#the bleeding at least but the bitterness is still there. still infecting my words and curving my spine around the injury | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tteokdoroki · 3 years

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waves that hurt | k.bakugou + i.midoriya.

♡ pairing: katsuki bakugou x gn!reader x izuku midoriya.

♡ word count: 3.04K

♡ rating: everyone.

♡ genre: pro hero!au, hurt, angst and comfort.

♡ summary: dark days mean dark waves that crash across your mind, intrusive and mean the waves pull you under— but they are the helping hands that pull you up and let you breathe.

♡ warning(s): please read ! heavy tw for depression, intrusive thoughts and self depreciation, self doubt and low self-worth. this fic is written mostly from personal experiences and may not be accurate to how everyone feels! mentions of therapy.

♡ author’s note(s): this is my contribution to @doinmybesthere ‘s mental health awareness collab, this is kinda personal to me and something i experienced recently!! i hope it can provide some comfort to anyone out there, please don’t forget to check out everyone else’s works and i hope you’re all safe ‘n well <3

♡ masterlist | requests | kofi

“kacchan, it’s much worse this time, i really think you should come home early tonight.”

deku whispers into the phone, his marred hands rub slow and soothing circles into your back from over the duvet— you can feel his warmth, light and airy through it but he feels and sounds much further away. a million miles across a dark ocean that trickles through your thoughts, intrusive and mean, keeping you under and away from clear air.

you wouldn’t want to pull him into this, bother him with the way you drown in dark thoughts— so you pull away from your boyfriend and tuck yourself away into the sheets.

izuku doesn’t retract his hand even as you pull away, listening to katsuki grunt orders down the phone— make sure yn’s eaten, make sure yn’s had water. basic things you should be able to do on your own but can’t, paralysed by the anxiety and depression that clamps down on you like a vice and refuses to let you up so you can just breathe. you want to breathe and not feel like the world is crashing down on you, to have a second to yourself where everything seems like it’s okay.

brushing fingers over the nape of your neck, toying with the coils of your baby hairs, your boyfriend speaks, only gently. “baby,” says quietly, his weight causing the bed to dip. “katsuki will be home soon, do you want to come with me to let him in?” you shrug, a sick feeling twisting in your gut. you see the black tendrils and waves in the back of your mind, bringing forth a new batch of ugly words that force you down. are you really that much of a burden these days that katsuki has to call it quits on work for you? “how are you feeling?”

you don’t know, you don’t know how to tell him that every thought you have hurts and there’s a pain in your chest with every breath you take. “i don’t know, it’s just...bad izu…” you want to explain how you feel deep inside, but the words are trapped like balls of tar in your throat— fear that if you say something he’ll walk away.

“you don’t have to say anything, don’t force yourself to…” he speaks with a soft voice, cotton to your ears in an attempt to soothe you. you can just about feel the clean air flowing through your lungs at the sound— it tells you he loves you, no matter what and you almost believe it before sinking back under. “let’s get you some water okay? wouldn’t want kacchan scolding us would we?”

the joke hangs in the murky and heavy air for a few seconds before you muster a small smile— your green haired boyfriend lets out a tiny sigh of relief and pressed a kiss into your hairline, the affection simmers under your skin and briefly brings light to your dark mind as izuku starts leading you to the kitchen.

you’re curled up in izuku’s lap when the front door pops open with a click— signifying your other boyfriend had arrived home. you flinch, hiding yourself in the blankets keeping you warm and locking away the dark thoughts from the eyes of your lovers.

part of you hated them seeing you this way, that’s why you forced yourself to keep everything away from them— but they knew, they always did and always came to your rescue. you didn’t want them to feel like they had to look after you when the days were bad and draining and your mind took hold of everything that you felt. you didn’t need the weight of your own problems on the shoulders of two pro heroes who had enough to deal with.

in the end, you would destroy them like you did with yourself.

you can hear katsuki shedding his gear by the door, feeling his intense and heated presence flood the room and barely penetrate the barrier you created for yourself even while you lay in izuku’s arms. for as long as you’d known the two— even from back in your U.A days, bakugou had hated self-pity, of course in recent years he’d cooled down a little and spoke less on the actions of others but even still, you weren’t sure if you could handle him looking down on you for looking down on yourself and for feeling this way.

the blanket is suddenly lifted from your head, momentarily blinding you with the overwhelming light that is your boyfriend, katsuki bakugou. a twinkle of concern lines his ruby eyes and you can see traces of his charcoal eyeliner that he usually smudges underneath his mask— he’s so beautiful but you’re afraid of the twitches of worry, afraid that he’s mad at you for being the way you are.

“hey honey,” bakugou hums, crouching to your level to cup your cheeks, stress bleeding from his body when you nuzzle into him.

izuku gives you a squeeze, an encouraging one and you nod. “hi,” is all you can muster, afraid of blurting the intrusive words that crackle across your brain.

katsuki sits back on his haunches, looking between you and his boyfriend before he attempts to kick off his shoes. the room is full of a thick, ugly quietness that you know you’re responsible for— they don’t have to say anything, you know that it’s you. because when you’re like this it’s hard for bakugou and midoriya to talk, afraid that they’ll say something to set you off and you afraid that they’ll leave if they knew how you really felt. how trapped and alone you felt inside, how the twisted darkness added tones to your vibes and dragged you down with every step that you took.

they don’t need to say it because it flows from your body like a rushing river and drowns them, fills their lungs and it’s your fault for infecting them with your own bitter taste of life.

“have you eaten?” the blonde of the two boys asks, looking you dead in the eye. you want to answer, but again the viscous back from earlier starts to flood through your body. you try to take care of yourself of these days where you feel it the hardest, but it’s difficult to move and to breathe— and the drive to complete even the simplest of tasks is barely ever there.

you move to speak, caught up in the thick smog of your own brain when izuku gives your body a squeeze and shakes his head, the forest of his hair brushing against your cheek. “you’ve had water, right?” izuku has no problem answering for you. “but nothing to eat,” he whispers, keeping his voice low as if to hide his worry from you— it’s light in his tone but tremors throughout the number one’s body. you feel sick for making him feel that way.

katsuki’s gaze shifts back from his boyfriend to you, his expression unreadable because he knows how you get if they worry too much about you. you’re thankful, partly for that at least, his blank face prevents your mind from reading too deep into things and blaming yourself for things out of your own control.

“‘m makin’ your favourite for dinner. you’ll eat it, no questions asked.” the explosive pro hero states firmly, rising from his place crouched down by your side, obviously not before thumbing over your cheeks to wipe away evidence of your dried tears. “gonna run you a bath too, damn nerd better get you upstairs and ready by the time it’s done.” deku’s chest rumbles with a light hearted chuckle beneath you, lifting the heavy weight of the air within the room— bakugou had always loved brashly, with a fiery intensity that hardly left room for the answer ‘no’, and while izuku was more tame, they balanced one another out in a way that felt more like a warm hug than a battle. they grounded you, in the best of ways.

true to his disgruntled words, your blonde headed boyfriend runs you a hot bath. you don’t miss the addition of lavender oil to the perfectly warm water, the baking soda which you’re sure he only knew to add because his mother had said it would remove the demon spawn toxins in his body. izuku is the one to help you strip, holds your hands as you kick off gross comfort clothes and folds them away, after pressing kisses to your groggy face and chin.

it’s almost funny to see the two biggest and beefiest pro heroes sit on your bathroom floor crossed legged and beside the tub— both of them taking up the majority of the room. you know for a fact that no one would believe the sight unless they saw it, but they’re there. both of them, izuku midoriya and bakugou katsuki are with you encompassed in the silence while you wash away the ugly words that plague your mind and fill the pores of your skin.

they’re still there.

even as sweet lavender water moves in soft waves over your bare body, while black ink moves in the same way across your brain— tattooing self-depreciating thoughts into every inch. you’re not worth their time, they say, you’re wasting it. because how could their precious time be put to good use if you’re taking it up, they could be saving people but instead your boyfriends are here, drowning in your own darkness.

they’re still fucking here.

when they could be out there saving the people who needed it, who were suffering out there in the world outside of your home.

and the suds against your body, the warm water sloshing over your thighs isn’t enough to get rid of the burning sensation of vile phrases printing themselves against your body and clouding every thought that you think. toxic, mean and nasty things you can’t scrub away— none of it is enough to make you feel like you deserve bakugou tenderly lathering you up with the rose scented soap his mother had sent you for christmas or the sips of cool water midoriya brings to your lips in order to prevent you from overheating in the steam of the bathroom.

deku catches the painful twist in your face, pausing his movements to study you. “whaddya need?” you need it to stop, to find something to replace the pain and doubts that fill you.

“water, hotter,” you croak quietly, tears building up in the base of your throat as katsuki catches on and flicks the tap for a stream of hot water to fill the tub. “please,”

they tell you to let them know when to stop if the heat gets too much, but the scalding water burns away any reminders of the self loathing you feel across every inch of your mind, your body and your soul. it stings at the darkness in a way that’s painfully soothing and maybe if you sink under— it could stop hurting completely. if you could slide deeper into the water, would the waves of darkness not crash so hard?

and then the damn breaks, like a tsunami the guilt and anguish you feel crashes over your body and takes control, leaving you fighting for oxygen in the form of your happiness.

everything that you’d been holding back flows freely in salty tears from tired eyes, scorching a path down the apples of your cheeks and mingling with the contents of the tub below. your boys, they don’t notice at first, how you cry and curl in on yourself until you think the world won’t notice you anymore but then just as they always do, they’re pulling you into their warmth and bubble of light— freeing you from black intrusive tendrils even if it means they have to crawl into the tub and wade their through the ocean you’ve made to set yourselves apart.

“don’t—!” you heave with an uneven voice, signs of you falling apart evident in every way. bakugou and deku pull away from you slowly, with dripping shirts and worry written across freckled faces and red eyes. they’re scared for you, hate seeing you force your feelings down and away from them. “please don’t touch me—you’ll—“

the water in the bathtub sloshes from where you retract from their touch, backing yourself up against the wall and away from your boys. “we’ll what?” izuku presses but only gently, keeping you afloat, stopping you from sinking and bakugou stays put in his place, letting the latter talk you down.

you shake your head, trying to think of the right words but it’s hard to, with the crashing waves heavy against your ears. how do you tell your lovers that everything hurts, to think and to feel, to live day by day. you don’t want to bother them with and an extra stress to their busy lives. but you can’t keep it in any longer, bursting at the seams. “you’ll drown. i-if i touch you, i’ll pull you under, you’ll drown with me and you won’t be able to breathe and all those horrible things that i think about will burn in your lungs until you give up fighting like me,” your tears and hiccups interrupt your words, but they listen. bakugou and deku, they listen and they stay.

“yn—“

“because if you do, then all that i feel will be a burden to you— i’ll break in ways that can’t be fixed and you’ll be forced to pick up the pieces and i’ll just be a burden,” you continue, not even pausing to take a breath while you continue to cry. “if you stay to pick up the pieces, you’ll be taken away from people who need you, who are worth saving, and can be helped and—“

you can’t recount how many nights, similar to this in which you wondered why and how two pro heroes could want and love you, why they dealt with your down days that sometimes outnumbered the ups— even if they’d shown you how much they cared, you couldn’t help but feel guilty as if your sadness took up their time to save someone else.

“you can be helped, yn. you don’t have to go what you’re going through alone, you’re worth the time and the effort of helping, no one deserves to suffer,” the green haired of your two boyfriends cuts through the tail ends of your words, still keeping distance until he knows it’s safe to touch you again. there is no look of condescending pity on his face, no sign to show you’ve pulled him into the dark of your mind. it’s just izuku, trying to help you pull through.

you look to katsuki hesitantly, he hasn’t said a word. “but i don’t want to be seen as...as weak, or to worry you because i can’t get out of my own head—“

“y’not fuckin’ weak, we’d never think that of you. we see you try to hide your pain, pretend things don’t get to you when they do. but fuckin’ handlin’ things on ya own can make y’stronger than any two heroes combined,” a look of anger flashes across his features, finer with age and tired with work. but bakugou isn’t angry with you, but with himself for leading you to believe that you were an extra weight on his shoulders. both of their shoulders. “yer not gonna get rid of us or scare us away, we love ya, we’re here for ya ‘n if it’s help that you need or think yer not worthy of, we’ll find some. it’s okay t’ask for help.”

maybe it’s hearing it from someone else, that your pain and your depression is valid, that you’re not an extra weight on the people you love that allows you to come up from a tar-like ocean for fresh air in your lungs, for the waves to calm and the storm raging in your mind to soothe. maybe it’s the two of your boyfriends being there for you despite the fear that you’d scare them away with not being okay that washes away some of the awful things you think.

you know that their support won’t make things go away over night, that it will take time for you to heal but for now you can keep your head above the water just long enough to breathe.

“can i touch you now? is it okay?” deku asks, feeling less distant from you than at the start of the day, but as your body shakes with the last of your tears all you manage is a nod before the number one hero is pulling you into his chest from the tub and the number two is wrapping a towel and his arms around you.

you sit sandwiched between the two, they keep you at the surface— holding you tight while you let out what you’ve been holding back. “we can get some help if y’want it, the doctors...therapy might be nerve wrackin’...scary even, but it can help and we’ll be there every single step of the fuckin’ way,” katsuki reasures you with pets to your head, rocking you back and forth on your bathroom floor, steam clinging to the air that you can finally breathe.

izuku nods along in agreement, pressing kisses to your wet hairline. “we’ll be here. you won’t be alone.”

the murkiness of the water in your mind starts to clear, but only just— their warmth starts to push through the clouds like sunshine brushing against your skin. a light to the dark that's plagued your every waking moment, the waves no longer crash and destroy but instead lap comfortingly at your painful thoughts and tame them just enough for you to have a moment of clarity.

you don’t have to be alone or millions of miles away, you deserve the hands of your loved ones that offer you help instead of pushing them away. the process of healing and things like therapy or meds will be hard sometimes, but katsuki and izuku will be here by your side, to help you manage days where darkness rolls in waves that hurt and help you breathe once again.

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yesimwriting · 3 years

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The Needs of Pain

A/n as promised,,, here is my gift to you bc I finished ap gov today :))

The darkling x heartrender!reader story based on the whole ‘no one but me can hurt you’ thing :))

Warnings: sexual innuendos,, attempts to sexualize pain if you squint, kinda lemon-y

I kinda want to write a smutty part 2 let’s see lol

Summary: after a training injury, Kirigan reveals how he views the dynamic of your relationship and figures out how to best help you work through the pian

In an odd way, the most painful part of my injury had been the wound on my pride, not my shoulder. Though the pain that begins beneath my collarbone and continues down my left shoulder is not exactly pleasant. I can’t bring myself to pity myself too much as I stare at the extent of my burns. There’s a war going on. People die, people lose loved ones, I have to tolerate pain for an hour or two before a healer can be sent to be.

I told Genya I’d be fine in the medical wing, but she insisted that I wait for a healer to be sent to me. The people here look up to me, if news of my injury got out, especially considering it’s a training wound, morale would take a blow we can’t currently afford. Genya had looked relatively sympathetic when she told me that many healers were occupied considering how difficult training had been and I had told her I could bear the weight.

Now, in my room, staring at the basin full of water, I’m starting to regret my desire to be self sacrificing. I dip the towel in the water, squeezing out the excess before daring to dab the fabric on the outer edge of the wound. The feeling is fire against my skin all over again. An instinctual curse leaves me as I drop the towel on the counter that surrounds the basin.

Arthur hadn’t meant it. I can still hear the frantic apologies tumbling from his full lips. He should have been more focused on the task at hand, he should have never stopped to look at me, at the way I could control so many living things at once. In some odd sense, his distraction had been a compliment. Many of the girls here would sell anything to have Arthur’s attention, even if it resulted in such a careless mistake.

I grimace, picking up the towel and preparing to start again. I should at least clean it before the healers have to deal with both a physical injury and an infection. The sound of my door flying open and then shutting angrily is enough of a distraction for me to accidentally dab the towel against my skin too harshly. I curse again, turning my head towards the bathroom door. Did Genya exaggerate the severity of my wound? Are the healers that desperate to get to me?

I turn on my toes, towel forgotten by the basen full of water as I approach the door that connects my room with the bathroom. “I’m--” Words meant to calm a frantic healer stick to the back of my throat as soon as I register all the black in the room. General Kirigan. Great. He no doubt heard about my injury after prying it from Genya and now he’s here to scold me for the childishness of it all. To be injured because a boy and I just couldn’t help ‘make eyes at each other’. All he does is insult my refusal to become bitter just because I was born possessing power.

“You’re what?” His words are a different level of callous, darker than the shadows he creates with the will of his mind alone. “An idiot that let herself be sent back to her room instead of demanding to see a healer?”

That’s an odd thing for him to focus his anger on. At least it’s not fully directed at me. On instinct, I half turn, attempting to hide my injury from his piercing eyes. My instinct tells me he should never see me so mortal. “Genya recommended it,” my words are determined yet calm, “It’s such a small injury it isn’t worth risking everyone’s morale. A healer will come here when one is available.”

His face tightens in what must be some kind of disgusted disbelief. “Foolish girl--have you no instinct for preservation?”

Every decision I’ve made since being injured made sense before he spoke to me. The fierceness of his voice leaves my face warmer than it was a moment ago and reminds me of the stem of my dislike for him. General Kirigan speaks and I am left a clumsy child. “Some things are more important than one’s self.” I expect he’ll turn that into something else to mock or belittle about me. “And it’s not a grave injury it’s barely--”

The distance between us seemed so great less than a second ago, but he’s closed it so quickly, grabbing my left wrist and extending my arm forward so that I can’t hide anything from him. “You’re burned.” There’s the slightest bit of surprise coloring his words along with something else I can’t interpret. “How did you get burned?”

Kirigan doesn’t know. My stomach knots, anticipating embarrassment. “Training incident--I was standing too close to an Inferni.”

His grip on my arm tightens. I grimace as he pulls me forward with no regard for my injury. “Who?” The voracious way he says the word leaves my thoughts trembling. He is a void of darkness, starving for a victim to snuff the light out of.

When my thoughts settle, I cannot bring myself to tell him the truth. “I didn’t see, I was distracted by the burning.” I exhale slowly, desperate to escape the flames behind his eyes the way I could not escape the fire of earlier. “It doesn’t matter, I’ve been injured worse in training.” His hold on my arm doesn’t loosen, I glance down at his hand, his firm grip on me somehow worse than the burn. “You’ve injured me worse in training.”

“I may push you, exhaust you, and leave you mad--but I have never done anything that comes close to--that!” The last of his words carry themselves louder than the rest.

If the skin of my shoulder wasn’t so sensitive I’d try fighting his tightening grasp. The accusation on my part had been a little much, but it was meant to serve as a reminder that he’s not one to care about my comfort or well being. “Why does it matter?” I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze. “You’ve never cared about any of my injuries before.”

Kirigan releases my arm in a stiff trance, raising his hand to brush his thumb down my cheek. The contact is reminiscent of an extremely different moment. “The first night here you only let a few tears escape you when you were convinced that no one could see them. Do you remember how I turned and wordlessly wiped them away?” His gesture had not been comforting then and it isn’t comforting now. He never wanted to comfort me, he wanted to assert some strange power over me. “I let those tears fall because they were because of me and I knew it was for the best.” I say nothing, letting his thumb ghost tears that will not come. “The moment I discovered you, what you could be, you became mine.”

“I am no one’s.” The reaction is instinctual, a pride my mother instilled in me. My voice is too loud, too brash. “I am my own.”

I brace myself for his anger, but all I receive is the slight relaxation of his lips. “It’s things like that give you so much potential in other ways.” His voice is a jagged rock caressing my skin, not minding the scrapes it leaves behind. “You’re a fair plaything, as well as useful.”

He’s speaking so gently his voice borders on vulnerable. Something in me warms, but I can’t tell why. I know that Kirigan finds joy in my discomfort--why else would he belittle me so often? “The healer will be here soon.”

“Yes,” he makes no move to leave, instead Kirigan grabs my wrist again, forcing me to turn so that he can analyze the extent of my burn, “Which is why I will ask you again…” I try to catch his gaze, but his stone stare is focused on my burned shoulder entirely. “Who did this?”

“I told you.” He can never know. “It was a training accident.”

“And someone is responsible.”

I let out a breath, tired of feeling so incomplete. I just want to be healed and go to sleep. “Why does it matter?” His fingers trail up my arm patiently, my body betrays me by shivering. “Accidents happen, you’ve put me in more risk than--”

“I’ve always intended to break you one way or another,” his voice is more supple than it’s ever been before, “Your goodness is too tempting to not tarnish.” He turns my wrist over easily, ignoring my slight wince. “But if someone else were to do it…” Kirigan trails off, expression tightening in a way I can’t read, “I don’t let others break my play things.”

Some strange resolve in my chest cracks at that. “Kirigan--”

“Who are you protecting?” He moves his free hand, placing it without reservation on my shoulder. “Not telling me will only make it worse.”

Thoughts of Arthur paying for such a small mistake leaves my stomach rolling in guilt. “Make what worse?”

His expression tightens again. I wait for some kind of rebuke. Kirigan’s lips part as if he expects to criticize my naivety, but instead of speaking he turns sharply. He doesn't release his grip on my wrist as he leads me into my bathroom.

“What are you doing?”

Kirigan ignores my surprise, releasing me to pick up the towel I was so quick to abandon. “If you’re too good to take a healer from someone, you should at least avoid infection.”

“I’m not an idiot, I was cleaning it.” The sharpness of my tone is ignored, Kirigan simply places one hand on my forearm to keep me in place. “Wha--”

He brushes his thumb over my pulse gently in an effective attempt to silence me. I part my lips in hopes of protesting, but something odd reflects across his eyes. It must be some trick of the light because his expression seems...hesitant. Maybe even concerned. And then cool fabric is pressed into my burn. I bite my tongue so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t bleed.

“Saints.”

His expression shifts to that of almost amusement. “I think I’d like to hear you curse in a,” he exhales softly, fingertips trailing up my forearm, “Slightly different scenario.”

The shock of such a bold innuendo clears my mind from thoughts of pain. But the most startling thing is that the innuendo isn’t entirely unwanted. In the wake of my surprise, he presses the wet towel into my wound again. I fight against a grimace, but that doesn’t go unnoticed by Kirigan. Instead of mentioning it, his free arm touches my uninjured shoulder. For the first time since he’s come here I’m aware of how improper my attire is. I changed out of my starched kefta and into a silk nightgown in order to leave my shoulder unbothered. Genya had helped me change, bearing all of my grimacing and pained curses.

I should push him off of me. Kirigan can get away with a lot because of his status, but I by no means have to allow something like this. I should not feel shy, I should not be embarrassed. He’s the one that’s out of line. I look up into his eyes, prepared to yell at him for being so out of line. But when I meet his eyes, I see something so un-monstrous I am left breathless. There’s a gentleness to the way he tilts his head downwards, eyes never leaving mine. Is he asking for permission? Permission to--to what? I stay frozen as his lips brush against the unmarred side of my collarbone. His touch is almost enough to make me forget pain ever existed. He pulls away enough that I can feel his breath against the base of my neck. Thoughts I’d never dare speak are banished as the towel presses against my skin again. My face cringes immediately, but he’s quick to press his lips to the base of my neck, lingering kisses melting into my skin.

“I thought you said you were fine.” His chiding is half-hearted, whispered between two brief kisses against my bare ski.

He dabs the towel on the burn again, but before I can think to complain, his lips are against my skin again. This time, his lips part slightly allowing his teeth to graze over my pulse. Kirigan pulls away slightly, expression hardening, “I’m almost sorry about this part.” His words leave him in a whisper as influential as sin.

“What part?” My voice feels foreign in my throat.

Kirigan doesn’t reply, but then I feel the sharpest pain yet. The towel is cleaning the worst of the burn, the ruined patch of skin that will never recover without supernatural intervention. The gasp I let out is that of a bird with shattered wings. A cry forms in the base of my throat, but before it can leave me, Kirigan’s teeth bite into the skin above my pulse. The pained sound is reduced by my shock, twisting in an odd combination of some kind of pained sound and something dangerously close to a moan.

He releases me with one last soft brush of his lips, straightening his back and retracting the towel. “There.” Kirigan drops the towel onto the bathroom counter. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

I can still feel the ghost of his lips, tongue, and teeth against my skin. I understand now. Each kiss had been a way to distract me, to lessen the pain. Something odd swells in my chest as I try to will my eyes to stop watering in pain.

Kirigan presses his lips together, pressing his hand against my cheek again. His thumb brushes the few stray tears that escape me. “Don’t cry,” his tone is pure velvet, “I won’t tolerate tears in your eyes caused by anyone else.” He tilts his head oddly, hand sliding down my cheek before gripping my jaw, “I can provide reason for your tears if you’d like.”

Inhaling deeply, I continue to stare at him. Today has been so sudden. He’s flirted with me through strangely sexual insults and threats before, but never has he been so forward about it.

“I’m fine,” I force my voice to remain clear. He nods once. A soft rap at my door has me turning away from him. “The healer--I shoul--”

“Come in,” he calls, voice clear and leaving no room for argument.

