie shrugs, because yeah, sure. He’s been called worse things. Robin’s called him worse things. This is her being nice. Her complaininig about his incessant smoking is nothing new. What is new is what she does next, placing the cigarette between her own lips and reaching for the light he’s been holding in a loose grip since she arrived.

She starts coughing immediately, pulling a face at the disgusting feeling of smoke in her lungs and tobacco on her tongue. But she keeps going. Eddie can only watch in surprise and mild horror.

“These things’ll kill you,” he says then in an echo of her usual sentiment, aware that he sounds as bewildered as he feels.

“Well,” Robin says, aiming for casual, but quickly interrupted by a wheeze and a cough that’s almost adorable. “Let them try.”

Eddie huffs, a pale little smile lingering on his lips as he leans back against the stairs behind him, resting his weight on his forearm to watch her. There is something captivating about her. Eddie always wonders what it is, wants to study her forever.

Maybe it’s only the lingering traces of Everything Steve Harrington that clings to her every breath, her every move, her every fucking cell, with how much he was a part of her and she of him. Maybe it’s their shared grief that has made Eddie fall a bit in love with her and with the way the moonlight catches in her hair and in the smoke wafting from her cigarette.

But somehow he refuses to believe that all he loves about her is merely the memory of Steve.

Robin, in turn, is kind enough to let him stare. Kind enough to let him find out what it is between them. If this friendship is more than a misguided projection of grief and mourning and trauma; more than co-dependence and the obsessive will to keep this one person in your life. This one person who understands.

After a while of Robin just holding the cigarette between her fingers, becuase no matter how strong her will to self destruct, she never quite got it right with the smoking, Eddie snatches it back before it goes to waste completely. As if pulled in by a string attached to his hollowed out chest, Robin leans back and into him in one smooth motion. It’s too calculated, though, and Eddie can feel how much she sags once she doesn’t have to hold herself up anymore.

He’ll hold her. It’s fine. She gets to rest if she wants to. God knows she needs it.

The night is warm for mid-September, but still Robin shakes against him. Eddie holds her closer.

Silence settles over them, and it’s not an easy one. Silence is never easy anymore, especially with them. He feels so deeply hollow that even the silence echoes in there, creating an ever-present, uncomfortable thrumming of apprehension and anxiety within him. A certain sense of doom, one that can’t quite decide if it’s only an echo itself.

“I wanna stop time,” Robin says at last, the cigarette long dead between Eddie’s fingers, but he somehow can’t bring himself to flick it away. “I don’t want tomorrow.”

I don’t ever want a new day. I don’t ever want another tomorrow. I just want Steve.

They ring in his head still, another echo that only hollows him out further every time it reaches him — Robin, overcome with hysterical grief, screaming and crying, curled up on that hospital floor, her cries quieting down and making Eddie wish she would be loud again, because the quiet was what killed him. The quiet, the whispered words, the declarations that tomorrow could go fuck itself if it came without Steve made him wish, irrationally, desperately, that their roles were reversed. That he could have died and Steve could have lived, and Robin would never have to wish tomorrow never came.

He’s not entirely sure if she remembers the words, too. If she even said them in this world.

So he takes a deep breath, breathes away memories and non-histories, feels the heavy weight of his guitar pick hanging around his neck, resting on the scarred flesh of his chest, and tries not to think of the one string left on his acoustic guitar. Tries not to think of his one last attempt. One last try.

“I know,” he tells her. “Me neither.”

He peers over her head, lifting his left wrist to check his watch. Ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes until Steve’s birthday.

“It’s not tomorrow yet,” he tries lamely, and Robin huffs — the sound wet and bitter and hopeless, making Eddie’s eyes sting.

“It’s always fucking tomorrow,” she rasps, her voice flat and wavering, and Eddie knows her well enough to know she’s about to cry. And she knows him well enough to do it.

“I know,” he says again, and reaches for his necklace through his shirt. One more attempt. One more try. One more chance. His eyes burn.

She turns to him after taking a moment to compose herself, peering up at him through her lashes.

“Tell me again?”

His heart falls, the tense apprehension vanishing from the air, bur quickly replaced by something a lot more heavy. Something that looks and smells and feels like grief.

They both know he’ll do anything she asks. He can’t really bear saying not to her. And not about this, anyway — she’s the only one who knows.

She’s the one who should have had the chance.

“Which part?” he asks, holding a new cigarette out for her to light it. She does, and the both follow the flame of the lighter Robin always keeps in her pocket these days.

She leans forward and takes a drag. Eddie lets her.

“All of them.“

Eddie sighs, pain welling up inside him, and he closes his eyes against the night sky. “Robbie,” he pleads, but he doesn’t finish his plea. He’ll do it. He’ll do anything she asks.

But before he starts recounting the tales of how he almost saved Steve Harrington, he finds himself saying something he never thought he’d tell her.

“There’s one more.” The words hang in the air, and Robin doesn’t react. Has no idea what’s coming; what he’s about to tell her. The guitar pick is heavy on the necklace around his throat. “There’s one more try. One more chance. I’m… I have one more—“

He can’t even finish the sentence. Can’t bring himself to say it, lest it all be jinxed forever. He doesn’t want to hope. Wants to carry this weight for all eternity and never think about all those times he failed to save someone he was never meant to save at all. People like Eddie, they’re not made to save anyone. Hell, they can’t even save themselves.

Steve was supposed to be the one doing the saving.

