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osarina · 5 months

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ᡣ𐭩 DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: seven months after his defection, you run into dazai osamu by sheer chance. you know in your heart what you should do—traitors are to be disposed of, regardless of any previous relationship you might've had with them... but can you bring yourself to do what must be done? or will you be more driven by the questions you desperately need answered?

(wordcount: 7.1k; fem!reader, pm!reader, angsty (i promiseeeee i have some happier ones coming up with pm!reader and pmzai), alcoholism, dazai is in a particularly bad mental state)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: this one was suchhhh a doozy. the third installment of my pm!reader & pm!dazai universe, this is why i had to retcon he's my collar because originally pm!reader didn't see him at all during the 4 years but i got the idea for this fic like 2 ?? weeks ago and it was too good to not use - tomorrow i think i'll put up the masterlist for it so you guys can see the chronology and planned installments

Against all odds, you run into Dazai Osamu seven months after his defection.

You should put a bullet in his skull. You watch absently from the mouth of the alley as the ex-Port Mafia executive groans, trying to push himself to his feet only to crash back onto the pavement, blood smeared across his face from a crooked nose and split lip, bile pooled on the ground where he’d landed.

Gross, you think, lip curling up in disgust as his lithe fingers smear through the vomit, blunt nails scraping against the pavement as he attempts to push himself up again but fails. His shoulders are heaving, breath slow and labored as he lets out another wretched sound, crumpling back to the ground.

You click the safety off of your gun, pulling it out of your pocket as you quietly make your way deeper into the alley, over to where he’s still struggling to get off the ground. He doesn’t even acknowledge your presence until he hits the ground hard again after nearly making it to his feet. This time, he falls onto his shoulder and gasps in pain as he rolls onto his back, blinking up blearily through glazed-over eyes that can hardly focus on you or the gun pointed at his head.

You should just get it over with, pull the trigger, and leave the body for cleanup to handle. It’d be a better fate than he deserves, cleaner and quicker than he’d ever give himself, and not even half as painful as it’ll be when the Port Mafia inevitably get their hands back on him.

You’d be sparing him, really; it would be a mercy.

And it’s what is expected of you. Letting a traitor as high profile as Dazai Osamu go free when you have a clear chance to execute him would be more than enough to have you stripped of your rank and thrown into the torture chambers, body dumped in the river when the Port Mafia is done punishing you.

But still, for some reason, your finger hesitates as you move to pull the trigger.

“You…” His voice is so slurred that you can hardly make out coherent words, but you use his words as an excuse to bide even more time, curious to see what he’s going to say. You can smell the whiskey on him from where you’re standing, his skin is paler than it usually is, and you notice, idly, that the bandages on his right eye are gone and you wonder when he chose to shed them. “You’re not real.”

Your eye twitches in irritation.

You pull the trigger.

If he was sober, he would have expected the reaction from you and dodged the bullet, but he’s not sober, so his eyes fly open in shock as the bullet grazes his ear and embeds itself in the pavement next to his head. He doesn’t look any more sobered up by the pain, which you suppose is a testament to how drunk he really is, but he does look significantly more confused.

“You shot me,” he says, pale lips parted as he stares up at you—too pale, you notice absently, brows furrowing a bit as you try to consider what to do.

“Yeah,” you say, voice rough with irritation. “Real enough for you?”

Dazai blinks, you don’t even think your words are registering and you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.

Get it over with, you tell yourself again, this time positioning your gun over his forehead. A clean kill. You won’t move it to the side at the last minute again. You remind yourself that this is what he deserves—he’s a traitor to the Port Mafia, to you. Killing him now would be a mercy compared to what the Port Mafia would do to him, compared to what he’d do to himself.

He stares up at you, brown eyes wide and glassy. He parts his lips to speak but you can’t give yourself the same excuse; you don’t wait for his words this time.

You pull the trigger again.

But Dazai is moving. He rolls over onto his side trying to push himself back to his feet and the bullet lodges right into the ground where his head had once been lying. You stare down at it in disbelief, gun falling to your side as your fingers start to feel a bit numb and clunky, breath catching as you realize what you’d almost just done—what you tried to do.

Dazai makes it to his knees and he tries to reach out for you but you step back out of reach. His brows furrow before he keels over again, dry heaving now—there’s enough bile around him for you to realize he’s probably thrown up everything in his stomach and then some. He leans against the wall, the glassiness of his eyes spilling over his cheeks as he continues to dry heave but your gaze is still trained down on the ground where the bullet is embedded in the ground where his head had just been laying.

You just tried to-

You think you’re the one who feels sick now. The dinner you’d had out with Chuuya and Kouyou rises to the back of your throat as you take another step away from Dazai. Your vision blurs as your gaze turns to him again, but instead of the tattered and vomit-stained clothes he’s wearing now, he’s back in the dark suit you’re accustomed to, crumpled on the ground still, but not because he’s drunk because he’s been wounded on a mission that he took on so you wouldn’t have to.

You just tried to kill Dazai.

Dazai, who’s been your closest friend since the two of you were sixteen and at the center of the most violent conflict to rock Yokohama’s foundations. Entirely inseparable, forever entwined since the moment the two of you met; the type of instant click that most people could only ever dream of experiencing in their lives.

You almost killed Dazai.

Dazai, who promised to put a bullet in Ace’s head if the man ever came near you again after he found out the newly promoted executive had insinuated putting one of his collars on you during a confrontation between the two of you. He knew that even he would face consequences for threatening another executive, that he would face even more if he dared to follow through with his threat, but he didn’t care and he had every intention of following through if it meant keeping you safe.

You would have killed Dazai if not for sheer luck.

Dazai, who used to kiss you with trembling fingers and quivering lips, because for as much as his reputation as the Demon Prodigy had spread throughout the country, he was still just a teenage boy who’d never had his first kiss until the two of you got drunk on champagne after a successful mission when he made the mistake of admitting to you that he’s never kissed anyone before. The two of you’d spent the entire night giggling between chaste kisses, getting through just about two bottles of champagne before you started throwing up.

He held back your hair and laughed at you as you leaned over the toilet, miserable. But he was gentle with you in a way that Dazai Osamu is never gentle with anyone, fingers carding through your hair, rubbing absent circles on your back to soothe you as you choked over sobs and gags.

Then there’s you. You, who not only a moment ago, looked down at him with your lip curling up in disgust, unable to hold your grimace at the way he laid in his own vomit. You lifted the barrel of your gun in his direction not once, but twice, and you pulled the trigger not once, but twice.

When you showed vulnerability to him, he showed you a type of tenderness that everyone thought was long lost to the notorious Demon Prodigy.

When he finally shows vulnerability to you, you only show him cruelty in response.

You try to convince yourself that it’s different, that the circumstances are different now but the words ring hollow in your head, taking no root, because you think the circumstances shouldn't matter. This is Dazai. Dazai. There are no circumstances that justify executing him.

Your head spins and you take another step away, you don’t know where you dropped your gun and you don’t want to know. You don’t want to look at it. You don’t want to touch it. You’ll send someone else after it later. You blink, and for a moment, you can visualize what almost happened: you can see Dazai motionless on the ground, blood pooling around his head and a bullet wound piercing through his forehead. You gag, pressing your hand to your mouth as you force back the bile that nearly comes up.

“Wait,” Dazai garbles out, pushing off the wall toward you but he propels himself right into the ground again, face first, scraping his cheek on the concrete. “Don’t leave again.”

Again? The word nearly pulls you out of your daze, the bitterness that’s poisoned you for seven months returning with a vengeance as your eyes focus on him.

Dazai, who left you without a word or a warning. Not even the slightest goodbye. He abandoned you like you meant nothing to him.

“I need to-” he gags again as he pushes himself to his knees. He tries to reach forward again but his whole body sways, eyes half-rolling back as he tries to steady himself, on the verge of passing out. “I need to tell you this time. I need to-”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, slumping back over onto the ground unconscious—in a puddle of his own blood and vomit, naturally. The logical part of you knows you should just leave him there. You’re already playing with fire by not executing him on the spot, but you also know if you leave him here, it’ll be as good as a death sentence. If he doesn’t die on his own from alcohol poisoning, then he’ll certainly be found by the Port Mafia patrols. You think Dazai is a fool for drinking so much so deep in Port Mafia territory, for not being careful enough to make sure he didn’t wander out in the open.

He should know better.

He does know better.

A part of you wonders if it was intentional, if he thought that he’d stumble into Port Mafia territory and he’d run into someone eager to lay claim to the fame of being Dazai Osamu’s executioner.

If that’s the case, he nearly got his wish—that thought alone almost sends you spiraling over the edge again, having to shove away more nausea. You force all thoughts of the Port Mafia and betrayal to the back of your mind as you fall to your knees next to him, gathering him up into your arms and pushing yourself back to your feet. He curls into you instinctively, even while unconscious, smaller than you remember, smearing blood and bile all over your suit. Your grip on him tightens, a shaky breath escaping your lips when you realize that this is the first time you’ve touched him since the night he left.

You shake your head to clear your mind, desperately trying to focus. You can’t stay out in the open with him for long otherwise you’ll risk someone seeing you with him, and that’ll open a can of worms you’re not prepared to deal with.

You’ll drop him off somewhere safe, and then you’ll get back to base.

That’s all.

That is not all.

The safehouse in Sakae that the two of you would run to whenever you wanted to avoid Mori is just how you left it the last time you spent the night with him there over half a year ago. One of his jackets is still draped over the couch, one of your ties thrown haphazardly on the ground—you remember the night vividly, the way he smiled against your lips as he lead you into the back bedroom, stumbling over each other and fumbling with buttons as you tried to undress the other while walking to the room, high off the success of a mission that everyone had said would fail because the odds were so stacked against the two of you. Even Chuuya had laughed in your face when you said you’d take the mission, but you knew so long as Dazai had your back on it, it would work out in your favor.

He’s woken up several times, you don’t even know what he’s saying in his incoherent babbles. Every time he wakes back up, he’s calling for you, stumbling out of the bed you laid him in after getting him cleaned up and crashing to the ground before he reaches the hall. It’s irritating, you have to go back to help him back into the bed every time and he starts babbling again, passing out before you can figure out what he’s saying. You finally had to move yourself into the back bedroom with him so he didn’t try to get up again.

You don’t know why you’re still here.

You lean your forehead against your hand as you sit on the bed next to where he’s lying, one leg tucked beneath you while the other hangs over the side. You tell yourself it’s because you don’t want him to get up drunk trying to look for you and then crack his head open, but it’s a weak excuse because Dazai Osamu is not your issue anymore. It’s not your job to watch over him when he gets shit-faced drunk, it’s not your job to patch him up when he gets hurt, it’s not your job to look out for him.

He left you, not vice versa, You don’t owe him anything. He lost that privilege when he betrayed you. Fuck the Port Mafia, he betrayed you when he left without a word. You deserved better than that. You deserved a goodbye. You don’t owe him shit. You should leave him here to rot in his own vomit and blood but-

But you won’t.

Your gaze drifts back over to him. He’s still out cold—cleaner now, because it had never just been ‘get him somewhere safe and then go back to the base,’ as soon as you got him into the safehouse you wrangled him into the bathroom to clean him up. He was uncharacteristically pliant as you manhandled him into the shower. You suppose it was because he was unconscious for half of it but even for the moments where he was awake and blearily blinking the water out of his eyes, looking up at you through wet bangs with those stupid big eyes of his, as if he was still unsure if you were actually there.

Instinctively, you reach out to brush the back of your knuckles against his swollen, split lip, wondering if it was just from him being clumsy while drunk or if he’d managed to piss someone off at a bar. Both are equally likely—Dazai is a rather cantankerous drunk when he’s alone and drunk on whiskey, and even after cleaning him up and dousing him in soap to get out the reeking scent of his vomit out from where it’d sunken into his skin, shoving a toothbrush into his mouth to brush his teeth and scrubbing so they don’t rot from the bile, you can still smell the whiskey on his breath.

You wonder how much he drank. His skin is still pale, his breath shuddered, and he’s shivering even though you wrapped him in three thick blankets. Some degree of alcohol poisoning, that’s for sure. You tell yourself that’s why you’re not leaving—you don’t want to leave before you’re sure he’s pulled through the worst of it. You’re not going to admit to yourself that you don’t want to leave because you’re worried it’ll be the last time you see him for real this time.

You hesitate right before your knuckles brush his skin, swallowing thickly before you withdraw your hand back into your lap, eyes sliding shut as you sigh.

What the hell are you doing?

If anyone from the Port Mafia knew what you were doing right now, you’d be hunted down right alongside him, branded as a traitor and sentenced to death. Chuuya would kill you if he knew what you were doing right now—and not because you betrayed the Port Mafia by helping Dazai, instead because you’re a fucking idiot. You’ve done a lot of stupid things in your life, but this might take the cake for the stupidest, sticking your neck out for someone who didn’t even care enough to tell you goodbye.

You rub your forehead, tired. You try to summon the anger you felt when you first found out he betrayed the Port Mafia from Mori and Chuuya—from the hot fury you felt in the direct aftermath, screaming and breaking everything you could get your hands on as you cursed his name and burned everything he left in your apartment to the cold rage you felt when you finally calmed down, bitter and lonely and betrayed by the one person you never thought would betray you—but you can’t. And you think it’s pathetic because what use is all of that anger if you can’t utilize it when the reason for it is lying right before you?

If Chuuya were here right now, he’d drag you out by the hair and leave Dazai to suffer on his own. You left your phone in the kitchen after turning off your location, because he was already buzzing incessantly wondering where you are. You’d told him that you wanted to stop by one of the fishing ports in Kanazawa to check on a small weapons shipment that should’ve arrived earlier in the night before heading back to your shared apartment—you’d moved in with him after Dazai’s betrayal. He made the executive decision himself, not giving you a choice in the matter because he realized that you living on your own in the apartment that Dazai had practically moved into with you was not conducive to you healing from his betrayal.

Plus, you think he was lonely too without Dazai around anymore, but he’d never admit that.

You should’ve been back an hour ago. You’re sure that he’s getting suspicious and it’s only a matter of time before he tries to track you down. You don’t think he knows about this safe house in particular, Dazai had threatened you with piling up mission reports onto you if you told him about this one, but you wouldn’t be surprised if Chuuya learned about it through other means—somehow, he always seems to know everything.

You sigh again, heavier this time as you try to figure out what to do. You know what you should do, but you also know you’re not going to do that. Your gaze drags back over to him and your breath catches when you realize he’s awake again, bleary brown eyes trained on you, brows furrowed.

His lips part to speak again and you tense, waiting for whatever he has to say, unsure if you’ll even understand it.

“You… came with me. You never come with me. Are you… really here?”

Even though his eyes are still glazed over and muddled, his voice is less garbled than it was before. You think that’s a good sign, but even so, you let out an even heavier sigh, this one more irritated, and a bit confused because you don’t even know what that means: you never come with me.

“Yes, Dazai,” you say sharply, but then you let out a puff of air. The same memories that hit you before coming right back to you, remembering all of the nights Dazai would stay up having to take care of you, patient in a way that he never was with anybody. You soften your voice a bit as you say, “Yes. I’m here.”

Dazai looks at you like he doesn’t believe you. He blinks once slowly, then his brows furrow deeper and his lips turn downward.

“You don’t call me Dazai.” He speaks the accusation slowly, as if to make himself sound more coherent, but you can still hear the clear slur in his voice. “You never-”

You turn away because if you don’t, you think you might lose your temper. He’s drunk, you remind yourself, but he’s still ripping open wounds that never properly healed, because how dare he expect you to still call him by his given name after everything. It had taken months for you to get used to calling him Dazai again and-

You feel your chest start to cave in again and your throat spasms. Your eyes flutter shut and god, you want to hate him. You thought you did hate him, you convinced yourself of it in all of the bitter rage and acidic betrayal you’ve felt the past seven months but now that you’re confronted with him again, you know that it was never hate. You could never hate Dazai Osamu. You'd just missed him so terribly that the pain was easy to mistake as hate; love and hate has always been a treacherously thin line, and Dazai more than anyone else wavers on either side of it.

Your heart feels like it’s about to leap from your chest and crawl right back to him, you have to physically place your hand over your chest as if to hold it in place, to make sure the traitorous thing can’t go back to the very man that tore it shreds. You force yourself to breathe, in and out, steady, trying to settle down.

This was a mistake, you realize, this was a mistake.

Just as you’re about to push yourself up, you feel lithe fingers curl around your arm. You freeze, not even daring to glance back at Dazai. You can hear him pushing the covers off of him as he crawls closer to you, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. His movements are unsteady, and you can’t bring yourself to push him off of you when you feel him slump against your back.

His weight is familiar, comforting in a way that it shouldn’t be. If you close your eyes, you can imagine that you’re back at the Port Mafia base seven months ago and Dazai is draping himself across your back, complaining about being overworked by Mori and trying to convince you to take over his paperwork. You’d have to drag him halfway across the base trying to get to your office with his dead weight hanging onto you, you remember all of the wary stares from your subordinates as they try not to let their gaze linger on the two of you but let their curiosity get the best of them regardless.

You hate that you don’t push him off right away, that you’re letting yourself indulge in his touch again. You’ve moved on from this—from him. It’s been seven months. You’re over all of this.

“You… understand, don’t you?”

You barely hear the words muffled against your back, but you do and you can’t help but stiffen at them. He shifts against you, fingers biting into your skin as he pulls himself up a bit more to bury his face in the crook of your neck, arms looped around your waist as he leans all of his weight onto your back. You can feel his breath warm and shuddered against your neck, making your hair stand on end, and his hands are limp in your lap now, fingers brushing against the material of the clean slacks you’d pulled on after getting Dazai showered.

It’s all so familiar that it could make you sick.

“How could I?” you ask bitterly, even though you know you shouldn’t take out your resentment on him while he’s so drunk; he probably won’t remember any of this in the morning anyway. There’s no point, you’ll just be wasting your energy.

His arms tighten around you, breath hitching against your skin. “I had to, Odasaku-”

The noise you let out is such a sharp scoff that you can feel Dazai flinch behind you. You almost shove him off of you but you refrain, taking in a deep breath to calm yourself down. You never really had any feelings about Odasaku—he was always just there, you heard about him from Dazai occasionally and he seemed pleasant enough the few times you encountered him—but after all of this, you can’t help but hold a grudge against him, irrationally blaming him for Dazai leaving you.

“Odasaku wasn’t your only friend,” you say tightly. “You had me. Chuuya. You-”

“It’s not the same,” Dazai protests, clinging to you as if he hadn’t just driven a knife right through your back into your heart.

This time you do shove him off, barely sparing him a glance as he lets out a surprised yelp, sprawling back onto the bed. You push away the mistiness that threatens your eyes, breathing in and out slowly to try to keep yourself calm. It’s not the same, you repeat his words, bitterness poisoning your blood and clouding your head. What the fuck does that even mean? You know logically you should take his words with a grain of salt, that he’s so drunk he probably doesn’t even know what he’s saying, but you just feel so angry that it’s hard for you to keep that in mind.

You hear him scrambling behind you: a thump as he hits the floor hard and then a rush of movement as he pushes himself to his knees. His fingers curl around your ankle before you can get further away and you have a half a mind to kick him off of you and leave.

You don’t.

“Don’t leave,” he pleads. He drags himself to his knees, pulling at your pants and it takes all of your self-control to not look back down at him. “I didn’t-it came out wrong. I didn't mean it like that.”

“How did you mean it then?” you ask him, even though you by all means should not even bother to hear his shitty explanation.

“I just-I didn’t mean it like that.” You’ve never heard Dazai’s voice crack before, but it does now. “Don’t leave. I miss you.”