My eyes widen. To be caught with him here could be detrimental for my reputation. Kirigan pulls away, something sharp playing at his features, something almost humorous.

He leaves the bathroom like this is his own room. “Her wound is clean, work quickly.” I walk out of the bathroom in a strange trance. Kirigan’s gaze lands on me as I enter the main part of my room, “I need her at her full strength for what I have planned.”

There’s a heaviness to his words, a weight that tells me he means more than what his words imply. Goosebumps erupt across my skin as I try to banish the thoughts of his mouth against my skin between inflictions of pain, blending together to create the most intense sense of fight or flight I’ve ever experienced.

Kirigan begins to approach the door to my room. “I’ll be checking on her later.”

People that asked to be tagged in this/expressed interest:

@luminous-99 @voyevoda-thejoy @voidmalfoy @i-padfootblack-things @all-art-is-quite-useless @buckverse @mandowh0re @uhanddreag

@we-love-our-bandz

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the-insomniac-emporium · 3 years

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Wounded Love (Lady Dimitrescu/F!Reader)

Fandom: Resident Evil: Village Rating: M for mature. Blood, more blood, heavy language, seriously lots of blood. Literally the bloodiest/most detailed thing I've written. Genre: Super angst with some fluff to ease the pain. We're talking putting honey in your cup of poison to make it taste better. The ending is split, with both a happy and a sad ending. Warnings: Minor surgery (technically?) while the patient is fully awake (that's the reader, btws), blood loss, graphic depiction of a wound and how said wound is taken care of. Possible trigger for self-harm, as the reader is performing part of the surgery themselves. Also brief mention of cannibalism in the bad ending. This may very well be a Dead Dove: Do Not Eat sort of thing. Notes: While I have more medical knowledge than the average person, due to my Girl Scouts training + having a mother as a nurse, I am in no way shape or form a medical professional, and do not suggest that the methods of treatment used in this fic be taken seriously. If you find yourself seriously injured, do not attempt to replicate anything you read here. Only a portion of this is based on a real-ass incident I went through, the rest is based on a dream, and what I experienced was not what you want to do in an emergency.

{Wounded Love}

This was a mistake. Blood stains your leg, your fingers, and bruises start to form all over your exhausted body. And for what? Why had you, a tiny, fragile human, dared to pass through this damned, lycan-infested forest? Because a woman who didn’t even love you asked you to. Now you were going to die, body certain to get left out in the cold or reduced to a pile of gnawed bones. If you had more strength remaining, you might have slammed your hand into the ground in frustration, or screamed until your lungs burned from something other than frost.

But that wouldn’t get you anywhere. Wouldn’t help you get back to the castle, wouldn’t ease the racing of your heart. So you settle for the only thing that might do any good: One quick motion pulls the scarf from your neck, sending a chill down your spine that you promptly ignore. Even with shaky hands and numb fingers, your experience is enough to let you wrap the cloth around your leg, tying the ends in a knot to secure it. The pressure hurts, just not enough for you to prefer bleeding out. A test step reveals that walking is mildly more difficult now.

“I’m going to haunt her,” you muse, under your breath, tears starting to freeze at the corner of your eyes. Still, you are as quietly determined as ever, and so once more you limp down the path. Every time you put weight on your injured leg it protests harder. If not for the snow and ice covering the ground, you might have quickly searched for a walking stick. “What could be so important about this damn package? Couldn’t Doug or whatever-his-fucking-name-is deliver it? Man can practically teleport, and here I am, watching as blood loss and hypothermia race to see who can kill me first.”

Gods were you angry. Why had this happened so soon after you had settled in? Finally you had been comfortable in Castle Dimitrescu, no longer as frightened of the residents, even finding them… charming, in a way. Then the Lady of house called to you for what she claimed to be a simple errand. You had believed her, even when she explained that you would have to leave the relative safety of her home. What a fool you had been.

“What a fool she must be,” you murmur, “to think me safe here. To think I could outlast wolfmen prowling the village outskirts.” Would she even care if she saw you now? Would she be surprised, disappointed? Would she do something to change your fate? There was no reason for her to do so. It didn’t matter how much you had helped her, how much she claimed to appreciate what you did (heavy lifting, repair of clothing, massages). You were as replaceable as any other Maiden there was. And that, that was what made you have a double-take. It came to you in that moment, a thought so painful that you could not deny it was the truth. “She never thought I would survive.”

Bitterness coats your tongue, like blood in your throat, and your brain demands that you destroy your cargo, the very thing that got you sent here in the first place. You almost do it. Feet stopping, arms shrugging the carrying straps off, bloody hands taking hold of it. Tears fall, just two, and hit the package. At that moment your plan changed. This new idea would be far, far more satisfying… as long as you succeeded.

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Spite was one hell of a drug. Enough of it and you could march your warm corpse right back to the castle, fist banging on the front door with everything you had. The path had been shorter than you thought, thankfully, but it had still taken so much out of you. Now you were leaning against the door, sliding down it, unable to support your own weight. Nothing inside the castle stirred. Were they ignoring you? Was Alcina really going to let you die inches from your “home”? Fuck that, you thought.

“Alcina!” You scream, loud as you can, startling the birds in the distant trees. The word echoes around you and rattles inside your ribs. It’s not enough. “Damn it, I am seconds away from dying, get out here now so I can look you in your fucking eyes!” Something tears a little in your throat, turning the last of your words into a hellish screech, leaving you to gasp and croak in the snow. You go to wipe your tear-filled eyes with your hands, only to remember just how much blood they’re covered in.

Sobs overtake you in just a few moments. You’re blinded by tears, deafened by sorrows, and numb from all the cold. In the aching seconds before you black out, you can only barely make out the silhouette of someone rushing to your side…

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The first thing you feel when you wake up is mind searing pain. You try to jolt upwards, only to find a pair of strong, gloved hands holding you down. Someone shouts something, but you can’t make it out, and you feel another hand gently squeeze one of your own. Pained gasps escape your throat one after the other, but whatever is hurting you doesn’t stop. It takes a full minute for you to adjust enough to make sense of where you are. At last, you understand what’s being said.

“-it’s okay, shhh, please, we’re trying to help,” says none other than Lady Dimitrescu herself. She’s the one holding your hand, doing her best not to hurt you with her grip, trying desperately to calm you down. One the other side of you, Cassandra is positioned to hold you down. There’s a tight-lipped scowl on her face, and her brow is furrowed, but she’s not looking at your face, but rather eying somewhere in the opposite direction. Following her gaze, you find her older sister is sitting near your injured leg, and is undeniably the source of some of your pain. In one hand she holds a bottle of alcohol (notably not the wine her family produces), the other holding a wet cloth to your wound. No wonder it stings so much.

“Shit, shit, stop,” you growl, barely getting the words out. But all anyone does is look at you. Alcina’s mouth opens to speak, only for you to cut her off. “I’ve got medical training, for the love of Mother Miranda let me help! How long have I been unconscious?” This time Bela stops, glancing at her mother for direction. The grip on your torso grows looser, with Cassandra evidently heeding your words, and you take the chance to sit up, careful not to move your leg. At this point you realize that there’s a needle of sorts in your arm, attached to a tube, which trails up into a blood bag. It’s clearly been improvised with equipment from the “wine-making” part of the castle.

“Fifteen minutes at most,” a new voice chimes, from somewhere behind you. “I got that cloth you wanted, mother, but something tells me I’m not done fetching things.” Ah, Daniela Dimitrescu. Was the whole family helping you?... Why? As much as you wanted answers, there wasn’t (currently) time for questions. Not when one glance at your leg tells you that some of your flesh is rapidly decomposing. The wound was made only an hour ago, and already it was getting deadlier than you could even process.

“I need a sharp, clean knife, a needle with thread, a glass of water, and someone needs to put a metal tool, sterilized, on the stove, right now,” you said, finding it easier to talk now that no one was cleansing your wound. Without hesitation Daniela dispersed into a cloud of insects, heading towards the kitchen, while Cassandra stood up and moved towards the stairs.

“Guess I’ll get the needle,” she said, sounding rather unenthusiastic.

“What are you planning?” Alcina asks, more concerned than you had ever heard her before. Attempting to reassure her, you manage a small smile before explaining.

“Got scratched and slobbered on by a lycan. Whatever they have, it’s infectious. If I want to save my leg, or at least have a chance at surviving, I have to take measures to reduce the likelihood of an infection,” you say. Now Alcina is slowly stroking her thumb across your hand, eyes narrowed with concern. There’s a look on her face that you can’t quite parse, something she’s not saying. For now you ignore it and continue going over your plan. “The best thing would be to amputate. The tourniquet might have helped prevent the saliva from getting further into my body- and I do mean might- but I can’t keep it on forever. Problem is… I don’t want to lose it. God, I’m terrified of that, and with what we have in the castle I… I’d be more likely to die of shock than not. So, well, forget that idea.

“I’m just going to remove the wound. By making a bigger wound. It’s crazy, I know, but this will kill me if we do nothing. It will probably kill me if we do. The technical term is some shit like ‘de-bride-ing’?... No, debridement, I think. Except normally the poor fucker getting cut open is asleep for the procedure.” By the time you’re done, Lady Dimitrescu is looking at you with horror. Yeah, you had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate the idea. “Look, if this is too much… if it’s not worth saving me, if you’d rather give me a quick death, I understand. If I were-”

“Don’t be foolish, dear. You will not die, not as long as something can be done about it,” Alcina replies, quickly, eager to stop hearing you talk about dying. It’s… strange to hear her sound so confident about saving you, even stranger to realize what she called you. As if reading your thoughts, she shifts in her seat, avoiding your gaze for a moment. Shyness didn’t suit her, and you imagined it was more about her finding the right words. When she speaks, she’s looking right at you again. “I have hesitated to tell you the truth, and now I find the world playing a cruel trick on me, trying to take that which I adore. But I don’t want to aggravate your stress right now. Please, think nothing of what I have said.”

Before you could reply, footsteps reached your ears, and soon enough Daniela returns. In one hand she holds a large pitcher of water. In the other? Several knives, of various sizes, one of which you’re pretty sure you’ve seen Cassandra playing with before. As soon as you see her your face lights up, glad to be able to start the procedure.

“Oh thank fuck- or, I mean, thank you, Lady Daniela,” you stutter, reaching out as she offers you the items. Thankfully Bela had already made room on the table at your side, where she had set the bottle of alcohol down. For a moment you had forgotten that she was there. Had she already known about her mother’s feelings? Based on her lack of reaction, you could only assume that she was well aware. “I’m gonna scream, B-T-dubs. Just, uh, cover your ears?” You offer, already holding your chosen knife (big enough to be effective, small enough to offer precision).

“So… you’re going to do this yourself? Didn’t think you had it in you, red. Try not to cut anything important. Wouldn’t want to have to clean that mess up,” Daniela teases. As soon as she’s finished she has to shift into a swarm, as Bela flat out throws a knife at her. For a moment you freeze, watching as Alcina rises to her full height, staring her eldest daughter down. Behind her, Daniela reforms, clearly using her mother as a shield. “I was just trying to relieve the tension, jeez. It’s like you think she’s already dead.”

“Don’t speak another word!” Alcina snaps, sending a frightening stare towards Daniela. You cough, awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Meanwhile Bela is pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers, clearly tired of dealing with her sister’s sense of humor. “No one will speak a word until this is finished, unless my dear needs something, understood?” Both the girls nod at that, neither feeling a need to risk any further ire.

“I’m just going to start working now,” you awkwardly chime, taking a deep breath before leaning in towards your injured leg. On closer inspection you can see a strange, dark residue in the wound. They’re specks, scattered along the length of it, and they seem more common the closer you look to the gash’s center. Gross, you think. Half curious, half checking for legitimate reasons, you bring your other hand to the cut and gently spread both sides apart. It hurts like hell, and you have to bite down on your lip to stop yourself from screaming. But sure enough, the residue is practically solid at the deepest point of the wound. “Those lycans really should be on leashes.”

Out of the corner of your eye you can see Daniela exchange looks with Bela, but neither of them disobey their mother (yet). Shaking the thought away, you finally get to the brunt of the task at hand. Your hand moves slowly, reluctant to inflict such damage against its own body. As soon as the tip of the knife touches your skin, you start to doubt your ability to do this. It takes looking at Alcina, seeing the way she watches you with equal parts concern and tenderness, to remind you why you’re doing this. Death just wasn’t something you could accept right now; not after what she had said, what she had implied.

The knife is fantastically sharp. Hardly any pressure is needed before your flesh gives away, cells letting go of their neighbors like it was a casual affair. You start at the left side of your injury, digging down a little, trying to only go as deep as you needed to. Tears formed in your eyes but you quickly blinked them away. As the first of many screams leaves your mouth, you turn and twist the knife, cutting to the right, then up. Like scooping the seeds out of a pumpkin. Fresh blood springs from the wound, starting to fill up the crevice. Quickly you discard the skin you removed by tossing it into the same bowl that Bela had put a bloody towel in earlier.

“Yes,” you shudder through gritted teeth, “this hurts so fucking bad. No, I don’t need someone to take over yet.” At this point neither of the present sisters are looking at you, seeming oddly uncomfortable at the sight of you cut up like this. Hadn’t they done worse to your fellow Maidens?... Whatever, the thought couldn’t last long when you still had work to do.

Next you take a fresh, damp cloth and dab at your injury, ignoring how it throbbed beneath your touch. Then you resumed cutting, forced to press the knife deeper in order to remove the spreading residue. If you had been a scientist, this would have been utterly fascinating to observe. Whatever had been in the lycan’s saliva was slowly eating at your flesh, but not outright dissolving it. No, it simply left the skin where it was, but killed and rapidly broke it down. Yes, it would have been fascinating, if not for the fact that there was a chance you wouldn’t be able to outpace the bacteria.

With this in mind you force yourself to hold in your next scream, hoping to make it easier for you to focus. The knife continued to cut, going lower, setting nerves alight as it did. Your vision starts to blur, and for a few seconds you think you’re going to black out. Someone says something you don’t hear, and then suddenly there’s a hand on top of your own. When your vision clears you see Bela is responsible, her grip keeping you from dropping the knife. She doesn’t let go until you give her a clear nod. Even then, she seems reluctant to let you continue.

Around this time is when Cassandra returns. Her footsteps catch your attention (it’s your understanding that carrying objects is much harder in swarm mode), and you spare her a quick glance before getting back to work. A few moments later she’s placing a set of needles and a long spool of thread next to you. Ironically, they’re the same tools that you’ve used to repair and adjust Alcina’s dresses over the past year. Hopefully they work just as well on flesh, you think. Your next thoughts are canceled out by unbelievable pain. More cries leave your lips, and your hand starts shaking. Panic is settling in fast, your movements getting sharper, leading you to make a brash decision: Time to care less about precision and more about speed.

“Distract me, please,” you gasp between grunts. No one responds at first, and you know they need clarification. Speaking is getting harder by the second, but you do your best. “Brain can’t process many stimulants, same time. Just- fuck- trace skin around wound, touch hair, anything.” Somewhere between your semi-broken sentences and screams, Alcina gets the message. She’s moving closer, now, behind you, one arm wrapping around your waist, the other rubbing gentle circles on your undamaged leg. Across from you Daniela is too busy pacing to help, though you can hardly blame her.

“Should I get the metal thing from the stove?” Cassandra asks, silently hoping that Dani hadn’t assumed someone else was going to handle that part. You’re still in too much pain to talk, so you half nod half grunt in response. Not bothering to say anything, the middle child takes off, swarm moving at what might be a new speed record.

As much as your hands are shaking, you still manage to cut away another strip of flesh, tossing it aside with even less care than before. This time Bela wipes the wound for you, practically reading your mind. The moment her hands are completely out of the way you start cutting again, crying out, throat shredded to pieces from all your screaming. Alcina sounds like she might be close to sobbing, but she doesn’t stop her movements, doing her best to distract you just like you had asked. Even Bela helps, now, tracing spots around your injury whenever she knows she won’t be in your way. The effect is minor, in the end, hardly making a dent in how much pain you’re processing.

If you survive this, though, you’re hugging every daughter as tight as you can and showering them with affection… but only after you finish doing the same for their mother.

“You are so brave,” Alcina murmurs next to your ear. It’s even clearer now how close she is to crying, her voice seconds away from cracking. Hearing her like this almost hurts as bad as the initial lycan attack did. “You are so strong. No other mortal could ever be your match. Do you understand, my dear? You are blessed, divine, and I love you so much.”

In any other setting, her words would leave you melting in her arms, radiating affection so strongly that you might as well have been radioactive. Instead, you are unable to respond, or even look her way. All you can do is press the knife to your skin again, showing your own feelings by destroying yourself for her.

The blade is starting to find more resistance, and you’re having to pause more often, spots appearing in your vision. Going faster only makes things worse, your hand threatening to slip. You’re determined to finish this, no matter what, but your need to control the situation is gradually making things worse. Alcina notices this before you do, and acts before you have a chance to protest.

“Bela, the knife,” she says, then tightens her grip on your waist. Your confusion shifts to panic as your arm is carefully, but forcefully, pulled away from your wound. “Can you finish the job?” It takes you a few moments to realize that Alcina isn’t talking to you. No, she’s speaking to her eldest daughter, who doesn’t hesitate to take the knife away from you. It’s so easy for her, between her strength and your weakness. “Don’t struggle. Let us finish this.”

Protests rise from your throat and die in your mouth. Pain flares harder now that Bela isn’t distracting you. Once more your vision goes dark, but this time there’s no pause, no hesitation. You are suffering, horribly, and the Dimitrescu family refuses to make you hurt longer than necessary. It’ll be over soon, you think, not knowing whether you refer to your pain or your life itself.

Something wet drops onto the back of your neck, then darkness overtakes you…

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“Damn those lycans, I should string Heisenberg up myself! They’re his responsibility, after all,” Lady Dimitrescu snarls, trying to ignore the tears in her eyes. Now that you’re unconscious, unable to hear what ails her, she feels free to voice her thoughts. “The damn things should never have come close to the path to the village.”

“What if she strayed from the path? Wouldn’t that explain it?” Bela suggests, even as her hands work to remove what seems to be the last piece of dead/infected flesh from your leg. She hates how the words feel in her mouth, hates suggesting that you of all people might have betrayed her mother’s trust. But it makes sense. After all, this whole mess, with you leaving the castle to retrieve a mysterious package, was all a test to see if you would try to run. It hadn’t been her idea, and Bela admitted to herself that she thought it was unnecessary.

“On the way back? Why would she bother getting the package if she intended to run?” Lady Dimitrescu asks, right as Cassandra returns. The middle child is practically juggling the metal spatula she’s carrying, irritated (not harmed) by the heat it produced. One of her brows perks up when she hears the conversation, but she keeps any thoughts she has to herself.

“Just a thought, mother, I didn’t quite believe it myself,” Bela chimes, after a pause. With that said she holds up her hand with pride, clutching between her fingers the last of the decaying flesh. The way the others react, one might have thought that a miracle had been performed. Daniela clapped her hands together, giggling a little, and finally stopped her pacing. “Don’t celebrate too much, now,” Bela reminded her, taking the spatula from Cassandra as she did. “There’s still plenty to do. It’s a good thing she’s not awake for this part.”

A good thing, indeed. She uses her fingers to spread the remaining skin a little, giving a quick examination, then deciding that she had successfully removed all remaining residue. Keeping her fingers where they were, she pressed the side of the spatula to your skin, putting the most pressure at the center of the wound. Three seconds passed, then she lifted her hand. A pause. She pressed it back into place, keeping a close eye on the affected area. This repeated several times, the gaps being necessary to prevent unintentional damage. Once the wound seemed properly closed she set the spatula aside.

“Is that it?... Did we save her?” Daniela asks, opting to finally sit down in a nearby chair. Something about her word choice makes both of her sisters scoff.

“I could sew it closed, as a precaution, but there’s no way I’d do it the way she had intended. It might be best to just give her time to rest, and see what she thinks when she gets back up,” Bela answers. For a moment her words hang in the air, but eventually Alcina gives a little nod and a hum.

“Very well. I shall carry her to my quarters, where she won’t be disturbed. Please, let one of the Maidens know to bring some food up this evening,” Alcina says, gently taking you into her arms as she does…

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BAD ENDING: It’s been six hours, with no sign of you waking up. Your other wounds had been examined, cleaned, and bandaged. Food had been carefully prepared and brought up to you, though it now remained on the bedside table, untouched. Alcina has gone to call Mother Miranda, intending to speak to her about the growing unrest of the lycans, as Heisenberg hadn’t answered his phone. For the first time since you returned you are alone. It is now, of all times, that you awaken. A gasp sends you into a coughing spree, forcing you into a sitting position. The space around you feels like it's moving, and your vision blurs. Blood spills from your mouth as you finally regain the ability to breathe.

Seconds later your vision clears, but what you see is enough to make you wish you couldn’t. The blood that spilled onto the sheets is a dark red… with even darker spots scattered throughout it. All at once you know what happened: Residue had hidden from you, or gone deeper than your wound, infecting you before you ever stood a chance. Tears threaten to spill from your eyes, but something deeper starts calling to you. Something older. Darker. It drags you to your feet, ignores the pain of your wounds, and sends you out the bedroom door.

Your mind is racing, thoughts never quite clear enough for you to understand. It doesn’t feel like you’re in control of your own movements. Was something else in charge, or were you operating on an infection powered autopilot? Answers weren’t coming, just bloodshed.

“You’re not supposed to be out of bed yet!” A voice calls out to you, making you turn to investigate. On the other end of the hallway is a maiden, one you instantly recognize. You’ve worked with her before, plenty of times, tag-teaming more tasks than you could count. She was like a sister to you. When she sees the blood staining your clothes, she gasps, then moves to support you. “Please, Lady Dimitrescu will be so upset if you-” her words melt into a blood curdling scream. For a moment you don’t understand.

And then you swallow, a chunk of hot meat slipping down your throat, and the scream dies down.

“What?...” You whisper, finally tasting the blood in your mouth, watching as your friend’s body falls to the floor. There’s a chunk of flesh missing from her neck, and the dots connect themselves in your head. You did that. Every part of you wants to scream, wants to cry out and beg someone to come kill you. Instead you fall to your knees, hard, uncaring. Your hands move themselves, grasping at the still warm corpse. Something has made you stronger, or at the very least removed the mental limits that kept you from destroying yourself. Flesh gives under your touch, tearing like paper, and you start crying as it reaches your mouth.

Footsteps approach, thundering fast, and you want to warn whoever it is. When you turn to look, you feel your hands let go of your meal. Your gaze meets that of a stunned Cassandra Dimitrescu, then drifts to the sickle in her hand.

“Kill me,” you growl, voice distorted, practically echoing. “Kill me now!” Not needing to be told a third time, Cassandra moves lightning quick, swarm-jumping forward before manifesting behind you, sickle dragging across your throat in one smooth motion. But it’s not enough. She realizes this, though, and slams her foot into your back, sending you tumbling forward. It’s enough to prevent you from countering, which gives her time to advance again, this time pulling a knife from her boot and driving it into the center of your back. When you scream, it’s not with your own voice, but that of a monster.

“Fucking fuck, what the fuck, red?” Daniella asks as she rounds the corner, eyes immediately landing on your bloodsoaked mouth. She’s quick to take in the scene, drawing a conclusion easily, even if it breaks her heart a little. Your vision fades as she approaches, and you know that it’s finally over. If only you had expired a few seconds earlier… because the last thing you hear is the startled cry of your would-be lover.

“No! No, darling, what happened-” Alcina finishes her sentence, but you do not hear it. You do not hear anything, anymore. You do not know it… but there will be hell to pay for your death.

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GOOD ENDING: When you awake, you find yourself in the softest sheets you’ve ever touched, a warm and familiar presence next to you. The first thing you see is Alcina’s sleeping face next to your own. She’s on her side, one arm around your waist, the covers pulled up to her hip. Warmth fills your chest as you take in the sight. For a few moments you just… appreciate this. Never before had you imagined that you would get to wake up next to the woman you loved so much. A sigh, one of bliss, leaves your lips. Slowly you move forward, gently placing a kiss to Alcina’s cheek. Seconds later her eyelids flutter open, and she tiredly takes you in.

“You’re… awake,” she murmurs, hardly awake herself. But her fatigue doesn’t last long. As soon as she’s fully processed the situation her eyes go wide. Then she’s pulling you closer, careful not to hurt you, and peppering little kisses over your face. “I’ve been so worried, dear. You scared us so much.” The hurt in her voice leaves you restless, making you curl up against her, desperate to soothe her worries. Moving hurts a little, but not enough to dissuade you from your goal.

“I’m sorry, love,” you say, tears pricking your eyes. “I’m okay, I’m alive, the plan worked out. You don’t have to fret for me anymore. I won’t leave you, I promise.” Slowly but surely, Alcina calms, exchanging kisses for softly running her fingers through your hair. There’s such love in her eyes that you can hardly believe you aren’t dreaming. “You’re amazing, Alcina. I could stay like this all day.”