And he did. God, he fucking did. But he was never supposed to—

Cold fingers wrap around his own as Robin fits their hands together.

“I hate you a little bit for telling me.”

Eddie nods, trying to focus on the cold hand and the nicotine in his lungs, trying not to let panic and grief and guilt and the heavy weight of one more chance win. “I know.”

“Hey, Eddie?” Robin says after a while, the silence stretching on, and it’s almost midnight now. “Can you— Would you do something for me?”

He turns his head, flicking the butt of his cigarette out into the darkness beyond them. “What’s that?”

“Don’t— Don’t try to, to save him. Don’t— Just… Just maybe, could you celebrate his birthday with him? Make sure he knows he’s… God, make sure he knows he’s loved? Last year, no one really made time on his birthday and we just moved it backwards but God, could you— It’s almost midnight, and—“

“Robbie,” Eddie interrupts her, his voice hoarse and wavering, his eyes burning with tears as he tugs her close and holds her to his chest. “You should go. Don’t you wanna…”

But she’s shaking her head against him with a vehemence that can hardly be misunderstood.

“No,” she cries, and it’s more of a sob than anything. “I think if I ever saw him again, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do. Burn the whole fucking world to the ground for him or some shit, I can’t— I’d probably just cry all the time and that wouldn’t be helpful, really.” There’s a weak, wet laugh that bubbles out of both of them, and Eddie’s wiping at Robin’s face, drying the tears and making way for new ones to fall.

“I’d light a fire for you,” Eddie says, the same weak smile on his lips that Robin meets him with now. “Nineteen fucking fires, you hear me?”

She laughs again, then buries her face in his neck in a way that never quite fit. In a way that Eddie always knew was supposed to be someone else’s neck.

But he’s not here anymore. And Eddie can’t get him back. No matter how much he aches for it, no matter how much he learned over and over and over again how easy it is to love Steve Harrington and how hard, how fucking impossible it is to lose him. Over and over and over again.

And to live without him. This one fucking time they all get. It’s not fair.

And now Robin is asking him to go back one more time and make sure that Steve knows— That he knows.

Somehow the thought of that feels nobler than any attempt to save him, to bring him back; to rewrite history from a lonely boy’s perspective and hope that no one else is reading along.

It feels right, too. Fundamentally and suddenly, and with such an intensity that Eddie knows the decision has been made the second he started telling her.

Still he hesitates. Robin’s sobs have calmed down, and Eddie’s hand finds its way into her hair.

“Do you really mean it?”

She nods.

He nods, too, but slower. Like he’s trying to sway himself. Which way, he doesn’t know.

“Make him happy.”

“Okay,” he decides after a while, feeling hollow and desperate, but feeling purpose burning underneath his skin again. “One last time.”

He unwinds his arms from around her and heads inside to grab his acoustic guitar. The last remaining string, badly untuned because he never dared to touch it, stares back at him in both mockery and invitation. A dare. A chance. A promise.

Outside, Robin is waiting for him, looking anxious. Eddie wants to hug her. He doesn’t, only tightens his grip around the guitar’s neck.

“Listen, Eddie, if this is goodbye or something—“

“It’s a birthday party, Robsie,” he interrupts her, aiming for light, aiming for brave. “I’m coming back right here.”

“I know,” she rushes to say, taking a step toward him and wringing her hands. It’s endearing. It’s genuine. Eddie really is a little in love with her. “But, y’know, you don’t mess with time, and I don’t know what all you already changed before and I don’t wanna know but… If this is goodbye, if something happens, I just wanna tell you that I’m gonna miss you. And that I think you’re really cool. And that Steve’s— he’s really missing out, okay. Okay?”

Eddie breathes, taking in her words and letting them soak into his body, his every last fibre.

“Okay,” he smiles. “Thank you. You’re… I’m kind of in love with you, Robin Buckley. So there had better be no change in the universe, ‘cause that would really suck.”

They smile at each other, Eddie with his guitar and Robin with her lighter, and somehow this feels like a deja-vu. The antithesis to a moment forever burned into his memory.

Make him pay.

Make him happy.

Eddie tugs on his necklace and plays the string before he can think about it too hard; before he can decide otherwise.

Distantly, he hears the church bells announcing midnight as the world around him fades.

🤍 permanent tag list gang: @skiddit @inklessletter @aringofsalt @hellion-child @cryptic-cryptid @hotluncheddie @gutterflower77 @auroraplume @steddieonbigboy @n0-1-important @stevesjockstrap @puppy-steve @izzy2210 @itsall-taken @mangoinacan13 @madigoround @pukner @i-amthepizzaman @swimmingbirdrunningrock @hammity-hammer @stevesbipanic @bitchysunflower @estrellami-1 @goodolefashionedloverboi @awkwardgravity1 @devondespresso @bookworm0690 (lmk if you want on or off, for this story or permanently)

#steddie #steddie fic #eddie & robin #eddie munson #robin buckley #robin and eddie are grieving besties now #me writing another story about death and the inability to grieve?? it’s more likely than you think #this one probably doesn’t make sense yet because they’re both refusing to think about what’s real or think about anything at all #so past present and future need time to develop above the damaged psyche of two entirely too young adults #so bear with me and give us time #anyway i’m posting this despite its unpolished ugliness bc this is as good as it gets #if i were anything like my self this would be a 7k study but as it turns out writing about grief is exhausting #(hi taglist gang i hope it was okay to tag you for entirely too raw a draft for anyone to lay eyes on lmao 🤍)

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