“You miss me?” you spit out, and you finally turn to look down at him—a mistake, of course, because he’s on his knees in front of you, looking up at you with those stupid, big brown eyes and you almost let your anger fizzle away at the sight of it. He’s drunk, you remind yourself again, but it doesn’t stop you from snapping at him. “You left me, Dazai. You have no right to miss me.”

“But I do.” His fingers fumble for your hand, grabbing one of yours with both of his. “I miss you so much, I think about you all the time.”

His lashes flutter, fingers brushing along your forearm as he presses his lips to your knuckles and then to your pulse point before leaning forward to rest his forehead on your thigh. You can’t even look at him, keeping your eyes trained on the wall, because your lashes feel wet and heavy and you know that you’ll give into him if you look at him now and he doesn’t deserve that.

“I couldn’t go to you before I left,” Dazai whispers and he sounds oddly coherent now even though you know he’s not. “I would’ve asked you to come with me.”

For some reason, that hurts worse than if he’d just admitted he didn’t care enough to say goodbye. Because what does that even mean, I would’ve asked you to come with me, would that have been so bad? He didn’t want you with him? Why wouldn’t he have wanted you with him? If you had left, he would’ve been the first person you ran to, begging him to come with you.

“How terrible that would’ve been,” you say, and you’re proud that your voice remains cold and steady, not betraying the hurt ripping through your chest.

“I wouldn’t have been able to handle it,” he says, voice breaking over a hiccup. “Odasaku had just died and-”

He cuts himself, and you dare to look down at him when you feel him lift his face from your thigh. You regret it immediately. Glassy, glazed-over eyes beg for you to understand, and you scare yourself because you want to understand when he shouldn’t even matter to you anymore. You’ve moved on. You have. It’s been seven months. He left you without a word. So why do you care so much for what he has to say right now?

“You wouldn’t have come with me,” he says, shaking his head. “You would’ve said no. You never would have chosen me over the Mafia.”

Your lips part to deny the allegations, to say that of course, you would have come with him, but the words fizzle out before they even form on your tongue because-

“You can’t even bring yourself to deny it, can you?” Dazai asks, and although he sounds more cogent now, you can’t help but notice that he’s starting to look sick again, the back of his throat making that faint clicking sound it always makes when he’s about to throw up. “You never would have chosen me.”

You would choose Dazai Osamu over a lot of things. You would choose to save his life before yours if put in the position, and you would choose to trust him over anyone else in the whole world. You’d follow him to the depths of hell and deep into the shadows, until your blood is black and corrupted and you’re entirely irredeemable, but you can’t follow him into the light.

You can’t choose him if it means betraying the Port Mafia. With his defection, the two have become mutually exclusive: Dazai or the Port Mafia, there’s no way of having both anymore. The boy you’ve come to love or the only home you’ve ever known. The only family you’ve ever had. A shitty family maybe, but a family nonetheless. If you don’t belong with the Port Mafia, you don’t belong anywhere on this earth, and as someone who’s always had a desperate fear of alienation, the thought makes you sick.

You stare at him, throat tight, and then you say, colder than you intend for it to come across, “... If that’s really why you didn’t say goodbye, then I’m glad you didn’t put me in that position.”

The expression that crosses Dazai’s face is something caught between ruin and shock—and you can’t help but wonder if he held out hope, thinking maybe he was wrong in his assumptions. That there had been a chance that you might’ve chosen him if he’d given you the option. That he’s been living his life in the what-ifs for the past seven months and now that he’s finally gotten the chance to bare his heart to you, you’ve crushed it.

Your chest tightens, your throat spasms and it takes all your self-control to not immediately take back the words, regret flooding you so intensely that it nearly makes you physically stumble. Because it’s true, you never would have picked Dazai over the Mafia, but he didn’t have to know that—especially not now, when he’s drunk and vulnerable in a way that he’s never allowed himself to be before.

You hope, for his sake and your conscience, that he doesn’t remember any of this in the morning.

His lips part to respond again but his hand is flying to his mouth instantly, doubling over, and you’re cursing, reaching for the trash bin you’d brought into the bedroom and falling to your knees next to him, helping him kneel upright and holding the trash bin in front of him as he starts gagging again.

“I would’ve-” He’s still trying to talk through the bouts of nausea, gasping over air, body trembling as he leans into you for balance.

You don’t want to hear what he has to say.

“Dazai-”

“I would’ve chosen you,” he finally forced out, voice breaking over the words and you’re not sure if it’s a sob or another heave that escapes his lips as he continues. “If the positions were reversed, I would’ve chosen you.”

Oh.

The words echo in your head so loudly that it makes you want to cover your ears even though you know it won’t do anything. You want to accuse him of lying, tell him that he’s full of shit and just trying to make you feel guilty, but you don’t think he’s capable of lying right now and you don’t think this is anything Dazai would have ever admitted to you if he was sober. He guards his heart more carefully than anyone you’ve ever met—in the two and a half years you’d known him, he never admitted he cared about you. You knew it just from how he treated you, but you think he might’ve ripped his own tongue out before actually admitting it.

You wrap an arm around him as his whole body shudders through another gag and he tries to push you off—angry, upset, you don’t know what he might be feeling because you’ve never seen him like this before—but your arm only tightens around him and Dazai crumbles.

He heaves again, clutching the small garbage can to his face as he throws up all of the water you’d managed to get in him before he passed out earlier. Tears spill over his cheeks, his face is pale and his lashes are fluttering again, on the verge of passing back out. You swallow thickly as he leans into you, letting him collapse into your chest after he’s finished vomiting.

“Will-” he tries to say, but his voice is slurred and weak. He’s desperately trying to stay conscious, you can tell, but he’s fighting a losing battle. “Will you be here in the morning?”

No.

You don’t want to say it, you think you’ve done enough damage for the night, but there’s no need. As soon as the words leave his mouth, Dazai is slumping over unconscious, head laying limp on your arm, lashes brushing his cheek. You sigh as your grip around him tightens before you adjust him in his arms to carry him back into the bed, laying him comfortably beneath the covers.

You don’t linger for long after that. After another hour or two passes and Dazai doesn’t wake up again, you make your way back into the bedroom, raising your hand to his face to brush away the dark locks in his eyes before cupping his cheek. Even in his sleep, he leans into your touch, and it makes your chest feel so agonizingly tight that you think you might be having a heart attack.

You lean down to press your lips to his forehead, to his nose, and then to his lips, indulging yourself one last time. Your forehead rests against his as you consider your words—there are a million things you’d like to say to him before you leave, but you don’t have nearly enough time to get them all off of your chest.

Instead, you tell him softly, “I hope you don’t remember any of this in the morning.” You don’t move your hand from where it’s caressing his cheek as you stand straight again, thumb drawing absent circles on his skin. Your voice is thick with emotion, eyes welling with tears that don’t spill over. “We’ll meet again one day.”

Dazai wakes up the next morning with a hangover so bad that he thinks he might die.

He sits up in bed and is instantly groaning, hand flying to his forehead as his brain throbs inside of his skull. He needs to figure out where he is—the last thing he remembers is…

The bar?

His eyes slide shut as he tries to think, but it only makes his head hurt more. He flops back onto the bed, arms splayed out. He still feels nauseous, he can feel it rising to his throat and he desperately does not want to throw up again—it’s one thing vomiting when he’s too drunk to remember, it’s an entirely different thing to vomit while he’s sober and conscious.

Dazai thinks he might rather die.

He lets out a heavy sigh as he begs the nausea to go away, breathing in and out deeply. He lifts his hand to brush a lock of hair away from where it’s tickling his ear and-

Ouch.

Dazai’s eyes fly open again, confused now, as he rips his hand away from where he’d touched his ear to stare up at the ceiling. He’s used to waking up with odd injuries after a night of blacking out at whatever bar will still have him, but his ear is a particularly strange place to be wounded, isn’t it?

Driven by curiosity now, he forces himself into a sitting position, and it’s only when he pushes himself out of bed, does he finally start to recognize the room he’s in. His lips part in a distinct mixture of shock and confusion as he looks around the room slowly, making his way over to the mirror.

The safehouse in Sakae?

His chest feels heavier instantly, and a tight feeling rises to his throat as he catches sight of an old jacket of yours draped on the desk chair, the one that had ripped during the last mission you went on together—just the way you left it the last time the two of you were here. A pair of his old dress shoes are lying haphazardly outside the closet door, he’s sure that if he peeks into the closet, all of your suits will be hanging there because you refused to share the closet with him so all of his spares are stuffed in the dresser. Dazai suddenly feels sick again and he doubts it’s from the hangover this time.

How did he get here?

He needs another drink desperately.

But first… Dazai leans over the dresser to look into the mirror—a bit dusty after so many months with no one stopping in—he lifts his hand to brush his hair behind and then-

What?

His jaw drops and his brows furrow, his fingers graze over where the top of his ear used to be, only to find the whole upper quarter of it missing.

What the fuck? He mouths as he stares at the missing cartilage, and then he looks back around the room, and just as his eyes catch a trash bin that should be in the bathroom, his vision blurs, and his head is aching. He’s suddenly stumbling down an alley, he’s lying in a puddle of his own vomit, unable to stand up straight. He can hear someone approaching and he knows he should get up, find some dumpster or crevice to wait out the night until he’s sober enough to get the fuck out of the heart of the Mafia’s territory in Yokohama, but he can hardly move.

He can lift his head from the pavement just enough to-

Just enough to see you.

Dazai can hardly cope with the emotions that rattle his chest. Longing, because he’s missed you so terribly the past seven months. Disbelief, because you shot his fucking ear off. And… and Dazai isn’t quite sure what the other emotions are. They’re heavy and light at the same time, his chest feels bubbly but his ankles feel chained—it’s a weird mixture of hope and dread, he thinks, because the safehouse is eerily quiet, seemingly void of any life other than Dazai himself, but the chance that you might still be here…

“Will you be here in the morning?”

The faint memory of the last words he spoke before he passed out the last time rings through his head, and his feet drag against the ground as he forces himself to move from the bedroom into the main room of the safe house. His fingers hesitate against the wood of the door—scared that he’s going to open it and you won't be there, scared that he’s going to open it and you will be there. He doesn’t remember the things he said to you last night, but he knows that he’d been staring at old pictures the two of you took before he blacked out. He can hardly imagine the things he might’ve said to you when given the chance.

It takes all of his strength and all of his willpower to push open the door.

It takes even more to actually step out of the bedroom.

The safe house is empty.

You’re nowhere to be found.

Dazai’s feet are moving before he’s fully even registered what’s happening.

He makes his way into the kitchen to rummage around for another bottle for him to drown away his sorrows, but he doesn’t pull out the untouched bottle of his favorite whiskey he knows is sitting in the cabinet—he goes straight for the wine fridge. He nearly shatters three bottles of whites before he finally gets his hands on your favorite red, the one you’d asked him to stock up in there for you three days before he left, knowing that the two of you had a mission coming up and you’d be celebrating here, as always. Not knowing that he’d have betrayed you by then.

He struggles to uncork it, the frustration causing his headache to return with a vengeance. It takes an embarrassingly long amount of time for him to finally get the bottle open, but when he does, he brings it to his lips immediately, eyes sliding shut as he downs a few generous gulps.

The taste is familiar. Pleasant. It makes his heart ache with such an intense longing for you that it nearly makes him throw up.

He can almost imagine that he’s tasting it off of your lips instead.

He leans over the counter, elbows digging into the marble as he tries to push away the ugly feelings ripping apart his chest. He can’t. He never can. He hasn’t been able to since the day he left you behind seven months ago. He can only numb it.

With a hand closed around the neck of the bottle, Dazai slides down the cabinet to sit on the ground. His cheeks feel wet, but he doesn’t dare lift his hand to acknowledge the tears sliding down them.

Instead, he lifts the bottle to his lips again and drowns himself in the memories of you for another night.

#dazai x reader #dazai x you #dazai osamu x reader #dazai osamu x you #bsd x reader #bsd x you #bungo stray dogs x reader #bungo stray dogs x you #dazai angst #bsd angst #bungo stray dogs angst

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melodic-haze · 1 month

Note

"Sucking off loser!gamer arle under the desk"— WHAT ABT ARLE SUCKING OFF LOSER!STREAMER READER UNDER THE DESK🥺👉👈

I thought ab how the almighty fuck this'd work but since you lot seem to be CONVINCED I'm a girlfailure genuinely FUCK yall FINE❗️❗️❗️❗️

Just having this absolute Greek God of a woman WILLINGLY kneel under the desk while you game is fucking CRAZY actually like how did you BAG THIS???? Bc we're hot as fuck duhhh 😜 but anyway

You try not no, you REALLY try not to, but you take little peeks down under from time to time in a casual way just to see a head of white hair bob up and down your length and you just cannot concentrate on your stream but you genuinely do try anyway......would be nice if you didn't struggle with sounding remotely coherent though but tbh would you REALLY complain when this woman, while NOT the loser, genuinely acts like one with the way she's putting her entire ass into getting you to cum????

You end up 'accidentally' losing despite being an absolute SWEAT at whatever game you were playing (and if you're usually the loud sort then your viewers WILL ask why you've gone quiet but shhhh chat's just going too fast yeah that's it DEFINITELY not just the hand on your dick nononono) and you sit in the lobby for a while, turning the stream into some sort of talking stream bc you just think that that's gonna help with further concentrating in seeming like you AREN'T getting sucked off under the desk

......yk, while one of your hands go to comb through Arlecchino's hair before moving her head yourself, to which she complies happily and even moves along to your movements like the trained good girl that she is 🥰🥰🥰 thought of as borderline terrifying and yet you find that hard to believe when she just looks so precious like this

Whether you want to cum on or off camera is up to you tbh have fun getting banned on Genshin Twitch

Let's be real though there's a huge chance you end up missing the dedicated button to pause stream.......you don't miss your aim in your beloved's mouth though 😜 HAHAHAHAHAH

#hazy samples!#hazy explicits!#if you meant loser = sub then TOO BAD #arlecchino x reader #arlecchino smut #sub arlecchino #genshin impact x reader #genshin impact imagines #genshin impact smut #sub genshin impact #genshin x reader #genshin imagines #genshin smut #sub genshin #genshin women x reader #genshin women imagines #genshin women smut #sub genshin women

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suashii · 4 months

Text

— 𝒶𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝓇𝓊𝓉𝒽 𝒸𝑜𝓂𝑒𝓈 𝓉𝑜 𝓁𝒾𝑔𝒽𝓉 ౨ৎ

previous part ౨ৎ masterlist ౨ৎ next part

boothill x f!reader. 2.6k wc. ﾉ sfw ﾉ fluff ﾉ non-canon compliant ﾉ farmhand!boothill ﾉ pet names ( darlin’ ) ﾉ mentions of alcohol ﾉ confessions ! !

small towns like this one are good for long drives. you know the roads like the back of your hand and there’s no traffic that requires your focus. with your foot on the pedal, the low hum of the radio, and the cool evening breeze blowing in through your window, you can let your mind wander—think about all the things you’ve been forcing yourself to bury and ignore the past few weeks. the circles you make on the same roads give you all the time you need to wrangle your unruly thoughts and attempt to form a coherent confession of your feelings.

today, you’ll tell boothill how you really feel.

it’s been a couple of days since your conversation with meg, since you listened to boothill’s advice. you may have picked to be brave at that moment, but the task is easier said than done. ever since that night, you’ve been struggling to find the perfect moment to tell him. you’ve considered taking him up on his offer to help you with the dishes after lunch, casually coming clean over the mundane chore. you’ve thought about just blurting it out as you pass him in the hallway, chickening out at the last second. you’ve sat in the darkness of the living room, staring at the stairs, hoping he’ll come down them so you can recreate that courage you felt then and there.

you only realize today that there is no such thing as the perfect moment—it’s simply another scapegoat for you to turn to when you’re scared. but you’ve come to the understanding that this uncomfortable, suffocating feeling that has been weighing on you won’t go away unless you step off the edge of the cliff to take that terrifying plunge.

you’ve lost count of how many times you’ve driven past the turn that leads down the road to the ranch but you finally take it this time around. your fingers tap nervously at the steering wheel as the house comes into view. despite its length, the driveway feels shorter than usual as you make your way up it to park at the end.

you take the time to turn the radio off and roll up your window before turning the car off, snatching the key from the ignition, and getting out.

you’re sure you hit the button to shut off the radio, but there’s still music in the air when you walk around the back of the vehicle to approach the porch. you almost frown, thinking you’ve driven yourself to madness finally acknowledging all of your thoughts, but your brow doesn’t furrow and your lips don’t curl down once you find the source of the music.

boothill is sitting on the porch swing, an acoustic guitar resting in her arms. rough fingers pluck at the strings, chords coming together in a familiar song that you’re sure you only know because of your grandpa—save the last dance for me by the drifters. at his feet, missy notices your arrival, tail wagging in excitement before she gets up to greet you.

you scratch the border collie’s head affectionately when she descends the stairs to meet you. the dog’s fur is warm beneath your fingers, likely due to the setting rays of the sun and, somehow, petting her brings you a little bit of determination to face boothill.

your eyes flit up from the dog to boothill and, to your surprise, he’s already looking at you. his lips stretch into a smile, fingers still playing despite his focus on you. though, you do notice that he’s slowed down.

“hey there.” he nods in greeting. the song has come to an end by now but boothill doesn’t abandon the instrument, instead choosing to set it on his lap. “we missed you at dinner.”

“yeah…” you don’t explain your absence, he’ll find out why you were gone soon enough. you pat missy’s head before walking up the few steps that put you on the same level as boothill. the new position gives you a better look at him. he’s wearing a shirt from high school if the name printed on it and its snug fit are any evidence, and a pair of basketball shorts. the style is a far cry from his normal attire but something tells you he’d be able to make a burlap sack look fashionable.

what he’s wearing should be the least of your concerns but you only exchange one distraction for another when trying to divert your attention.

“i didn’t know you could play.” you point at the guitar.

he shrugs, lifting up the instrument and leaning it against the house. you almost take the movement as a sign that he’d rather not talk about it but he’s only making room for you on the swing, keeping the neck of the guitar from taking up any unnecessary space. he jerks his head in the direction of the newly available seat, a silent way of offering you a more comfortable alternative to standing. you hesitate for a short moment before letting your feet carry you to the swing.

“i dabble in it—high school, mostly,” boothill tells you as you sit down. the swing sways with your added weight and neither you nor boothill try to stop it, preferring the subtle breeze the motion brings. your new proximity to him sets your nerves ablaze, makes you think about darting past him and into the house, but you force yourself to stay put.

boothill reaches down for something, something you hadn’t seen earlier. there’s a brown bottle in his hand when he sits back up, a bottle opener in the other. he uses it to crack open the beer and turns to you. “want one?”

a little bit of liquid courage might do you good but you grimace at the thought of it being beer. you shake your head. “no thanks.”

“can take the girl out of the city but never the city out of the girl.” he chuckles to himself before taking a swig. you’re tempted to tell him that your distaste for beer has nothing to do with geography but picking a petty fight with him right now seems counterproductive, so you keep quiet.

the chirp of crickets and the occasional huff from missy at your feet fill the otherwise silent evening air. the sound of your heart thumping against your chest becomes obviously apparent in the quiet and while you hope boothill can’t hear, it’s enough to act as a catalyst, a vital push in the right direction. your mouth moves with the words but even though it’s quiet, they don’t hit your ears. “can i tell you something?”

you're not sure you actually asked him the question until you see his eyebrows raise in curiosity, a smile tugging at his lips. it should be all the invitation you need to continue but you need a little more security. your next sentence comes out rushed, the ends of certain words blending with the beginning of others. “and you can’t laugh or tease me because if you do, i will pack up and drive away so fast—”

“hey, hey,” he stops you, raising his hands and the beer bottle in mock surrender, “i’m not gonna laugh.”