“Maybe we should,” she offers, chuckling a little. Once again you give her a quick kiss, unable to resist the urge. “I should have never asked you to leave. I should have just trusted you.” The words give you pause, and you tilt your head in confusion. Realizing that you still didn’t know the full story, Alcina frowns. “The package is worthless, just a bundle of straw and a few rocks for weight. It was never what I cared about.”

Tension builds in your chest, and for a few seconds you have no idea how to react. It takes a minute for you to think, to connect the dots, but once you do it’s a tad bit easier to breathe. A scowl twists your lips as you think of what to say.

“If I had known that Heisenberg was forgoing his duties, I never would have sent you outside,” Alcina adds, the silence taking its toll on her.

“You shouldn’t have sent me either way,” you respond, bitterly, thinking of all that you had seen and heard on your journey. “I would have done anything to prove to you how I feel. There are other ways to show devotion- far less dangerous ways, at that.”

“I know, dear. You have every right to be angry… and watching you suffer has taught me all that I need to know,” Alcina says, still playing with your hair, trying to ease the tension. As upset as you about this recent revelation… it’s not enough to change how you feel about her, and you want her to understand that, fully and completely.

So you lean into her touch, let your eyes drift close for a moment, then softly place one of your arms around her as best as you can.

“We’ll need to talk about this more… just not right now. Right now, I need you, Alcina. I need to hold you, and be held by you, and just know that you’re here. That I’m here. That neither of us are going anywhere,” you say, resting your forehead against hers. “I need to feel safe, and your arms are the safest place I can imagine. Stay here with me?”

“It will be the easiest thing I have ever done.”

#alcina dimitrescu #lady dimitrescu #alcina x reader #lady dimitrescu x reader #tw blood #tw self harm #tw cannibalism #blood blood blood oops #I wrote this instead of sleeping because my hands cannot be stopped #typeity type type type #sorry if the formatting is off #i'm trying the new editor or whatever #if it's fucked I'll fix it whenever I wake up

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thefanficmonster · 3 years

Text

Partner

Ethan Winters (Resident Evil Biohazard) x Reader (Gender Neutral)

Warnings: Spoilers for Resident Evil 8:Village, Swearing, Mentions of injury

Genre: Angsty Fluff, Comfort

Summary: Following the final battle in the Dimitrescu Castle, Ethan is surprised to stumble upon a person who witnessed the whole debacle, offering him a safe place to patch up his wounds and rest for a little while.

Requested by Anon. Hi dear! Thank you so much for your request! So sorry you’ve had to wait so long but here it finally is! Hope you come across it and enjoy reading it! Love, Vy ❤

“That was...something else.“ Ethan Winters mutters to himself as he limps his way out of the Dimitrescu Castle which is now vacant in terms of residence - his doing. He killed Alcina Dimitrescu and her daughters, all arguably in self defense and with little guilt to follow. However, plenty of trauma’s definitely attached to him following the horrific events he had to go through and the things he had to see between the walls of those luxurious rooms hiding dark secrets of the vampires who took pleasure in torturing people, and wreaking havoc over the villagers who feared them.

“At least they won’t hurt anyone any longer.“ He tells himself, giving the monster of a structure one final look before he continues back towards the center of the village where he’s gonna rethink what he’s got to do next, gather his bearings, take a breath and keep going. He has no other option but to keep going, he won’t allow himself to quit no matter what danger he faces. In his mind, he’s convinced himself that he’s already seen the worst, it’s easier on him that way, it suppresses the fear he’d feel otherwise. The last thing he wants is to think what’s in store for him ahead, he’d rather focus on what’s up to him to do next.

“And we can’t thank you enough.“

The sudden presence of an unfamiliar voice startles him, causing him to whip out his gun and point it in the direction it came from. However, he quickly finds his deadly tight grip loosening ever so slightly because he realizes he’s pointing the barrel at a very human-looking and seemingly harmless person.

“Who are you? Who’s ‘we’?“ Ethan still refuses to let his guard down though, just cause it may not be a life or death situation, doesn’t mean this person won’t bring him trouble and Lord knows that’s the last thing he needs right now.

On instinct, the person takes a step back, “I speak on the behalf of all the remaining villagers. I mean, it was only a matter of time before we too became victims in the Dimitrescu Castle basement. I was next, actually, but the commotion you created allowed for me to escape. I owe you my life, foreigner.“ The speak hurriedly and in a hushed tone, as if the fear of their torturers overhearing them still lives within them despite the monsters being deceased.

“Glad I could help you.“ He nods curtly, remaining at the distance of seven feet between them, “My name’s Ethan Winters by the way.“

They give him the tiniest of smiles, “Y/N L/N, pleased to meet you.” Their gaze gives him a quick onceover, assessing the damage the horrors of the castle have inflicted on him. Their eyes widen in shock at the many bleeding wounds all over his body but what appears to rattle them most is the severe injury that’s causing his limp as well as the missing finger - a poorly wrapped would that has surprisingly not started getting infected yet. “Look, I know you don’t trust me, but I don’t trust you to take care of yourself either. I live in that windmill over there in the outskirts, come with me, I’ll help you with...well, with all that. You seem rather hopeless at medical care.”

While he could refuse their offer, he wouldn’t be able to deny the fact that they’re right - he knows the basics of first aid, but his injuries are far too gone for simple first aid, especially when taken into account that he doesn’t even have any supplies. How he’s not died from blood loss is a surprise to him as much as it is to them.

“What’s my guarantee you won’t turn on me?“ He finally asks after a decent amount of time contemplating it.

They shrug, “You have none. But, you have the guarantee that if I turn on you, you’ll be the one coming out of that altercation alive.” Their gaze sizes up the guns he’s got on him, emphasizing their point.

Suddenly, Ethan feels sorta ridiculous - after all, guns or no guns, he could probably take on them easily with just his knife. Regardless, no one can blame him for being cautious. “Fine.“ He mutters, “But please don’t turn on me, I’ve already had one hell of a day.“

Y/N nods, motioning for him to follow them, “I promise I won’t.”

* * *

“Wow, what a back-stabber! Some friends you have, Winters.“ Y/N comments as they set down a cup of tea on the small wooden table in front of the freshly patched up Ethan.

Turns out, he made the right move by trusting them - they used to be the village’s main nurse until it all went to hell and they went to hide in the shadows of their windmill where they, as evidenced, still are today. That being said, not only did they have all the necessary equipment to fix him up, but they also had the skills and knowledge needed to use that equipment.

“There are those friends who borrow money from you and never pay you back and there are those who shoot your wife randomly while you two are trying to have dinner. Two types of friends out there really.“ He sighs, his tired, a thousand yard stare following the path of the steam levitating from the cup that’s been placed in front of him. “I have no time to dwell on that right now though. My daughter is in grave danger and I have no idea where I should even start looking for her.“

Y/N sits down on a chair opposite his, “Well, you’ve already defeated one of the village Lords looking for Rose, process of elimination should reveal where she is - wherever she is, it has to be one of the Lords’ residence. Mother Miranda trusted Lady Dimitrescu most so it’s a wonder why she wasn’t there, but then again, Heisenberg’s factory is damn near impenetrable, one cannot enter unless he wants them to so she could have entrusted her precious cargo to him.”

“How do I get to that fucker?“ Ethan tightens his hand into a fist, squeezing so tightly his knuckles turn white. There’s so much within him, so much that’s happened to him, so much in such a short amount of time and he’s had no time to deal with any of it. He’s a volcano waiting to erupt, but he has to do so at the right time - in front of the right danger to show he’s not hopeless or weak as his opponent may think. “Where do I find him?“

“He’s in the outskirts too just on the other side of the village.“ They sigh, regretting every word they are saying since they know they are just feeding him information on how to get himself in the worst kind of danger he’s probably ever been in. “That key you have, it’s not complete to access his quarters yet. By the looks of it...“ they observe the key Ethan has placed on the table, “You can only get to Lord Donna Beneviento’s estate, and I wouldn’t suggest heading there before you heal at least a bit more. Her and her dolls are a real nightmare. Of course, I haven’t experienced it for myself, but the stories are enough to get an idea.“

“So you’re telling me I have to waste my time with the little fish before I can finally get to Rose? You know how long that’ll take? You know how long she’ll have to be at the mercy of a fucking lunatic until I can finally save her?!“ Ethan snaps, banging his fist against the table, bad idea considering his hand’s been just patched up. The impact sends a jolt of pain up his arm that makes him hiss.

“I get it, I understand, Ethan. But you are a lot less likely to get to your daughter if you’re dead, you know.“ Y/N cautiously explains, their eyes narrowing a bit as they wait for the pearl white bandages to soak crimson, sighing in relief when they don’t. “Speaking of how likely you may or may not be to get to her on time, I’d also have to mention your odds would be significantly higher if you were to receive help from someone else. You’d need someone to have your back throughout all the shit you’re about to go through, especially Heisenberg’s factory where two eyes are not enough to track each and every threat that might pounce at you.“

Calmer now, Ethan gives them a puzzled look, “What are you suggesting?“

“I’m suggesting - well, I’m offering you my partnership.“ They explain, watching his expression change to one of knowing and understanding. “Of course, you’d have to give up one of those guns and hand it down to me, but I think that’s a small price to pay in exchange for an extra pair of eyes and limbs to guard and help you.“

Ethan’s first instinct is to decline. He can’t afford to see another person dying around him or because of him, he wouldn’t be able to stand it. But then again, just like he had no guarantee they wouldn’t turn on him, he has none that they’ll die. Of course, he’ll do everything in his power to keep them and himself alive and they don’t seem like they are in it to half-ass it either. Quite the contrary, they seem perfectly determined and ready to face the same shit he’s about to.

“What do you get in return?“ He asks, his gaze suspiciously measuring each line on their face to gauge their true intentions. He’s a complete stranger to them, they’d have no reason to be this selfless for him, it’s obvious they are aiming at something bigger.

Y/N scoffs, leaning back in their chair with a small bitter smile on their face, their gaze resting on the tabletop and avoiding his, “You really wanna know? I want my revenge - revenge for what they did to this village, to me, to so many people I cared about and to those I didn’t even know. But...” they trail off, pausing to sigh out a heavy sigh before continuing, “But I also wanna redeem myself. I knew I should’ve done all in my power to stop them when their havoc was still on the rise, I knew I should’ve done more, but I didn’t. And now I’ll die trying.”

“You won’t die.“ He says sharply, barely a second after the last word left their lips, “I won’t allow it.“ He adds, taking a bit of the edge off his voice.

Their eyes come up to meet his, searching for what he means, “Does that mean...“

“It sure does, partner.“ Within the blink of an eye, his pistol is on the table, fully loaded and free for their taking, “You just give a green light and we’re off.“

Y/N lets out a sound between a laugh and a gasp as their hands quickly wrap around the gun, looking at it in disbelief before whispering a quick ‘thank you’. Ethan allows them to marvel at it for a bit longer but they don’t wait another second. “Get your ass up, Winters. We have monsters to kill.”

He needn’t be told twice

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piracytheorist · 3 years

Text

Till I Can Stand On My Feet Again (1/1)

Fandom: Resident Evil Village

Summary: One simple change; Heisenberg is the one to show Ethan what he is, and drags him to watch his fight with Miranda. Scared of himself but determined to protect his daughter, Ethan’s path takes a different route. (Basically, an Ethan Lives AU cause my heart and soul need it)

Word count: 5.3k AO3

“Not bad, not bad, Winters!”

Ethan’s hand rose instinctively, gun aimed directly at Heisenberg’s head. He was walking down a series of metal pieces from the chamber that he moved to resemble a staircase.

“You would’ve made a useful ally in my fight against Miranda,” Heisenberg said. “Too bad your feelings override your logic.”

“Fuck you!” Ethan shouted, firing two bullets at him. He wasn’t surprised they ricocheted off a metal shield Heisenberg put up just in time, but he was too stubborn to regret the wasted ammo.

“You amuse me, Ethan. You’re so hard-headed you can’t even see what’s right in front of you.”

“I’d never join you!” He hadn’t lowered his pistol.

“Sure, sure. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Before Ethan could see it coming, a pair of handcuffs flew and wrapped around his wrists. He managed to fire once before his pistol was snatched from his hands, but the bullet didn’t seem to hit anything. Heisenberg threw away the gun without even looking at it, or the rest of Ethan’s guns as he pulled them off of him.

“Damn it,” Ethan said under his breath. “What the fuck do you want from me?!”

Heisenberg’s gloved hand jolted up and Ethan was flying backwards, grunting as his back met with the metal door he had just attempted to open. His hands went up and he sighed exasperatedly. At least he wasn’t hanging from them this time.

“I’m returning the favor,” Heisenberg said. “You’ve been giving me quite the show since you stepped foot in this village. How long has it been now? Barely a day, and you’ve survived so much.” By now he was right in front of him. “Did you even count the amount of injuries you sustained?”

Ethan stared at him in confusion. “What?”

“I have been watching. And don’t forget, one of those was my initiative.”

Without a warning, he grabbed Ethan’s sweater and the t-shirt under it and raised them up to Ethan’s chest. He extended the index finger of his free hand and he touched the place where he’d stabbed him with that metal pole… indeed, barely twelve hours ago.

“Look at it, it’s already scarring.” His voice sounded less amused now; more focused, serious. “It should have taken days to close, weeks to heal. You shouldn’t have been able to walk, let alone run or fight, until it stopped opening and bleeding every time you took a step.”

Ethan shrugged; if he were honest, he hadn’t actually given himself the time to wonder how it all had worked. “What can I say? The healing stuff found around here works wonders,” he said, a bitter tone in his voice.

“What? This junk?” With another move of his fingers, Ethan’s last bottle of healing salve flew from his inner jacket pocket to Heisenberg’s hand, probably manipulated by the metal cap. “Some fucking disinfectant?”

Despite the confusion setting in his mind, Ethan couldn’t ignore the relief at Heisenberg not touching his naked torso anymore. He shook his head. “It’s not- AARGH!” His sentence was cut short by a cry of pain as something stabbed through his finger. Before he even had time to raise his head to see it, a particularly sharp metal piece had pierced through the index finger of his right hand, completely cutting it off. His knees gave out and he slid down the door, his haunches dropping to the ground.

Heisenberg picked up the fallen digit, saying, “See, I was even generous to not remove more fingers from your crippled hand. But you wouldn’t need worry, even if I had. See?”

Ethan whimpered, curling his right hand into a blood-soaked fist as Heisenberg turned the finger so that Ethan could see the inside of it. “What- what am I supposed to see?” he said between gasps of pain.

“The mold, Ethan.”

His throat went dry. “The what?”

Heisenberg leaned down to him and brought the finger even closer. The lights in the room suddenly turned brighter, and in his absolute horror, among the mess of blood, muscle and bone, Ethan could see small, black tendrils across the inside of his finger, moving. His voice shook in a breathy whimper.

“Don’t tell me you think that’s normal,” Heisenberg said. Ethan gasped as the handcuffs moved suddenly; Heisenberg grabbed his right hand, keeping it steady with physical and magnetic force as he brought the finger back to its place.

“Wh- What are you-” Ethan started.

“Patience,” he interrupted.

Ethan swallowed past the lump in his throat. It couldn’t… no, the BSAA had tested him… maybe Heisenberg was toying with him, the way Donna Beneviento had?

“You think it was that liquid you carried around that healed you, right?” He lifted his head, sunglasses moving away from his face through magnetic powers. “I suppose you’ve heard of the placebo effect.”

“No…”

“No, you haven’t, or no, you can’t believe it?” His eyes were boring into him. Whatever Heisenberg was trying to tell him, he was dead serious about it.

“You’re lying. You’re just messing with me.”

“Am I?” Heisenberg shrugged, raising his hands as well.

It was then Ethan realized he had actually let him go. He looked down at his hand; his finger had been perfectly reattached, though with a visible scar around the connection.

“Even if it had been a top-notch surgeon to reattach your finger, under perfect hospital conditions, it would still take weeks for your finger to regain its full mobility, if even that.”

Panting hard, Ethan tested his digit. Though the skin around the scar itched a little, it moved as perfectly as before. He looked up at Heisenberg, who was now smiling wide.

“Wha- why…” Ethan tried.

“Why else do you think Miranda was after you?”

“What? How would Miranda even know about us?”

“Oh, she knows some powerful people.”

Ethan shook his head. “No. Only the BSAA knew where we were living, about our involvement with the Dulvey-” He cut himself off, then looked at Heisenberg, feeling like an idiot. “The BSAA?”

Heisenberg shrugged. “Weren’t they the ones who’d made you feel safe and protected enough to start a family? To have a child? The ones who probably told you you were safe from whatever shit you went through in America?”

“Wh- what shit are you talking about?”

“I stabbed you, for fuck’s sake!”

Despite himself, Ethan shrunk backwards a little.

Heisenberg went on. “The now-dead tall bitch drank your blood, strung you up with hooks from the ceiling, cut off your whole hand! Only now you’re wondering?” He shook his head, amused again. “Talk about denial, Winters. No healthy, living man should be able to reattach limbs just like that.”

“Living?” Ethan said in a weak voice.

“Well… as living as the mold inside you keeps you.”

“No, no, that’s impossible. I stopped Eveline. I killed her.”

Heisenberg smiled. “You know as well as I do that sometimes, a dead man can still kill.”

It was then that it hit him; how Dimitrescu, upon tasting his blood, had said that it tasted “stale”.

His head fell down to his hands again; she’d stabbed him with hooks, her claws, cut off his hand… and there he still was. It would be impossible, unless…

“You’re dead, Ethan Winters,” Heisenberg said.

“You know he’s right.”

Ethan didn’t have to move his head to see who had spoken; he’d had enough nightmares haunted by Eveline’s form, either as a child, old woman, or transformed mold monster, to recognize her voice.

Still, he moved it, to see the girl standing just behind Heisenberg, the same, patronizing smile on her face as always. “Stop lying to yourself already,” Eveline said. “Do you think Zoe had any real idea how to reattach your hand?”

“B-but…” Ethan tried.

“Just like Lucas reattached his cut hand. But Lucas had been alive, when I infected him. You?” She moved instantly right next to him, leaning down to whisper in his ear. “Remember, when you first met Jack?”

Could he ever forget? He was welcomed to the family with a punch in the face… and Jack stomping on his head.

“That hit was stronger than Jack had intended. You were already dead when he dragged you back to the house.” Ethan shivered at the sound of a smile in her voice. “When I took you too.”

His hands were trembling; he could already feel tears pool in his eyes, and the first, stupid question to form in his mind was how he was even able to make tears. How… how could he not know? Everything else had been normal, had it not? He experienced everything he had before, hunger, thirst, heat, cold, pain… He bled. He cried.

“How exactly do you think your little Rose would be able to survive what happened to her?” Heisenberg asked.

Ethan snapped instinctively at the sound of his daughter’s name. “What ‘happened’ to her?! Or what you did to her?!”

Heisenberg raised his hands again. “I just stood by and watched. Can’t say I was really bothered to do anything.”

Stood by? He’d seen it– Heisenberg and the other Lords reaching to touch Rose… “You fucking bastard-” Ethan started, cut off by Heisenberg’s hand pressing against his mouth.

“Ah, ah. But don’t you wonder? You think she just happens to be able to crystallize and be brought back unharmed? Don’t you wonder whether she takes after you?”

After him?

His eyes widened. Mia had had the vaccine. He had not. The BSAA had reassured them both the mold hadn’t left any lasting effects on their bodies. But he… Rose…

New tears formed in his eyes, this time starting to run. To his surprise, Heisenberg seemed to show understanding, as he pulled his hand off and stood up, turning his back at him.

Was that what Mia had kept from him? Did she- had she… when… how…?

Was that why Chris had killed her? Did he want to isolate Ethan, and had he feared Mia would protest, and decided she had to get out of the way? If the BSAA had told Miranda… she would get Rose, and they would get him…

It was all because of him. Rose was… infected, because he was. Because he was too stupid, and too worried about Mia instead of himself, to notice that something was wrong with his body, before deciding to bring her into this world.

“Seeing as those old news have shocked you, I will extend my last chance,” Heisenberg said, still turned away from him. “I am going to use Rose’s powers either way, but you can choose to stand by my side and enjoy watching that bitch Miranda dying.”

Within the waves of panic and sorrow, Ethan was nearly surprised to feel rage build back up in his chest. He looked up as Heisenberg turned to face him, and actually spat at his direction. “My ‘fuck you’ still stands.”

Heisenberg shrugged. “I tried.”

Ethan’s shoulders hunched forward as he felt his rage wash off, his previous feelings surfacing again. He didn’t bother watching as Heisenberg moaned and roared, his body fusing itself with steel and iron in yet another horrific body transformation. Ethan had seen enough of those in a day that he couldn’t be bothered to feel shock at it.

The shock at realizing his own condition was enough.

Instead of throwing Ethan in a cell, Heisenberg simply passed a chain around his handcuffs, secured it to his metallic body and forced him to walk beside him and his metal army towards the ceremony site.

It seemed the asshole was still enough of a drama king that he wanted Ethan as an audience to the show of him taking revenge on Miranda.

Not that Ethan minded the idea of Miranda being taken care of. But with Heisenberg transformed into an iron giant, surrounded by hordes of soldats and zombies that for once weren’t trying to kill Ethan, he couldn’t help wondering how the hell he had any chance of saving Rose.

He was still determined to, no matter the potential cost to himself. Though, with him being already dead, what were really the limits?

He had none, he realized. First chance he’d get, he’d grab Rose and run. To where, he didn’t know.

He was nothing but a corpse full of mold. How could he ever raise his daughter properly? With the BSAA coming after him?

He had to. He owed it to Rose to find a way to save her and keep her safe.

The village looked nearly unrecognizable now. Trees made of mold had broken out of the ground in various places, ruining any house that hadn’t already been ruined by the lycan attacks. Heisenberg was leading, his tank form flattening any obstacle on the way to the ceremony site.

Ethan’s chest grew heavy; he had no weapons, his hands were literally tied, and he would be surrounded by enemies.

Just let Rose be fine. Just let Rose be fine.

When Heisenberg pushed aside the mold trees isolating the ceremony site from the outside, Ethan stopped listening to what anyone else was saying, though he could hear voices speaking, because she was right there; Rose, in the flesh, fussing and crying, in the arms of that psycho monster.

“Rose!” Ethan screamed and tried to run to her. His body twisted as the chain pulled at his hands, and for once he found himself wishing he could cut off his hand on his own. Mold wrapped around Rose, carrying her behind Miranda, to safety, as Miranda herself transformed. Ethan couldn’t bother turning to see what she looked like.

The fight started. Ethan was being struck by stray swings of swords, drills, and mold branches. Heisenberg and Miranda groaned in effort and pain, as he would try to move to grab Rose and she would move to stop him. And still Ethan pulled at the chains that kept him restrained to the metal tank, out of reach of his daughter.

The first sound that caught Ethan’s attention was the one of gunshots being fired closeby. Three shots found Miranda, and though she cried in pain, she still kept standing and resisting Heisenberg.

And then, with the sound of metal breaking and a bullet ricocheting, the pull at Ethan’s hands disappeared and he was dashing straight ahead. He wasn’t looking, he wasn’t listening, he didn’t even care much to understand what was going on. His hands were still cuffed, but that didn’t stop them from stretching forward as soon as he saw Rose, lain on top of the Giant’s Chalice behind Miranda.

“Rose!” he shouted and ran to her. She was crying softly, small feet fussing under the blanket she was wrapped in. Ethan’s breath shook when he finally reached her. Picking her up with restrained wrists was hard, but he managed to lean her against his left shoulder. A feeling of warmth rushed through his limbs when he felt her hook her tiny hands on his jacket.

She was safe; she was whole, and she was back.

He allowed himself one shaky sigh of relief; and then he was running.

With both hands covering Rose’s head, his shoulders hunched to protect her from stray attacks and gunshots, Ethan bolted towards the exit.

“No!” he heard Miranda’s distinctive wail.

Tendrils of mold sprang out of the ground, wrapping around Ethan’s ankles. He screamed out as he fell, turning to the side so Rose wouldn’t be hurt.

“You will not take her from me!” Miranda cried.

Ethan turned his head to see, terror pulling at his heart as Miranda started stretching her mutated arms towards him, until more shots found her, along with a punch from one of Heisenberg’s chainsaw hands.

The mold retreated from Ethan’s legs to protect Miranda, but then another chainsaw hand appeared right in front of him as he stood up.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Heisenberg’s also distorted voice rang out.

The ground shook as a blinding flash of light erupted, centered on Heisenberg’s form. He screamed out in agony, chainsaw hand twitching wildly. Crouching down, Ethan barely avoided it as it scraped against his right bicep. He clenched his jaw, his throat shaking with a restrained grunt of pain, then ducked away from it and once again, ran off.

He felt hot blood run from the gash down his arm. He was probably bruised in multiple other places, and his right ankle complained at every jolt as he ran down the rocky steps. His vision was starting to go dark, but he chanced one look behind him. He was out of the ceremony site.

And then another flash erupted, along with another pained scream from inside. He saw it clearly now. It was some sort of laser from the sky. He didn’t care to wonder where it had come from, or to decipher the timbre of the voice to understand who had been struck. The gunshots were multiplying now, as were the screams.