“and no teasing.”

he shakes his head, smile falling upon seeing just how serious you are. “none of that either.”

you nod. there’s understanding in his gray irises and as much as you’d like to keep looking at them, to draw courage from them, you don’t think it’ll be possible for you to get this declaration out if you’re meeting his eye. you’ve always heard that the eyes are the windows to the soul—you won’t be able to take seeing that understanding and compassion morph into rejection and pity.

you face forward, choosing to look at the blend of pink and orange coloring the sky.

“i…” you start, but your breath catches in your throat. it’s tense with fear and if air wasn’t passing through it, you would be sure that it was completely closed. but you can still breathe. you suck in a breath through your nose and slowly exhale a stream through your mouth. it does little to ground you, but it does remind you that you’re alive. you are now and you will be after—even if it does end less than ideal.

be brave.

“i have feelings for you.” an immediate weight is lifted off of your shoulders. the air around you feels light, easier to breathe. the relief that washes over you doesn’t last long, though. his eyes are boring into you, you can feel them urging you to turn and look his way. you don’t. you have something more to say. “you… you make me warm inside and i have no idea how to deal with it. i don’t know what to do with these feelings.”

the silence blankets you once more and you close your eyes. the burden you’ve been carrying is finally gone, you should be happy—you are happy. but there’s an entirely new dilemma that takes its place. the question of what happens after.

silence from boothill is always uncharacteristic, but this time around, it’s nerve-inducing. your mind is in shambles again, racing with all of the negative possibilities. there’s one thought that comes back more frequently than the rest; he’s trying to find a way to let you down easily.

“hey.” his voice startles you and tension tightens in your shoulders. the single word is meant to get your attention and it does but you refuse to open your eyes.

“would you look at me?”

it’s not a demand, it’s a request. the farmhand agreed to your terms, the least you can do is give him this. maybe this is part of being brave, too—facing the unknown in spite of its frightening nature.

you peel your eyelids open. the sky has darkened a bit and fireflies are visible now, their abdomens glowing softly against the sunset, but that’s not what you’re supposed to be looking at. you bite your cheek and turn to the right where boothill is sitting. his gaze is already glued to you.

your heart jumps at the sight. his gray irises haven’t dulled like you expected them to—they glow like the lightning bugs, burn like the warmth of the sunset. his lips curl up in a smile, putting sharp white teeth on display. your lips part in silent surprise.

“y’know,” he starts, smile never leaving his face, “i’ve been waiting for you to say so.”

heat blooms in your cheeks and under your skin, just like in the past when he’s said things like this. what does he mean he’s been waiting? did he already know?

the next words that push past his lips send yet another shockwave through you. “i fancy you myself.”

your answer to the question of what happens after. it’s not rejection, it’s not pity, it’s not indifference—it’s… reciprocation. he feels the same way. your mouth is beginning to dry with how long it has been open. you hinge your jaw shut, poke your tongue out to wet your lips. once it doesn’t feel like your voice will be muffled by cotton, you ask. “why?”

“why?” he repeats after you, disbelief lacing his voice. “are you serious?”

you nod. “very.”

boothill lets out a humorless chuckle. “you’ve gotta be kidding me,” he mumbles under his breath.

“well, you don’t let people talk down on you.” he scratches his chin and the smile that was lost slowly makes its way back to his lips. you’re about to ask what he means by that when he explains. “like when i gave you a hard time over not looking the type of help out—you called me on it and proved me wrong then and there.”

the moment he’s referring to seems like it happened forever ago but you remember the feelings you experienced then like it was yesterday—the initial annoyance, the determination, the shock. you certainly wouldn’t consider how you handled those feelings your finest moment (maybe your most embarrassing) but boothill regards the interaction in a different light, one that paints you as resilient rather than awkward.

“and you put others ahead of yourself,” he goes on. “always making sure i’m present before we start lunch and prioritizing a horse’s wellbeing over your own. you’re real caring.”

to think that he’s been examining you so carefully, reading into all of your little actions and storing them away in his head, makes you flush, warmth spreading over your skin despite the cool evening air brushing against you. it never struck you as possible that he might think about you just as often as you think about him.

“and, y’know, i’ve always said you’re pretty.”

he’s right, he’s told you that a countless number of times, but hearing it now feels different. there’s a new weight behind his words now that you know he truly means them and because you’re ready to accept them. well, partially—it’s still hard to say thank you, especially when boothill is looking at you so attentively. “that you have…”

his half-lidded eyes and the smile tugging at his lips added on to his silence tell you that his list has come to a close. he’s given you all the evidence you asked for with examples, too. you’d have to be painfully oblivious to question his feelings having heard his reasoning. though, there is something else you’re curious about. “so, were you planning on telling me? before now, i mean.”

“i was waiting for you to say somethin’,” he admits with a grin.

“you jerk.” you slap his shoulder playfully but he doesn’t budge an inch. it would have spared you a lot of grief and overthinking if he had made the first move. after all, it seemed like he skipped the whole “coming to terms with his feelings” part of the process and readily accepted them.

“you knew i was talking about you the other night then.” it’s not a question—there’s no way he didn’t know if this was something he’d been anticipating.

he shrugs. “i had an idea.”

you’re tempted to give him another smack but you restrain yourself—he wouldn’t have deserved it anyway. sure, he lied about how much he had heard, but you think you’re better off having waited until now. in your mind, this is as perfect as things could have gone. “well, thanks. for not forcing it back then.”

“no thanks necessary, darlin’.” he flashes his signature smile before taking back another swig of his beer.

the world seems to still for a moment. you like boothill. boothill likes you. you’ve both made your feelings clear but where do you go from here? “so… what do we do now?”

“anything you want,” he tells you, like it’s the most obvious answer.

you haven’t thought this far ahead, considered what might take place if you made it through this encounter on the side where the grass is greener. what do you want to happen?

boothill can practically see the gears turning in your head. it’s apparent in the way your eyebrows crease, in how far away your gaze is. it’s cute to see you think so hard, but he’s willing to share a proposition of his own. “tell you what, how about i take you out on a date?”

“right now?” you ask, your voice a pitch higher than normal.

he can’t help but snort at the surprise you fail to conceal. “i was thinking tomorrow but if you’re that eager—”

“no, no,” you wave your hands, “tomorrow is good.”

a date with boothill. a few days ago, the thought would have riddled you with fear. but now, your heart buzzes with excitement. you don’t know it when you ask him, but you’re smiling. “where are we going?”

he meets your eye, takes in the enthusiasm sparking in your gaze. he wants to hold onto it forever. the smile you wear is mirrored on boothill. “it’s a surprise.”

thanks for reading! reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated ❤︎

#₊˚ପ⊹ signed: honkai star rail #boothill x reader #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #boothill fluff #hsr fluff #boothill drabble #hsr drabbles #honkai star rail drabbles

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violetflowerswrites · 2 months

Text

I Hate Motorcycles

Pairing: Jason Todd x GN Reader

Summary: The Red Hood saves you from a bank robbery gone wrong, and reveals that your best friend, Jason Todd, is back from the dead.

Word Count: 1.7k

Disclaimer: bank robbery, weapons (guns, gas, knives, mace, taser), minor injuries with mention of blood, mentions of kidnapping and stalking, reader swears like a sailor, loss and grief, attempted murder, angst, consensual kiss.

A/N: I’ve been reading Batman comics and the BatFam has just wrecked my heart! I wrote this in like an hour because I kept thinking about the emotional whiplash that is losing Jason and his unexpected comeback. I’m not an expert on DC comics and I’m not sticking to any specific storyline. Just a lil Drabble for fun. Enjoy!

“Are you fuckin kidding me?” You muttered under your breath as broken glass, screams of terror, and angry shouts crackled across the bank.

The one day you decided to beg for a loan from the city’s stingiest bank, it gets robbed.

Fan-fuckin-tastic.

Multiple assailants in ski masks shouted the usual—“hands up or we’ll shoot!”, “put the money in the bag!”, so on and so forth.

You could practically taste the caked on dirt of the discolored carpet as you pressed your face down, splayed out on your stomach with your hands up in surrender.

Carefully, your eyes trailed across the foyer, wondering if you could just casually dip a hand into your pocket and pull out your switchblade, or mace, or taser.

This was Gotham after all.

Everyone has to be prepared for the worst.

But, no such luck. There were 8 armed men with machine guns.

Huh. That seemed like overkill.

Unfortunately, you didn’t have time to process that thought when a bright green gas started to waft through the glass building.

Then, the unmistakable sound of giggling.

What the fuck?

On instinct, you army crawled towards the nearest broken window, desperate for fresh air. In the chaos of over fifty hostages suddenly caught up in raucous laughter, you managed to hold your breath and pull yourself up to the windowsill.

Immediately cutting your hands to a bloody mess.

Biting in a swear of pain, you persevered, hauling your body across the shards until you fell in a heap on the sidewalk outside.

Your breath came in dizzying gulps, but nevertheless, your gaze blurred as the exposure to the gas was rendering you unconscious.

Just before your eyelids shut, you heard an incredibly loud revving of an engine.

And saw a blurry red streak of a motorcycle sailing through the broken window and into the bank behind you.

Your last coherent thought was:

I fucking hate motorcycles.

…

The story of why you hated motorcycles was a simple, although tragic one.

Your father was a mechanic, a brilliant one, but poor. You grew up helping in the garage as much as you could, trying to make ends meet.

Then, your father started to take on jobs for vehicles that weren’t…normal.

Decked out motorcycle-turned-gliders, cars that could transform into boats, that sort of thing.

Soon enough, you weren’t so poor, but your father still kept up the appearance of just being another struggling business in the great city of Gotham.

You knew better than to ask questions.

Until one day, a boy came. He asked for a motorcycle in special colors—red and yellow and a hint of green.

By then it was obvious to you that your father—and by extension, you— were fixing up vehicles for none other than Batman and Robin.

The vigilantes, the crime-fighting heroes of your city.

It was inevitable that the two of you, being practically the same age, would strike a close friendship. If he wasn’t busy fighting who-knows-what in the dark alleys of Gotham, Robin would come over and spend hours with you working on his bike.

And he was such an asshole. A demanding, violent, arrogant jerk of a kid who wanted his motorcycle to be as deadly, dangerous, and fast as possible.

You, being an incredible mechanic like your father before you, took it as a personal affront to your pride. You constantly fueled each other, challenging each other to do better, be better.

And together, you were a formidable pair.

Until the Joker came.

And he was gone.

Batman lost his Robin, and your family soon lost its main source of business.

That’s why you were at the bank, trying to get a loan to cover the mortgage of your garage.

For years, you cursed Batman and his vigilante crew, blaming them for getting your best friend killed.

But, just as much, you blamed yourself. If only you hadn’t given him such a formidable vehicle, or hadn’t goaded him into fighting as violently as he did.

Maybe he wouldn’t have died.

So now, every motorcycle was a heart-stabbing reminder of him, and your failure to protect someone you loved.

…

You awoke to the feeling of someone placing a helmet on your head and lifting you up.

Firm hands wrapped your arms around a thick midsection, as your legs straddled a motorcycle.

Shit.

Someone was kidnapping you.

Before you could react, the wheels squealed and you peeled off into the rain-slicked streets of Gotham. Fear coursed through your now ice-cold veins and you shut your eyes, holding on for dear life as the rider pushed the vehicle ever faster.

After what felt like an eternity, you both finally stopped and you cracked open an eyelid to see a shocking sight.

Your garage.

Whoever took you knew where you lived.

Fucking hell.

This was worse than you thought.

Gathering your wits, you whipped out a knife in one hand and a taser in the other.

“Who the fuck are you?!” You screamed at your kidnapper. “How do you know where I live?”

“Ah—shit—this looks bad. Look, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to scare you—“ the man wore a red metallic mask, his voice altered by some kind of technology. He sounded more like a robot than a man.

“Yeah? Well you’re doing a piss-poor job of it. You got 3 seconds to explain yourself!” You lowered your stance, clearly ready to attack whoever this leather-clad stalker was.

”You got hit with laughing gas at the bank. It’s the Joker, he’s back, and I just couldn’t stand by while you were in danger. I couldn’t stand watching you from afar anymore.” The man stumbled through an explanation, backing up until his legs bumped into the motorcycle.

In a quick glance, you looked at the vehicle and immediately recognized it as one of yours. It was tricked out with fatter tires, a different front windshield cover, and red and black paint, but the engine, the shape of the body, that was undeniably your engineering.

It was Robin’s bike.

You rushed up to him, closing the distance and pressing the blade of the knife to the gap of skin between his black Kevlar turtleneck and his mask. Your other hand pressed the taser into an exposed seam between the armored protection on his side.

“Where the fuck did you get this bike?” Your voice dropped dangerously low, your tone seething with murderous anger.

In that moment, Jason could see in your gaze just how deeply the pain of loss ran through you. You were a mechanical genius, a competitive, intelligent, shit-talking inventor. But you weren’t a fighter. And you definitely weren’t a killer.

But, Jason knew that if he didn’t tell you the truth, you would have murdered him in cold blood on the steps of your home, without a single ounce of regret.

“Take off my mask.” He whispered, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the blade of the knife.

Your eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why?”

“You need to know who I am.” He replied cryptically.

Jason could see the gears turning in your head as you realized that this mask-wearing fucker could be working with the Batman.

And good ol’ Bats wouldn’t waste a perfectly good bike, even if it belonged to his Robin, whom he treated like a son.

A now dead son.

Jason held his breath for a beat more as you considered his words, but curiosity got the better of you and you complied.

You eased up on the knife to use your finger to pull the mask off his chin, and it fell to the floor with a sharp clatter.

A second later, your knife and taser fell to the floor as well.

“Fuck.”

The single syllable popped out of your jaw-dropped mouth as you stumbled back as if Jason had shoved you.

It was him.

That unmistakable sheepish look of taking things just a little bit too far on his handsome face. A face now aged and scarred a bit, and a shock of white hair attached to his forehead.

“It’s me. I’m back.” He shyly smiled at you, shrugging his shoulders as if he didn’t just come back from the fucking dead.

An uncontrollable wave of rage washed over you and you recovered, your hands quickly forming fists which rain all over his chest.

“Fuck you! Fuck you, Jason! You fucking died! You have no fucking right to be here right now! You fucker!” Raw screams of grief and disbelief wrenched out of your body, as sound unrecognizable to you since the first days that you lost him.

Thought you lost him, forever.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jason hugged you tightly as if he never wanted to let you go again. You didn’t realize that tears were streaming down your blotchy cheeks and were now soaking through the bullet proof vest on his chest.

“How? How are you here?” You spluttered through heaving lungs, trying your best not to break down into sobs.

“I’ll explain everything, I promise.” He ran a soothing, warm palm down your back. “But, there’s something I need to say, something I regretted not telling you before I died. And I’ve been thinking about it every day since I came back.”

His gaze down at you was soft, and you can see tears pricking the corners of his blue eyes.

“Say it, you fucking asshole.” You punch him one more time in the shoulder, but Jason could tell your heart wasn’t in that one.

With the gentlest smile you’ve ever seen from him, he opens his mouth and says:

“I love you.”

Your eyes widened in shock as those three words hit your ears, and your heart.

You didn’t realize you’d been waiting to hear that for years.

And you thought you never would.

Jason cupped your chin and lifted it to his, pressing his lips to yours and—fucking hell.

It felt like coming home.

…

#jason Todd #jason todd fluff #Jason Todd angst #Jason Todd fic #jason todd drabble #Jason Todd x reader #red hood #red hood fic #red hood fluff #red hood angst #red hood x reader #Batman #batfam #Batman and Robin #Robin

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alexiethymia · 10 months

Text

Boiling Hot Iron vs Lukewarm Water

Maomao's Way of Affection Part 2

[LN 12 spoilers]

I AM ACTUALLY FOAMING AT THE MOUTH. I mean I read it somewhere, but apparently yes, Maomao does initiate the kiss in the light novel. Even if she did accept his feelings, I always thought that it might have been too fast the way she was ready for a night visit already, but I always chalked it up to her upbringing in the pleasure district and her being fifty-fifty that Jinshi wouldn't actually try anything. But the fact that she is the one to actually instigate a kiss, and quite a sweet one at that, while Jinshi was sleeping. This scene in LN 12 really is in contrast to the scene in LN 5 where it was Jinshi who forced the kiss, and even to later on when Maomao ends up falling asleep and Jinshi restrains himself to a kiss on the forehead for replenishment.

It's hard to be coherent with my ramblings but one of the reasons why I love this series is the slow burn on Maomao's part which is really fulfilling, and the slight angst we get because of that, and not just on Jinshi's part.

Below is a translation from the Spanish translation of LN 12:

She just doesn't get it. He wants to step down from his position near the top of the country for a purpose. If that purpose was MaoMao himself, he would definitely have gone mad.

It's as hot as cast iron.

Maomao is not interested in such blazing heat. The only thing she can give back is a warm temperature.

Slowly puts his hand on Mr. Jinshi's cheek and feels his body temperature, which is the same as warm water. Her cheek was slightly colder. His eyelids were completely closed and he rubbed his cheek against my hand like a kitten to be pet. Looks like he sleeps, like he feels safe.

Maomao seems to struggle with the inequality of Jinshi's feelings and hers. She compares Jinshi's feelings to hot cast iron, and hers to warm water. And no wonder, to her, Jinshi willing to give up everything, including his position, for her, seems to be such a passionate love. As much as she snarks and would rather say that she could just do without all of Jinshi's gestures (*cough branding himself for example, this damn masochist cough*), she recognizes how much Jinshi has given up and is willing to give up for her, not to mention all that he has in fact given her.

She even goes to say, "I don't even have anything in return for you." When she says this line, I think that she isn't just referring to being unable to return the depth of Jinshi's feelings, but even their difference in position. As Suiren observes, despite Maomao's forthrightness, perhaps because of the environment they're in, she is very much aware of her station.

It's such a melancholic line coming from her. It seems to me as if she really is afraid of hurting Jinshi. She already doesn't like the thought of Jinshi being hurt like Luomen, but now she also doesn't want to be the one to hurt him. On top of that, for the normally aloof Maomao, it may be that she's starting to feel unconfident precisely because of the difference in position.

Maomao strikes me as a person who wants to be used. Even when she wasn't in love with Jinshi yet, she always seemed to want to be praised for doing a good job. So for her to think that it's just her who keeps receiving and receiving, while not being able to give anything back, the inequality (this time going in the reverse direction) must bother her a lot. She never used to care so for her to feel different from how she usually does because of Jinshi - caring about him, being unsure of herself because of him - oh she must hate how that feels so no wonder she wants to remove herself from the equation. But alas, it's too late.

Unlike Maomao though, I don't think that there's such a disparity between her feelings and Jinshi's despite that she describes his feelings as boiling hot and hers as warm. Yes definitely I feel that Jinshi's feelings may be stronger, but I feel that Maomao's is actually closer to his than she thinks. I think it may be because the nature of their feelings may be strongly influenced by their past.

Jinshi has always had the things he's loved taken from him. He wasn't allowed to prioritize a single thing or a single person because of the responsibilities he's had to assume from such a young age. Sure he's childish now but that may be because he had to grow up fast. Of course he would be desperate and slightly bit manic when it comes finally falling in love. He'll always feel that Maomao will be taken away from him unless he does something about it with his own hands.

Meanwhile, because of Maomao's complicated past with her birth parents, it's no wonder that Jinshi's passion unnerves her. Remember it was that same passion that caused her mother to hurt her. No wonder she doesn't want it. But when it comes to that feeling called love, that's the only version she recognizes because that's what she's been surrounded with in the pleasure district and even in the rear palace - lust imitating love, or even if it was love, a passionate and all-consuming love that destroys everything in its path.

But what does Jinshi make her feel? Trust. Safety. Even if her rational mind tells her that people's feelings change, Jinshi's constant proclamations that he will make everything be ok so that the both of them can be together may in fact actually reassure her. Heck, perhaps that was why Maomao goaded him to make that verbal confession a while back, precisely so she could have that assurance. She doesn't recognize it because she's never seen or had it, but perhaps this stability is something she's wanted her whole life. And I would say her feelings for Jinshi are nearly as strong as his for her, precisely because she feels for him the same way he makes her feel. Nothing passionate but also uncertain. But rather something warm and can be relied on. It's a feeling that pushes her to want to see him safe and healthy. It's a comforting and homey feeling that allows her to relax. And for Maomao who's always considered herself frigid, for her frozen heart to feel that warmth is also a tiny miracle in a way.

Jinshi is childish. Maomao is weird. But apart from their extremes, they're actually a lot alike - engrossed in their work, willful, but ultimately just. Apart from anything else, they're at ease when they can talk to each other. It's actually interesting for me to see how those emotions develop from Maomao's side since Jinshi is giving her space to take things at her own pace, another slow burn in a way. But while Jinshi's love is loud, Maomao's love is quiet. Even before this admission, it was always there, in the soft touches to the hair or cheeks, in being a refuge for rest and sleep, in her worry when he was overworking himself. The moment I would pinpoint that Maomao had actually already fallen in love with Jinshi was when she was contemplating Enen and Yao's relationship. She thinks to herself, "the more you cared for someone, the more you wanted a say in how they behaved - especially if that behavior involved hurting themselves." Now doesn't that sound familiar?

*Note - because I loved it and I'm impatient I'll share the translations for that particular scene in LN 12 in the comments section. One is translated from the Spanish version, while the other is translated from the Korean version. I got all of this from facebook. I'm quite interested to see how it'll come out in the English version.

#kusuriya no hitorigoto #the apothecary diaries #jinmao #maomao x jinshi #maomao #jinshi #knh #knh spoilers #I've reached the stage where I'm rambling about them #there are just so many layers in the ln #especially when you consider power dynamics and social constructs and agency

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dualcordie · 9 months

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I’ve seen people talking about Zuko adopting Izumi instead of her being his biological child and I had a silly little thought (that I haven’t stopped thinking about for days)

warning: this post is basically just my last two brain cells trying to put out a semi-coherent thought

What if Zuko and Azula mend their relationship after everything and heal, but they both still despise Ozai so much that they make a pact that their lineage dies with them and they refuse to ever have children?

BUT

Azula goes on some self discovery trip and eventually meets this little orphan named Izumi. They hit it off almost immediately. Azula is usually super awkward around kids, but Izumi is a little menace and Azula loves her. She sees parts of herself, and even Zuko, in Izumi (ya know, before things went downhill for the both of them as children). She manages to bring Izumi back to the capital and tells Zuko she has a surprise.

Zuko nearly shits himself when said surprise is a 6 year old who can’t seem to stop bouncing off the walls and talks so fast you can barely make out what she’s saying. Zuko is adamant that Izumi doesn’t belong there and “What about our deal?!”

To which Azula starts to persuade him (because she’s good at that shit and would be able to do it without hesitation) and even makes the point that their ancestors would be livid if they knew that the Fire Lord adopted a random child rather than “keeping their lineage pure” or whatever the fuck kind of bullshit they’d say. She wants to be an auntie so bad, she’s bound and determined to get Zuko to adopt this kid.

Zuko says Izumi can stay, but he can’t be a dad right now and they’ll have to eventually find someone to take her in. Azula doesn’t believe that for one second, especially after seeing how great Zuko is with every child he comes across. She manages to rope the gaang into it and when Zuko sees how Sokka and Izumi instantly click, how comfortable Izumi is around Aang and Katara’s kids, as well as Toph’s, he can’t say no to adopting her. He takes her in, spends more and more time with her, and they’re definitely a dynamic dad and daughter duo (even though he hasn’t officially adopted her yet). There’s even talk going around the palace that Zuko is spoiling her rotten (but he swears he isn’t, he’s just trying to give her a better childhood than he had).

then blah blah blah Zuko’s a great dad to her and him and Sokka surprise her with the official adoption and they sometimes struggle with the whole new being married and parents thing but they’d give their lives for Izumi in an instant and they’re in love and that’s all that matters

#and they lived happily ever after #someone who can actually write #please write this #i am begging #zuko #azula #izumi #sokka #atla #zukka #sokka/zuko

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esquen · 2 years

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hello can you do a jude smut where he’s frustrated after a game or something along those lines …thank you ;))

night gown : j.b

summary ;; you comfort jude after a bad game (😉😉)

you could sense jude’s anger radiating off of him as you drove down the highway, him being too sore to do so himself.

he had been looking out of the window for the whole drive, taking heavy breaths in and out. you were there at the game and saw how unfair the ref was being.

jude had tripped one of the players in an attempt to get the ball and he was given a yellow card. for the rest of the game he sulked and even when someone fouled against him, the ref pretended not to notice.

jude tried telling his coach, but there wasn’t much he could do since there was no other ref on the site at the moment.

so he kept playing, until the ref held up a red card for misconduct after jude slid into a player and broke his nose when he fell face first.

jude tried to put up a fight and keep himself in the game but it was already a done decision, and he had to sit out for the next 40 minutes.

he wasn’t excited to see you afterwards like he usually does, he just walked right past you and got into the car without a word.

now you were home, applying your lotion to your arms as jude walked back in fully clothed after his shower.

“so you’re never gonna speak another word to me again?” you asked as you crawled onto your side of the bed.

“i’m sorry about today.” you whispered. he huffed out and rubbed his eyes. “please say something to me jude.” you kneeled next to him and whined.

“i’m sorry, okay? i just— it was a lot. that was a huge game.” he explained.

“i’m sorry.”

“you know what would make me feel better?” he asked and sat up propped on his elbows.

“what?”

“head.”

“jude, no.” you rolled your eyes and laid down, taking your phone from the nightstand.

“then… can i give you head?” he asked, his hand laying at the bottom of your tummy.

you shrugged and looked at him.

“would it make you feel better?”

“it would cheer me up in under two minutes.” he smiled.

you smiled back and pecked his lips, moving back. “go ahead then.”

“thank you baby.” he smiled and pulled the duvet off of you, flipping your night gown up and pooled it at your waist.

he slid your underwear off in a hurry, moving your thighs apart to get a good look at your cunt.

“shit.” he groaned and planted his hands on that same spot on your tummy again before licking you one time.

you shuddered at the feeling and looked down at him, noticing he was already looking at you.

“don’t look at me like that.” you whimpered and brought a hand to the top of his head, playing with his coils.

“fuckk..” a whimper escaped your throat as he sucked on your clit lightly, holding you down with both hands.

“fuck— m’ gonna cum.” you exhaled, watching as he began rubbing your clit to get you there faster.

“fuck!” you squeaked as everything came down on you. you teared up a little bit, never experiencing something so strong like that.

“happy?” you asked while trying to catch your breath. jude sat up on his knees and looked at you while nodding.

“wanna be in you.” he kissed you, warm hands caressing your body.

“you can do it.” you nodded, feeling as he smiled against your lips.

he pushed himself up again and grabbed at the strings of his sweatpants before pulling them down completely along with his boxers.

he grabbed the base of his cock with one hand and put the other under your knee, keeping it pinned to the bed.

slowly, he sunk into you. he groaned at the feeling and watched himself be completely covered with you slick.

“fuck, you’re really big j.” you whimper as you watched his dick completely dissapear inside of you.

“shitt, you get tighter and tighter everytime.” he groaned, beginning to move in and out.

“can feel you in ‘m tummy.” you looked up at him and he nodded.

“yeah? right here?” he asked, pushing on the specific part of your stomach

“mhm.” you nodded, struggling to let coherent words out of your mouth.

“yeah.. feels good doesn’t it..?” he asked. you nodded again as you let a few tears slip from overstimulation.

“gonna cum again.” you exhaled as you closed your eyes.

“me too baby.” he furrowed his eyebrows and kept his same pace, scanning your face.

“‘m gonna cum.. right now..” you spoke, biting your lip.

“cum on me baby.” he let out another groan as he felt you convulse on him.

he pulled out and came on your stomach, holding your hips and carresing them slightly.

“aww,” you whined, looking down st your night gown. “my night gown.” you frowned and looked up at your boyfriend who was already in the bathroom getting a wet towel.

“don’t worry, it’ll come off.” he replied and started cleaning you up, around your thighs and your gown aswell.

“see? all done.” he nodded and pulled your panties back up and your night gown down.

he himself got changed quickly and joined you in bed, allowing you to rest your head on his chest.

a/n ;; OKK so i know this request is probably asking for rough smut but i really dont know how to write it LMFOAOO its ok bya

#jude bellingham #jude bellingham smut #world cup smut #soccer player smut

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uns4lted · 1 month

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Tender Care (One-Shot)

Genre: Pure Fluff Warning: None Pairings: Bonten!Ran Haitani x fem! reader Sypnosis: When you fall sick, Ran Haitani stays by your side, revealing a rare, tender side as he cares for you throughout the night. His unwavering presence and affection show just how deeply he cherishes you, solidifying the bond between you. Note: i made this out of boredom, who knows i might make more? ٩(＾◡＾)۶

The rain pattered steadily against the windowpanes, creating a soothing backdrop to the otherwise quiet apartment. You lay in bed, wrapped in layers of blankets, your face flushed and pale from a high fever. The flu had struck you hard, leaving you feeling weak and achy. Your usual vibrant energy was nowhere to be seen as you struggled to stay awake.

Ran Haitani had noticed your absence and despite his usually aloof demeanor, had immediately dropped everything to be by your side. His concern was evident in every gesture as he moved through your apartment, determined to care for you despite his busy life.

He was currently in the kitchen, preparing a pot of chicken soup from scratch—a rare display of domesticity for someone who was usually all about high-stakes situations. The comforting aroma of the simmering soup wafted through the apartment, offering a stark contrast to the discomfort you were feeling. As Ran carried the steaming bowl to your bedside, his eyes softened at the sight of you looking so fragile. He set the bowl on the nightstand and gently touched your forehead, feeling the heat radiate from your skin. “Princess,” he said softly, his voice unusually gentle as he helped you sit up a bit. “I made you some soup. It’ll help with the fever.” You opened your eyes and gave him a weak but grateful smile. “Ran, you didn’t have to go through all this trouble. I’m okay.” Ran’s expression softened even more, a rare and tender look that few ever saw. “You’re not okay. And I’m not going anywhere until you’re better. Let’s get some of this soup into you. It’ll help.” He carefully fed you a spoonful of the warm soup, his gaze steady and filled with affection. The warmth of the soup and the comfort of his presence offered soothing relief from the fever’s grip. You took the soup gratefully, feeling a deep sense of warmth and love for the man who was showing you such a caring side. After you finished eating, Ran set the bowl aside and helped you take the medicine he had brought. His hands were gentle as he adjusted your blankets and checked your temperature. His concern was palpable in every movement, from smoothing the blankets to ensuring the room was at a comfortable temperature.

As the night wore on, your fever began to break slightly, and you started to feel a bit more coherent. You watched Ran, admiring how his tough exterior melted away in the face of your vulnerability.

“Ran,” you said quietly, your voice soft but filled with warmth. “I didn’t know you could be so… caring. It’s a side of you I don’t see often.” Ran’s eyes met yours, a hint of surprise and a touch of shyness in his gaze. “What can I say, princess? You’re my everything. I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

You reached out, your hand finding his and holding it tightly. “Thank you. For everything. It means so much to me to have you here.”

Ran’s fingers gently squeezed yours, a rare, genuine smile lighting up his face. “You’re worth every bit of it. I’d do anything for you. I’m not leaving your side until you’re better.”

He settled into the chair next to your bed, his presence a comforting constant through the long night. He stayed by your side, occasionally checking your temperature, adjusting your blankets, and offering reassurances. He even put on a playlist of soft, soothing music, creating a peaceful atmosphere that helped you relax.

The hours passed slowly, but with Ran’s constant presence, the time seemed to be filled with warmth and care. As dawn began to break and the rain outside started to ease, you felt a renewed sense of comfort and security.

Finally, as your condition improved and you began to feel stronger, Ran reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair from your face. He looked at you with a tender gaze. “You’re doing much better now, princess. Just rest a little longer. I’m right here with you.”

You smiled, feeling a profound sense of love and contentment. “I’m really lucky to have you.”

Ran’s smile grew softer, and he leaned in, pressing a gentle kiss to your forehead. “I’m lucky to have you too. Get well soon, okay? I want to see that beautiful smile of yours back to its usual brightness.”

As you drifted off to sleep, the sound of Ran’s steady breathing beside you was a comforting reminder of his unwavering support. With his love and devotion surrounding you, you felt more at ease than you had in days, knowing that Ran’s presence made all the difference in your recovery.

#tokyo revengers #ran haitani #bonten #bonten x reader #bonten x y/n #ran haitani x reader #ran haitani x y/n #fluff #one shot #tokyo revengers x y/n #tokyo revengers fanfic #tokyo rev x reader #tokyo rev

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promptsforyourwhumpfic · 10 months

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Whump Prompt #1323

Anon asked:

Do you have any prompts for a usually funny and hides insecurity behind humour/a strong character being poisoned/drugged and being forced to be vulnerable around others? Usually they’d always have a joke or a bright idea on their tongue, but now they can’t really form coherent sentences right now as they’re delirious.

I have a few - great concept!

I can imagine that it's deeply unsettling for the caretakers to experience this at the very least. Because it's so out of character for them.

^ As a result of this, maybe the whumpee tries to escape medical/hide away to avoid subjecting the caretakers to this. Despite how upsetting the situation is, the caretakers are more overrun by worry than being put off by the whumpee.

I like the idea of the whumpee becoming frustrated, because their brain is working at a snails pace, they're struggling to be understood, they're uncomfortable and unwell, but it feels like everyone is crowding them. It gets a bit much for them.

"[whumpee]'s quiet." It's two words that have the other caretakers stop in their tracks. Quiet and [whumpee] do not go together.

Maybe in a fit of delirium, they reveal things about themselves/their past that they've kept to themselves all these years.

^ bonus points if it's their insecurities. The caretaker could say something along the lines of "...you're kind and funny...", to which the whumpee responds: "I have to be... if not you'll realise just how useless I am and you'll want me off the team."

#sorry my schedule is all over the place #whump #writing #prompts #angst #comfort #family dynamics #stoic whumpee #delirium #revealing secrets #worry #vulnerable character

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elsweetheart · 2 years

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hey lovey! i absolutely ADORE your writing and i just wanted to share the idea of a strong and intimidating reader getting positively TOPPED by abby and her pulling the kind of condescending tone and being like “aww not so big and scary when you’re all fucked dumb on my cock huh baby?”

GIGGLING AND KICKING MY FEET RN

my reader is usually a big cry baby wuss so i thought i’d spice things up and give this a go …..also i changed the prompt very slightly hope thts ok !!

and i shouldn’t cry, but i love it.

🎀 mentions of injury, blood, reader gets attacked by clicker (and briefly by a raider at the start), brat!reader? kind of? another ldr song title fic name… no one is shocked

you had to have your guard up. you didn’t know any other way. having your guard up meant no one could take advantage of you — so damn being friendly. there was no way in hell that would happen again.

you’d been on your own for a long time now, and you’d learnt to adapt. maybe you weren’t the best with fighting, but no one would ever get close enough to pull a swing on you — because you were ruthless with a pistol. until you weren’t of course, some random raider skimming your thigh with his bullet just enough to make you bleed like crazy before you put a hole in his skull.

fuck, you would have died. at the time you’d rather die than what really happened. abby and her league of idiots as you liked to call them came to your rescue. you were bleeding out when they found you, barely coherent from the dangerous cocktail of adrenaline and blood loss and you had somehow lost it enough to let abby carry you back to camp. big, strong, abby. you were humiliated.

so you had to prove yourself. they’d convinced you to stay with them, safety in numbers and all — and you must have received a concussion somehow from your injury because you agreed. this wasn’t like you, but they’d come to learn that. you were taking every patrol shift, gunning down the infected whenever you go the chance to show your impeccable aim— and most importantly, being pretty much a raging bitch to anyone who tried to get close. it wasn’t charming, to say the least— and everyone gave up trying to befriend you as you quickly outcasted yourself and gained a reputation of being intimidating. everyone, but abby.

when you’d first seen abby, under your blood loss, dazed, near-death-experience haze— you had seen her as a beacon of hope through your bleary eyes. not because she was saving you, no. because seeing someone so toned and buff was living proof that there was enough food out there, and working facilities that she built her body with. they were living somewhere that had food, a gym— it seemed like a safe haven where you could kick back for a while. as soon as you came to, you of course had come to your senses and remembered that she carried you all the way ‘home’ like you were some damsel in distress.

abby was the only person who wouldn’t even bat an eyelid at your quick and irritable remarks. you’d only ever get so much as a chuckle, or a playful eyeroll followed by a ridiculous comment such as “ooh, this one bites.” she was undermining you, laughing at you. the anger within you, from having an attractive yet incredibly infuriating girl laugh at you was constantly bubbling to the surface. you felt you were constantly proving yourself to the only person who wasn’t intimidated, and it was growing increasingly difficult.

so you agreed to a patrol with her, infact — you became patrol partners. abby still towered over you, so you had to try extra hard to big yourself up enough to feel like her equal. she was effortlessly good at killing the infected, and she never seemed to struggle to hoist herself up on top of walls and hit her targets with her gun. you’d be lying if you said you weren’t impressed, but you’d never admit that.

you had proven yourself a fool twice now, when you’d wound up with a clicker on top of you — snapping it’s jaws at you, it’s foul breath so close to your face that if you weren’t fighting for your life you’d be gagging. they were usually a sack of bones, why was this clicker so heavy? holding it off with one arm, you struggled for your knife— but your hands were clammy and it was really wedged into your holster. it’s warm breath closed around your arm, and just as it was about to bite down — a shot rang out, the clickers fungus attachment exploding across you as it slumped to the side.

abby stood over you, wielding her pistol with a concerned look on your face.

“are you bit?” she practically exclaimed, analysing the shocked expression on your face. your eyes were glazed, having just looked death in the eye as you sat up. you checked yourself over, patting down your legs for any bites you may have missed. and then your midriff, and then your arms, and did you check your legs already? you pat them down again, staring into space— the sound of the bullet tearing through the clickers skull still ringing in your ear. that was by far the closest encounter you’d ever had, and you couldn’t believe your relief was owed to abby.

“are you bit?” she repeat after you met her with silence and you were quick this time to snap back.

“no i’m not bit!” you were sucking in jagged breaths, recovering as you stood back up, looking around in paranoia for more infected. then, your eyes fell on her and a surge of energy vibrated through you. “you wasted a bullet. i had my knife in my hand, you probably just attracted more fucking infected.” you barked, throwing your arm out angrily. abby stared at you for a moment before, and you couldn’t believe it, a smile crept onto her face. a smile that turned into a chuckle. she was laughing at you.