A small sound from Rose made Ethan turn to her, carefully moving her so he could see her. She wasn’t crying anymore, her face was calmer. She was still grasping on his jacket, somehow realizing the safety he was providing her.

“Oh, Rose,” he said softly, feeling a lump in his throat again.

He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing through the lump. He didn’t have time for that now. He still had to get out.

He secured Rose back against his shoulder, turned around and kept running.

His knees were shaking when he reached the square where the Giant’s Chalice was first, where the Duke was too, not that long ago. In his panic, Ethan realized he had considered him his only hope of escaping. Did he have any chances now?

“Ethan!”

His blood ran cold as he immediately recognized the voice screaming his name.

It couldn’t be…

He turned to where the sound had come from, where it kept coming as she kept shouting his name. The voice he would recognize anywhere was joined by a face and figure he'd also recognize anywhere, now running towards him.

No. Donna was dead, she couldn’t be still toying with him-

He saw Chris appear behind Mia, a rifle in his arms, and Ethan wanted to scream at her to run away from him.

But his head was dizzy, he could barely keep it up.

Mia was now standing in front of him. One hand was grabbing his free shoulder, the other was frantically rubbing at Rose’s back. She was talking to him. He couldn’t understand a word, but still her voice felt like a soothing balm on his wounded soul, nothing like the fear, guilt and anxiety Donna’s hallucinations had caused him.

When Chris spoke, however, he understood him. Because Chris said “Take the child,” and Ethan couldn’t… he couldn’t let him take her… Not again…

And then his arms were empty. Too empty. As if Rose had been a lifeline keeping him steady and afloat, and now he was about to drift off below, down into darkness and nothingness.

His eyes had already closed.

His head spun and his stomach rolled as his balance shifted; he was being pulled up, leaning on something stiff and warm, his head, arms and legs dangling.

A warm hand touched his cheek.

“Stay with us, Ethan.”

He wanted to call out for her. But his lips felt heavy, heavy as his whole body did.

“I love you. I’m right here. Stay…”

“You can’t stay with them! You can’t have a family! You’re a monster, a corpse, made of nothing but mold!”

Eveline laughed. She mocked and she giggled and she laughed.

And he could only stay there, kneeling on the cold ground, looking at the black tendrils of mold spread across his body, even over his clothes.

At least, he had made it. Monster or not, he had saved what mattered the most, his everything.

His daughter.

He was lying down on his side. For half a second, instinct was about to kick in to send his hand jolting down to his hip where his gun was.

Or would have been.

But that instinct was immediately taken over by the feeling of familiar fingers brushing through his hair. His head was resting on something warm and soft with a soothing scent.

He opened his eyes.

He saw a row of seats across from him, and he could guess he was lying on a similar set of seats. His hands were still restrained by Heisenberg’s cuffs, making him grunt in frustration.

“Ethan? Baby, can you hear me?”

Mia. Of course. Her scent. He looked down to see his head was lying on her lap. He recognized Mia’s home clothes, the ones she’d been wearing… Fuck, had it been just yesterday? That she’d been shot?

“Ethan?”

He slowly turned his head towards her. She was right there, a worried expression on her face, Rose resting on her shoulder. One hand was holding her, the other was still brushing through his hair, dirty with muck, sweat and blood as it was. Perhaps he ought to tell her, but it just felt so good…

He was struggling to keep up; Mia was alive. Rose was safe. It hadn’t been a dream; he had truly saved her. It hadn’t been a simple, easy-to-ignore nightmare either. The entire day, from watching Mia get shot, to being attacked by lycans and undead monsters, to fighting the Lords, to learning about what he truly was, it had all happened for real.

“Mia…” he managed.

“Oh, thank God.”

“How? C-Chris…”

“It wasn’t her last night,” Chris’ voice rang from the side, as he approached and sat on one of the seats across from them. “It was Miranda.”

“What?”

“She had taken my form, made herself look like me,” Mia said. “She kidnapped me yesterday and pretended to be me, wanting to take Rose too. Chris found out about her plan and tried to kill her.”

“She… she took Rose…”

“Rose is safe now. We all are,” Mia said, touching his also blood-stained cheek. “Thanks to you.”

He looked at Chris. “Why didn’t you just fucking tell me?” he asked, only remembering his promise to himself to not swear in front of Rose after the words were out.

“I should have,” Chris admitted, lowering his head. “But it all happened so fast. As soon as we realized Miranda was in your home, we had to take immediate action. I feared she might have infected you, so we didn’t know if we had the time to explain.” He sighed. He sounded really tired too. “I hadn’t expected her to survive being shot and make her move so soon. I’m sorry.”

“You were the one shooting at them?”

“Miranda and Heisenberg? My team, yeah. They were watching, waiting until you were out of the ceremony site so they could attack without any stops.”

“Where are they now?”

“Blown to bits.”

“Blown?”

“I told him you were sleeping too heavily to hear the explosions,” Mia said. “They blew up the whole village.”

Something pulled at Ethan’s heart – as much of an actual heart as he had now. Everyone in the village had been a victim of Miranda. So many lives, wasted and lost. The few villagers at Luiza’s house, the ones that had turned into lycans, even the Lords. He, the dead outsider, was the one to come out in one piece. Only Rose came out actually alive – or at least he hoped she was, in some form.

Tears prickled his eyes as he looked up at his daughter.

“You want to hold her?” Mia said, recognizing the expression on his face.

He nodded, swallowing hard against that persistent lump in his throat. Chris stood up, offering to help him sit up, but Ethan shook his head. Moving carefully, he managed to sit up on his own. His body still ached, and the longer he was awake, the more places he realized were hurting. It felt like he was all out of the adrenaline that had kept him running all day, and now the effect of everything he'd gone through was becoming more apparent.

Chris was holding a set of bolt cutters. “Let me see if I can take those out.”

Ethan turned his head towards Mia and Rose, not wanting to look at those fucking cuffs anymore. He didn’t realize tears were streaming down his face until Mia reached to wipe them away.

With a definite clank the handcuffs broke loose, and Ethan flexed his wrists around as his arms reached out for Rose. Mia handed her over.

Rose was awake. She looked up at him and smiled, hands reaching up to touch his face.

A sob escaped him. “You’re here,” he whispered. He kissed her forehead, then brought her even closer to him, nearly squeezing her against his chest.

His body started shaking with sobs. He felt Mia’s hand tentatively touch his back, and he turned towards her to lean his head against her shoulder. Mia’s hand didn’t move.

“Hold me,” he whispered, voice breaking.

He heard Mia’s shaky sigh as she wrapped her arms around him. Through his current outburst of piled-up emotions, he was somehow recognizing the irony, of a baby being calm and smiling with her parents being the ones crying.

Biting his trembling lips, he tried to focus on the sensations he’d believed he’d never feel again; Mia’s fingers in his hair, her lips on his temple, her warm breath landing on his skin.

She was never dead. He hadn’t even given himself proper time to mourn her, but he’d missed her enough for those sensations to start calming him down a little now.

His sobs were slowing down; he was still leaning his head against her shoulder, but he finally took a quick look around. He was just realizing they were in some sort of a plane. He could see the pitch black darkness outside the window, and all he could think was how everything had happened in barely a day. It had just been yesterday that he’d been home, putting Rose to bed, with fucking Miranda having invaded their house…

“Are you okay? Where were you?” Ethan asked, his voice just a little steadier.

“Miranda took me yesterday. She kept me in an underground cell in the village.”

“You were there?” He raised his head to look at her.

Tear tracks were on her cheeks too, and he secured Rose on his chest to wipe them away, feeling stupidly guilty at his fingers smearing dirt on her. But she didn’t seem to care, as she retrieved her hand to hold his.

“You were in the village, the whole time, as I was…” His voice trailed off.

“As you were rescuing our daughter.”

He shook his head, dropping his gaze. “I was only a pawn to Miranda’s experiments. I wasn’t given any choice in the matter.”

“You chose to save her. You chose to fight for her.”

A choice that had led to so much being revealed. Too much. “Mia… I…” He looked up at her; he hadn’t blamed her for keeping that secret, and it was then he realized how terrified she must’ve been of it breaking their family apart. He was as scared to admit it now as she must have been ever since she realized it herself. “You knew. About what… I am. Didn’t you?”

Her eyes widened, filling with new tears. He saw his own fear reflected on her face. However, she closed her eyes, sighed, then opened them to stare on her lap as she took her hand away, guilt clear on her face. “I did. I’m sorry, I wanted to tell you.”

“I know.”

“I should have told you…”

“I’m not sure it would have changed anything.”

She looked up at him. “What?”

“I think the BSAA had something to do with all of this. How else could Miranda have known about Rose?”

Mia’s face fell even more. “She knew about me.”

“What? How?”

“She was involved in the E-series project. I only saw her once, didn’t even speak to her, but she probably found out what the outcome of that project was.”

His head spun again. He didn’t care to hear more about that project. Knowing wouldn’t have helped him, either way. “Then the BSAA must be compromised. They wouldn’t have helped us. And I wouldn’t have acted differently myself, had I known.”

“Why-” Mia started, almost upset, then collected herself. She hunched her shoulders, dropping her gaze again. “Aren’t you mad?”

His only reaction was to breathe out a laugh. “Waiting for the other shoe to drop, aren’t you?”

“More like waiting for the storm to hit.”

“You were afraid. Of how it could break us apart.” He looked away. “Just like I am now.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw her turn to look at him. “Ethan…”

He looked down at Rose in his arms, already sleeping by now. “You didn’t… you didn’t know before we…”

“No, of course not.” She sounded almost shocked. “It was during the pregnancy that I started suspecting, and when she was born I was almost certain. I was in denial for some time myself. I’m sorry.”

“Mia…” He looked at her. “How… how did you stay?”

“What?”

“I’m dead.” He let out a shaky breath. He didn’t know if he would ever voice those words without feeling how heavy they weighed. “I’m no different than the monsters in the Baker house. Even the Bakers were probably better off than me.”

“No, Ethan, what are you talking about?” She touched his arm in a gentle grip. “Do you realize what you just did? You went in there, you fought, you saved our daughter. Do you have any idea how quickly, and how intensely, Jack Baker, or Marguerite, or Lucas, started to want to kill Zoe? And the monsters didn’t even have a consciousness…” She started brushing her fingers through his hair again. “It’s different. You’re still you, baby.”

“But what if that changes? What if I lose control?” He looked down at Rose, once again terrified at just how vulnerable she was, her mold status notwithstanding. “What if Rose…”

“We can deal with that, okay? Look at me.”

He did.

“I stayed because I saw you. I know you. And I love you. I was never worried you might lose control, I was just scared you would feel you don’t belong with us anymore, if you knew.”

“How... how can I belong? How can you want me with you?”

She smiled. “Who the hell else am I gonna choose?”

Hearing his own words thrown back at him was so jarring he found himself laughing out loud. New tears were forming in his eyes, and when Mia leaned forward to rest her forehead against his, he didn’t feel as dirty or unworthy as before.

“We can work with it, okay?”

He sighed, but then nodded.

“For now let’s just take a breath.”

He nodded again. Waves of guilt spread through his chest when she closed her eyes and kissed his lips. But that feeling of holding her close, of feeling she was really there, after he had spent a day – that had felt like an eternity – thinking she was dead, fearing for their daughter’s life, was enough to turn them into small ripples. Easy to manage, easy to wade through.

He had really had a long day. With Mia holding him close, and with Rose’s reassuring weight and warmth against his chest, he couldn’t help feeling that, finally, he deserved a break.

He was still terrified. But this was the first moment he could allow himself to not feel that, to let himself feel something better, lighter.

And he’d be a damn idiot if he didn’t take the chance.

#piracytheorist writes #Ethan Winters #Mithan #Resident Evil #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil 8 #re ff #re8 ff

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chaseatinydream · 3 years

Text

pirate king (4) || atz

You’re sitting at a tiny cove.

Your legs swing along the rocky ledge of the cliff you are on, dangling into the water. Beneath you, the water sparkles like liquid emeralds. Bright, colorful fish dart here and there around your feet and you laugh.

You leap down and there’s a splash, you’re waist deep in water. You move forward and forward until you’ve reached the mouth of the cove and the water comes up to your chin.

You close your eyes, take a deep breath, and submerge yourself.

Something soft and gentle brushes its way along your arms and you giggle underwater, bubbles escaping your mouth, but it’s of no concern to you. The soft arms caress you gently, as if you’re a precious treasure to them. You open your eyes.

Something stares back at you, glowing the colour of blood. It’s massive, almost twice your size, radiating some sort of curious light in the middle of the dark mass it’s in. Then it hits you.

It’s a single, unblinking eye.

You jerk awake with cold sweat running down your back and immediately regret it as you feel your head split in half from a sharp throbbing in your head. You groan, keeping your eyes tightly shut as you cradle your head in your hands, waiting for the pain to subside.

Something tugs lightly at your shoulder. No, not rope. Cloth? You start to panic when you realize that you are no longer tied to the mast.

Are they intending to kill you now?

“Ah, you’re awake.”

Your eyes fly open and you immediately shy away from the voice, pressing against the wall next to you. Your legs instinctively curl up to your body and you let out a cry of pain as your ankle knocks into wood.

“Don’t move, idiot.”

You look up to see the man talking to you. He’s tall and lightly built, dressed in a simple, oversized tunic and knee length shorts. Around his neck are a few silver chains, with strange symbols you don’t recognise, and his hair is a soft grey-green. Everything about him throws you off, he feels soft and reserved, nothing like a pirate.

Then you see the short dagger strapped to his left thigh.

You press against the wall more tightly, turning your face away from him. If he’s going to kill you, it might be more bearable if you can’t see it coming. You feel the tiny rocking of ocean waves.

“My name is Choi San, but you can just call me San.” The man begins to introduce himself, seating himself in a chair opposite you. You’re in a bed, you realize, as he continues to speak. “I’m the healer on board the Treasure, so I was responsible for treating your wounds. It’s admirable how you managed to keep quiet about a badly twisted ankle, an infected musket wound and a raging fever all at once.” There's something unsaid left in his voice.

You swallow.

“Especially for a woman.”

You freeze, all movement ceasing in a single second. Your hands unconsciously move up to your chest, only to find it unbound underneath a couple of layers of fabric.

Oh shit.

You’re definitely going to be shark food now.

“I haven’t told Hongjoong yet, if that’s what you were wondering.”

Your head whips around to stare at him in shock. His expression hasn’t changed the least, he still wears the same unreadable, blank face and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or he’s being serious. He has no reason not to report to the captain his findings, so why?

“It’s not my business that Hongjoong-ie is so blind he can’t tell the difference.” The healer leans back in a sturdy wooden chair, steepling his fingers with a calm gaze. You can’t tell whether that is comforting or terrifying. “Besides, I have a cat’s nature and I find my curiosity difficult to satisfy. So, if your story entertains me enough, I may keep your little secret from the captain. But I can see that you’re bursting to ask questions, so ask away.”

“Who undressed me?” Are the first words that tumble from your mouth. San chuckles at your question.

“Me.”

You groan in embarrassment and hide your face in your hands, unable to face him anymore. He snickers in amusement, and even though you can’t see it, his smile dimples his cheeks.

“No need to feel shy.” The man remarks, even though you can hear the mirth lingering in his voice. “I didn’t look. I just changed your bandages daily for the last two days.”

“I’ve been asleep for two days? That doesn’t make it any better.” Your words are muffled behind your fingers and you know your cheeks are tinged pink. “It’s still embarrassing.”

“I had to check you over for injuries.” San explains logically as you peer at him between the cracks in your fingers. “Who knows what else you might be hiding? I cleaned your wounds with salt water solution and bandaged you. As for your ankle, I splinted it with driftwood but don’t expect to walk normally for the next five to ten days or so.”

You gulp. Five days is more than you can afford.

“Is the captain going to throw me overboard?”

“As if I’d let him.” San’s complete indifference to Hongjoong’s authority surprises you, but you suppose even the captain needs to be on a healer’s good side in case he ever gets injured. This explains the sizable room and bed for the healer. Still, the informal way he addresses his captain is a little shocking. “He’s not going to waste all that effort I put into treating you. I used the last of my marigold petal antiseptic on your arm and he’d better get me more at Tortuga.”

You manage to stifle the tiny giggle that leaves your mouth, but San hears it anyways. He smiles slightly. “So, what’s your name?”

You pause, then answer as truthfully as possible.

“I don’t remember.”

To your surprise, San doesn’t try to call you a liar or force you to tell him some other answer. Instead he ponders your words carefully.

“That’s a common symptom among those who have head injuries. I was just telling Yeosang about them a few days ago.” You don’t know who Yeosang is, but you nod in understanding. You’re a little relieved that he seems to believe you, but is this a ploy to make you lower your guard? “They’re short term, but the memories usually come back after a few days or weeks. I don’t think I’ve met many who’ve forgotten their own identities though. Those usually die a few days after.”

“What?” You choke and suddenly you start coughing, your throat dry and scratchy. San reaches for a mug you hadn’t noticed before on his desk and passes it to you, filled with a fragrant green tinted liquid you don’t recognize. You can’t hide your suspicious look.

“It’s jasmine green tea.” San explains as he sits down again. “It’s helps calm the nerves and is also a fantastic cleaning solution for wounds as it prevents infection, but I prefer drinking it. My shipmates would rather ingest grog.” He sniffs in distaste and shakes his head. “Hongjoong knows what’s good for him, though. We’ve stayed in the cove for a couple days more because some of the scouting parties found tea leaves growing on one of the hills nearby. The rest are hunting deer with Shiber so we can have fresh venison tonight. It makes a nice change from eating preserved food all the time.”

As he continues to ramble about how some of the crew have started setting out nets to catch some fresh fish, you take a sip of the tea. It’s a little bitter with a warm, grassy flavor. You don’t enjoy it very much, but the next available option, grog, sounds even more unpalatable, so you choose to down the whole mug.

San pauses in his talking to nod his approval. “You’re a smart one. Anyway, as I was saying, the men usually die soon, but that’s because of internal bleeding in the skull. I found blood clots when I cut their heads open.”

You almost spit out the tea. “You cut their what open?”

The healer shrugs. “They’re already dead, so they don’t feel a thing.” When you continue to give him dubious, horrified looks, he starts to explain. “It’s for medical research! What I’m trying to say is, they don’t die because they lose their memories, they die because of the wound that caused them to lose their memories. From what I can see, you don’t have any such wound.”

“That’s reassuring.” You manage to say, thumping your chest. San nods.

“Captain said you claimed to have woken up in a prison cell in Raguza, am I correct?” He asks and you nod. San seems like a kind person and is the only one who is willing to help you. Then you pause.

“Raguza?” You repeat, unfamiliar with the name. San dismisses it with a wave.

“The town we raided a few days ago.” He explains, before carrying on. “He also said that you claimed to have no memory of how you came to be wearing the coat of a Royal Navy officer.”

You nod hesitantly. Even you’re aware of how unbelievable your story sounds. But San seems to be taking all of this in stride, better than you are, at least.

“Well, you could either be a skilled liar, insane, or telling the truth.”

You open your mouth to protest that nothing that has come out of your mouth has been a lie so far, but he holds up a hand to stop you. Your mouth closes with an audible clop.

“If you are a liar and are simply a spy of the Royal Navy here to steal the navigational maps, you must be a terrible one to present such a ridiculous story.” You try to protest again, but he continues. “From what I gather of my conversation with you, you are too sound of mind to be mad. So that only leaves me with one option. You are telling the truth.”

Just like that?

Something in you breaks down in relief and your shoulders sag. You’ve known that the whole time, that you’ve been telling the truth, that you have no memories. But suddenly, you’re not alone. Now, somebody believes you.

Someone understands.

You don’t even realize you’re crying until San reaches forward to brush the tears from your eyes. His fingers are gentle and warm, like Seonghwa’s hands. Then you start.

“Did Seonghwa bring me here? Where are we?” You look around the room you are in. You’re sitting on one of the two small beds in the cramped cabin, the shelves along the walls overflowing with written text, books and boxes with messily scribbled labels. There’s a small wooden table in the middle, a stack of paper in danger of falling off the side, and several stalks of dried plants on its surface. Opposite you is a wooden door.

“We’re in my cabin. You’re currently in Seonghwa’s bed. He offered to bed down with the rest of the crew until you recover.” San hesitates. “As for who brought you here… he asked not to be mentioned. It wasn’t Seonghwa.”

A frown tugs at your lips. Besides the kindly cook, who else would take any sympathy on you to come drag you here in the middle of a rainstorm? San shakes his head and gets to his feet.

“Don’t think too much about it.” Before you can protest, he moves over to the table and retrieves a small wooden box, opening its clasp. “Anyway, I was intending on returning this to you once you woke up.”

A thin, silver chain dangles from his fingers, at the end of which is a tiny, clear cut crystal. Small, delicately wrought silver leaves hold the crystal in place, and your mouth falls open in awe as San presses it into your hand. A kaleidoscope of reflected colors fall on your palm.

“It’s beautiful.” You breathe, lifting your hand to inspect the gem. San’s head cocks to the side in confusion.

“That is not the response I was hoping for, considering that I took it from your neck when I was undressing you.” He frowns, and your eyes widen in surprise.

“From me? As in, it was around my neck the whole time and I didn’t notice it?” You babble and San nods. He taps the largest silver leaf with a finger.

“Look at this carefully.”

There’s an inscription in the lid, beneath a carving of an elaborate swirl. You squint to make out the minuscule words.

I will be with you every step of the way.

You pause in shock at the revelation.

From before you lost your memories, from before you came to be in that tiny prison cell, you were not alone. If you just find the person who gave you this, you’ll know who you were before.

“You should keep it with you.” Gently, San takes the necklace from your hands and clasps it behind your neck. You’re silent in wonder, fingering the tiny crystal that nestles in the center of your chest. “Now, I should really go check on Wooyoung’s arm before he starts whining again.” He rises to his feet. “Do you have any last questions?”

“Is the captain really not going to throw me overboard?” You manage, gripping the tiny crystal in hand. At this, San really laughs.

“No. Although he did burn the Royal Navy coat you were wearing and tossed the ashes into the sea.” The healer replies as he plucks a small jar of ointment from a shelf. “If you give him no reason to kill you, he won’t.”

“Being alive seems to be reason enough to him.” You mutter unhappily under your breath, tucking yourself under the covers once more. Your eyelids are getting heavy once again. “The captain really hates the Royal Navy, doesn’t he? Why?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see San shrug as he pulls a leather sling bag over his shoulder. “He has good reason to, but it’s not my story to tell.”

Then he crosses over to you and tucks the blankets a little more securely around you. His grey eyes are soft.

“Go to sleep. I’ll come back and tend to you later.” San’s voice is gentle and melodic, like a lullaby.

You close your eyes, still clasping the small crystal in your hand. “Okay.” You murmur in reply, pulling the blanket closer around you. “Just for a while more, then.”

You don’t wake up till a day later.

#ateez #ateez fanfic #ateez fanfiction #ateez hongjoong #ateez seonghwa #ateez yunho #ateez yeosang #ateez jongho #ateez mingi #ateez san #ateez wooyoung #pirate king #ateez pirate king #w; pirate king #w; fanfiction #w; ot8

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whalesfallmoved · 3 years

Text

soft descent

Wedding vows for the dead. Neither of you ever had a chance.

chargestep. rated m. twisted memories and revenge and nightmares of all kinds and ricardo ortega, starring as sidestep’s poorly repressed self-doubt, in a manner of speaking.

or, sidestep sees nothing clearly, and her head has never been a pleasant place to be.

warnings: implications of suicide, slight body horror, violence, injury. hurt, without comfort, because of course.

ao3 link.

——

“Oof, that’s going to leave a mark.”

You’re standing next to the window in the dark the sun blistering overhead and the glass shattered underfoot. He’s looking down. You’re looking at him. It’s always been like that. When you look down you’ll see— no. You’re not going to look down. You’re going to look at him.

“It didn’t feel great.”

He smiles and it’s broken, one hand on the windowsill, one hand on his gut where Catastrofiend’s goodbye kiss drips slowly, wetly, a splash of violence against the cobalt blue skinsuit, Ranger-proud. You want to say you should get that looked at but it wouldn’t do any good, he’s already gotten blood all over the carpet.

Soft laugh and when he licks his lips you can see a hint of red, waiting to get coughed up, waiting to get expelled, the body killing itself to save itself—you remember the way it stuck between your fingers, the delirium—beg, the monster-thing demanded, and he laughed then too.

You look down at your hands. The way they curl up, clinging to air.

Are you bleeding? You must be.

“Yeah, I know all about that.”

“No,” you shake your head and your spine pops, “you don’t.”

“What, are we comparing jumps now?”

“Are we?” wouldn’t that be something. He never talked about this before, why start now? Trying to get you to forgive him? You won’t.

“It was a longer drop.”

“And there were people there to help you.”

“Depends on your definition of help.” Head jerk to the side, beckoning you to look, look down, look at them, look at you. “Technically, they helped you too.”

Bite down, taste blood and bile. Have you started choking yet down there? You remember the way it sluiced up your throat, the way you could feel the crack and splinter of your ribcage. His brows furrow a little and maybe he feels bad. You hope so. You hope it’s twisting him up inside.