“your welcome.” she shook her head. “now let’s get the fuck out of here.” she nodded towards the exit, taking a few steps in that direction. she didn’t hear you following, so she turned around — probably to poke fun at you again. but you were stood, arms hugging yourself slightly as you looked around, eyes watery and wide like your brain was catching up to what had just happened. if abby wasn’t there, you would have died. again. that’s when she saw, for the first time — you looked frightened. the harshness was gone from your eyes as you stared ahead, in your own mind. abby knew she was on thin ice, but she stepped forward anyway and braved the plummet of cold water. “hey. you’re okay. you’re alive.” she spoke softly, the tone so gentle in fact that it brought you out your trance— eyes snapping to her. you looked sweet and dependent in that moment, but she’d wouldn’t dare ever tell you that. you were small but mighty, and even she believes that you could possibly stand a chance against her given enough anger.

you came out of it, clearing your throat and brushing the debris off your jeans. “let’s just go.” your guard was back up, just like that. the two of you walked back, with a quick lecture from you of course. “you don’t tell people what happened back there. do i make myself clear? if you do, i will know. and i won’t not fuck you the fuck up. okay?” you stared up at her, leaning on your hip. you know when a bunny rabbit gets angry, and they start thumping their back feet on the ground, button nose wriggling and claws digging stubbornly into grass? that’s exactly what abby saw when she stared down at you. she really didn’t want to smirk, she wanted to let you have this to make you feel better — but the upwards curve of her lip couldn’t help itself, and thankfully you ignored it.

“yes ma’am.”

abby couldn’t get that expression of yours out of her mind when she hit the showers. the one where you looked vulnerable, eyes wide and searching for her. you looked so… submissive. as she cleaned the dirt, grime and blood off her body that evening it became clear to her what you needed. she needed to force that bad attitude out of you, pronto — and she had just the tool.

don’t ask how she convinced you to even step foot in her room, she couldn’t tell you, maybe you’d made it easier than she thought you would have. maybe that’s how you got into the position you were in, legs pinned open by her own— a giant vibrating wand clutched in her hand as she sat pressed up behind you, holding the bulb straight to your clit. you didn’t even know your name anymore, all you knew was abby.

somewhere in the back of your mind, you’d wondered how she’d even acquired it. you’d heard rumours of a sex shop a couple of miles east, and a few days prior abby had asked you for the batteries from your reading lamp. you said no, so she must’ve found them elsewhere to power this beast of a sex toy. those thoughts melted away, with abby’s voice in your ear. you had no thoughts anymore, you were totally at her mercy once more.

embarrassment was a far away concept now, pants and underwear completely discarded from your bottom half — mewling against abby’s strong shoulder as she ground the vibrator into you. you were two orgasms down, drool pooled beneath your pouty bottom lip as she grasped your jaw with her free hand, keeping her hand squeezed there — reminding you who was in charge.

“aww. not so big n’scary now, are you? where’d all that attitude go, baby?” she mocked you, her voice gentle and sympathetic in the most condescending manner. you whined, hips jumping against the toy as she removed it from your clit to swirl around your inner thighs, spreading your embarrassing amount of slick everywhere. “this is just what you needed huh? to get fucked dumb. poor girl had such a stressful day didn’t she? needed that pretty pussy taken care of.” she was enjoying this, and you hated to say it but so were you. everything she was saying, was inherently correct. you had no fight left in you, and abby had let you drop your guard enough to be taken care of and it felt good. it was undeniable that you needed her.

“can’t — g—g’nna cum ‘gain. please.” you begged, hot tears on your cheeks which she rubbed into your warm cheeks once they reached your jaw where her hand was. she was rubbing the vibrating head up and down, nudging up beneath your clit at the perfect pressure and pace. you squeezed and gushed around nothing, awaiting her to grant you an orgasm.

“say thank you first. i made you my good girl, so maybe you should express some gratitude for once.” she sarked, voice caressing the shell of your ear making your spine tingle and toes curl.

“thank you abby. thank you! for everything! please!” you were crying now, and she had shushed you, placing kisses to your temple soothingly.

“take what you need baby, i’m right here.”

#abby anderson smut #abby tlou2 smut #abby anderson x reader #abby anderson prompt #abby anderson drabble

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justcallmecj · 4 months

Text

Don't Play With Love Potions

"Is it bad I'm curious what the guys would do if someone slipped alovepotion into their food/drinks as a prank, and reader was the first person they saw?" Courtesy of- Luna the shiny eevee (On Quotev)

Anyway, I randomized a boy and got Jack! There was no specific person in that comment, so I hope they won't mind that I chose one of the boys myself! (Lots of flustered and embarrassed Jack!)

Potions class was kicking his ass. It's like Crewel just suddenly decided to throw a shit ton of information at the class out of nowhere and wanted them to be able to do everything on short notice!

Now, potions class may not be Jack's best subject, but he's never particularly struggled with it. All he had to do was pay attention and study, when need be, and he'd be good. Someone must have done something to Crewel for him to suddenly torture his students.

But all that is what led Jack to be where he is now. In the potionology classroom, hunched over a book of recipes, ingredients strewn about the table and some red-ish colored liquid boiling in a cauldron. For the most part, everything was going according to plan. He'd been practicing and studying the potions and retained most of the information without any problems.

Then, his friend Y/N came into the room. His sharp ears immediately caught onto their entrance, and he turned to greet them.

"Hey Y/N! What brings you here?" he asked while putting down the vial he held in his hand. Y/N walked over to him and placed down their bag.

"Nothing much honestly." they said. Their wings spread out wide behind their back and their tail curled around in front of them. "I heard that you were studying in here and thought I'd come keep you company!" Y/N pulled out a laptop from their bag and placed it on the table as they sat across from Jack.

"Well, thank you. I don't mind the company as long as you don't distract me." Jack joked, causing Y/N to laugh. They waved a hand dismissively as they reassured Jack that they wouldn't distract him while he was working.

Seeming to remember something, Y/N reached into their bag again and pulled out a plastic bag from it. "By the way, Ruggie asked me to give this to you." they said as they handed the plastic bag to Jack. He took it and pulled out a ham and turkey sandwich. "He said he made a little too much food today and made a sandwich for you with some of the leftovers. He ran into me while trying to find you and asked me to give it to you."

Jack took a bite out of the sandwich and realized how hungry he had actually been. Usually, he gets a snack after school, but he didn't since he stayed behind to study. Happily, he had a few more bites and left what was left for when he's done with work.

Y/N giggled watching Jack garble down the food like he hadn't eaten in days. Jack pouted at their teasing but just pushed it to the back of his mind.

Jack and Y/N sat in comfortable silence and did their individual work for a good 20 minutes when Y/N noticed that Jack had stopped moving. They moved their laptop to the side and tried to get Jack's attention.

"Jack? Hey! Are you okay? Jack! JACK!" they kept waving their hand in front of his face, but nothing could snap him out of this strange trance. Not even his ears twitched at the yelling and calling of his name. Y/N's worry only increased when Jack's eyes closed, and his head hit the table.

They stood up and rushed to his side and shook his shoulders. Slowly, Jack got back up.

"Jack?! Are you okay?? What happened!?" He held his head in his hands and shook around, trying to wake himself up. He still had yet to respond to Y/N. After a few moments, groggily, he finally spoke.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm....good..." His words were slurred, but coherent. That was enough to stamp down Y/N's worries a tad. He finally gained the strength to look up. His eyes met Y/N and stayed there, like he was stuck. If Y/N didn't know they had impeccable eyesight, they would have played off the faint, pink swirl in his eyes as their imagination.

Something wasn't right, and Y/N knew it.

"Hey...you're really pretty, you know that?" he said, snapping Y/N from the spiral of thought in their mind.

"W-what?" Y/N stuttered. Why would he suddenly say that? Jack looked away and hid his face by his shoulder. A faint blush crept up his neck and he mumbled something to himself that Y/N didn't bother to try and understand.

"I said...that you're really pretty." He was still facing the other direction. "I-Is there something wrong with me saying that??" Jack asked, he turned his head back to face Y/N and willed himself to look them in the eyes.

Once they looked closer, Y/N saw the difference in Jack. It definitely wasn't their imagination. There was a pink color in Jack's eyes, it swirled and mixed with his gold eyes, pulsing at times and sending ripples through the mixed color.

There had to have been something in that sandwich Jack ate.

"Jack? How do you feel right now?" Y/N waited for a response but didn't let go of his shoulders. Jack was slow to respond, seemingly distracted by looking at Y/N's eyes.

"I feel...just fine.." he stalled. "But I feel like kissing you.." That caught Y/N off guard. They felt their face heat up and their brain failed to think straight. Jack's words seemed to finally hit him. His cheeks grew pink and his ears laid flat against his head. Despite the embarrassment, he didn't back down. He continued to stare Y/n in the eyes, even if it made the blushing worse.

Y/N finally started to understand what may have happened and now Jack's sudden words made sense. A love potion. A potion that induces and increases a person's love. It typically lasts for a couple hours, five usually, but can be more or less depending on the strength of the potion. People also tend to be a lot more...verbal with their feelings when under the potion's effects.

Jack confessing he wanted to kiss Y/N really didn't help Y/N ignore the feelings they had for Jack that they preferred to keep down.

Y/N's liked Jack for a long time now but was too scared to admit it. They didn't know if he'd return the feelings and didn't want to risk ruining their friendship. But due to the current circumstance, they could indulge a little, right? Chances were high he'd only have fuzzy memories once the potion wore off, and then Y/N could just play it off as trying to help him with the potions effects if he asked. One method to get a potion like this to wear off quicker is to indulge the person.

What if he does end up remembering? What would I do then? He'd hate me after that. There's no way he wouldn't.

There's only one small detail Y/N forgot about love potions.

They can't create feelings, only enhance already existing ones.

Jack seemed to lose whatever patience he had. He got closer to Y/N's face, which snapped them out of their spiral of thoughts. He just stayed there, staring. Y/N didn't know what to do.

"Can I?" he asked, his voice was filled with emotions, some of which Y/N had never heard from him. It took a moment before they understood what he was asking. He genuinely wanted to kiss them. Would he be saying these things if he wasn't under the potion's effects?

Y/N nodded.

Jack moved forward, all the way until his lips connected with Y/N's. His ears stood up again, and his tail wagged even if he tried to stop it. Y/N wasn't doing any better controlling themselves. Their tail uncurled and swished behind them. Their wings twitched and the longer the two stayed like that, the more the wings flared out.

Y/N gently pushed Jack back a bit. He wasn't the happiest with that action but did nothing to stop it just in case. Y/N turned away from him, intense blush covering their face. The sight made Jack blush, but he also chuckled at them. Y/N got even more flustered and pushed Jack more forcefully as well as hit him on the top of his head, but it was a gentle hit and lacked the force to hurt.

"Jack...I think we should be careful about this." Y/N finally managed to say. Jack raised his brow in confusion.

"Why?" he asked. Y/N could hear the tad bit of hurt in his question. Crap. He's not in a clear enough mind for me to tell him about the potion, he'd reject the idea. I need to come up with an actual reason.

"Is t-this really something you want to do out in the open?" Y/N asked. Jack brought his face closer again and Y/N stumbled to elaborate. "I-I mean!" they took a breath, "shouldn't we go somewhere where it can just be the two of us? To avoid being interrupted!" For the Sevens sake, that shouldn't have been as hard as it was, nor that embarrassing!!

"I guess..." he started. Y/N watched as a resolve settled in his eyes. He swiftly put away the potion ingredients he was studying, stuffed his books into his bag, carefully put Y/N's stuff in their bag, grabbed both bags and latched onto Y/N's wrist, pulling them out of the potionology room.

Y/N didn't know where Jack was dragging them, but they didn't put up a fight about it. Eventually, Jack came to a stop, forcing Y/N to do the same. They found themself at the door of an empty classroom. With a final tug, Jack pulled Y/N into the classroom. He placed both of their things by a desk and motioned for them to sit down. They obliged. They scooted over so Jack could sit too. The seat was plenty long, so there was plenty of space. (It's like the desks you see in the lessons of the game)

He took the seat and faced the front of the room, not Y/N. They took the initiative to break the ice.

"Jack, why are we in here?" they asked, placing a hand on the others shoulder. There was no way they could miss how Jack's tail wagged at the contact. He turned to Y/N, and Y/N caught sight of his current condition on full volume. His cheeks and a bit of his neck was fully pink. His face scrunched up with embarrassment. The potion was doing all sorts of things to him, and he didn't understand to the same degree that Y/N did.

He quickly reached for Y/N's hands, holding them in his own, then using what seemed like quite a bit of willpower to look them in the eyes. Y/N met that stare with some embarrassment of their own.

"I don't really know what I'm doing right now, but I'm going to keep going with it until something happens!" he shouts, more to himself than to Y/N from the sound of it.

He let go of Y/N's hands and pulled them into a tight hug. Y/N was stunned with shock as Jack tightened the hug slightly. He was clearly pushing himself to make sure he didn't chicken out and embarrass himself further. Once Y/N had enough time to process Jack's actions, they returned the hug, pulling their wings around their conjoined forms and encasing the two in a protective cocoon.

Now in the cocoon, his heart rate, which Y/N had been listening to since the potion effects started, slowed down considerably from what it had been this whole time. His grip loosed just a bit, he seemed more at ease. He knew how large Y/N's wings were, and he was sure that no one could see him from the outside with the way they covered him. It let him calm down.

He pulled away just enough to properly speak to Y/N. "Sorry," he mumbled. He nuzzled his head into their neck a little, which tickled but Y/N stayed still as to not freak him out. But they did allow a small giggle to escape their lips. Jack, upon hearing this, huffed and nuzzled further into their neck. This only gave Y/N more reasons to giggle and laugh. Eventually though, they took pity on the poor wolf.

"So, did you bring me in here just to cuddle with me?" they asked, Y/N really was curious to know if that's all Jack had planned. He pulled his head back and stared into Y/N's eyes. That pink from earlier swirled around in the gold again. Y/N had come to realize that it was a tell-tale sign that the love potion was doing something.

Jack closed the space between the two again and locked Y/N into another kiss. Thankfully, they were a bit better prepared this time for the feeling and how it effected them. Jack pushed into Y/N more than he had the first kiss. Y/N made sure to keep their wings up and around Jack, wanting to make him feels as comfortable as possible.

After a good while of long kisses and a few pecks on the lips mixed in, Jack let Y/n go. He backed up, but not far enough that Y/N had their own personal space again. Their noses brushed against one another whenever either breathed a certain way.

Jack looked kinda out of it. Like his brain was still caught up in the middle of the make out session that just happened. "....I love you," he muttered under his breath. "I have for a long time, but I didn't know how to say it." Y/N was utterly shocked. They didn't know what to say.

The boy they'd been heavily crushing on for months, the same boy they had watched from across the table at lunch every day, the same boy that was right then practically sitting in their lap, red all over his face, eyes half lidded, and had just made out with them not even a minute ago, was now sitting there and confessing that he loved them. It was a situation they had played out in their head countless time, but never expected to come true. But it had. What else can they do-

"I love you too, Jack." they said breathlessly.

-but seize the moment?

Those words excited Jack. He looked up with a brand-new vigor in his eyes. He lit up, pushing himself up. His tail wagged fiercely behind him, and his ears flicked in every which direction. "Really!?" he shouted, a little to loud for Y/N's powerful hearing and how close he was right now. They giggled, nonetheless.

"Yes, Jack. I feel the same way, have for a long time." He basically jumped at Y/N, pushing them backwards and forcing them onto their back against the long seat of the classroom. He laid on their chest, practically beaming with joy and love. This is my new favorite face for him.

He finally settled down and rested his chin on the middle of Y/N's chest. Not far from their face, but not too close for it to feel claustrophobic, especially since they were still cocooned.

They both just sat there and stared into each other's eyes, admiring the one they loved. Y/n watched as the pink swirl in his eyes got faster and faster, curling into itself before finally fizzing out and disappearing. He smiled differently than before, a smile that could leave anyone with no doubt, that he absolutely loved Y/N.

"I love you." he said.

"What are you laughing to yourself about?" Leona asked Ruggie with clear annoyance in his tone. Ruggie, who had been hunched over the counter with and open bag of bread, leftover lunch meat and a now empty glass vial with a bit of pink residue on it, made one more giggle before looking his dormleader in the eyes. He adjusted himself to be leaning against the counter more comfortably.

"You remember our little conversation about how annoying it was to watch our Dear Dragon and Little Wolf pin each other for so long without realizing they both liked each other?" he asked. Leona looked him up and down like he may have lost it from all the laughing.

"Yeah, it was annoying and starting to get on my nerves. What about it?" Ruggie reached over and grabbed the empty vial. He held it up to Leona, who grabbed it and put it up to his nose. He blanched from the strong smell the moment it hit him. He knew exactly what potion this was, he remembered the class where he made it for some test vividly.

"Well, I think I found a damn good solution. And all it took was a sandwich and a little errand from Y/N." he laughed that signature laugh of his. Leona couldn't help but chuckle along with him. Finally, the ever-painful shows of pinning between Y/N and Jack were being put to an end.

#twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #ice dragon!reader #justcallmecj fics #Jack Howl x reader

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chiropter36 · 7 months

Text

Three or More Foxes Form a 'Skulk'

Read on Ao3

AN: Oh my god it has been so long since I've actually finished a fic, I'm just going to post this before I overthink it too much.

So... watched Sonic Prime, wanted to give my boy Nine some interactions with Mangey and Sails, plus explore the immediate aftermath of where things were left with him and the other Shatterspace folks, and... here we are.

(There's a reference in here to a headcanon from @the-knucklesverse, specifically one regarding Gnarly. He doesn't feature much in this and it's not the focus, but I like the headcannon and felt it worked with something I wanted to have happen here, so I included it. I'm not involved with that blog, but check out their stuff for fun multiversal Knuckles shenanigans!)

---

Nine wasn’t sure exactly when he’d closed his eyes, but he really didn’t want to open them right now.

A small groan escaped his lips as he halfheartedly fought against whatever stupid self-loathing part of his brain kept trying to drag him back to full consciousness.

What had… happened? Disjointed images whirled through his head, and he weakly struggled to force them into a coherent order.

The Grim…

The Prism, gone…

Sonic… Sonic fading away, because of him...

The pink jungle hedgehog taking him on her bird mount, then her two counterparts leaving with Shadow on the Kraken…

They all got too far away to see…

A blinding flash of light from the distant Green Hill portal…

And then…

Nine didn’t remember passing out, but that was the only explanation he could think of. (Urgh, thinking, why did thinking hurt?) With no more imminent threat to deal with or time-sensitive problems to solve, everything he had been through over the past… had it even been a full day?...must have just hit all at once.

Another groan – this one almost more of a whimper – slid involuntarily out of his throat.

With consciousness returning came the awareness of just how exhausted he felt in every way imaginable. His head still ached from the strain he had put on himself using so much Prism energy so indiscriminately. (Idiot, you idiot, you should have known there would be consequences for that, but you just couldn’t stop, could you.) He doubted he could lift himself a centimeter off the ground right now with how sore his flesh-and-blood tails felt. His right cheek was still throbbing horribly from the sucker punch that damn echidna had got in, which had felt more like being smacked with a concrete block – judging by the taste of blood still in his mouth, Nine was pretty sure he could count himself lucky if just one of his remaining baby teeth had been knocked loose.

And then there was the awful ache in his chest that had nothing to do with any physical injury he’d sustained.

Not having to think or feel was such an enticing prospect right now…

At least, for some reason, one thing Nine wasn’t feeling was the hard floor of his base. Logically, that should have been what he’d collapsed on, but instead he felt almost like he was floating on air without moving his tails; his body gently swaying from side to side, trying to lull him back to sleep. It made no sense, but it felt so nice that he didn’t feel like questioning it.

Conversely, it seemed strangely as though gravity was pressing harder than usual against his body, but in an oddly pleasant, comforting way. Like a heavy blanket, sort of; warm and soft and–

Wait.

Gravity seemed to be breathing.

Nine forced his eyes open.

The first things he saw were the leaves of his two palm trees, their trunks stretching directly above him. So he was still in the Grim then; that made sense, but… wait, was he in the hammock? Had he climbed into it before blacking out…?

Before he could ponder that too much, his gaze turned down to where the soft, snuffling breathing sounds were coming from… and his brain froze in confused disbelief at the sight that greeted him.

One of the fakers. The one from the jungle world. Fur slightly more orange-ish with red-brown stripes and clearly having never once seen a brush; no cybernetic tails; gloves and shoes made of leaves and vines; but otherwise so nearly identical to himself in appearance that he could have been looking in a very distorted mirror.

And it was laying on his chest.

“What the- Hey! Get off me, you flea-ridden--”

The other fox let out a surprised yowl as Nine shoved him, leaping off and landing on all fours. The sudden movement sent the hammock swaying, and Nine overbalanced and tumbled off the other side. His tails instinctively extended out to catch him before he hit the ground; he set himself on his feet and immediately ducked into a defensive crouch, glaring at the offender and preparing for a counterattack–

“Oi, you’re awake!”

The sudden adrenaline rush throwing his self-defense instincts into overdrive cut off as abruptly as it had hit, replaced with a surge in the throbbing pain in his head. Nine put a hand to his head, groaning miserably as he waited for the hammer apparently inside of his skull to stop bashing his brain over and over.

A few moments and the pain faded to more-or-less the background level Nine had woken up to; able to think slightly more clearly, he turned to focus on the new speaker.

Ah, of course, the other one. Pirate-him. That ridiculous bandanna over one ear, cutlass hanging from his belt, the odd mechanism extending from his back that Nine supposed made a passable prosthetic tail, though nothing as sophisticated as his own of course. He stood next to where the feral one was still crouched and watching Nine warily, but in contrast was sporting an easy grin that instantly put Nine on guard. Meeting Nine’s eyes, he raised a hand in a hesitant wave.

“What did you…?” Nine stammered, his brain still struggling to catch up with the events of the past minute. “What… how did I…?”

“Oh, er, we put ye up in yer hammock there after ye conked out a bit ago.” The young pirate shrugged, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve taken me fair share of naps on a hard deck floor, an’ I figured ye’d prefer somethin’ a mite more comfy.”

“You…?” Nine did not know what he was supposed to do with that, so he pushed it aside in favor of addressing his other point of confusion.

“And why was that one sitting on me?”

The pirate fox shrugged again, patting his jungle-dwelling duplicate on the shoulder. “I guess he just thought ye could use some company after… everythin’.”

Nine frowned, glaring suspiciously at the two of them. Did they really expect him to buy that? More likely the rebels just had the idea to place one of their allies in position to hold him down in case he was faking sleep to lull them into a sense of security.

Wait, where were all the others?

Making sure to keep the other two foxes in his peripheral vision, he took a quick look around. They seemed to be mostly alone in the main room of his base, save for one other: the echidna pirate (“Dread”, he vaguely remembered Sonic referring to him as), who was leaning casually against the wall just inside the hole that had been blasted through the crystal pillars. He raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgment when Nine met his gaze, but otherwise seemed to be off in his own world, not paying him or the other two much mind.

Out past the echidna, on the other side of the hole at the start of the vast, featureless plain of the Grim, Nine could see a large gathering of all of Sonic’s friends and allies from across the Shatterspaces. Among the various rebels and pirates milling about, he picked out the other two echidnas, the three bats, the cyborg Rusty Rose and her two pink hedgehog counterparts...

Wait, if those three were back…!

Nine jerked his head back to the other hims, this time ignoring how the sudden movement aggravated his headache.

“Did… did he make it? Sonic…?”

The pirate and the wild child both pulled their ears back and exchanged a look.

“Well… can’t say for sure either way. Black Rose- that is, Cap’n Rose, she said that Thorn Rose’s Birdie got injured not ‘alfway there, so the Kraken picked ‘em up and took ‘em further. Then the ship got damaged too, so Shadow said he’d take ‘im the rest o’ the way. Rusty Rose says she saw Shadow make it to the portal; ‘twas too far for her t’ see for certain, ‘specially with how, well... faded Sonic was by then, and then there was that flash o’ light, and…” He shrugged helplessly. “She didn’t see either of ‘em after that.”

Nine swallowed, trying to hold back whatever emotion was trying to claw its way out his throat.

Pirate-him looked at him with... concern?... in his eyes, then put on a reassuring smile that somehow managed to look mostly genuine.

“If’n ye ask me, though, I’d say there be no doubtin’ he made it home. That hedgehog be tougher ‘n gristle an’ barnacle grit! No matter what any of our worlds – or any of us, truth be told – threw at ‘im, he always took it, got back up an’ kept runnin’ – heck, even when there weren’t any ground t’ run on!” He shared a grin with the jungle fox. “Not bad for a landlubber. Aye, an’ with that Shadow fella backin’ him, the Devil himself couldn’t stop ‘em! He made it home, we’re all sure of it.”

The jungle fox nodded emphatically.

Nine just stared as the other fox made this declaration. It was not escaping him the similarity between the pirate’s words and ones he himself had spoken to Mr. Dr. Eggman back at the Yolk, and he didn’t like it.

Grimacing through his headache, he tried to parse through his whirling too-many-thoughts and focus on the factual data that pirate-him had provided. Silly optimism that blatantly ignored the realities of the hedgehog’s deteriorating physical state aside, it sounded like there was a decent chance that Shadow had successfully gotten Sonic back to Green Hill before he faded completely. That… that was something, at least. He just wished there was a way to know for sure...

“Um, so…” the pirate broke the silence, shyly scratching the back of his head when Nine looked up at him again. “Don’t think we ever got rightly introduced. The name’s Sails, formerly of the Angel’s Voyage, from No-Place, and this here’s Mangey, from Boscage Maze. No ship, but we don’t hold that against ‘im.”

The jungle fox chittered happily and gave Nine a wave.

Nine stared at them blankly. “Okay,” he said with a dismissive shrug.

An awkward silence ensued, and both other foxes’ smiles dimmed slightly as Nine held their gaze, stubbornly refusing to engage them any further.

“And, erm, ye be called Nine, aye?” Sails finally broke the silence.

Nine rolled his eyes. He glanced over at the pirate echidna again, then back to the other foxes.

“Look,” he said with a tired sigh, “I get it. You three got put on watchdog duty – keep an eye on the traitor to make sure he doesn’t go all crazy again…” Not that he could really blame them for that. “But frankly I really just want to be alone right now. So if you could go tell your friends” – he gestured to the crowd outside – “to get off my world and go back to theirs already, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Wha- no, that ain’t–” Sails stammered. “Well, aye, some o’ the others thought that maybe… but that ain’t why…”

The pain in his head flared up again, and Nine couldn’t help the pathetic whine that came from him as he shut his eyes tight and gripped his head in both hands.

“Are ye okay?” Sails’ concerned voice cut through the pain. “Do ye need…?”

“I’m fine,” Nine growled out. He extended two of his tails threateningly in the direction the voice came from, just in case either doppelganger got any ideas about trying to approach him in his moment of weakness. “Just a headache. It’ll pass.”

And it did, or at least died down to a more tolerable level, though the process could have gone much faster in Nine’s apparently inconsequential opinion. When he could think clearly again he opened his eyes, only to see the same two uncomfortably-identical foxes still in the same spot where he’d left them, looking at him with twin looks of concern and… and sympathy, and still there even though they had no reason to be.

Nine scowled, trying to ignore the more confusing emotions in favor of one more familiar to him: annoyance. Why hadn’t these people left yet? They had promised Sonic they’d leave him alone, yet here they all were still invading his space, and the two he least wanted to interact with seemed inexplicably invested in doing so.

Sails cleared his throat awkwardly before speaking again, keeping his voice soft as if trying to be… considerate of Nine’s headache or something.

“No one told us to stay with ye. Th’ fight’s over, we know that. It’s just that… well…” He shrugged awkwardly. “You’re… and we’re…” He gestured somewhat helplessly between himself and Mangey as though that would articulate his thoughts better, smiling apologetically.

Nine didn’t smile back. “We’re what?” he asked coldly.

Sails wilted slightly at his tone.

“I mean, there’s differences, t’ be sure,” he continued hesitantly, “but... well, we all three of us got the tails” – he gave his own a demonstrative helicopter twirl – “an’ the brains, an’–”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Nine muttered, looking pointedly at Mangey, who had chosen that moment to sit on his haunches and scratch at his ear with a hind leg. “Not sure your little pet there knows how to use a toilet, let alone basic mechanics.” He allowed himself a small smirk. “Unless you mean he knows some hacking, but I think that’d be more the hairball variety than computer, you know?”

For the first time since they’d started talking, Sails’ expression turned angry. He scowled and took a protective step in front of the jungle fox, glaring at Nine.

“Mangey figured out your fancy-pants gizmos just as quick as me,” he snapped. “Fresh out o’ the jungle and an’ ne’er seen any contraption more complicated ‘n a vine bridge before, an’ he was pickin’ out the right bits from yer bots to build the bomb what took out a whole platoon of ‘em like he’d been at it all his life. An’ then ‘twere a two-man job pilotin’ that Catfish bot o’ yers, and I’m fair sure yer metal Birdies could tell ye how the both of us handled that… if’n they weren’t piles o’ scrap at the moment.”

Taken slightly aback by the vehemence in the pirate’s retort, Nine averted his eyes… and caught Mangey’s downturned gaze instead.

The upset frown and, well, puppy eyes the other fox was giving him made Nine instantly certain of two things: he had understood the insult, and was hurt by it.

A sickening guilt suddenly bloomed in his chest and began clogging his throat, suffocating him, as he stared at that pitiful face.

His face. The face Nine must have had in the early days, before he’d hardened himself, before he’d built his defenses; when the older foxes had thrown names before graduating to throwing punches, a variety of epithets but all telling him essentially the same thing: your existence is wrong, you are less than a person so it’s okay for us to hurt you. And him just curling up and waiting for it to stop and wishing he knew what he could do to be acceptable to them, but not wishing for someone to come to his defense (like Sails was right now for Mangey) (like Sonic had for Tails but not him) because even then that notion had been so outside the realm of possibility that it had never entered his mind…

He wrenched his eyes away from Mangey’s face. He felt like he was going to throw up. Is that what I’ve let myself become now?

To distract himself, he latched onto the last thing Sails had said. “How… how did you even manage to take over the Grim Big?” His voice trembled despite his efforts to sound composed and unaffected. “There should have been built-in safeguards against anyone but me taking control.”

Sails shrugged, scowl lightening only slightly. “Aye, that there were, but really ‘twere a simple matter o’ rewirin’ the computin’ base with an improvised Prism-energy redirector. All yer bots seemed to work on th’ same system, so while ye thought we were out o’ the action we took a closer look at th’ broken ones t’ figure ‘ow they worked, then scavenged enough scrap t’ put together a rudiment’ry adapter that could block out yer programmin’ long ‘nough for us to hack into th’ system an’ take control – an’ with no hairballs involved from either of us,” he finished with a smirk, crossing his arms defiantly.

It took a moment for Nine to realize his mouth was hanging open dumbly, and he quickly clamped it shut.

“Oh. Uh, yeah, I guess… that would do it. Um… that’s impressive. I guess. Of you. Both. I mean, I wouldn’t have expected…” He felt his face heating up, and cut off before he could embarrass himself more with his stammering. “That, well, that was smart. What I would’ve done in that position.”

He hesitantly made himself meet Mangey’s eyes again. The other fox met his gaze, and his upset expression turned into a small, almost bashful smile. Nine had to clamp down on a sudden urge to return it. The nausea in his throat faded slightly.

Another awkward silence filled the space, and Nine looked back at the rest of Sonic’s rescue party. He noted in particular the bat and echidna from New Yolk – Rebel and Knucks, he remembered vaguely – in the middle of what looked like an intense conversation. At something Rebel said, Knucks shot a look at Nine; his scarred face melted into a scowl as he met Nine’s eyes, before turning back to grumble something to his companion.

“But anyway, as I were sayin’…” Sails’ voice – less testy now – drew Nine’s attention back. “Ever since we first saw t’other in No-Place, I’ve… well, I’ve had ye on me mind. Wonderin’ what yer life be like, if it be anythin’ like me own…”

Truth be told, Nine had also been thinking about these foxes since their initial brief encounters, speeding through the Shatterspaces with Sonic on the way to Ghost Hill (where one other fox had also butted into his headspace). Putting together what their existence implied about his own; what had happened when the Prism had shattered; the reality of what the Shatterspaces were truly hitting him for the first time…

“...An’ then I met Mangey here in the egg-heads’ city, an’ we started gettin’ on, an’, well… Didn’t have much time ‘fore things got all…” He started awkwardly fiddling his thumbs, not meeting Nine’s eyes. “An’ then everyone was focused on goin’ after Sonic, an’ people’s blood was runnin’ a bit hot for a while there, but… now that things’ve calmed down a bit, I thought that maybe…”

He bit his lip nervously.

“Well, t’others all have three of ‘em.”

Mangey, who had been looking back and forth between Sails and Nine, now flicked his gaze over to the crowd gathered outside. Nine followed his eyes, and noted that he seemed focused specifically on the three Roses. The pink hedgehogs were huddled close together, the pirate’s hands on each of her duplicates’ shoulders. Presently, she was making some remark that had the bird-tamer laughing out loud and even brought a small smile to Rusty Rose’s normally impassive face.

Nine looked back at his own duplicates, the anger he had felt at their presence not moments earlier now fading in place of confusion and… something else, something he didn’t want to couldn’t give a name to, but seemed to be coming from the same place as the steady ache in his chest that he had woken up to and, unlike his headache, hadn’t been fading at all since.

When he managed to make himself respond to Sails, he couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice. “I literally tried to kill both of you just like an hour ago.” Another wave of guilt crashed over him, and he fought to keep his expression neutral.

Tried to kill them, yeah, and thought he had succeeded – even if the bomb had been their own, he had specifically targeted them with the robot assault that had forced them to use it at such close range – and had felt nothing but spiteful satisfaction at the notion of their deaths hurting Sonic.

Or at least, told himself that was all he felt. Anything else, any shock or sickening horror at the notion that he was responsible for ending the lives of two actual real living people, had been easily drowned out at the time with yet another channeling of Prism energy to send his brain into a manic power high.

After all, there was only one him.

(He’d yelled at Sonic that he was just as real as Tails, but he’d looked at these two and from the start seen only feeble, insulting copies of himself.)

“Aye, ‘tis a fact,” Sails said with a careless shrug, seemingly oblivious to Nine’s inner turmoil, “but we’re no worse for wear now!” He shot Nine a devil-may-care grin, putting his hands on his hips and puffing out his fluffy chest. “Ain’t th’ first time I’ve cheated Davy Jones’ locker, an’ I’m fair sure it won’t be th’ last! S’no reason to be holdin’ a grudge.”

Nine had been fairly dismissive, back on Ghost Hill, in his first impression of “Tails”; the friend Sonic had shared so many happy adventures with may have shared his face, but his bearing was too sunny, his eyes too bright, his whole demeanor just too… obviously cared-for, to have anything in common with him outside the superficial. Granted, all Nine had seen was a faded reflection of Tails repeating just one moment over and over, but even just that had made it clear that having had Sonic in his life from early on had made all the difference.

Except... here was this other two-tailed fox, also his own person separate from Tails and with no blue hedgehog in his past, but clearly nowhere near as beaten-down and cynical as Nine.

“How are you so… perky?” he finally asked, shaking his head. “You didn’t have a Sonic to… to protect you on your world either, right?”

Sails blinked, looking surprised at the question.

“Well, no… but I had me crew.” A small, nostalgic smile came to his face as he spoke. “They found me when I was just a kit, all alone on an island, strugglin’ just to find food every day without it bein’ stolen by the birds... They took me in, gave me a place, a home. A name.” There was something more vulnerable in the fox’s voice at that last admission than Nine had heard from him to this point. “Adventure on the high seas, an’ a share o’ the salvage to build me contraptions. Wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for them. Prob’ly wouldn’t be here today.”

He frowned, his ears drooping a bit as he looked at Nine. “Ye… ye never had a crew, aye?”

Nine swallowed a lump in his throat, not meeting the other fox’s eyes, and just shook his head.

“Well… maybe that can change now!” Sails exclaimed, his ears popping up again hopefully. He gestured over to the pink hedgehog trio still chatting happily outside. “Look at the Roses! Th’ worlds they all come from couldn’t be more different, an’ I heard ‘em callin’ each other ‘sisters’ earlier.” He put a companionable arm around Mangey’s shoulders. “Why, I’ve hardly known me mate Mangey here for more’n a day, but we’re already thick as thieves!”

Mangey yowled a happy affirmative, leaning against his double’s side affectionately.

“What d’ya say, Nine? The three of us… could we be friends?”

Mangey nodded in agreement, bright blue eyes wide and earnest… then to Nine’s shock, opened his mouth and echoed:

“Fuh-rends.”

His voice was rough and growly, clearly not used to forming words, but that he made the effort to use it at all implied a deep sincerity that Nine couldn’t convince himself was faked.

A snide remark informing them exactly what they could do with their “friendship” immediately jumped to the tip of Nine’s tongue… but when he opened his mouth, it didn’t come out. Maybe it was Sonic’s influence getting to him once again, maybe he was just still so exhausted that he didn’t have the energy to keep being hostile, but all that he could manage was a tired sigh, his shoulders slumping despondently.

He hadn’t been able to handle this kind of openness from Sonic when he had offered it so freely; how could this new scenario possibly come to any better end?

“I-I’m… I’m not really good at… friends.”

“Yeah, no kiddin’,” a harsh voice scoffed.

Nine’s neck smarted as he whipped his head to face the voice, an adrenaline spike instinctively snapping his tails into a threatening defensive configuration as his heart suddenly burst into frenzied hammering in his chest.

The speaker – Knucks – was already raising his fists in response, glaring at Nine from behind them. Nine tried to glare back, but between his ragged, agitated breathing and his limbs trembling from a combination of frayed nerves and exhaustion he doubted he managed to look very intimidating.

“Woah, hey, hey, it’s okay!” Sails exclaimed, waving his hands and moving forward as though to interject himself between the fox and echidna. “Nine, ye be fine, they just want t’ talk to ye!”

At the same time a hand was placed on Knucks’ shoulder, and Nine became aware of the other person who had entered the space without him noticing: the bat resistance fighter, Rebel. She gave the echidna a pointed look, and he scowled but lowered his fists, though clearly with great reluctance, and not taking his eyes off Nine.

“Sails is right,” she said, stepping forward to stand slightly in front of Knucks. Behind her, Nine could see that the rest of the crowd was now watching them, though they remained outside. Dread was still in the same place Nine had last seen him, looking completely unperturbed.

His cheek throbbed even worse as he continued staring down the echidna, and he was more aware than ever of the coppery taste on his tongue. For a second he was back on the top of his tower, cowering behind his forcefield as punch after punch tried to batter through to get at him, which had itself sent him back even further to a time where he had no forcefield to protect him, trying in vain to shield himself from blows and words that just wouldn’t stop–

He shook his head sharply, actually welcoming the throbbing pain as a distraction. Trying to reclaim some semblance of dignity, he forced his tails to relax and focused on getting his breathing under control. He looked up and met Rebel’s eyes, already resigning himself to whatever this group had decided his fate would be.

“And here it comes. Without Sonic around to make everyone play nice, all that talk about leaving each other alone goes out the window.” He tried to sound droll and unconcerned, but all the eyes on him were just reinforcing how utterly helpless he was now, and his false bravado faded almost as soon as he could summon it. Dropping his gaze down to the floor, he muttered gloomily, “Just do whatever you want to me. I don’t care anymore.”