“Wish they’d helped me to the morgue.”

Exhale, ragged and wet and torn.

“Yeah, those contracts are a bitch, huh? Nothing like a blood debt.”

“What, you want me to feel bad for you?” You taunt, vision hazy bones aching— pulse in your ribs, they must have picked you up by now, isn’t that nice. He’s still looking down, waiting for something to happen. “Poor Ricardo. The US government branded on his ass till the day he dies. Join the fucking club.”

“Hey—” he hisses, flashing his eyes to you finally, “you could pretend to sympathize.”

“I’m so sorry you have posters and trading cards and get invited to award ceremonies and—”

“Oh, I knew I have trading cards, but how did you know I have trading cards,” a wink, sly, charming and wrong, like a bone splitting the skin. “Collecting them, aren’t you?”

“You wish.”

You want to throw up. His neck is bruised.

He sighs, knocks his fist against the window. You both flinch. “They’re gonna keep you going till you’ve got nothing left to give, you know.”

And this time it’s your turn to laugh, bitter and cruel and serrated. You want to twist the knife in his gut you want to rake your nails down his skin, it’s the least- it’s the least you can do, god you are so angry you shake, but you’ve always been good at staying still. Hold your breath, don’t scream, fuck that hurts, and now he’s looking at you full on. “I’m already out. No thanks to you.”

Maybe he sees the way your hands are starting to twitch. The smile softens and you want to kiss-bite-punch it bruise blue to match his stupid fucking suit.

“Are you?”

Are.

You?

I am.

Am I?

A snake in your throat curling up ready to snap bite. Your lips twist, scene hazy at the edges, and when you get your hands around his neck (oh those are the bruises, they look like your hands) you’ll both be sorry—“fuck off.”

Magic words.

Ortega shrugs, pushes the window open like it doesn’t matter, like it didn’t matter, like he can just do that; he always had to make it about himself, can’t even leave you your death, can’t even leave you your place at the window.

You want to shove him away from it.

You want to shove him through it.

“If you insist.”

Close your eyes.

One.

Two.

Three.

—

Dr. Mortum does not smile, not until Angel flashes her a wicked grin and a bag of cash and a promise of more where that came from if— if— if—

She flips through the schematics, eyes brightening—the loose design, the necessities, the ideas—oh, you are going to do such great things together.

“It can be done, I assure you.”

“Excellent. My employer wants nothing but the best.”

—

The sound of waves takes the edge off the thump of a corpse hitting the ground, but you aren’t ready for it—you aren’t ready for the scent of rotting meat, rancid and cloying under the Los Diablos sun.

You open your eyes and when you look down, a dead girl is mangled, half gone. You think— she almost looks like your target.

Huh.

“That’s a bad idea, you know.”

Voice soft prying you know it and you groan, twist, turn, the sand uneven and blood-splattered.

He’s got that loose hold, hip jutted on a rock arms crossed, too casual for the teething gore surrounding them. Suit torn and eaten at, blood drip-drip-dripping down his arm where the skin is all gone, you keep waiting for them to crawl through the sand and eat you both alive. Maybe you won’t save him this time.

“Which one?” You ask, and when you look down you’re in the old suit, fitted like an infected wound. You yank at the collar, touch your cheek, your face— you’d covered your face here, hadn’t you? Yes.

He smiles. Shakes his head.

He hadn’t let them touch you, even when you collapsed, even when they wanted to help.

Not that it matters. None of it matters anymore.

“So you do care about my opinion?”

“No,” you murmur, choking down a gag—dead meat, food for the nanovores, food for the flies, “but that’s never stopped you before.”

“True,” he winks, running through the motions; what you remember, what you want to forget. Oh god you want to forget. You want to peel back this body and dig into the marrow and pull, pull, pull until the memories unravel in streams of violent orange.

He pushes off the rock, kicks his long legs out and walks too easily for a man that almost got eaten alive five minutes ago. “Walk with me?” He asks the way you don’t ask, you order, and throws his wounded arm over your shoulder, locking you hip to hip, no way out.

You sink under the weight, slotted to his side like a mismatched puzzle piece. Nothing about you fits, disjointed, dislocated. You’ve been shaped wrong for a long time now. They didn’t put all the parts back right. A doll unstitched and gutted for parts, but they didn’t— did they recycle you? Just medical waste and scars.

“You take me to the nicest places,” you say because it’s the only thing you can say when the sky looks like God wrapped his big meaty fist around it so tightly till it swelled and pinkened.

Black clouds on the skyline. Here they come. Don’t they know how strong you are now? How many webs you can weave? You crack your knuckles and almost smile.

Then you see: Tía Elena crosses herself in the background. She shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe. Why haven’t they evacuated all the civilians?

“Well, you never let me take you anywhere else,” he huffs, ignoring his mother as they walk on by, and that’s not— that’s not right?

It— no. You don’t want to be here. You can’t do that to him, not even now.

—

Fuck that’s good you’re invincible. The reckoning day is coming and when it does you’ll watch out for this one, you’ll remember her, how it felt to sit in her skin and move under it, but she can’t stop you. None of them can stop you now.

You smile and it’s sharp and cruel and silver. You almost almost almost want him to show up but the victory wouldn’t be quite as sweet, and you don’t really want to take a lightning bolt to the chest. Even if it wouldn’t slow you down, it’d still fucking hurt.

But it doesn’t matter. When you drive your foot into the golden boy’s chest you can feel his ribs crack a little bit and that’s even better. You’ll be riding the high of that for weeks after this. He’s a kicked puppy and you want— you want to kick him again, but there’s no time for that, no time for anything.

You wonder if Steel recognizes the grin right before you drop her like a body bag.

—

Gasp—jump spin dodge—near miss, fuck—Ortega laughed at the start but he’s not laughing anymore, smoke on the air, electricity crackling over his skin.

Fire off at its head one two, one miss, one hit. Head jerks, twists.

The thing-beast groans— don’t look at me i’m not here don’t look— “yOu...” guttural ugly it sees you, it sees you.

Run run run don’t touch me— “Noa!” He shouts and you stop drop and roll just in time for a blade to swing down, headsman’s axe, grazing the suit but not quite touching. Space where your body was empty, and it howls rage-snap.

“Mother— fucker!”

This. This you remember.

You remember the way its mind shucked the skin off your bones, all slick-blood drip drip drip. Gory, wrong, wound over wire, dirty fingernails scraping on the myelin, eating eating down down down— you remember: if you let it in it’ll kill you, cut your throat on its twisty edge thoughts as quick as a knife in hand.

You remember the images in your head— its plans, its ideas, the ways it was going to ply and split him down the middle like a rotten fruit. You couldn’t look at him for weeks. Almost. He was almost.

Almost.

Blink and the scene changes, and backup’s arrived, and you’re holding onto him, your mind pressed up against ITS just enough to make you both disappear. You threw up again and again afterward, but you still couldn’t forget, oil-slick.

not here we’re not here don’tlookatus

Then: you covered the wound with your own hands.

Now: you tilt your head to the side, pet his hair. It still doesn’t hurt as bad as the final impact, hitting the ground, or what came next. Suck it up.

“I told you,” he slurs, eyes half-mast, must be hazy from the blood loss. The human body can only take so much, even with the cutting edge mods. “I know all about that.”

“You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything at all.”

Hand over wound, you push down and he groans. You might as well save him again. You still haven’t had that showdown, and you’re gunning for a win. A dozen to one then, but you’ve gotten better, faster, smarter, your body catching up with your thoughts, and he doesn’t think at all. Doesn’t even matter if he did, you wouldn’t be able to hear it.

“C’mon, Noa,” that’s not your name, that’s the name he gave you—your name is a mouthful, he’d grinned and you’d rolled your eyes and flushed, but now it sticks like a stove burn—numbers and names and Noa, Noa, no one else has ever gotten close enough to name you— fuck you. “Throw me a bone here.”

“No.”

“Fine.” he gasps, chokes, but the words still spill loose, “but you can’t hate me for what you didn’t tell me.” He says, sounding so fucking reasonable while he’s bleeding out on your lap, and now you definitely have to save him, now you definitely have to make sure he lives, just so you can level him for that alone. Just wait, a feeling builds up in your chest, his day is coming and it’s coming fast.

“Don’t tell me what I can’t hate you for.” You want to snarl, a fighting dog, a dog fit for the ring, but it comes out weak, threadbare, and you hate the way your hands shake, the way your throat hardens up and each word is estranged from your mouth.

“At least give me a chance to prove you wrong.”

“Why?” Is that your voice? Small and weak, a child learning to make a fist, thumb tucked in. But you were never a child. You were never small.

“You know me,” he punches out a laugh and it breaks like a sob, “I love a challenge.”

“This isn’t a challenge, Ricardo. There’s just nothing left.”

—

He.

“November?”

He is.

“I thought you were dead—”

Older. Different. That feels wrong, wrong. He should be the same he can’t have changed that much. Fuck that moustache is ridiculous. He looks so heavy with grief, or is that just you, reflected back? A labyrinth of static.

It’s all blurry and too much, not enough, but maybe— for a moment— for a moment everything shatters, fingers under a suture, and maybe— it’s just a flash of his eyes, real and in front of you and not blurred by a late night show or security footage fight you only watched to make sure he still leads with his left sucker punch with his right and maybe—

“Are you still a telepath?”

You say yes and feel like a fool and you tell him a dash of the truth and you feel like a wound and you can’t hate me for what you didn’t tell me.

Your hands are shaking. You make a fist.

He wants— he wants something.

A raw crack down your spine and you smile and it feels wrong. Maybe it looks wrong. He won’t stop watching you like you’ll disappear if he blinks more than once, if he looks away, and maybe you will. Maybe you’re just ash and graveyard dirt held together with sutures and wire.

You want to crawl through the floor to someplace small and dark and cold where no one will ever find you again.

You tell him just enough, just enough to keep on hating him.

It’ll be easier that way.

—

Rewind.

“That’s a bad idea, you know.” He cackles as you thrust out a punch—miss—and dodge his return, feet sliding on the mat. You can’t believe you let him talk you into this, a friendly spar on Ranger soil.

“Which one?” Thrust dodge lock your ankle around his own, slipping up letting you get close like that, rookie mistake— twist of your hip— throw! and the satisfying slap of skin on the mat, his skin, his body hitting the ground, but he holds hard and pulls you down with him (if you go i go) and you land— oof! breathless and grinning and on top, finally, finally.

Fingers lock and you shift, thighs on either side, pin him down, his emitters humming biting pinching but you got him, and you aren’t letting go. A shiver skip-dances down your spine, static-charged.

“I win,” you growl, a winner’s grin biting into your cheeks, free and loose (where’s your mask?)

He squeezes your hand, sends a low-grade jolt up your palms sharp, just to see what you’ll do, jellyfish stings, and you squeeze back harder, lean down till you can feel his breath hot on your lips. You never got this close before, he’s so solid beneath you.

Ricardo, grinning back, a halo of black curls fanned out, sticking to his brow all slick with sweat, “what is that, a dozen to one?”

“Shut up,” he can’t take this from you, not yet, “don’t be a sore loser.”

“Actually, I’m enjoying myself quite a bit right now. I should let you win more often.”

“Fuck you,” but it tears out a laugh far too sweet for your mouth. You feel segmented and gentle, like a scorpion smashed on a rock left out to rot in the sun. Maybe he’ll take you home, run his fingers through your matted hair and not mind the stingers or the venom. You weren’t made for a laughter light like this, and if there was ever a time you could be it’s long gone now, but you still want him to touch you, a want like a scar healed wrong.

“Buy me dinner first— ah!” You let go just to crack your palm against the top of his head, anything to wipe that smug edge off, and— “okay, fine, I’ll buy dinner,” but this time when your hand comes down he catches it, brings it to his lips, soft on your palm— oh god, oh god it hurts.

“And then what?” You dare, you gasp, you’ve never been that bold—couldn’t afford boldness, always a coward at heart and that’s how he always won, but for a moment you let your fingers curl along his cheekbone. His eyes slide closed, kissing still—dart of tongue, tracing the line of your palm. How long is my life? How many children will I have? What do the cracks in the skin say? Maybe his mouth can divine something human in the shape of your hand, even if the lines there aren’t really yours, just a thing they gave you to play pretend.

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, still not giving you his gaze, a pained crush to his brow, “you did ask me to take you somewhere nice.”

“Did I?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“Liar. I never asked you to do anything.”

He smiles right on your skin, like a knife sliding under your gut—girl/deer, splayed out on the slaughterhouse floor of his kindness. The world hazes at the edges, curling up set aflame.

Somewhere nice. Too bad it can’t last.

Finally. Finally he looks at you. Sees you. How long has it been since someone hasn’t stared through?

“No, you didn’t. I wish you would have.”

—

Choking hard gasp and the phone screams or maybe you do. Your teeth throb.

The room is heavy dark save for the corners of curtained sunlight peeking through, the air scented thickly of cheap candles and candy wrappers. The sheets are sweat-slick and you can smell your own skin, the rawness of sleep on it. Musky. Unsterilized.

The fabric sticks and itches. Fingers under the hem, you toss the sweater aside, hear it thump damply against a wall.

Breathe. Hand to chest and yes, that’s your heart, rocking in your rib cage, slowing down. You breathe with in—ten—tion.

One.

Two.

Three.

Okay, you’re okay. You can do this. You can still do this.

—

“I don’t want to do this here.”

He holds out a plate of food, tilts his head to the side, the corners of his mouth twitching up. Pushes the plate into your hands, and you take it—just hold out something to someone and nine times out of ten they’ll take it without thinking, asking only after they’ve agreed to carry the burden.

Silly you, you never had a choice.

His apartment is soft and safe around the edges, and your heart gets sticky in your chest. You think maybe those are your books on his shelf, the ones you lost after—

“What’s wrong with here?” He shrugs, brushing past toward the table, beckoning you to follow with a grin and a nudge.

“I like it here.” You answer honestly, for once, and he beams, a light bright enough to burn.

“I know.”

“So why are you ruining it?”

“Ruining it?” Hurt. Smile gone.

“Take me somewhere else. Anywhere else.” Somewhere cruel and sharp as a scalpel to the throat. Psychopather or Overlord or the dilapidated construction ruin you jumped out of at the second story and broke your wrist because you made a deal— you agreed to a dare— race you to the bottom down the stairs— if you lose you have to answer my questions— and god, you didn’t want to answer anything, anything at all, and he’d screamed your name, cursed you out, told you don’t be an idiot what if you broke your neck and flinched when you snapped I was just following your lead.

“I can’t,” he shakes his head and you have to sit down, set the plate on the table before you drop it, wouldn’t want to break the fine china. Did his mother give him this? You think so; he’d taken such care, stacking each plate freshly hand washed before putting them away.

“Liar.”

“Not this time,” a loaded smile, a loaded gun, his fork twirls around on his plate. Shadow of a wrist and a vague gesture to the seams of the scenery. “This is all you. Your shape. What you made. I’m just along for the ride.”

“Then I’m not staying.”

Shrug again. Why won’t he do anything else? A looped tape, a slight glitch. Something’s wrong.

You’re wrong, maybe.

“Not even for dinner?”

You stand up. Pace. There are plans— things to be done— finishing touches— you can’t stay here. You can’t.

“What do you want, Noa?” He asks, so softly, so gently, it would be kinder if he killed you there, but you know he won’t; it’ll take a lot more than bad table manners to push him to that, but maybe you can do it. Maybe you can get him a little ruthless, even more desperate. You’ve seen it before, in flashes, coiling green under his skin. Won’t it be funny if he breaks before you do? No blood on your hands, not yet. What a record. Fitting, almost.

“I don’t know.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Why?”

“Hard to work on an empty stomach,” he shrugs again, fuck, stop doing that. Bare feet silent on the carpet and you find yourself back at the table, back in the chair, sitting across from him and there’s nowhere to go—

Blink.

Sterile antiseptic white walls and doctors— in your apartment— your neighbor? Yes, that’s your neighbor he accused you of staring once, the fuck are you lookin’ at? And you weren’t staring, at least not like that, but it took a soft nudge of don’t look at me for him to go all the same. Strange. You didn’t think a doctor would live here. It’s a bad side of town, but it’s good for sidestepping.

You think: I am going to wake up now.

Wait. No. You say this out loud. It comes through with the wet ache of drowning.

No. Wait. Your words roll back down your throat—you didn’t say it. You didn’t say anything at all. You never have.

All the words roll in but they’re not yours you’re fit to burst.

It must be nice being able to speak.

Not here.

Maybe that’s what it is to be human.

Get real, you think because you stick your fingers in a few skulls and cut your teeth on some gray matter while someone thinks about love you know what being human is?

I could. I could know.

They gave you a tongue and mouth and lips but you can’t kiss and you can’t make words, you can only patch together the syntax, call it real, call it human—but when you speak it’s always going to be with someone else’s voice, strangled out.

The walls are whiter now and the lights slice your skin like a hot knife through butter. It isn’t a cliff but a door you’ve already walked through and the ocean inside the warehouse inside the apartment is now a table with handcuffs. His table. Her table. You jerk your wrists and the metal clanks hard and fuck no not here not here please take me back i’m sorry i want to go back—

(he’s coming to get you)

(he wouldn’t leave you here)

(no time for the dramatics ricardo just get the door let’s blow this popsicle stand)

She smiles at you from across that metal table (wait) and tells you that you are never going to die (stop) because to die you have to be alive (i am i am i?) and you should know better by now we are going to do such great things together (please)

aren’t we,

aren’t we.

aren’t i?

wake up now- i want to— please.

—

You’re alone in the dark, the armor fits perfectly, and that’s all that matters.

(when you become a casualty revoked from the grave get ready a revenant coming back to eat them alive oh oh oh just you wait)

You think you’ll keep the name.

(sidestep and charge reunited again you can see the headlines now and fuck you can’t wait to see the look on his face you were always a pair maybe he’ll stop you wouldn’t that be something)

You don’t sleep.

—

He doesn’t stop you.

—

“Noa?”

“Yes?”

“You are... fine, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’d tell me if something was wrong?”

“Of course I would.”

—

Your dreams are filmy, cracked wombs of (not not not) memories and gummy tissue. Press on it too hard and it moves back just the same but with a muscle deep ache. At least you know it’s a dream this time, and when you go up the stairs and find him there, you don’t hiss or spit or curse. You’ve done enough of that. He’ll carry the scars to prove it.

He’s looking out the window. He’s looking at you.

No, he’s looking at you. You flinch and you don’t know why.

“Really? Even here?”

“What?”

“Take the mask off at least. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen your pretty face.”

You reach up and your fingers find hard armor, not supple skinsuit. When you look back his face is different, older, not the poster-ready Marshal but aged, aching, and you ache with it, bone-deep.

You’re so tired. You wonder if he is too.

The helmet comes off. Drops with a thump.

You go to the window. After all, there’s nowhere else left, and he asked so nicely.

“What do we do now?” You ask, so softly. Still can’t look outside. Still don’t want to see what he sees. Better to watch him watch you. Now that you’re on the other side of things, you prefer it when you’re the one doing the bleeding—what a thing.

“I don’t know,” a laugh a sob or something in between, he crosses his arms and turns away, turns toward you. “Did you ever figure out what you want?”

“Yeah.”

You blink and he’s himself again, younger, more angular, a grin fit for the big screen on his handsome, handsome face. It’s easier to talk to him like this, the way you remember, the way it should be. Time didn’t move while you were gone, and you’re the only one still snapped in half.

A pause. Are you smiling now? It must be a sad little thing though, because his eyes soften up and a frown mars his forehead.

“I want to watch you grow old.”

“What, so you can keep on teasing me? That never stopped you before.”

“Shut up, I’m not done yet.” you whisper, stepping forward, stepping up to the cliff’s edge.

“I want to watch you grow old,” reaching for his hand, and he lets you have them both, cradled so carefully—and your gloves are black and armored and insulated, but not the most protected part of your body. Could he kill you with a surge? Maybe. “And I want to watch you die in a bed. Your bed.”

“A little morbid,” he murmurs but you’ve got to keep going, you’ve got to get it out, because once it’s out you’ll never have to look at it again. “But I guess that tracks.”

Turn over his hands, you thumb at his emitters. Hint of a spark, and you laugh and now it’s sob, now it’s a wound. You won’t look at him. “I want to watch the arthritis take your hands and I want to take you away from this fucking city and we’ll both be so bored out of our minds, we’ll start inventing problems just to fix them.”

“Careful, Noa,” hands turn over, running up your armored wrists, grasping at your forearms. “That almost sounds like a happy ending.”

Wedding vows for the dead. Neither of you ever had a chance. You don’t have one now.

“And we can’t have that.”

You look up. The sun’s on his face now, turning his eyes a shade of deep whiskey, and that’s how you want to remember him; alive under the sun, smile lines just forming, his nose a bit crooked from getting punched one too many times. You’ll be on the ground in a moment.

“No,” he agrees, grasping at your elbows now, pulling you close, and you cling to his in turn. “We can’t.” Flash and grin, and there he is, just like you remember. Challenging, challenger. No chance, and neither of you know when to quit. “Want to up the stakes a bit?”

“Always.”

You let go first. Of course. You turn to the window. You open it.

“Whoever falls fastest wins.”

“And what do I get when I win?” When, not if.

“A quick and painless death.”

“Fuck,” you breathe. “That’s a hell of a thing. How do I know you won’t cheat?”

“You don’t,” he winks, steps back, head tilt toward the window. Mirrored. You’ve got one hand on the windowsill and one hand curled around your gut, where he sunk that barb between the plates before you cracked his skull on the ground before all of Los Diablos. “You never do. Isn’t that part of the fun?”

You take your place at the window, you set your shoulders, look down. What’s he been looking at all this time?

Long way down, and you wait to see her; you, in soft skinsuit, teal and black and bloody and broken, but she isn’t there.

Just an ambulance, an end repeating itself.

“Person who falls the fastest, huh?”

“And hits the ground hardest.”

You climb up, clench your jaw.

It always ends like this.

“You’re on.”

#chargestep #fhr #mywriting #okay-- I have not slept. and that is indeed a problem. and this should probably get more than a cursory glance-over. alas.#there's running themes in here somewhere- I swear- but until then I'm going to sleep #ricardo strictly through noa's twisted memories and flawed perceptions and rage up until she finds him again - because yeah #(is it ortega? good question. she doesn't know either. but your (not) lover-slash-rival haunting your memories and dreams.. mhm.)

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ecclais-fouoras · 3 years

Text

FALLING, for someone like you.

Ch 1

Mentions of blood

You were walking down the stairs of your office, you were almost in your own office when you heard it. It was as quiet as a whisper. But enough to have you pay Attention. And you heard it again, a little whimper, like someone was crying quietly.

The sounds came from the floor underneath you. You decided to go find out who it was.

"Who's here ?"

You asked softly, no one responded so you kept going further.

It was your boss, ms Venable, sitting on the floor, her skirt higher up on her thighs, holding her legs like a little kid trying to soothe themself.

Her knee was covered in blood and her cane to far for her to reach. You rushed to her side and asked worriedly. "Oh god Ms venable what happened ?" She composed herself for a minute

"Well are you blind y/n, ?"

"No, I'm not but i though...."

"A dangerous pastime"

"Oh come on ! I said i thought it..."

"I do not give a single fuck about what you think"

"And you wonder why you're single"

"Excuse me ?"

"You heard me"

"I did now WOULD YOU EXPLAIN WHAT YOU EXACTLY MEAN BY THAT"

"I MEAN THAT YOU ONLY CARE ABOUT YOURSELF"

"I..."

"AND WHAT EVERYONE ELSE THINKS ABOUT YOU. BUT THAT AIN'T IT MS VENABLE....THERE IS MORE TO THE WORLD, THERE'S MORE TO PEOPLE AROUND YOU ! THERE'S... MORE TL LIFE, THAN THE BITTERNESS OF YOUR HEART TRIES TO CONVINCE YOU THERE IS"

"WHAT do YOU know about the world y/n ?! You have barely even lived old enough to leave your own diapers"

"And YOU'VE LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO STILL WEAR THEM !"

"AT LEAST I'VE LIVED LONG ENOUGH TL KNOW HOW PEOPLE ARE "

"clearly not long enough for that. Clearly you still believe there is nothing else in this world that matters to people besides money, and power. Well you're wrong, people have other motives, LOVE, CARE, FRIENDSHIP, SPIRITUALITY. We are not empty vessels for horrible people. We are not just, 'the idiots who work for you', we are the PEOPLE who work WITH you. With our own stories, experience, interests, and you would know. If you weren't so damn cold ! If you actually gave a shit, about any of us, beyond what we could think of you !"

"Well then what do YOU think of me"

"I THINK YOU'D MAKE FRIENDS IF YOU CARED !"

"WHAT ?"

"I THINK YOU HAVE INTERESTING THINGS TO SAY, EXPERIENCE, INTERESTS, BUT YOU ARE TO DAMNED AFRAID TO SHARE THEM.

I think you have to give love in order to receive some ! I don't know who's made you so sure that no one would or should ever. love you but that person's a piece of shit who doesn't deserve anything more than a rat's ass. Now let me help fou for god's sake. I can't stand to see you in pain"

"Why ?!"