“Nine, that ain’t what…” Sails began, his ears drooping sadly.

“We promised Sonic we would leave you be, and I for one intend to stick to that,” Rebel spoke up, her voice calm and level. “Unless you plan to break your side of the deal?”

Nine looked back up at the bat. She was looking down at him with her arms crossed but her expression didn’t appear actively hostile. He sighed and shook his head.

“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t anymore.” He looked over at the still-empty platform that had once held the Paradox Prism. A harsh fact that he had been trying not to think about since he woke up shoved its way to the forefront of his mind. “The Prism is gone; without it, I can’t reshape the Grim. It’s a clean slate, but now that’s all it’ll ever be.” He sighed morosely. “Probably for the best. No one should be trusted with that kind of power. It messes with your head. Makes you think you’re invincible. You’ve got so much power you can do whatever you want, so you should do whatever you want. And if you cause any harm it doesn’t matter ‘cause you can just fix it later once you have just a little more power…”

Nine almost didn’t realize he had been muttering all that out loud until out of the corner of his eye he noted Dread’s ears suddenly perk up.

“That’s actually something we wanted to discuss with you,” Rebel said, pulling Nine’s wandering thoughts back to the present. “When we all made that agreement with Sonic, it was under the assumption that you would continue to have access to the stabilized Prism. Without it… will you even be able to survive here?”

“I…” He shrugged, trying to look unconcerned. “I have some food and water stored. Once I go through that… I’ll figure something else out.”

Except, there wasn’t really anything else to figure, was there? The Grim only reacted to Prism energy. Without the Prism itself to harvest from, he wouldn’t be able to alter it to create supplies and sustenance.

He found his eyes migrating from the empty platform to the palm trees, the empty hammock strung up between them – out of the Grim’s endless potential, the first things he had chosen to make.

What did it matter if he was doomed to waste away here once he ran out of supplies? Even if he could figure out a new way without the Prism to turn this place into a paradise, it would still be empty.

“Well. Several of us have been talking, and taking the changed situation into account, we would like to propose an alternative.”

“For the record, this is a very generous interpretation of the word ‘like’ for some of us,” Knucks added.

Rebel elbowed him sharply. Knucks rolled his eyes, but stepped back to give her the floor.

“It’s honestly hard to believe that the Chaos Council is finally defeated for good – or at least, they’ll be out of the picture for a long while. Thanks for your help with that, by the way; seeing them float away into the void was immensely satisfying.”

The bat’s lips briefly twitched up in a small smirk as though replaying the scene in her head.

“But now we have the responsibility to take charge of our own world and heal what they broke. Once we return, we plan to start working on dismantling however much of the city we can manage safely at this point, and restore the natural environment. And… much as I hate to admit it, the Chaos Council’s tech would probably be useful for a lot of that, if we can repurpose it. Plus it would be prudent to build some sort of defense in case they ever do return. And while I’m sure we’ll be able to work it out on our own… the work would go a lot faster with someone who already understands that tech.”

Nine hardened his expression and squared his shoulders in preparation for what he could already see was coming.

“We have Rusty Rose, of course, and she’s already agreed to help however she can, but she told us that her expertise is more focused on weapons and vehicle operation and her personal system maintenance. She still has a better background than the rest of us, so it’ll help, but…” here Rebel gave Nine a significant look, “we could also really use the help of someone with a broader understanding of the city’s tech and the creativity to adapt it for new purposes.”

Nine scoffed tiredly. “There it is. Thanks, but no thanks. I had enough of my help being used when I was captured by the Chaos Council.”

“We ain’t the Chaos Council!” Knucks barked angrily. “We’re tryin’ to make a better world for everyone, not just ourselves! Though I guess that ain’t a concept that’s really on your radar.” He crossed his arms heatedly and turned to Rebel. “You’re wastin’ your breath. I told ya. He ain’t gonna help.”

Rebel held up a hand to cut Knucks off, still keeping her calm demeanor.

“The rebellion is over,” she went on. “It’s not going to be easy moving past all the paranoia and mistrust that we needed to survive in that environment… but we need to try. Or else, what was the point? The whole goal was to create a better world, one where all that wouldn’t be necessary.”

She sighed, a bit of exhaustion showing in her eyes. “Maybe as part of that… we can accept having misjudged you a bit.”

Nine’s eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“We followed Sonic here to help him because we assumed that you weren’t intending to keep your word after he gave himself up,” she continued. “Now… I’m thinking we may have been wrong about that.”

“Not that ya gave us any reason to buy that you wouldn’t betray us again,” Knucks grumbled. Then his scowl softened ever so slightly. “But Sonic… well, even after everything, he never seemed to doubt that you were on the level. And, well, he sometimes had good instincts.”

‘Even after everything you've done, everything we've been through – together, against each other – you're still my friend, Nine.’

Nine’s breath hitched, and he had to bite his lip against the something he felt building in his chest.

“I never wanted to harm your worlds,” he said, voice thick and shaky despite his efforts. “I swear. I-I know that I did, and I don’t… I don’t have any excuse for that. But I was certain that I could fix all the damage I caused, and I intended to. Even when… even when I was still angry at Sonic. My only goal was always just to build my own world here, and for everyone else to leave it alone.”

He swallowed thickly, avoiding their gazes.

Rebel nodded. “And honestly, after everything that’s happened… I am inclined to believe you now.”

“Don’t get us wrong, I ain’t gonna hold back if ya do turn out to be pullin’ somethin’ on us, but…” The echidna shook his head and sighed. “Whatever. I’m tired of fightin’ for now. And I never thought I’d say that.”

Rebel tried to meet Nine’s eyes again, but he stared resolutely at the floor.

“Look,” she spoke up again. “We don’t know you very well. But we are from the same world, the same home, we all lost the same things thanks to the Chaos Council. And if we-”

“Well, you’re right about not knowing me at least,” Nine interrupted sharply. A tiny spark of anger had fizzled into existence at the bat’s words, and he latched onto it, nurturing it into a tiny candle flame and slowly fanning it larger and larger; and he knew, he knew he shouldn’t because anger was what had gotten him to where he was now, but anger at least overwhelmed the something festering underneath. “I hated the Chaos Council as much as anyone, but I didn’t lose anything thanks to them. Can’t lose what you never had in the first place.”

Neither Rebel or Knucks seemed to know how to respond to that. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Sails and Mangey both looking at him with concern. He chose to let that fuel the flame in his chest even more.

“I used the Paradox Prism to restore New Yolk alongside the other Shatterspaces. I fixed what I broke, and a lot of what the Chaos Council broke too. Consider that my contribution to the rebuilding effort. But there’s nothing you could offer me that would make me go back there. It’s your home, you take care of it. I’m not letting anyone use me for their own ends anymore.”

That actually seemed to get Rebel mad. She grit her teeth and took a deep breath before speaking in a clipped tone, “We are not trying to use you, and we’re not going to force you to come with us if you’re so insistent on staying here on your own–”

‘We’re all on our own.’

“–but Sonic made a sacrifice to save all of us, you included, and somehow I don’t think the spirit of the agreement he specifically insisted we make with you involved leaving you to starve and waste away here. If that’s what you really want, though, fine. We’ll head back home without you and–”

The flame exploded.

“That city, that world, never gave me anything but pain! Why do you think I did this to myself?!” He flared out his cybernetic tails; Knucks flinched and raised his fists defensively, but Nine ignored him. “Why do you think I lived underground, away from everyone?! No one in that world ever wanted me. They made that abundantly clear for as far back as I can remember. I may have been born on that world, but it was never home.”

And then just like that the flame had completely burned itself out, leaving Nine with nothing but a horrible cold emptiness just as vast and pointless as the Grim. Standing was suddenly too difficult; he stumbled back against one of his palm trees, and slid down to sit so he could hide his face behind his knees, his tails falling limp on the floor.

“I-I don’t h-have a home. I don’t have anything.” He hated himself for how his voice hitched and shook, but he just couldn’t muster any energy to fight it. “S-sonic’s gone, the Grim is empty. I have nothing. Just like before, only now it’s my own s-stupid fault.”

He pressed his forehead against his knees, trying desperately to resist the pressure he could feel building behind his eyes, although part of him wondered what the point was – it wasn’t like these people could possibly think any less of him.

No one spoke, which only made Nine’s stomach start twisting into knots waiting for some sort of fallout from his outburst. After a moment he chanced a brief glance at the bat and echidna, and was vaguely surprised to see neither looked angry or harsh like he had expected; Rebel was frowning uncertainly at him, a trace of sympathy in her turquoise eyes that just made Nine feel even more pitiful, while Knucks was awkwardly averting his gaze, fiddling with his glove spikes.

Over to the side, there was sudden movement as Mangey, eyes wide and glossy like he was close to tears himself, took a few steps toward Nine, only stopping as Sails’ mechanical arm-tail settled on his shoulder, the pirate giving him a small head-shake, even as he bit his lower lip like he was struggling not to come over himself and try to administer some comfort that Nine knew he wouldn’t deserve.

He looked back at his knees, but could still feel everyone’s eyes on him – Sails and Mangey, Rebel and Knucks, the entire crowd of rebels and pirates and jungle-dwellers.

He wished they would all stop staring at him, wished he could just disappear, wished someone would say something so he didn’t have to listen to his own pathetic ragged breathing…

He wished Sonic were here.

A gruff throat-clearing cut through the lull.

“If I may.”

Nine’s ears twitched in surprise at the sound of the echidna pirate speaking up up for the first time, his tone light but clearly conveying that he intended to speak regardless of any objections. He looked up to see Dread strolling casually to stand beside his resistance fighter counterpart.

“What do you want now?” Knucks grouched, his scowl reasserting itself.

Dread shot a patronizing smirk at the other echidna.

“As entertainin’ as all this jabber be, I find meself itchin’ to get back to No-Place at some point in, oh, the next decade. So in the interest of speedin’ this up…” His flippant tone changed to something more serious. “I may have some smidgen of understandin’ what th’ lad is goin’ through right now, is all.”

Oh do you? Nine wanted to spit out, but he didn’t trust himself to speak right now without losing the fight to hold back tears, so he just forced a glower that he was sure wasn’t fooling anyone.

Dread stepped forward so he was a bit in front of Rebel and Knucks but keeping a polite distance from Nine. Briefly, he glanced over at Sails, his expression unreadable; the fox frowned uncertainly, but gave his ex-captain a hesitant nod. Then the pirate turned to look down at Nine, and spoke.

“Ye’ve lost it. The one thing in the whole wretched universe ye thought mattered. That if ye just managed to get yer paws on it… ye’d finally be satisfied. Finally be happy.”

His words were blunt, but spoken with a depth of emotion that despite himself Nine was certain they were born of intense personal experience.

“An’ now that it’s slipped from yer grasp… ye feel there’s nothin�� more what matters. Nothin’ t’ strive for, nothin’ t’ do but mope yer days away dreamin’ of what ye could’ve had.”

Dread looked away from Nine for a moment, staring off at something only he could see, before breathing a wistful sigh and meeting Nine’s eyes again.

“I got no business tellin’ ye what course t’ set for yerself now. I still be figurin’ that out for meself. All I’ll say, lad, is that whatever ye choose… don’t define yerself by what ye lost. Find somethin’ what matters to ye, and make a new goal t’ strive for. Or ye’ll just find yerself forever chasin’ somethin’ – even if only in yer dreams – that was never goin’ t’ give ye what ye truly wanted, an’ makin’ the same bloody mistakes each time ye grasp for it.”

With that, the pirate backed off and returned to his previous spot, leaning against the crystal pillar wall as if he’d never moved.

Leaving Nine to sift through a confusing swirl of emotions that had replaced the emptiness but still gave him no relief.

Disdain and anger were the easiest for him to parse out at first, naturally.

What could that idiot pirate know? What Nine truly wanted? He wanted the Grim. He wanted to be left alone, in his own perfect world. He wanted… he wanted...

He felt the hard bark of the palm tree against his back.

‘So… what else did we do?’

“I used t’ have nothin’.”

Nine looked over at Sails, his vision a bit watery despite his efforts. He quickly wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm as the other fox spoke.

“Then I had the crew, but… I didn’t quite know how I fit in with ‘em, at first.” His voice was soft and hesitant, like he was forcing into words something he usually kept very private. “Weren’t certain I was truly a crewmate, or just a… a temp’rary cabin boy they’d be ready t’ abandon again if’n I became more trouble ‘n I was worth. Ev’ry mistake I made, in those days, I thought were gonna be th’ final straw for ‘em, an’ they’d leave me at some village or maroon me on an island or just tell me t’ fly off an’ ne’er come back, an’ I’d… I’d be back were I started, alone.”

He swallowed thickly, then continued. “Took some time, an’ getting’ t’ know ‘em, an’… lettin’ ‘em get t’ know me. Which were really th’ scariest part. Didn’t happen all at once… but now, all these years an’ adventures an’ troubles later, I know they be where I belong.”

He turned to scan the crowd outside, passing in turn from the bat, cat and hedgehog in pirate garb, who each smiled fondly at him (the giant cat in particular was unabashedly wiping at his clearly watering eyes); even Dread gave Sails a small nod of acknowledgment when the fox caught his eye.

Mangey pressed his face against Sails’ side, before catching Nine’s gaze with wide, imploring eyes. He started looking pointedly back and forth between Nine and his fellow jungle-dwellers in the crowd. Nine suddenly found himself wondering what the wild-child’s story was, what he was trying to convey with those big blue puppy eyes that he couldn’t with words.

Disdain and anger faded to the background noise in his head, the wall that he had actively cultivated them into over long merciless years crumbling apart, and Nine finally forced himself to examine the less-familiar, uncomfortable feelings that just one evening with an aggravating blue hedgehog had managed to bring out in him.

What would Sonic do…?

Tch. Sonic would recklessly jump into things without any thought. He’d take it upon himself to help everyone, and in the end make a huge mess of everything.

...And then, once he realized he had done that… he would try to make amends however he could.

And he would always put his trust in other people.

Even if past experience might have made that trust difficult to give.

What Nine truly wanted…

Sonic was gone, but maybe… maybe what he had offered to Nine was still something he could find for himself.

But if it was… it definitely wouldn’t be here in the Grim.

Slowly, Nine pushed himself to his feet, setting his tails back in their relaxed non-combat configuration. He stepped forward to stand in front of the resistance leaders, forcing himself to look up and meet Rebel’s eyes; and, taking a deep breath that only shuddered a little bit, he spoke.

“...Back in New Yolk, before all this, I had a lab in the underground. I’m sure the Council ransacked it when they tracked down the shard I took, so I can’t really live there anymore, but it was… my sanctuary. A safe haven. If I do this, if I agree to come with you and help restore that world… I get a place of my own. I’ll put it together myself, you don’t need to do anything, but I get a place, outside of the city, away from everyone. And it is off. Limits. Whether I’m there or not, no one else is, unless I give explicit permission.”

He swallowed, trying to ease the scratchiness in his throat. “Deal?”

Rebel shared a quick look with Knucks, who frowned but shrugged in answer to her unspoken question.

“That sounds reasonable. Deal.” She held out her hand. Nine stared at it silently for a moment before reaching out his own, and they shook.

“Don’t make me regret this,” Nine stated. He tried to make his voice sound stern, but was pretty sure he just came across as tired.

“Same,” Rebel responded in a similar tone.

Releasing Nine’s hand, she straightened up and turned to look out over the rest of the eclectic collection of beings.

“Now with that business over with, let’s start working on coordinating getting us all back to where we’re supposed to be. Black Rose, how’s the Kraken looking?”

The hedgehog pirate stepped forward from the crowd, grimacing. “She jus’ barely limped us back here on one engine an’ a prayer. An’ it’s been slow-goin’ tryin’ t’ patch her back up. Ain’t sure if she’s got enough left in ‘er to make it to one world, let alone three.”

“Um… I could… take a look at it?” Nine offered hesitantly. Everyone turned to stare at him, and he again had to clamp down on the instinct to bare his tails. “A-and we can probably salvage some parts from the Council’s mothership, enough to at least get it working long enough to get everyone to where they need to be.”

“Aye, and the Catfish bot still be flyin’,” Sails proclaimed. He moved to stand just behind Nine’s shoulder, Mangey still at his side; Nine flinched slightly but actually found their proximity not as distressing as before. “It ain’t exactly speedy, but if we can take the engines for the Kraken that could boost it enough t’ keep it goin’ the whole trip.”

Rebel nodded decisively. “Alright, sounds like we have a plan.” She raised her voice to speak authoritatively to the crowd. “Everyone, let’s get out there and help them gather the parts we’ll need. Rusty Rose, do you think you can help with that?”

“Affirmative,” came the monotone reply. The cyborg hedgehog gestured out to the debris-strewn plane. “Come, sisters.”

As the gaggle of beings began to disperse, Nine found his eyes drawn from the hedgehog trio still sticking together like glue, to the jungle echidna running up to walk beside Knucks, to the other two bats fluttering over to join Rebel as she took flight.

He looked to his side, to Sails and Mangey. The other foxes shot him identical soft smiles, and while Nine couldn’t quite muster up one of his own, he found that the something in his chest was somehow no longer as painful as before; that the presence of these two people who maybe understood more than he had given them credit for was… comforting.

But noticing that, he also realized what was nagging at him, and a heavy knot formed in the pit of his stomach.

“Wait!” he called out, running over to the hole in the wall where everyone was exiting, Sails and Mangey on his heels. “There’s, there’s one more thing…”

Everyone stopped in their tracks and turned to look at Nine again; ears pinned back against his head, he swallowed nervously and tried to stand tall.

“I-I should tell you, just… to make sure you’re all on the same page. Without the Prism or any stored energy, there’s no way to create the portals the Chaos Council used to travel between worlds. Once you return to your respective worlds… you won’t be able to leave.”

Everyone’s faces fell as they absorbed this information. The three Roses looked particularly devastated as they exchanged crestfallen looks between themselves (Nine wouldn’t have ever guessed the cyborg was capable of such expressiveness). The jungle echidna rubbed his arm and bit his lip, looking at Knucks with dismay; the other echidna placed a hand on his shoulder, his own face determinedly stoic. Mangey whimpered and sidled up next to Sails, who put a comforting arm around the other fox’s shoulders.

“I… suppose that’s the way it has to be,” Rebel said, glancing around at her fellow bats. “Those portals were what started the collapse on all the worlds; even if we still had the Prism it would be too dangerous to start it up again.”

There were reluctant nods from among the crowd.

“Well,” Thorn Rose pronounced, her face set, “then it has been an honor to know you, sisters.”

“Oi, we ain’t splittin’ up yet!” Black Rose exclaimed, managing a grin despite everything. She slapped Thorn on the shoulder. “Save the heartfelt goodbyes for th’ actual goodbye!”

The mood slightly dampened, the crowd nevertheless began splitting into groups to begin scavenging.

As Nine prepared to follow, he stumbled as his foot slipped on one of the myriad broken crystal shards scattered around the opening in his fortress wall. Frowning, he kicked the shard away, and prepared to take flight over to the Kraken to see what he could do about it…

...But the glimmering of the crystal as it skidded along the floor of the same substance, bopping against other shards before coming to a stop, caught his eye.

Something niggled at the back of his mind, the same feeling he got when he had his ideas for inventions; arresting his take-off, he knelt down to examine the shards more closely, ignoring the remaining traces of his headache as he wracked his brain trying to get a lead on what had drawn his attention.

Something to do with the physical crystalline structure of the Grim? He’d done an analysis when he’d first arrived, of course, but then he’d been thoroughly distracted by the applications of Prism energy and had subsequently pushed any data not pertaining to that to the back of his mind...