"Because I don't want you to be in pain ! ESPECIALLY WHEN I CAN DO SOMETHING TO HELP ! IT'S CALLED EMPATHY"

"SO you just feel bad for everyone for no reason"

"Not necessarily, but right now I FEEL BAD FOR YOU ! NOW LET ME HELP.... please !"

She nodded so You rose to your Feet qnd told her "I'll be back soon". After a few minutes you came back with some rubbing alcohol, compress and bandages.

"We gotta get that cleaned up otherwise it could get infected"

"Get away y/n, i can do this on my own"

"Of course and you could get an open heart surgery by yourself so no-one else would have to see it. We get it, you're tough, and strong. Now quit this shit and let me help you."

"What-..."

"You heard me, now stop talking or I'll hit you so hard, I'll make your ancestors dizzy."

"How dare you talk to me like this. I am your supervisor, you will get back to your office now."

"With all due respect that's some bullshit. Let me help you now." She hesitated for a bit but gave in eventually. So you damped the cotton in alcohol cleaned her up and she winced. "I'm sorry, this will sting a bit"

You were closer to her than you'd ever been, your hand on her thighs and you could feel her breath on your neck. Her wound wouldn't close up no matter how much pressure you put on it. "Shit, this won't stop bleeding...I think you need stitches for that one"

"No i don't"

"Yes you do, the cut is to deep"

"I'm not going to the hospital"

"Yes you are" you replied.

"No"

"Why ?"

"...leave me alone please"

"I will not, you are hurt And you are bleeding and you can't stand up. I'm staying right there"

"Why"

"Because I care ! Because I don't leave people who need a little hand to bleed out sitting on their ass ! Because you're my boss, but mostly my colleague. Because you deserve someone who wants to help."

"You really think so ?"

"Yes ! Now stop being a pain in the ass and let me take you to the hospital."

"I can't, i...i have an hospital phobia. I can't do it"

Your mind immediately wondered to her cane, and her scoliosis, which probably took her to the hospital as a kid. And doctors can be quite mean, especially when they see you often.

"Okay... I'll find something else...oh my god does your back hurt right now, do you want to move ?"

"....it hurts but i don't want to move"

"Alright...I can stich you up, but it'll be without anestesia"

"Do it"

"Venable, It'll hurt like a bitch, are you really sure you don't want to go to the ER ?"

"Yes I'm sure, i can't go..."

"Even if I'm with your the whole time ?"

"I'm...."

"I'll hold your hand if you need it, and I won't leave your side"

"No... I'm sorry just stich me up"

You got all of the tools ready, and prepared her leg.

"It won't be long, bite this."

Your hands worked on her leg, and she groaned loudly at the pain. You cut the chord and cleaned her up again.

"All done I'm finished."

"Finally"

"Well I'm not done with you yet, do your have any wound anywhere else ?"

"No, i don't think so" you nodded

"Good Now, are you going to tell me what happened ?"

"It's embarrassing"

"I'm sure it's not, come on" you squeezed her knee and looked at her softly so she'd feel safe.

"I...I was trying to go to your office and I fell down the stairs and broke the light bulb, my cane was to far and i couldn't get back up so I dragged myself here."

"Oh...ms Venable, why didn't you call me ? I could have hellped you"

"Don't be silly y/n, you would have probably laughed if I wasn't your superior"

"No. I wouldn't have, because you've hurt yourself, and your pain isn't funny to me at all."

"Well i don't know why you would do that"

"Look, we might not know each other very much, but I'm still worried about you. No one deserves to be alone."

"You don't know me, maybe i do"

"Well then let me get to know the real you, and I'll be the juge of that" she laughed ironically

"Well you are quite the specimen."

"I know right ?! Now let's get you up, unless you'd like to spend the night sitting on the floor....here"

You picked her up by her hips, and before she could protest you cut her off.

"Tsk tsk tsk.. let me help you, that's the least I can do. I can't take away your pain, at least let me soothe it." Once you though she looked like she could stand up on her own you went to pick up her cane but suddenly she was falling again but this time you were close enough to at least hold her while she went down. You shifted so she you could be the one to take the impact and she fell on top of you.

"I'm so sorry y/n.. are you okay ??"

"Ye..yeah I'm Fine are you ?"

She began to laugh from the bottom of her heart at how ridiculous this situation was, and you joined her.

"That was really stupid of me...to think I'd take a step... without my cane"

"And that was really stupid of me... to think that leaving your side to pick it up was a good... idea" you said in between breaths

After a while you both calmed down, and she was still lying on you, her har had fallen out of her ponytail and came to rest on the side of her face, her eyes shining orange and her breath hitting your neck in a slow and steady rithm. She looked so beautiful, you brushed her hair behind her ear, before offering her a warm smile.

"Hi"

"Hey"

"We should get up y/n"

"Probably"

"Even though you are oddly confortable"

"And you are specifically beautiful"

She rose to her feet as if you'd insulted her, her pride, her life. So you lifted your hand to stroke her cheek.

"It's okay ms Venable, you're safe, I've got you. I really do find you beautiful, I'm not making fun of you."

You spoke as your words calmed all of her fears.

You both got up, you gave her back her cane.

And both of you walked off into the parking lot.

"I'd like to take you to dinner someway ms Venable"

"Please call me Wilhelmina"

"Okay then, I'd like to take you to dinner someway Wilhelmina"

"I'd like that too y/n"

#sarah paulson fanfiction #wilhemina venable x reader #wilhelmina venable

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bellatrixobsessed1 · 3 years

Text

When A Bird Dies

Pair: Alcina/Mia

Summary: After Mother Miranda’s death, Alcina feels lost. She uses wine to cope and Mia tries to help her find a purpose.

AN: This one shot was inspired by Rosegarden Funeral Party’s Once In A While. It’s my first time writing Mia so apologies if it’s somewhat OOC. Ngl I was kind of just typing here and hoping for the best xD

Sometimes when she gets insecure, she gets drunk. And the lady is a woefully sloppy and unrefined drunk. Sometimes she drinks when she is sad. Mia doesn’t understand why she does this, the drinks only heighten her sorrow and leave her a sobbing mess.

On these nights, Mia wishes that she could carry the lady to bed. Lift her right off her feet and tuck her in. Perhaps rub her back until she comes back to herself. Her poised and fierce self. Back to the Alcina who speaks of skinning men alive and tasting their delectable blood.

But sometimes, the woman curled up and sobbing on the floor isn’t of any intrigue to Mia. She is a pitiful thing. And sometimes a disgusting sniveling thing. Really, Mia thinks that she ought to take the woman’s wine from her. Sometimes she grows tired of what it can reduce Dimitrescu to.

“You would do this in front of your daughters?” Mia asks.

“My daughters aren’t here.”

“Yes, they’re off fetching and bedding maidens.” She comments dryly. Sometimes bitterness gets the best of her. Sometimes she finds herself slipping and lapsing into something that she isn’t proud of, not even slightly. Maybe the woman in front of her is wearing off on her. Maybe it is this village infecting her just as swiftly as the mold.

“How dare you?” Lady Dimitrescu growls. She wipes her eyes, smearing mascara and foundation. Her face is twisted into a furious, almost feral snarl. Double so with crimson of blood-wine staining her teeth. “Talk about my daughters like that…” she slurs. “I’ve never said an ill word of that Rose.”

She could slap the woman. She very well should. Dimitrescu knows well that Rose is a subject not to be spoken of. Even years later it still stings to think of having to let the baby go. To think of having to let Ethan go. To have watched them make their way out of the village with only a glance back.

To know that the mold has infected and warped her so beyond repair that she had to let the two of them go and remain here amid the other freaks and monsters. And only this one, this sorry drunk had taken pity on her. Mia supposes that calling her a drunk is a bit of a stretch. She only drinks when she thinks. And lately she has been doing a lot of thinking. She says that she thinks until her head hurts. Undoubtedly she misses Mother Miranda, the wretched beast.

Without Mother Miranda she is both stronger and weaker. She is bolder, freer. Bolder, freer, and sadder. Though sometimes Mia thinks that it is merely a melodrama, that the mutant just wants attention. And with nothing better to do, Mia gives it to the woman. Most of the time she only dimly recalls having received any affection at all.

And maybe it is her maternal side that does the talking and moving. Her maternal side that compels her to help the tall lady to her unsteady feet. “You’re going to have to stop this.” Mia sighs. “You’re a lot stronger than this.”

.oOo.

Alcina shakes her head. These days she doesn’t feel much like that. Between Mother Miranda’s great fall and her own at the hands of Ethan Winters, she has found herself feeling rather inadequate.

Her weakness now runs so deep that she can’t even bring herself to go through with her vengeance. To drive a claw through one end of Mia and out the other and deliver the corpse straight to her husband and his wretched daughter.

Right now her head hurts too much to stand, let alone skewer a woman. And even if she had the ability she is coming to find that she has quite a soft spot for Mia. To think that she has fallen so low that she finds herself fancying a human. She is lucky that her daughters aren’t here to see this. She resents it with a fury, but Mia is right. She needs to get herself together.

“Sit with me?” She pats a spot on her lap. The woman hesitates. “Sit with me.” She still hesitates but climbs into her lap all the same. “You know that I was thinking of bleeding you out? I was going to chain you to the ceiling just the way I did your husband.” She pauses, trying to detect fear or hatred on the woman’s face. It remains blank. Impassive and unphased. “I was going to taste your blood on my tongue, surely it tastes better than your husband’s. Woman…” she leans closer, hovers her lips over Mia’s exposed neck. “Women taste better. Sweeter, richer. They aren’t so dirty and stale.”

“And how does your blood taste, Lady Dimitrescu?”

She furrows her brows, admittedly, the question has thrown her. “My blood…”

“I don’t bleed.”

“Everyone bleeds, Lady Dimitrescu.” Mia seems to study her face. “You just bleed differently. I imagine that your blood tastes like wine. You drink enough of it.”

Her face colors. It helps her case very little that she is already quite tipsy. Tipsy and absurdly emotional. She understands why Mia isn’t quite so intimidated by her today. “I do not bleed.” She repeats again.

“You would hemorrhage if your daughters died. Mother Miranda died and look at you...you’re bleeding all over the place.” She reaches up and wipes a tear from Alcina’s eye. “It’s depressing and fascinating to watch.” She pauses. “I’ve looked after a mutant before. Eveline. The infected definitely bleed. The hurt and cry just the way we do. You wouldn’t even know that some of them are mutated.”

Alcina cringes, “don’t you dare compare me to…”

“Humans?” Mia asks. “You were human once.”

“That...that was a very long time ago.” And there is not one part of her that wishes to return to that feeble, delicate state. “You’d do well not to bring it up again.” Where did she put the wine bottle? But the words have already well and settled upon her, she doesn’t think that more wine can drive them out this time.

Evidently she isn’t sure what to do. Isn’t sure that she has a purpose at all anymore. Donna has her dolls and Karl has his machines. She never thought that she would find herself near the same level as Salvatore--confused and lost.

She could continue to export her wines, she supposes. But that has lost its charm now that Mother Miranda won’t be around to stop in for a taste. To dully express a fondness for the drinks.

She has her girls but they have their own lives to live and now that the weather is warming, they are out and about more often.

“What shall I do, Mia?” She murmurs.

Mia’s face softens and the woman brings a hand to her cheek. Her hand is somewhat cold but the gesture has a warmth to make up for it. “About what? Your startling bloodlust?”

“What shall I do now that Mother Miranda is gone?”

“First you can put down the bottle.” She takes it right from Alcina’s hands and puts it aside. “And then you can start living your own life again. Your way.”

She isn’t sure that she remembers how.

“You used to enjoy jazz, yes?”

“Quite well.” She nods. And she still enjoys digging out an old record every now and then.

“Well, why don’t you put a record on, we can have dinner, and discuss how to get you back into the music industry.”

“I don’t believe that I fit into the scene anymore.” And she means it most literally.

“That’s what we’ll be talking about. I’d love to get out of this village every now and again. Perhaps you can do the singing and I can do some lip syncing?”

It isn’t such a horrid plan. If nothing else, it gives her something to fantasize about. Something to look forward to. And perhaps if she doesn’t kill the woman or corrode her soul completely--they might make a fine duo.

Mia casts a smile over her shoulder.

Sometimes, Alcina loses herself. At least this time she may have help finding herself.

#Alcina Dimitrescu #Lady Dimitrescu #Resident Evil #Alcina/Mia

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ghost-in-the-hella · 3 years

Note

73. “I missed you.” Gideon/Harrow

Took me a bit to get my head around this one, but I think it worked out well enough in the end. Consider this an AU where the Emperor never summoned the heirs of the Houses and Gideon therefore successfully escaped to the Cohort. Contains some mild spoilers for Harrow the Ninth, I guess? Kind of?

---

In the opinion of Private First Class Gideon Nav - rising BARI star of the Cohort, dirty toenail of the Emperor, ladykiller in her own mind - closing time is the best time. As much as she loves the hustle and bustle of the mess hall during its peak hours - chatting up all the uniformed honeys, filling three or four elaborate orders at a time like the coffee rockstar that she is, showing off her sick coffee-slinging skillz with style and flair rivaled by none - there’s something soothing about the quiet at the end of her shift that speaks to her soul. The mess hall empty save for a handful of stragglers and night owls. The slow work of cleaning the machines. The pervasive near silence in which every move she makes echoes in the cavernous space.

It reminds her a bit of nights in Drearburh spent jogging in the recyc mist with only the sound of her own footsteps and breath for company, and enough time has passed since those lonesome nights that she can feel a tinge of nostalgia for them even as she internally celebrates her successful escape. She thinks of the Ninth House rarely enough these days that she can indulge in some light nostalgia without immediately feeling salty about the absolute shitshow that was her entire childhood and adolescence.

Gideon’s got her back to the counter, wiping out a portafilter and whistling a jaunty tune, when she hears someone step up to the counter. She’s about to tell her unfortunate customer that she’s all closed up for the night - technically she’s still got ten minutes on her shift, but she’s already cleaned out the coffee urns and wrapped up the pastries so seriously fuck off already - when she makes the mistake of turning around. She is immediately and viscerally reminded of the Ninth House again the second she locks eyes with the young woman before her, and it’s not just because she looks like a skeleton.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus looks different, of course. She’s almost a year older, for one thing. For another, her face isn’t covered with ten pounds of ancient paint, revealing an awkwardly ferrety visage that Gideon would hardly recognize if it weren’t for the bottomless black eyes in them and how deeply they stare into her golden ones. There are dark shadows under her deeply set eyes that render her face at least partly familiar, as they echo the sockets of a skull. Her mouth is pinched, as if the stick up her ass has finally penetrated all the way to her cranium and jammed her lips shut. Her nose is thin and sharp as a knife. Her chin looks like it would put someone’s eye out if they were fool enough to try to embrace her, assuming Harrow didn’t slit their throat first for the very attempt. She’s wearing Cohort whites rather than her familiar billowing black vestments, and the uniform makes her look sallow and somehow even more painfully thin.

“Griddle,” she says before Gideon can start to wonder if she’s somehow stumbled into an alternate reality. For how different she looks, clearly Harrow hasn’t changed. Gideon rolls her eyes and returns her attention to the portafilter. “Is this how you treat all of your customers?”

Beneath her typically peevish tone there’s something unfamiliar in Harrow’s voice, something it takes Gideon a good twenty seconds to decipher. Holy shit, Harrow’s nervous. Gideon’s seen Harrow be nervous before, but previously it’s always been buried under considerably more makeup and Gideon generally hasn’t been the cause of it.

“Customer, huh? Sorry, I naturally assumed you were here just to make my life hell again. Drag me back to Drearburh kicking and screaming, something like that. I didn’t think you might actually be here for a cup of coffee.”

“Yes, well, as usual you are mistaken. I was informed that on this deck’s mess hall I would be able to find a coffee adept who’s considered something of a genius with BARI. I certainly didn’t expect it to be you. I thought surely you’d be on the front lines on some distant planet by now.”

Gideon scoffs. “You don’t expect me to believe you joined the Cohort just to get a decent cup of coffee, do you? I mean, I know it’s all ice cold sludge on the Ninth, but damn, girl.” She fetches a porcelain mug (the darkest one she can find: it’s charcoal gray, but that’ll have to do) despite the fact that Harrow has yet to place anything remotely resembling an order and begins preparing her special extra-dark brew. It’s bitter enough that it’s unlikely to overwhelm Harrow’s stunted palette, and she should appreciate its blackness.

“Of course I didn’t join for the coffee,” Harrow snaps. It’s funny: her face is much more expressive without her skull paint, but Gideon finds it harder to read. “If I’d known you were the so-called BARI star the others keep rattling on about, I wouldn’t have bothered with coffee at all. I was lured into a false sense of security by the word ‘genius.’”

Gideon grins smugly as she flips the mug expertly into place in a daredevil move that usually earns her at least a smile if not a room number. “I guess some folks appreciate my brilliance.” She braces the triple-shot portafilter against the counter with one arm and effortlessly tamps the espresso grounds with the other.

Harrow scowls, and it nearly makes Gideon homesick. “Your brilliance remains to be seen.”

Gideon locks the portafilter into place and hits the brew button, counting off the seconds in her head. “That’s fine; you’ll taste it soon enough.” As the espresso streams beautifully into the mug, Gideon adds a liberal sprinkle from the jar she’s marked Gideon’s Special Dark Mixture of Doom and Ecstasy.

“I must admit, I didn’t expect to see you here so long after your… departure from the Ninth. I assumed you would have been deployed by now.”

“I was,” Gideon says with a shrug as she flicks the espresso machine off, trying not to sound butthurt about it. “Served for nearly a week before I got injured. Caught a leg full of shrapnel defending my commanding officer. I wanted to stay in the field - it was only a damn limp - but they didn’t want to risk me losing the leg to infection.” She removes the portafilter and bangs the wet grounds out into the garbage. “They started me behind the counter here while I was recuperating, found I had a knack for it, and I haven’t been redeployed since.”

Harrow’s face cycles through several dozen expressions that Gideon can’t quite parse before settling on ‘carefully neutral.’ “How is your leg now?”

Gideon stirs the brew with a wooden swizzle stick to help the BARI blend dissolve. “I’ve got some gnarly scarring, but it only hurts first thing in the morning.” And by the end of her shift most days. And if she walks too much, or stands too much, or sits too much. “Don’t worry, though; I look even hotter with the scars.” Gideon winks while Harrow groans, and for a moment feels like old times. She sets the steaming, fragrant mug down in front of Harrow. “So. What’s your story? I didn’t think anything short of a summons from the Emperor Undying himself would lure you out of Drearburh.”

Harrow eyes the drink as if she expects it to bite her. “I have no story,” she says without affect. “I am here to bring honor to my House.”

Gideon wipes the portafilter with the rag at her hip and locks it back into the machine, then hits the brew button to run hot water through it. “That’s some classic Harrowhark Nonagesimus evasive bullshit if I ever heard it. Why are you really here? The congregation finally all die out?” She jabs the button again and the water dribbles to a halt. “Oh, shit, did they finally figure out about your parents??”

“No and no,” Harrow says firmly. She leans in and gives the cup an experimental sniff. “I have simply decided that I can serve my House better as a Cohort necromancer than as the Reverend Daughter. What better way to disseminate the gospel of the Ninth and expand our congregation than by showing the universe what the Ninth House is capable of.” She attempts to take a sip of her drink and promptly scalds her mouth.

“Careful, it’s hot.” Gideon studies her and shakes her head. “Y’know, you almost had me, but no. Maybe that’s how you rationalize it to Crux and Aiglamene, and maybe even to yourself, but that’s not why you enlisted.”

Harrow looks strangely vulnerable with her pale and naked face and her seared lips. “Would you believe I wanted to test my mettle and prove that I am indeed the greatest necromancer of my generation on the field of battle?”

“No,” Gideon replies bluntly. Harrow’s studying the steaming beverage like she can’t figure out how to drink it without injury, and she probably really can’t. Gideon still remembers how steep her learning curve was when she first encountered hot drinks after nearly two decades of nothing but cold. “Here,” she says, taking pity on her old nemesis. “You’ve got to blow on it to cool it off. Like this.” She bends and purses her lips, cascading cool air over the surface of the hot BARI drink.

The outer edges of Harrow’s ears turn pink. Gideon realizes all at once that Harrow’s not looking at her like she’s a nemesis at all. If Gideon had to classify the look Harrow’s giving her, it’s more akin to how the handful of fellow Cohort recruits she’s hooked up with since enlisting looked at her right before they hooked up. The idea of that look coming from Harrowhark of all people makes her palms sweat. “Harrow,” she says tenderly, as one peels the hard rind from a soft fruit, “Why did you join the Cohort, really?”

Harrow worries her lower lip between her sharp, bone-white teeth until it starts to tear and bleed. “I missed you,” she confesses, dredging the words up painfully like vomit.

Gideon nods as if this were a perfectly normal and comprehensible thing for her oldest - and only, really - enemy to say and not the most unfathomable thing she’s heard in her entire life. “You should aim better next time.”

Harrow turns livid at that. Rather than using her words like a normal human being (because when has Harrow ever done anything like a normal human being?), she snatches up her mug with the expression of someone who’s just taken a step out onto a tightrope only to end up tredding in flaming dogshit. She pivots with a dramatic whirl that doesn’t quite work without her flowing black robes and takes a sip of her coffee as she goes. She stops short and her eyes widen in the universal expression of ‘holy fuck that’s way more delicious than I expected.’

Gideon grins as she heaves herself up onto the counter, sliding across and landing lightly on the other side in a super cool move that would sweep any girl off her feet (even if the girl in question were a dessicated bone witch). “Oh, fuckin’ get over here,” she says, pulling Harrow into a hug that nearly causes her to drop her mug in alarm. “I missed you, too.”

#prompt fill #prompt fic #fanfic #prompt ghost #ghost writes #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #griddlehark #coffeehouse AU #Cohort AU

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 3 years

Text

Eccentricity [Chapter 14: Love Keeps The Monsters From Our Door] [Series Finale]

A/N: Thank you for your encouragement, enthusiasm, laughter, rants, screeches of anguish, and unapologetic thirsting for “sexy undead Italian man” Joseph Francis Mazzello. I hope you love this conclusion more than Baby Swan loves pineapple pizza. 💜

Series Summary: Potentially a better love story than Twilight?

Chapter Title Is A Lyric From: “Til I Die” by Parsonsfield. (The #1 song I associate with this fic!)

Chapter Warnings: Language.

Word Count: 7.7k.

Other Chapters (And All My Writing) Available: HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @bramblesforbreakfast @maggieroseevans @culturefiendtrashqueen @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @escabell @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhyee @deacyblues @tensecondvacation @brianssixpence @some-major-ishues @haileymorelikestupid @youngpastafanmug @simonedk @rhapsodyrecs

Mercy

We have to stay in the Vladivostok palace until her transformation is complete, and I hate it.

The floors are cold and sterile and every clang of noise ricochets off them like a bullet. The earth outside is stripped bare and hibernal. There is no green to interrupt the bleakness of the sky, the cruel absence of color: no spruces or hemlocks or bigleaf maples, no evergreen forests, no verdant fields, only a grey that bleeds from the sky in sheets of hail and driving rain. This land is a stranger. So many of the faces, too, are strangers, although they try. Honora sits with me—her large dark eyes, like mirrors of mine, polished and wet with aching pity—and braids my hair. Morana invites me to bake homemade bread with her. Austin tries to make me smile. Cato visits me as much as he can, because he feels responsible; or maybe he would do it anyway, maybe lessening suffering is as instinctual to him as bloodshed is to so many of our kind. And when Cato is with me, I do feel a little better, like my story might belong to somebody else, like it’s a name I can’t quite remember, like it’s a transitory moment of déjà vu I can catch glimpses of but never touch. And yet, still, I send him away.

I don’t want to be with Cato. It’s painful for him to be around me, I can see that. It’s painful for Rami, and for Ben, and for Joe, and for Lucy and Scarlett. It’s even painful for the Irish Wolfhounds that Cato found locked up for safekeeping in Larkin’s study; they skulk around the palace vigilantly but leave great swaths of uninterrupted space around me like open water. So I conjure up a mask of brave, hopeful acceptance and wear it everywhere I go.

Joe says very little, never leaves the girl he calls Baby Swan’s side, dabs her scorching skin with washcloths soaked in ice water and murmurs in sympathy when she screams through the unconsciousness, from beneath the ocean of fire we all know so well. He nods off sometimes, snatching minutes of sleep like fireflies in a jar, before jolting awake to make sure her heart is still beating. When Ben isn’t checking on them, he’s with Cato, helping to draw up plans for the future, reminiscing about the past with slick eyes and clinking midnight glasses of whiskey. Scarlett sprawls across the desk in what was once Larkin’s study and spends hours on the phone with Archer as she gazes up at the ceiling, telling him how to care for the farm animals and the garden, reassuring him that we’ll be home soon, whispering things to him that I try not to hear; and I know she wouldn’t want me to anyway. Lucy weeps delicate, ceaseless tears as she perches on the staircase landing and Rami entombs her in his arms, never having to ask what she needs from him. And I wander meaninglessly through the echoing, unfamiliar hallways like a moon without a planet.

I know what they all think about me, perhaps even Rami, for I keep it buried as deep as all skeletons should be: that I’m irrevocably kind, effortlessly forgiving. That I’m as incapable of bitterness as I am of aging. But they’re wrong. It’s a choice, and it always has been, ever since a late-November dusk in 1864 when madness eclipsed mercy. Every day I choose whether to surrender to the beckoning, malignant hatred that lurks in the back of my bedroom closet, in the dusty and ill-lit loft of the barn roped with cobwebs, in the twilight tree line of the western hemlocks crawling with shadows that whisper through fanged teeth. Every day I decide whether to become a monster. And it has never been harder to remember why I don’t.

My future is unimaginable. The nights are endless. I feel black, razored seeds of what I am horrified must be bitterness burrowing beneath my skin and taking root there. I am consumed by infected, fruitless questions that I can’t silence: Why Gwilym? Why Arthur? Why Eliza and Charlotte? Why is it always fire?

The first words that Gwilym ever spoke to me, as I unraveled from unconsciousness under a grove of sycamore trees with smoke still clinging to my unscarred skin, rattle around in my skull like windchimes beneath thunderous skies. His voice was colored with an accent I couldn’t place, and yet it sounded like home: You’re in a dark place right now. But you don’t have to stay there.

That might have been true once. That might have been true in the ruinous autumn of 1864. But now I can’t find my way out.

Seventy-three hours after our arrival in this barren corner of the world, Charlie Swan’s daughter wakes up as a vampire. Her heart is perfectly still, her skin faultless, her senses sharp, her mind as impenetrable as ever; at least, that’s what Lucy says when she finds me. And Lucy tugs at my hand, wearing her first smile in days, insisting that I have to come meet the newest member of our coven, to welcome her. I don’t know how to tell Lucy that I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to love this girl, that I don’t have it in me to love anyone but ghosts. And yet—compliantly, yieldingly, expecting nothing but disappointment in the monster I have become—I follow her.

The door is already open to the Swan girl’s room; chattering, beaming vampires flood in and out like the tides. I step inside. And I see the way that Joe looks at her, the way that Ben does; and all those seeds that I had feared might be bitterness blossom into nothing but open air.

It’s Not A Fucking Wedding (A.K.A. 13.5 Months Later)

The ocean is a universe. Its arms are not ever-expanding, spiraling galaxies of suns and planets and nebulae and black holes, this is true; its belly is not a vacuum of inhospitable oblivion, its bones are not invisible strings of gravity, its language is not a silence older than starlight, older than eternity. But the ocean is a universe nonetheless, its borders tucked neatly around the seven continents, slumbering there until the next hurricane or tsunami or ice age comes conquering; and inevitably equilibrium is restored—like defibrillator paddles to a heart, like naloxone to an addict’s blood—and our two worlds can coexist side by side once again.

The ocean’s arms are sighing waves, bubbling and brisk, grasping and retreating in the same breath. Its belly is swollen with life from immense blue whales down to swarming clouds of single-celled, sun-hungry phytoplankton. Its language is ancient whispers; not parched and blistering and brittle sounds like the desert’s but cool, serene, supple, engulfing. And I can hear them all, if I listen closely enough. I can hear the sentient whistling of orcas, the breaking of waves against rocks, the scrabbling of sand crabs beneath the earth, the gruff distant barks of sea lions, the rustling of evergreen pine needles in the breeze. And I understand now why it was always so easy for vampires to be introspective, to lapse into thoughtful, unhurried silences. I could imagine spending decades just sitting here with my knees tucked to my chest and my hair whipping in the brackish wind, watching the seasons roll by like a wheel.

Joe was coming back from the gravel parking lot. I turned to watch him: red U Chicago hoodie, messy dark auburn-ish hair, a pizza box clasped in his hands. The GrubHub delivery driver was returning to his car with the toothiest of grins.

“Buon appetito!” Joe announced, dramatically presenting me with the pizza box. It had become our post-finals tradition each semester: pizza at La Push beach, half-pepperoni, half-pineapple.

“Grazie, sexy undead Italian man. Your accent is getting so good!”

“I know, right?! I’m on a twelve-day Duolingo streak. I can’t let that little green owl dude down.”

“I’m impressed, I’ll admit it. I gotta brush up on my Welsh. Why’s the GrubHub driver so cheery?”

“I tipped him $500.”

I smiled, opening the box and lifting out a semi-warm slice of pineapple pizza. Elastic strands of mozzarella cheese stretched like rubber bands until they snapped. “Aww, really?”

Joe plopped down onto the cool, damp sand beside me. “No. I lied. We’re actually having a torrid love affair.”

I laughed, shaking my head. “How could you possibly have time for all that?” Between school, business ventures, family activities, and me, Joe was very rarely unoccupied. And he preferred it that way.

“I’m so glad you asked. I’m very speedy, if you recall. And that’s just one of the exclusive services I offer. I am a man of many talents. I make people’s wildest dreams come true. Who am I to deny the GrubHub delivery man the wonderland that is my spindly, annoying body?”

“You are the fastest,” I said, winking.

“Oh shut up! I mean, uh, uhhh, silenzio!” He pointed his slice of pepperoni pizza at me reproachfully. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not the fastest at everything.”

“Whatever you say, mob guy.”

He lunged for me, pinned me down in the crumbling sand, both of us laughing wildly as the crusts of our pizza slices bounded off and were snatched up by diving, screeching seagulls. He growled with mock savagery, braced his hips against mine, kissed his way from the corner of my jaw to my lips. That oh-so-familiar commanding, craving ache for him came roaring to the surface; and now there was no bittersweet edge to it, no inescapable backdrop of lambent numbers ticking down from five or ten or fifteen years to zero. Now there was only the calm, unurgent promise of forever.

“Joe—!”

“You have besmirched my honor, Baby Swan. I am left with no recourse but to refresh your clearly flawed memory and prove you wrong.”

“Public indecency? That’s illegal, sir.”

“Okay, you gotta stop stealing my catchphrases. It’s extremely difficult for me to come up with new ones. I’m almost a hundred years old, you know.”

“Alright, I guess you’re not bad in bed for a basically-centenarian.”

He smiled down at me, his dark eyes alight, the wind tearing through his hair, one palm resting on my forehead, uncharacteristically quiet.

“What?” I asked, worried.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just really glad we’re a thing.”

“You better be. You’re kind of stuck with me now. You’ve stolen my virtue, you’ve made me fall in love with your entire demented family, you’ve forced your torturous immortality upon me. I’m not going anywhere. Unless you ever stop funding my pineapple pizza addiction, of course.”

Joe chuckled as he climbed off me and took my hand in his, pulling me upright. “It’s absolutely ridiculous, by the way. Your insistence on being a sort-of vegetarian. It’s embarrassing. You’re the wimpiest vampire ever. You’re a disgrace to the coven.”

“I eat animals!” I objected.

“Yeah, when you have to.” And Joe was right: I steered clear of flesh outside of the two or three times a week when I hunted. For environmental sustainability reasons, I mostly consumed deer or rabbits; although the very occasional shark was my guilty pleasure. Joe gnawed on his second slice of pizza and peered out into the overcast, dusky horizon, wiping crumbs from his stubbled chin with the back of his hand. “We only have one more of these left,” he said at last, a little sadly. “One more finals season at Calawah University. One more celebratory dinner at La Push.”

“We’ll just have to get used to a new view. Pizza by the Chicago River, maybe.”

Joe looked over at me, thoughtful again, smiling. He had received his acceptance letter to the University of Chicago three weeks ago. I got mine eight days later. “It won’t be hard for you to leave Forks?”

“It will be. Once upon a time I didn’t think that was possible, but I will miss Forks. And not just because of Charlie and Archer and Jessica and Angela and all the Lees. But it was hard to leave Phoenix, and I’m sure one day it will be hard to leave Chicago. Just because change is hard doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”

Joe nodded introspectively. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

“Don’t quote classic rock songs at me, mixtapes boy.”

“You love my mixtapes,” he teased, circling his left arm around my waist, pulling me in closer, touching his lips to my forehead. Mint and pine and starlight sank into my lungs like an anchor through the surf. “And that saying actually goes all the way back to Seneca, my dear.”

“Don’t tell me he’s still philosophizing in some cloudy corner of the world somewhere.”

“Not to my knowledge. Although that’s an intriguing thought. We need more famous vampires. Caligula would have made for very interesting conversation. Lincoln, Napoleon, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Dante...I guess it’s possible that anyone is still around. Maybe we should turn Meat Loaf. You know, for the good of posterity.”

“Is it not enough that they’re already cursed with student debt and global warming?”

Joe cackled, took my face in his palms, kissed each of my cheeks one after the other, then nudged my nose with his. “You ready to go, Baby Swan? I suspect we’re expected to participate in some holiday festivities tonight.”

“I’m ready,” I agreed. We threw our leftover pizza to the seagulls, disposed of the grease-spotted cardboard box, and walked back to my 1999 Honda Accord with our pulseless hands intertwined.

The evergreen trees along Routh 110 fled by beneath a sky freckling with stars. Sharp winter air poured in through the open windows. And I could feel that it was cold, in the same way that I could feel the warmth on Forks’ rare sweltering days; but there was no discomfort that accompanied that knowledge. Pain only came when the sky was unincumbered by thick clouds churning in off the Pacific, and then it felt something like staring into the sun had as a human. Sunglasses helped, but the surest remedy was avoidance, was surrender. And what an inconsequential price to pay for forever.

“Wait,” I said, spying the mailbox that marked the start of the Lees’ driveway. “They still deliver mail on Christmas Eve, right?”

“Uh, I think so, why...?” And then he remembered. “Oh, yeah, let’s check!”

I pulled up beside the mailbox and Joe leaned out, returning to his seat with a mountain of Christmas cards and business correspondence and advertisements from Costco and Sephora. He sifted through them until he found a single white envelope from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. It was addressed to a Mr. Benjamin August Hardy. Joe held it up to show me as we drove down the driveway, the Lee house coming into view and ornamented with a frankly excessive amount of multicolored string lights and inflatable reindeer.

“Oh my god!” I squealed, drumming the steering wheel.

“You want to be the one to give it to him?”

“Are you serious?! Yeah, can I?”

Joe passed the envelope to me as I parked my geriatric Honda, which Archer had pledged to keep alive as long as physically possible. In return, Ben let him and Scarlett borrow the Aston Martin Vantage no less than once a week. I dashed out of the car, up the steps of the front porch, and into the house that bubbled over with the sounds of metallic kitchen clashes and frenetic voices and Wham!’s Last Christmas.

“Ben?!” I shouted.

“Hi, honey!” Mercy called from the living room, where she and Lucy were putting the final touches on Scarlett’s gown. Scarlett was playing the part of semi-willing victim, wearing gold heels and an impatient smirk and her hair out of the way in a milkmaid braid; her train of vivid red lace billowed across the hardwood floor. From the couch, Archer and Rami were playing Mario Kart on the big-screen tv and nibbling their way through a tray of homemade gingerbread cookies.

“Oh wow,” I said, clutching the envelope to my chest, mesmerized. I kept waiting for Scarlett to start looking like a normal person to me, and it never happened. Tonight, in the glow of the flameless candles and kaleidoscopic Christmas lights and draped in lace the color of pomegranate seeds, she was Persephone: a goddess of resurrection, a face that death himself could not pass by unscathed. “You’ve outdone yourself, Lucy. Seriously.”

“One day I’m going to get you out of those thrift shop sweaters,” Lucy threatened me, placing a pin in the fabric at Scarlett’s waist.

“Yeah, okay. Let me know when that shows up in one of your visions.”

“Bitch,” Lucy flung back, snickering, knowing how improbable that was. I still appeared in her visions extremely infrequently, and then only when I happened to be standing next to whoever the premonition was actually about.

“Language, dear,” Mercy tutted, inspecting the hem of Scarlett’s gown.

Joe arrived beside me, his arms still full of mail. “ScarJo, I almost didn’t recognize you! Why do you have, like, no cleavage or fishnets or thigh slits?”

“Why do you have like no eyelashes?” Scarlett replied. “See, I can ask unnecessary and invasive questions too.”

Joe frowned, wounded. “What’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“Lucy, darling, I think it’s just a tad uneven on this side,” Mercy said, showing her. “Maybe by half an inch...?”

“No, seriously, what’s wrong with my eyelashes?!”

Mercy replied distractedly: “Nothing, honey, you’re perfect just the way you are.”

“Mom!” Joe groaned.

“It really is gorgeous,” Mercy marveled as Lucy flitted around her to investigate the hem situation. “And so Christmasy. So perfect for the season. Scarlett, dear, you were right after all, and I’m so sorry for doubting you. I’d just never heard of a red wedding dress before.”

“Mom, it’s not a fucking wedding!” Scarlett exclaimed, for probably the thirtieth time since Thanksgiving. “It’s a nonbinding, informal celebration of an egalitarian romantic partnership. Will somebody please inform this woman that it’s not a wedding?!”

“Yes, yes, of course, whatever you want, sweetheart,” Mercy conceded dreamily.

Joe pointed to Archer. “Isn’t he supposed to not see the dress until the day of or something?”

“What a great question!” Archer replied, still deeply invested in Mario Kart. “You see, that would be the case if this was a wedding. However, I’ve been informed in no uncertain terms that it is most definitely not.”

Scarlett grinned triumphantly at Joe. “There you have it.”

She might snap petulantly, and she might complain, but Scarlett wouldn’t be doing this if she didn’t want to; we were all intimately familiar with the futility of trying to force Scarlett into anything. The not-wedding, as improbable as it seemed, had been her idea from the start. And she wasn’t doing it for herself. She wasn’t even doing it for Archer. Scarlett was doing it for her mother.

The first six months had been hell for Mercy. She didn’t resent me, as I had feared she might; Mercy made that clear, and Rami confirmed it. But she was gutted. She wouldn’t speak of Gwil, wouldn’t listen to us talk about him, locked every photograph of him away in dark drawers, wandered around with a remote, uncanny, unseeing smile until she walked straight into walls; and then she would blink inanely up at them, as if they had dropped out of the sky rather than been built by her own hands. She baked hundreds of cakes and almost never slept. She told us she was fine every time we asked, which was more or less constantly. But on the very rare occasions when she was left alone, Mercy would unfailingly end up in the field behind the Lee house, gazing out into the forest of western hemlock trees with tears snaking silently down her cheeks, the muted light of the cloud-covered setting sun flickering red and furious on her face like wildfire.

And then one afternoon, a package had arrived from Arviat, Canada, where Cato and the rest of the surviving Draghi had relocated shortly after the rebellion at Vladivostok. It was five feet tall and another three wide, and what we found after carefully peeling away all those layers of foam padding and packing tape was a portrait of Gwilym so skillfully painted that it could have been mistaken for a photograph. Mercy had stared at it for a long time—ignoring Lucy’s attempts to guide her away, deaf to any of our concerns—until she at last picked up the portrait herself and said, quite evenly: “I think we should hang it in the living room, don’t you?”

Things had been better since then—very, very gradually, and yet unmistakably—and Gwil’s portrait remained mounted above the living room couch like a watchman, his eyes sparkling and blue, his faint smile stoic and fond and omniscient. But even in the wake of Mercy’s continued improvement, none of us kids were about to risk another agonizingly despondent Christmas. So the solution was obvious. We would keep Mercy preoccupied with what thrilled her more than absolutely anything else: the pseudo-weddings of her children. Rami and Lucy had already secretly volunteered to go next year...and after that, who knew? And there was one other thing that was making Mercy’s burden a little lighter these days.

Charlie sauntered into the living room, wearing an apron covered in cartwheeling Santas and wiping white dust like snow—powdered sugar? flour? baking soda?—from his ungainly hands. He was palpably proud. “The sugar cookies are officially in the oven. And I managed to fit them all on one baking sheet, isn’t that great?! Cuts down on dishes!”

“Why, yes, I suppose it does!” Mercy said, alarm dawning in her eyes. Had my beloved father placed the globs of dough too close together? Would we end up with one hideous, giant monster-cookie? Only time would tell. Providentially, Archer and Joe could be counted on to eat just about anything.

Joe sniffed the air, his forehead crinkling. “What’s burning?”

“Nothing should be burning,” Mercy replied, almost defensive, forever protective of Charlie and all of his profound, incurably human imperfections. Sometimes I thought that she preferred him that way, that he was a link to a simpler world in the same way I had once been, that he was a puddle of memory she could drop into, that maybe he wasn’t so unlike her first husband Arthur. “Not yet, anyway. The cookies need at least ten to twelve minutes at 350.”

“Wait, 350?!” Charlie exclaimed, horrorstruck. “I thought you said 450!”

“Oh, this is tragic,” Scarlett said.

“I can fix it!” Mercy trilled buoyantly, breezing off to the kitchen as Charlie followed after her with a fountain of apologies. She shushed them away affectionately, patting his chest with her soft plump hands, chuckling about how luckily they had fire extinguishers stowed away in almost every closet just in case. And there were other reasons for that besides Charlie’s perilous baking attempts, but he didn’t know them. Now the record player was belting out Queen’s Thank God It’s Christmas.

Archer lost another round in Mario Kart and exhaled a great, mournful sigh. “Hey, Baby Swanpire, can you do something about this guy?” He nodded to Rami. “This is criminal. It’s nowhere near a fair fight. He knows every freaking time I’m about to toss a banana peel.”

Rami smirked guiltily up at me from the couch, not bothering to deny it.

“Do you mind?” I asked him.

“Not at all,” Rami replied. “I want to show this loser I can beat him even without the benefit of mega-cool extrasensory superpowers.”

“Rude!” Archer cried.

“So rude,” Scarlett agreed, smiling.

“Okay, here we go.” I sat down beside Rami, still holding Ben’s envelope in my right hand, and laid my left against Rami’s cheek. And I felt a fistful of numbness—like instant peace, like milk-white Novocain—pass from my skin into his, rolling into his skull, deadening whatever telepathic livewires had been ignited there in the August of 1916. The effect would last anywhere from thirty minutes to a few hours; and it worked on every vampire I’d met so far.

“Whoa, trippy,” Rami murmured. “It’s still weird, every single time.” He peered drowsily around the room. “It’s...so...quiet?! You guys really live like this? No one is constantly bombarding you with sexual fantasies or romantic pining or depressive inner monologues? How do you function?! Now I’m alone with my own thoughts, that’s actually worse!”

“Hurry up and beat him while he’s all freaked out and vulnerable,” Scarlett told Archer.

Archer laughed, picking up his Nintendo 64 controller, radiant with the promise of vengeance. “Yes ma’am.”

“Any good mail?” Lucy asked Joe.

“Yeah. Coupons and a ton of Christmas cards from random people. The vet sent us one with alpacas on it, so that’s cute. Oh, and here’s one from our favorite Canadians.”

Joe held up the card so we could all see. The picture on the front showed Cato and Honora sitting on a large velvet, forest green couch with a hulking Christmas tree illuminated in the background. The others were arranged around them: Austin, Max, Ksenia, Charity, Araminta, Akari, Morana, Phelan, Aruna, Adair, Zora, Sahel, and a few new faces I couldn’t name yet. They were all wearing matching turtleneck sweaters. And every single one of them was smiling.

Joe cleared his throat theatrically and read the text on the inside of the card:

“Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

(Oh, and Scarlett, congratulations on your not-marriage.)

- Cato Douglass Freeman”

“That bastard,” Scarlett muttered.

Rami offered me his controller. He had just slipped on a banana peel and rocketed off a cliff. “You want a turn?”

“No, thanks though. I have to talk to Ben. Is he around?”

Rami shrugged ruefully. “I would help, but my brain is temporarily broken.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes, taking a gingerbread cookie from the tray and biting into it as Lucy batted crumbs from the red lace dress, exasperated. “I think he’s out in the hot tub.”

“Cool. I shall return.”

Joe took my spot on the couch as I departed, shoveling cookies into his mouth, seizing Rami’s controller and kicking his feet up on the coffee table.

I opened the door to the back porch, and frigid December air rushed in like an uninvited guest. The field was coated with a thin layer of snow, the animals safe and warm in the barn, the garden slumbering. And in the spring and summer, when blossoms of a dozen different varieties came open beneath the drizzling grey skies, Mercy’s calla lilies didn’t bother my allergies at all. Nothing did anymore. Ben was indeed in the hot tub, puffing on his vape pen, wearing only a beanie hat and swim trunks.

“What flavor is that cartridge?” I asked as I approached. “Gummy bear?”

“Close. Strawberry doughnut.”

“Ohhhh, yum!” Ben passed me the vape pen, and I took a drag as I kicked off my boots and sat near him on the rim of the hot tub, slipping my bare feet beneath the steaming, roiling water. Then I handed his vape pen back. “So. Guess what I have for you.”

“Uh.” He glanced at the envelope. “Jury duty.”

“Better.”

“Someone I hate has jury duty.”

I flipped the envelope around so he could see the University of Chicago logo on the front.

“Oh god,” Ben moaned.

“Don’t you want to see what it says?”

“Not really,” he admitted, grimacing.

“Come on, Ben. Open it.”

“Nah.”

“Why not?!”

Ben sighed. “Look, if I open it and it’s bad news, it’s gonna make Christmas weird. Rami will know. They’ll all know. They’ll all feel bad for me and it’ll be pathetic and depressing and awkward. You can look if you want to, just don’t tell anyone else yet.”

“It’s not going to be bad news,” I said, tugging at the floppy top of his beanie hat. He swatted my hand away, but he was smiling grudgingly.

“You have positively no way of knowing that. Unless Lucy’s had a vision I’m unaware of.”

“She hasn’t. You know she never sees anything important.”

“She saw you coming,” Ben countered.

“She saw human-me and Joe in love and gobbling down pretzels at a Cubs game. So I’d say there were at least a few minor details missing.”

“There’s no way I got in,” Ben said, his green eyes slick and fearful and now fixed on the envelope. “We can’t all be geniuses like you.”

“That’s an unfair accusation. I’m far from genius. I’m just obsessed with the ocean.” I’d written my senior thesis on the feeding habits of Pacific angelsharks, and my advisor was still trying to figure out how I, an amateur scuba diver at best, had managed to get so many quality photographs with my underwater camera. The secret, of course, was superhuman agility and not needing to breathe.

“I fucking hate calculus. The MCAT wrecked me. I got a 517.”

“And their median score is a 519, so I’d say you still have a fighting chance. Plus you have like eight million volunteer hours.” Ben had spent the vast majority of the past year either in class or at the hospital. The psychiatrist-in-chief, Dr. Siegel, had been more than happy to take one of Gwil’s foster children under her wing. Every human in Forks except Archer believed that Dr. Gwilym Lee had drowned in a tragic boating accident while he and Mercy were on vacation in Southern California, and that his body had never been recovered. The town had held a wonderful remembrance ceremony and dedicated a free clinic at the hospital in his honor. “Now open it.”

“You do it,” Ben relented finally. “My hands are wet. Go ahead, open it up and tell me what it says. And then kindly euthanize me to end my immortal shame.”

“That wouldn’t work,” I pointed out, tearing open the envelope. I pulled out the tri-folded piece of paper inside, flattened it against my thighs, and read the typed black text.

“...Well?” Ben pressed, vaping frantically.

I looked up and smiled at him.

“No way,” he whispered.

“I hope you like pretzels and bear-themed baseball teams, grandpa.”

And for a second, I thought he might bolt up out of the hot tub, hooting victoriously, splashing water all over the back porch as he danced around bellowing that he’d gotten into one of the best medical schools in the world, that he would be following me and Joe to Chicago. But that wasn’t Ben. Instead, a slow smile rippled across his face: it was small, but perfectly genuine. Pure, even.

“Goddamn,” he said, watching me. Venom doesn’t just resurrect or ruin; it forms a bond that is simultaneously intangible and yet immense. It’s an evolutionary adaptation, a way to facilitate stability and the building of covens in an often violent and ruleless world. And now that he had turned me, Ben had family here in Forks in more ways than one.

“Gwil would be so proud of you, Ben.”

“I hope so. I really do.”

The back door of the house opened, and Joe stepped outside. He studied Ben for a moment, and that was all it took for him to know. “Benny!” he shouted, elated.

“I know, I know. Fortunately, I look amazing in red. Thanks, supermodel genes.”

“This is going to be so fun!” Joe said, sprinting over to wrap Ben—who was characteristically lukewarm on this whole physical displays of affection business—in a hug from just outside the hot tub. “We’re going to go furniture shopping, and eat deep-dish pizza, and find apartments right next to each other, and mail home Chicago-themed care packages, and get you hooked up with some gorgeous Italian woman...or whatever you like, I guess I shouldn’t assume. Women. Men. Gang members. Marine mammals. Jessicas. Whatever. There are options.”

Ben laughed as he playfully shoved Joe away. “Sounds like a plan, pagliaccio.”

“Oh my god, stop learning Italian without me! You realize you have to tell Mom now.”

“I will,” Ben agreed, with some trepidation. “I’ll wait until after Christmas.”

“It’ll be hard for her,” I said. “But she knows it’s what you want. She knows it’s what’s best for you. So she’ll get through it. I think it would be worse for her if you didn’t get in, if she had to see you unhappy.”