Wait. What if…?

He was belatedly aware of Sails and Mangey beside him. Mind racing as he ran equations and factored in variables, he grabbed two shards then straightened and turned to his fellow foxes.

Both wore confused frowns as they looked at him, but as Nine worked the problem out further and further in his head and started arriving at some very promising conclusions, he found himself somehow feeling lighter than he had since waking up.

For the first time, he looked into those two pairs of identical blue eyes and a small but genuine smile came to his face.

“Here.” He handed each a shard. “Take these. Bring them with you to your worlds, keep them intact.”

Mangey curiously turned his shard over in his hands a few times, sniffed at it a bit… then gave it a good lick.

Nine felt his right eye twitch, but he gritted his teeth and pushed down the urge to snap at him and snatch the shard back.

If he was really going to attempt this whole friends thing, he supposed, he should start getting in some practice at not judging the other fox’s scientific process.

“What’re ye thinkin’?” Sails asked, staring inquisitively at his own crystal.

Nine reached down and picked up a third crystal for himself, then looked past his two counterparts out to the pitch black sky above, and the shimmering, far-off Shatterspace gateways floating through it like planets. The light green radiance of the farthest gateway seemed to shine the brightest to Nine’s eyes – a faint beacon in the dark to guide him on this new path.

“I have a theory. Don’t tell anyone yet, it’s nothing definite. But maybe… the Grim can still be useful after all.”

---

~ Several months later ~

Even before Knucks had noted where the light show was coming from, he knew it had something to do with Nine.

Normally he would have taken some time to appreciate a stroll through the countryside outside the city boundaries. Just spend a few moments taking in the soft green of the grass regrowing over the rolling hills, kneel down to look at the tree saplings slowly but surely pushing their way up into a world that would welcome and nurture them now, feel the sun on his face shining down from a sky no longer dreary red with smog but a shade of blue that he had almost forgotten. He would revel in the sweetness of breathing air not heavy with pollutants and the smell of ozone and slag, and just the simple joy of being able to see the horizon unobstructed by a skyline of ugly, pointless buildings.

He may have had to get used to the city life during the days of rebellion, just out of necessity, but Knucks had been hatched and raised in the untamed wilderness, and with said wilderness finally making a comeback, he was never going to take it for granted.

But right now he was an echidna on a mission, and that mission involved a certain arrogant antisocial fox brat, and the searing flash of light that had all of a sudden burst into existence over his house not twenty minutes ago.

A beam of light had suddenly crackled into the sky off in the distance, but loud and large enough to draw the entire city’s attention, and probably most of the folks who had moved out to settle in the countryside as well. For an entire minute it had remained as a pillar reaching up into the heavens, swirling with an admittedly rather beautiful rainbow of colors, then had faded away as inexplicably as it had appeared.

There had been some panic as civilians wondered what it could have been, but Rebel had managed to mostly calm people down, especially when she put Knucks on the case to investigate. They had shared a significant look at that, because they were both aware of a fact that the general citizenry were not.

Namely, that there was only one person who lived around the area where the light had appeared to be coming from.

And so Knucks stomped his way past the sapling forest, leapt from a large rock to give himself some height to glide from, swiftly making his way toward where the hilly grasslands met the beach, and soon enough had arrived at the entrance to the fox’s house.

Well, it was really more of a bunker than anything. The fox had claimed one of Dr. Don’t’s hidden underground labs close to the former city’s outer boundary and repurposed it. That part of the city had been the first to be deconstructed – the work going faster through the use of reprogrammed Chaos Council bots – and as the city boundary retracted further and further, Nine had soon attained the private sanctum away from the city that he had been promised.

With nature slowly reclaiming the area – aided in no small part by the seeding and terraforming machines Nine had developed – the entrance (at least, the one Knucks and Rebel had been made privy to; they were both fairly certain the fox had multiple other entrances and exits he kept to himself) was difficult to spot unless you were right in front of it. Built under an unremarkable grassy hill and looking out over the shifting sand dunes, nothing about it really drew the eye...

Save for one prominent landmark that seemed oddly inconsistent with the fox’s clearly-stated desire for people to stay away.

Two palm trees, with a homey-looking hammock hung between them, planted just a little ways off from the entrance.

The fox hardly ever left the place – or at least, was not often seen doing so. The rare times he emerged, to gather food and materials or discuss plans and issues with Rebel and the rest of the reconstruction council, there was some… animosity from the general populace. Many of them had seen Nine’s giant image in the sky, taunting Sonic to save them all as the world turned sideways, and few had been present at the final confrontation in the Grim. Rebel had so far managed to spin their arrangement with Nine as the fox’s “community service” to anyone who started making noise about locking him up or… anything further. So far there hadn’t been much more than grumbling and distrustful glares, but the decidedly unfriendly atmosphere clearly didn’t give the fox much incentive to come out of his hole any more than necessary.

Knucks frowned thinking about that. He was far from Nine’s biggest fan, but some of the folks passing judgment on the fox were… well, ‘unreasonable’ was probably a polite way of putting it.

Especially the ones who obliquely implied that Nine’s past actions were somehow related to his… unique physical traits.

Finding himself wanting to punch a face in on behalf of the fox kid during that one particularly heated council meeting had definitely been a new and unexpected experience.

(Ugh, why couldn’t this fox just be a complete unrepentant bastard like the Chaos Council? Feeling sympathy for someone who had once callously abandoned him and his teammates to die, and later almost destroyed everything he held dear, was not something this echidna was built for.)

Though, it was a big city, and there were some who were willing to give the kid a chance. There had been one instance where a little rabbit girl and her mother had hesitantly come up to Nine and thanked him for all he was doing to help restore the world, and even given him some home-cooked food as a gift.

The look on the big bad aloof super-genius fox boy’s face as his big bad aloof super-genius brain apparently short-circuited and he stammered out an awkward “You’re...welcome?” had been priceless.

Hey, Knucks wasn’t supposed to fight the jerk anymore, he had to take what he could get.

But who knew, maybe that was about to change. Maybe the lights from Nine’s home had come from some superweapon he was building, and the situation could just be nice and straightforward and solvable through punching.

With that happy (if, admittedly, unlikely) thought, Knucks began banging loudly on the metal door.

“Hey, Nine! We all saw the fancy light show, what’re ya up to in there?! Open up!”

His yelling was interrupted by a life-size holographic image of the brat in question suddenly vwip-ing into existence in front of the entrance.

The flickering semi-transparent fox looked down at him – the hologram floated in the air so that its head was about a foot above Knucks’, which the echidna was certain had been done deliberately to spite him – and put on a lazy smile.

“Always a pleasure to have you stop by for a visit, Knucks.” He spoke in the bored, mildly patronizing tone that never failed to get Knucks’ hackles up. “As it seems you’ve forgotten some of the details of our arrangement – understandable, as they involve several multi-syllable words – I’ll remind you of the parts relevant to the current situation–”

“Just shut up and let me in, fox! You got some things to explain!”

“–and provide you with aid regarding the environmental restoration, and in exchange, my personal space shall be respected–”

“Okay, ignorin’ me, fine, whatever, you’re only delayin’ the inevitable, brat.”

“–without my permission. Now, with the understanding that issues requiring my technological expertise will not always conveniently come up when I am outside my home, I have invented a radical new piece of technology to facilitate communication in such an event. You may have noticed, next to the door, a simple-looking square-shaped panel, but it is in fact so much more. When only a mild amount of pressure is applied to it, you see, it causes a musical tone to sound within my dwelling, thus politely alerting me to any visitors without any unnecessary banging or shouting.”

“Alright, alright, I get it–”

“Or, to put all that in layman’s terms…”

The hologram suddenly leaned forward directly into Knucks’ face, glowering darkly down at him.

“Ring. The doorbell. First.”

It straightened and resumed its casual tone. “Now, shall we try this again?”

Another vwip, and the image vanished.

Knucks growled, taking several deep breaths as he debated the pros and cons of just punching down the fox’s door.

Glowering for the benefit of the hidden cameras he was certain were showing Nine his every move, he reached one fist to the blue panel, moving exaggeratedly slowly. With his entire fist, he pushed it inwards and held it for several seconds longer than necessary, then finally released it. A muffled musical tone sounded from behind the door.

Knucks quietly seethed as he counted the seconds, certain that the fox was taking his sweet time opening the door just to annoy him. Finally, the metal panel slid to the side, revealing Nine standing in front of him, hands clasped nonchalantly behind his back, all nine tails swishing casually behind him, and looking up at him with a lazy smirk that Knucks desperately hoped he would have an opportunity to wipe off by the end of this interaction.

“There, now was that so hard?”

“Can it, brat.” He stomped past the threshold into the bunker proper. “What was with the light show? I know it didn’t have nothin’ to do with the world repairs. You up to somethin’ out here? Some schemin’?”

Truthfully, as aggravated as he was right now, the accusation wasn’t quite as serious as it might have been months ago. Knucks was still far, far from ever calling the fox boy a friend, but “ally” had slowly but surely become slightly less begrudging. There had been no signs over the past months of the fox going back on his word, and with how much faster the restoration efforts had been going thanks to his help, Knucks had to admit that Rebel had made a good call. He wasn’t to the point of letting his guard down around Nine… but he could see maybe getting there someday.

(Plus... there had been the whole uncomfortable revelation that the kid was not, as Knucks had originally pegged him from his overall demeanor, just a rather short teenager, but in fact not yet even past single digits.

(He still hadn’t worked out how he felt about… certain actions he had taken during the Grim battle in light of this information.)

The fox boy in question just shrugged at Knucks’ accusation.

“Welp, I guess you got me. I’m actually enacting my evil plan to betray you all again and eventually crush every world under my heel.”

“Ha ha. Look, ya didn’t warn anyone about any experiments you were doin’, so ya can’t blame us for–”

“Relax, Knucklehead. It’s–”

“Don’t call me that!”

“It’s nothing dangerous.” The smirk on his face softened, into what Knucks would almost be tempted to call a genuine smile. “I just... invited a few friends over for a brainstorming session.”

“‘Friends?’” Since when do you have friends?, he barely managed to keep from blurting out. (And Rebel said he couldn’t be diplomatic.) “Who-”

“Ahoy! City Dread!”

Knucks looked around with a start. The voice had come from another hologram – one that he at first mistook for Nine again, and briefly wondered if the fox was experimenting with creating a horde of holographic duplicates, before spotting a few more… pirate-y details that made his eyes widen in recognition.

“Wait… that’s…”

Another holographic fox bounded into view on all fours and drew his attention with a wave, this one dressed in leafy attire and with a semi-feral look to him. Both were full-color and life-sized, only their transparency and the slight crackle in the pirate’s voice betraying what they were.

“Wait… are they actually…”

“Here?” Nine finished for him. “Well, not yet, but this is actual real-time audio-visual communication. We’re still in the early testing stages, but if this continues to hold, it looks like we’ve finally cracked it.”

There was an understated pride in his voice that Knucks didn’t think he’d ever heard from the fox before.

Shaking himself out of his shock, Knucks belatedly noticed two small beams of light extending from each fox’s form and leading to a mechanical contraption over in a corner. Knucks’ first thought was that it looked like some sort of high-tech chimney more than anything, with a portion of it extending up through the ceiling – probably connected to some hidden antenna or something that had been the source of the light pillar, he now suspected. A circular opening in the center contained a shimmering cylindrical crystal shard floating in some sort of force field. It was from this shard that the beams of light were projecting.

“The ‘light show’ you saw was a side effect of the energy necessary to boost the signal through the Shatterspace gateways,” Nine continued explaining. “We’ve been testing it on smaller scales, but this is the first time it was large enough to be noticeable. Hopefully we’ll be able to fix that in the future.”

“Sorry ‘bout that, by the way” Sails chirped. “We be sailin’ uncharted waters with this here tech, it ain’t always easy to predict what the effects’ll look like. I be on an island right now ‘cause th’ first time I tested this on my end th’ flashes ended up attractin’ a glowin’ sea leviathan from the depths what almost capsized us!” He gave a little self-deprecating chuckle. “Cap’n Rose an’ I both agreed that maybe I should do me experiments from a greater distance movin’ forward.”

“Wait, all of you’ve been workin’ on this?” Knucks asked incredulously. The three foxes nodded. “How’d you… I mean, if this whole thing is new, how’d ya even manage to work all this out between you three?”

“Not easily,” Nine admitted. “It took over a month to even establish reliable two-way auditory communication. But now that we’ve worked through those problems it should be easier to coordinate our efforts going forward.”

Knucks nodded, stepping around the other two foxes (he supposed he could have walked through them, but that just seemed kind of rude) to scrutinize more closely the contraption that was projecting their images. Nothing about any of this looked sinister, but Knucks had never been the type to take such things for granted.

“So, ya say you’ve been workin’ on this for a while?”

Nine nodded. “Whenever I’ve had free time, for the past couple months. And before you say anything,” he added, rolling his eyes, “this project is entirely irrelevant to the restoration efforts so I was under no obligation to disclose it.”

Knucks frowned. “I thought you said we wouldn’t be able to communicate between worlds without the Paradox Prism.”

If Nine heard the suspicion in his tone, he didn’t acknowledge it. “I thought we couldn’t. And we can’t, really, at least not with methods utilizing the Prism. But before we all left the Grim, I… had an idea for a potential alternative.”

He gestured at the crystal in the heart of his machine. “The Grim’s physical structure is… well, I won’t bore you with the details, but essentially it’s one giant crystal with a strong elemental plasticity. Even when parts of it are separated from the whole, they still share a morphic resonance with each other and the entirety of the Grim itself – even, as we’ve confirmed over the past months, when transported to completely separate worlds. And it turns out it’s not only Prism-energy they react to.”

Knucks raised his eyebrows as Nine paced around, gesticulating excitedly with both his hands and tails as he spoke. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the fox brat like this, so eagerly showing off how his tech worked – heck, he didn’t even sound like he was deliberately trying to patronize Knucks by “dumbing it down”, which Knucks honestly would have fully anticipated.

“With these physical pieces of the Grim sharing the same energy signature, we figured out a way of using the Grim itself as a sort of ‘signal tower’ to project communications through. The biggest hurdle was honestly figuring out what energy to project with, since most forms physically can’t penetrate the Shatterspace gateways without an open portal.”

He stopped pacing and stood beside the two other foxes, nodding slightly toward the jungle-dweller.

“Mangey here had the breakthrough that allowed us to get to this point. Thanks to your counterpart on his world, actually.”

Knucks started, the image of another red echidna popping into his head, smaller and malnourished and with wild eyes constantly darting around, but still very much like him in so many ways.

“Wait, you talked with Gnarly?”

He hadn’t had much time with the jungle echidna, but after his interactions with Dread it had been an immense relief to encounter a version of himself whose nature didn’t utterly offend him to his very core. During their time sheltering in the Yolk together Gnarly had awkwardly gravitated towards him, and they’d shared words; from what Knucks gleaned from Gnarly’s stammered stories, the kid (he didn’t actually know if Gnarly was younger than him, but he just gave off that vibe) had never known any other echidnas on his world, which had… hit uncomfortably close.

Knucks had quickly found himself feeling rather protective of the other echidna (especially with their “allies” in the Chaos Council making snide remarks about his “unsophisticated” origin and mocking his skittishness). Gnarly was a good kid; a little off, yeah, but with a good heart, and loyal to his friends and allies (unlike certain pirates Knucks could name).

Plus, just… talking with a fellow echidna.

He had largely resigned himself to the notion that it wouldn’t be possible for them to see each other again.

“Not directly,” Nine answered. “Mangey’s been our go-between.”

“I thought Mangey didn’t talk.”

Nine shrugged.

“There are ways to communicate aside from words. Mangey knows how things work, even if he can’t always articulate it.”

The wild-child fox ducked his head bashfully and waved a hand as if to say “aw, shucks.”

“Anyway, apparently with the Paradox Prism stable again, Gnarly’s been picking up on some previously unknown form of ambient energy that he’s sensitive to, and Mangey was able to devise a means of utilizing it with the Grim shards. It’s taken a while – this energy is, well, chaotic and hard to pin down to make it work for us – but combining it with these” – he gestured again to the floating crystal – “we’re able to utilize it to produce similar effects to the Shatterspace portals.”

Huh. Knucks wasn’t certain what that was about – if it was an echidna thing, it was nothing he’d ever felt. But thinking about Gnarly brought up another thing that was bothering him.

“And did ya consider that some of us might wanna know that you were workin’ on a way we could talk with our friends in the other worlds again?”

And apparently Knucks was just going to keep having novel experiences today, because Nine bowed his head and actually looked genuinely contrite.

“I… I wasn’t one hundred percent certain whether this would even pan out. I didn’t want to give people false hope until we had something definite to show.” He settled his face and looked up to meet Knucks’ eyes again. “There’s still things the three of us need to work on right now while we’ve got this communication going, but I’ll come out to the city later and explain everything to Rebel and Rusty.”

Knucks shrugged, uncomfortable with the kid being so… agreeable. “I mean, I’m gonna be tellin’ ‘em anyway, but, yeah, that’d be appreciated. They’ll want the details from you, at least.”

Nine nodded, then turned back to look at his machine, his expression turning pensive.

“But anyway, once we can fine-tune this process and make sure it won’t cause any degradation like the Prism-energy portals did – it shouldn’t, since it’s not actually using Prism-energy, but we still want to be safe – we think we can probably eventually crack actual physical transportation between our worlds.”

“That be one of our two long goals,” Sails said in aside to Knucks.

Knucks frowned. “And what’s the other?”

The three foxes all shared a meaningful look between themselves.

“Finding a way to communicate with Green Hill.”

Knucks’ eyes widened. For a second he was back on the Grim, a washed-out hedgehog leaning against his shoulder for support, his seemingly endless vitality drained through his sacrifice to save them all…

“Oh.”

“Aye, this only worked ‘cause we each got a shard of the Grim to be actin’ as a connective point between worlds,” Sails said. “We been battin’ around a few ideas, but… well, even if’n we get a signal through, someone on t’other side needs to be there to pick it up.”

Nine again got a pensive look on his face.

“Yeah, that’s the major issue. Best case scenario, though, it’s possible – maybe even likely – that our counterpart in Green Hill will have the tech to pick up our signal if we can manage to force it through their gateway. And if Sonic…” He broke off, grimacing, and took a deep breath before continuing. “If Sonic’s okay, and if he’s told his friends there about us, then… Tails might be actively investigating the Shatterspace himself, which would make it easier. I mean, if he’s anything like us…”

The other two nodded in agreement.

Knucks… felt very much on the wrong foot here. None of this was what he had expected when he’d set out to this place. He couldn’t make himself feel upset about it though. Frankly, he was finding himself imagining the future with the foxes’ new tech – the chance to see Gnarly again; heck, even the prospect of meeting up with Dread too, if only because he’d been itching for a good fight…

And, of course, finally getting confirmation whether or not Sonic had made it home.

“You really think you can pull all this off?” he asked quietly.

“Well…” Nine turned to look at his fellow foxes.

He smiled then, and it wasn’t the insufferable smirk that Knucks had become used to seeing on the fox’s face when he wasn’t scowling. It was something hesitant, but soft and genuine and… happy.

He turned back to Knucks, Sails and Mangey on either side, identical blue eyes shining and each matching his smile.

“With the power of our three brains together, there’s nothing we can’t do.”

#sonic prime #nine the fox #tails nine #nine sonic prime #mangey the fox #mangey tails #sails the fox #sails tails #renegade knucks #rebel rouge #knuckles the dread #gnarly knuckles #nine mangey sails #fanfic #my fanfics

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