Ben nodded, exhaling strawberry-doughnut-flavored vapor, gazing up at the stars, Orion and Auriga and Lynx and Perseus reflected in his thoughtful jade eyes. “She’ll still have Rami and Lucy and Scarlett here with her. And Archer. And Charlie.”

“Especially Charlie,” Joe said, grinning.

Mercy would have to leave Forks eventually, of course. The Lees had already been here for nearly four years; they could stay another ten, perhaps fifteen at the absolute maximum. And there had been a time when ten or fifteen years seemed like quite a while to me, but now it felt like I could doze off one afternoon and wake up on the other side of it, like swimming a lap in the sun-drenched public pool back in Phoenix. We would find a new home somewhere after Joe and I finished our PhDs, after Ben finished medical school, maybe Vancouver or Buffalo or Amsterdam or Edinburgh or Dublin or Reykjavik. Wherever we went, I hoped it wouldn’t be far from the sea. But Mercy couldn’t bear to leave Forks yet. It was the last home she had shared with Gwil, the last house they would ever build together, and leaving it would make his loss all the more irrevocable. She would be ready to leave someday, but not today.

In the meantime, there would still be visits for breaks and holidays. Scarlett and Archer had the shop to keep them busy, a brand new eight-car garage that held a virtual monopoly on both the Forks and Quileute communities. Lucy had opened a bohemian-style clothing boutique downtown, which confounded most of the locals but attracted more adventurous customers from as far away as Seattle. Rami was interning for a local immigration lawyer and entertaining the possibility of applying to U Chicago’s law school in another few years. And Mercy had the farm; and she had Charlie. He had asked her for cooking lessons to try to help rouse her a few months after Gwil’s death, and it had grown from there. If it wasn’t romantic just yet, I believed it would be soon. And there were moments when I thought my father might have figured something out, when his eyes narrowed and lingered on me just a little too long, when his brow knitted into suspicious, searching lines, when the hairs rose on the back of his neck and some innate insight whispered that we weren’t like him and never could be again. But then he would chuckle, shake his head, and say: “You’ve gotten weird, my gorgeous, brilliant progeny. But Forks looks pretty good on you.”

“Can I talk to you upstairs?” Joe asked me suddenly; and did I see restless nerves flicker in his dark eyes? I thought I did.

“Sure,” I replied, climbing down from the hot tub. “Ben, are you coming inside? My dad is trying to bake Christmas cookies and failing miserably. It’s pretty hilarious. Not that you should be the one to critique other people’s kitchen-related accidents.”

“I do enjoy your company a lot more now that I don’t want to murder you and slurp you down like a Chick-fil-A milkshake,” Ben said. “Yeah, give me a few minutes and I’ll be there.” And as Joe and I headed into the house, I saw Ben pick up the acceptance letter that I’d left on the rim of the hot tub and read it for himself with incredulous eyes, grappling with the irrefutable fact that it was his name on the opening line, that he had somewhere along the way become the sort of man who dedicated his immortality to saving lives rather than ending them.

In the living room, Scarlett was back in her yoga pants and absolutely brutalizing Archer in Mario Kart. Rami and Lucy were entwined together on the loveseat, murmuring, giggling, feeding each other pieces of gingerbread cookies. In the kitchen, Charlie was leading Mercy in a clumsy waltz to Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything For Love, and each time he fumbled his steps or mortifyingly trod on her feet she would cry out in a peal of laughter brighter than the sun she had learned to live without. Joe spirited me up the staircase, into his bedroom—which, honestly, was more like our bedroom now, in the same way that my room in Charlie’s house had become Joe’s as well—and closed the door.

“You’re in luck,” he said. “Your dad totally ruined our song. Now I can’t hear it without thinking about some moustached guy in plaid trying to seduce my mom.”

“It’s the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for. Meat Loaf is vanquished. Oh, just so you’re aware, Renee and Paul are getting an Airbnb and coming up for New Years.”

“Cool. Do they still think I have a super embarrassing sunlight allergy and will break into hives and asphyxiate and that’s why we can’t visit them in Florida?”

“Yup.”

“Spectacular. Also, can you please tell me what’s wrong with my eyelashes?”

“They’re just a little sparse, amore. But I still like you.”

“Well, I am only moderately attractive, you know.” Then Joe steeled himself, taking a deep breath. Uh oh. He was definitely nervous. I still couldn’t believe I had the power to make him that way, but here we were. “So I get that we’re doing presents with the whole family tomorrow morning, and you do have some under the tree, so don’t worry about that. But there’s one I wanted to give to you alone. You know. With just us. Without an audience. Or whatever.”

“...Okay...?” A secret gift? A naughty gift? “I hope it’s a new vibrator.”

“Shut up,” Joe begged, laughing. “Here.” He reached into the drawer of his nightstand—our nightstand—and produced a small blue box topped with a turquoise bow. It wasn’t a ring, I was sure of that; I didn’t feel especially attached to the idea of marriage, and neither did Joe to my knowledge. How could rings or papers seal commitment when you already had eternity? I was right: the mysterious present was not a ring. When I removed the lid and emptied the box into my palm, what appeared there was a small plastic airplane.

“What is this?” I asked, amused but puzzled.

“Are you not college educated? It’s a plane.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that. But it’s also like two inches long.” I scrutinized the plane. “Are you magically transforming me into a tiny, tiny, little plastic person? Is that my gift? Because I actually got you something good.” And I really did: there was a collection of vintage Chicago Cubs photographs from the 1910s and 20s downstairs under the Christmas tree, packaged in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wrapping paper.

“We’re going on a trip,” Joe said, grinning. “The day after Christmas. It’s just a short trip, nothing huge, don’t get too excited, we’re not going to Mt. Everest or Antarctica or anything. I think you’ll still like it. But I don’t want you to know where we’re going until we’re there.”

“How will that work? Considering the tickets and signage and pilot announcements and obnoxiously noisy other passengers and all.”

“ScarJo’s going to fly us.”

“Really?!” We were taking the jet. We almost never used the jet. “What’s in it for Scarlett?”

“She found out that Archer’s never had In-N-Out Burger before and is very much looking forward to initiating him into the cult of deliciousness.”

“Oh nice. I could go for a vanilla milkshake myself, now that Ben mentioned them.”

“Obviously I’m gonna buy you all the milkshakes and animal-style fries you want. Bankrupt me, bitch. But we have to get one other thing taken care of first.”

“So it’s somewhere they have In-N-Out Burger...” I pondered aloud. California? Texas? Las Vegas? I felt a brief but unambiguous pang of homesickness for Phoenix. But there was nothing there for me anymore.

“Stop,” Joe pleaded. “I’m sorry. I’ve already said too much. Please forget that. Get a traumatic brain injury or oxygen deprivation or something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m rather indestructible at the moment.”

He smiled wistfully. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

There was laughter downstairs in the living room. I could detect the aroma of a fresh batch of sugar cookies baking in the kitchen, mingling with the cold night air and pine trees and peppermint candy canes. I loved Christmas. The entire world smelled like Joe. The U Chicago décor, classic rock posters, and Italian flag were now interspersed with National Geographic pages and photos of the two of us together. The Official Whatever You Want Pass hung in a small, square picture frame on the wall above Joe’s bed. Our bed.

“How real is it, Joe?” I asked quietly. I climbed onto my tiptoes, linking my hands around the back of his neck with the tiny plane still tucked between my fingers. “Seriously. The wishes thing.”

“The world may never know. Akari never met me as a human, so she wouldn’t be able to say. But if I had to place a bet...” He shrugged, grinning craftily. “Kinda real. Kinda not real. Just like vampires, I guess.”

“I am alarmingly glad that you’re real, mob guy,” I said, abruptly somber. “I never thought I’d meet someone who saw me as remarkable, who could make me see myself that way. And it’s miraculous. And it’s terrifying too, honestly. Being a thing with you. Falling for someone you could have for centuries and lose in a second.”

“It’s the scariest thing there is,” Joe concurred, taking my hand to lead me back downstairs.

Joseph

Scarlett looks like a goddess, and she knows it. But she’s not one of those magnanimous, fragile, harp-plucking, pastel-colored goddesses. She’s ferocity and wildness and crimson like blood, and that’s exactly why Archer loves her. And as they stand in front of the Christmas tree with their hands clasped together—ivory on bronze, snow on sun—with matching sprigs of holly in Scarlett’s hair and pinned to the jacket of Archer’s suit, reciting truths but no promises, I can’t help but watch the other faces in the room: Rami, Lucy, Ben, Charlie, Mom with her beaming smile and shining eyes, the woman I met sixteen months ago and now can’t fathom life without. And it occurs to me for the first time that love, in its cleanest form, isn’t something that changes people as much as it allows them to become who they truly are.

On the evening of December 26th, as soon as the sun dips beneath the western horizon, we board the jet in the Forks Airport hangar. It’s much easier for Scarlett to fly at night; otherwise she has to wear two or three pairs of sunglasses on top of each other, and even then it’s still painful, it still feels like blinding needles burrowing into the jelly of her retinas. That’s not a wrench in my plans or anything. It needs to be night where we’re going, too.

Vampire hyper-acuity notwithstanding, FAA regulations require Scarlett to have a copilot, so Archer joins her in the flight deck with his newly-minted license and spends most of the journey flipping through the latest issue of Motor Trend. As we begin our descent, he peeks back at us and teases: “It’ll be your turn eventually, guys. Scarlett and I did our time. Rami and Lucy can go next year. And after that...unless Ben happens to find someone worthy of a not-wedding...” He wiggles his black eyebrows.

“Bring it on,” I reply casually. “Fake wedding are my jam. It’ll be ocean themed. Or Roaring ‘20s themed. And we’ll all do the Cha-Cha Slide in the living room and shame Ben as a bonding activity.”

“Mercy can set up a mashed potatoes bar,” Baby Swan adds.

“Yeah. With pineapple.”

“No. Not on potatoes.”

“Yes on potatoes.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Too late,” I tell her, touching my lips to the knuckles of her cool, steady hand.

We touch down at a small noncommercial airport just outside the city, and Scarlett and Archer stay back to secure the plane as Baby Swan follows me outside. And she realizes where we are as soon as the wind hits her, as soon as her eyes soak up the sand and cacti and cloudless night sky like rain swallowed up by parched earth.

“Phoenix,” she whispers, smiling like a child.

“But wait, there’s more!” I announce in my best Billy Mays voice. I take the little glass bottle from my pocket, walk across the runway to the naked desert, crouch down when I find a suitable spot, and fill the bottle with dry, sandy earth that crumbles in my palms. Then I seal the bottle with a tiny cork and bring it back to give it to her.

“I know what it’s like to have to leave home,” I say. “You’ve had to say goodbye to Phoenix, and soon you’ll have to say goodbye to Forks, and next will be Chicago, on and on forever. You’ll always be leaving the places you learn to call home. Every five or ten or fifteen years, we start over again. Like a snake shedding its skin, like a hermit crab swapping shells. Like the water that travels from rain to seawater to mist and then back again. But now you can always have a little piece of home with you, and maybe that will make it easier.”

She takes the glass bottle and shakes her head in disbelief, in wonder. Because this is exactly what she wanted, what she needed, even if she didn’t know it yet. “Joe...how did you...?”

“What’d I tell ya? I’m a talented guy. Now you have to dance with me.”

She laughs. “Oh no. Hard pass. I don’t dance.”

“When we’re alone in my bedroom you do. So just pretend we’re alone now. In, like, a really really spacious, sandy bedroom. With probably some lizards.”

“Fine. But only because I’m willing to degrade myself for milkshakes.”

She slides the glass bottle of Arizona earth into her pocket and takes my hands. She’s still a pretty terrible dancer, honestly. She hasn’t lost that. And I love that about her. I love damn near everything about her. And it took me a long time to figure out what exactly her subtle yet peerless cocktail of fragrance is, because it wasn’t somewhere I’d ever been. The scent that drifts from her pores—the scent that now lives in my bedsheets like a shadow or a ghost—is sunlight and heat and clarity and resilience and wisdom older than the pyramids. Her scent is the desert.

Now she’s mischievous, her eyes gleaming with the reflections of the Milky Way and the full moon and the stars that are dead and yet eternal, just like us. “So what, you think you’re Vampire Boyfriend Of The Year material now or what? Some dirt and In-N-Out Burger? That’s the height of your game? Is this what I have to look forward to for the rest of my perpetual existence? I totally should have pursued that polyamorous triad with Scarlett and Archer when I had the chance—”

“Yeah,” I say, very softly, smiling, tilting up her chin to kiss her beneath the universe and all its eccentricities. “I love you too.”

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proclaimersofheroes · 4 years

Text

The Cracks In Our Family

For @gentrychild, and their lovely nonnies. Feast, vampires and loyalists! https://archiveofourown.org/works/24644959 For those who prefer ao3 He didn't want to go back.

Crawling back to that house, after all that man had done to him? No.

He'd found the family grave, his name washed of the red that had declared him still alive. What ashes had they used? What bones?

It took a lot of effort and a crowbar to get into the storage underneath the Todoroki family grave. But, after living so long on the street it hadn't made him that much more grimy.

Urns lined the space neatly. Blue eyes fell on the newest looking one, and his hands hovered over it.

He was sweating, his throat felt tight. The hammering of his heart in his chest should prove beyond all doubt that he was alive.

Right?

A small breeze ruffled matted white hair. Patchy skin itched and sagged, dirty clothes and skin threatening infection along burns that were prepared to split open. The earlier birdsong was drowned out by the memory of hearing his father read out an obituary for him.

"Todoroki Touya was a determined young man, and a budding hero. Even with the control he was taught, his flames were too powerful for his body. Had he only better restraint and better health, my eldest son would not have been taken from us so soon."

A bitter laugh bubbled from singed lips. Todoroki Enji, the 'hero' Endeavor, didn't know the meaning of the word restraint. Not when it came to catching villains, not when it came to chasing All Might's back. Not when it came to hiding his distaste of people. Not when it came to breeding and abusing Touya's mom.

Not when it came to beating and burning Touya, little Shoto.

He couldn't laugh any more, bile bubbling up from an empty, roiling stomach instead. The smell of burning flesh, of intense pain so great before it turned cold and numb. Visits to doctors with medical quirks who were passed fistfulls of money to keep quiet. Little baby Shoto, not even fully reading and writing hiragana or katakana, covered in massive bruises and sobbing on the floor.

Todoroki Enji had control over everything from his fire to his family to his words, but he never bothered with restraint. Always more, always faster, always hotter.

Always Touya taking his ire, to try and spare Shoto and his mom.

If he thought Touya was dead, who would protect his mom and siblings?

He knew he had to go back.

He couldn't.

Go home.

Run away.

Go home.

Run away.

Something wet dripped on Touya. It startled him out of his endless turmoil, the cycle of indecision. Blue eyes blinked, and when Touya touched his face his fingers came away bloody. "Shit," another drop landed on him, and Touya wondered where else he was bleeding from now.

But no, while Touya had been trapped in his own head clouds had moved in. The sun was lower in the sky, painting orange across the distant horizon while dripping clouds puffed up all purple and blue. He had to get under shelter.

But first, Touya braced himself for what he had come here to check. Lifting the lid of 'his' urn, the young man peered inside.

Well. It seemed even in death he had been replaced.

___

It seemed that scars made you look untrustworthy, even these days.

Normal people avoided him, at the first glimpse of his charred flesh and grungy appearance. He was covered in filth from living outdoors, begging and dumpster diving for scraps. His previously white shirt was yellow, grey and brown with mostly unknown stains, grey shorts tattered as he'd scavenged and had to tear strips for bandages.

Criminals and lowlifes seemed split between whether his scars meant that he was dangerous, or that he was weak and easy pickings. His fire had scared them off easily enough, but there were a few who had caught him off guard.

Of course, there were nice people on the streets too. Homeless, those down on their luck or kicked out due to their quirks. Or lack of, in quite a few cases. A foreigner named Jane had shared her meager meal with him last week, after he'd scared off some black-tongued addicts trying to steal from her.

It was hard to keep hold of any morals out here. But he wouldn't be like his father, who didn't care which villains died in his arrests. No, 'Dabi' as he went by now would not be a murderer.

Of course, Dabi would be dead soon if he didn't do something. The teen hissed as he pressed at the tattered edge of his scars. The bubble under dead flesh moved slowly, until he was able to extract the pus from the infected area.

The shelters were overcrowded, the hospitals would ask questions he couldn't answer.

But, there was one place he knew of that was always stocked with medical supplies. A hot shower. Washing machines. Food.

Pushing off the wall of the alley, Dabi looked towards the sky. It would be late by the time he reached his old home. That was just fine for him, everyone would be asleep.

He skulked down the streets and alleys, doing his best to act natural, act like he wasn't planning on breaking and entering a 'hero's' home. The sun cast a long shadow, eventually taking most light with it.

In blues and greys, Dabi traveled, staying out of the illumination of street lamps. The night turned cool, causing shivers along what nerves hadn't been burnt out. By now, Dabi was used to moving in the dark. For some reason, he suspected that his eyesight was better at night than it was before his untimely and mysterious 'death.'

Even having left the place two months ago, Dabi would never forget it. Large imposing gates, locked and barred for the night, before a traditional japanese mansion.

But it wasn't his first time sneaking into the place, remembering nighttime escapades with Natsuo whenever he wasn't too injured. The hole was right where it had always been, hiding behind hydrangeas. His malnutrition made it even easier to squeeze through.

As ridiculous as it was, the spare key was where it had always been too, under a false rock by the empty koi pond.

Silently delighting in dirtying Enji's immaculate home, bare toes rubbed on the waxed floorboards as Dabi tried to decide what he wanted to do first.

___

Shoto needed to pee.

That was the first and only thought, that led him to carefully crawl out of bed. Rubbing at his eyes, the little boy carefully looked either way down the hall. No one was around, which meant Shoto was free to leave his room.

All the lights were off, his family sound asleep. Oh so quietly, delicately, Shoto tiptoed with the wall to guide him. He couldn't remember who it was who taught him that the floorboards nearest the wall were quietest, but it was good to remember when he didn't want to catch his father's attention.

The bathroom was found without incident, and Shoto silently closed the door behind him before turning on the light. It felt damp in the room, for some reason. Little brows furrowed in confusion, but nature's call was too pressing.

When he stepped onto the stool to wash his hands, Shoto frowned at having to wipe the mirror. Water droplets clung to the smooth surface, and now his hand. Was the mirror sweating?

When he left the bathroom, Shoto left the door open behind him. Maybe the extra air would cool off the mirror.

There was a faint rattle from below, followed by a word he didn't know, and the little boy froze. Was someone awake after all?

His parent's door was closed and dark, so it wasn't his father at least. Peering down, a faint light was visible from the kitchen.

Juggling between just going to bed and investigating, Shoto's curiosity won in the end. Being as quiet as he could, Shoto snuck down the hallway and then carefully felt out the stairs one by one so he wouldn't trip.

Reaching the ground floor, he continued his silent quest. His siblings' rooms were dark and quiet too, but he could hear a quiet rumbling as he passed the laundry room.

No one was supposed to do laundry at nighttime, and Shoto grew worried for whoever it was.

There was something moving around in the kitchen, something big. He could hear the heavy breathing, the crunch of food being bitten into. Was it a villain?

No, villains attacked people. Focusing, Shoto held out his left hand and called up some fire. It burst to life, traveling up his arm and into his hair.

His pajamas were fireproof, but the boy didn't even focus on that. No, instead of that he saw blue eyes flash in the light, heard the clatter of the plate and utensils as whatever was in the kitchen flailed and disappeared.

Again he heard that call. "Fuck!" quiet, fast, and Shoto wasn't even sure if it was a word. Slowly, he circled around to get a better look.

"Hello?" he called in a whisper, and got a response.

"Shh! Shh, shh, shh." Illuminated in his light was a poof of white, retreating away from him backwards. Reflective blue eyes framed by black circles, a large mouth opened with the remains of a sandwich in it swallowed by black.

In his surprise, Shoto lost control and the fire went out. The boy was left blinking in rapid confusion as he tried to adjust to the sudden darkness. "Hello?" Shoto tried again, and got no response.

He didn't dare try his fire again, instead fumbling around in the dark for a bit. Whatever small thing had been making a sandwich in the kitchen must be gone. Shoulders slumping in disappointment, Shoto carefully made his way back to bed.

In the morning, it was a surprise to get some time with his remaining brother. When he mentioned his encounter, the bigger boy frowned. "Are you sure it wasn't a dream?"

"There was a mess in the kitchen." he pointed out. "Bits of bread and lettuce and meat." Natsuo at least seemed to consider this seriously.

"Touya used to say we had racoons and tanuki come in sometimes." His tone held sorrow, and Shoto tucked himself more into his brother's side. Ever since Touya had died four months back, the hole in their family hadn't closed up. "Maybe they're back. What did it look like again?"

Shoto thought back, through the haze of having woken up in the middle of the night. "It was scared of my fire. And was big, had reflective eyes. Lots of black and white, with circles around its eyes."

"Yep, sounds like a raccoon to me."

#bnha fic #a gift!#oneshot #Todofam #Angst To Crack

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himikiyo · 3 years

Text

cityscapes turn to dust // himikiyo week day 1

Himikiyo Week Day 1: Folklore + Magic

“Trying to defy death, hmm? You’re choosing to take the hard road just as I did. If I don’t have enough time left to change your mind, all I can do is wish you luck.”

Korekiyo's actions taking care of their sister catch up to them.

Read on AO3, DRA, or under the cut

They had to travel light these days. With the city so ravaged, it was common to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice, and there was only so much Himiko could carry. Kiyo was much stronger than her of course, but even the essentials weighed a fair bit. Most of her possessions, along with theirs, remained at their house, still locked up tight for the time being. Someone determined enough would still be able to break in, but she tried not to think about that.

Material possessions weren’t as important as a life anyway.

Despite traveling light though, Korekiyo seemed to be getting weaker. She told them they just needed rest, but they both knew that wasn’t it. The last time they visited their sister, she put up a fight. Perhaps she knew what was coming, and recognized the sickle in their hand. Either way, she bit them again. Maybe that was the final exposure their body could take after holding out so long.

Their arm was wreathed in broken veins, a sickly purplish crown centered on the bite mark. The imprint of each and every tooth was still clearly visible over a week later whenever she checked under the bandages. She picked her opportunities carefully, when they were half asleep or in a particularly good mood. That way, she hoped, they wouldn’t be quite so upset about how cold it was to remove any layers.

She checked every night to make sure they were still breathing. It was getting harder to tell.

---

People still tried to avoid saying the word zombie. Euphemisms were used: infected, changed. Sometimes there was no more than an indirect reference, like the grandmother who told her that “some of them” drove her out of her home. Maybe it was a foolish desire, since this elderly woman had clearly done well enough for herself to escape that, but Himiko wanted to help her.

“Why don’t you stay with us?” she asked. “Just for a little while. We don’t have much, but it’d be safer than traveling alone.”

“Thank you, dear,” the woman replied, adjusting her shawl. “But I like my chances. I’ve made it this far. If you’ll accept some advice from an old woman...” She trailed off momentarily, casting a meaningful glance at Kiyo. “You may want to consider striking out on your own too. There’s something not right about that one.”

“They’ve just been a little sick lately. Once we find somewhere safe to get medicine, they’ll be fine.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue, but she couldn’t stand saying anything else. Without Korekiyo, she was sure she’d be long since dead.

“Sick? Or changing? Sometimes the hardest lesson to learn is when there’s nothing more to be done.”

“No, that’s not—” She broke off, swiping miserably at her eyes. Kiyo still sat in the corner. Wearing three sweaters to fight a mild early autumn chill, they gave off the impression of an especially gangly marshmallow. It seemed like they were oblivious to the conversation, but Himiko knew better. They always observed more than people gave them credit for.

“Don’t let your friend suffer, dear.” After pressing a small, paper-wrapped package into her hands, the grandmother left. Himiko watched until she vanished from view, hoping she arrived safely to wherever she was headed.

---

“So,” Kiyo said some time later. “When are you planning to kill me? She gave you everything you need to do it, didn’t she?”

“What? No, I’d never. You know I’d never do something like that.” Perched on the edge of the couch they were laying on, she combed a hand through their hair. It helped her fight the urge to rest it on their forehead and see how much their temperature had dropped.

“Yet you encouraged me that putting my sister out of her misery was the right thing to do.”

“That’s different. She wasn’t herself anymore.” As always, she bit back the part about how even with her full mental faculties, that would have been what she deserved.

“Any day now, you might come to find that I am not myself anymore either. Then I will no longer be able to cooperate with your attempts to do it painlessly.”

“That won’t happen,” she argued, fingers involuntarily tightening in their hair for just a moment. “If it was going to happen, it would have already. That was, what, the fifth time she bit you or something? It’s like you told me that first day I found out the truth. You’re immune.”

“Immune.” They scoffed, face contorting into something between a grimace and a scowl. “That was never anything but a lie I allowed myself to believe. I’m not immune. I’m dying.”

“No, you’re not,” Himiko mumbled. She inched closer to them on the couch, laying her head on their bony shoulder. Through sweaters and blankets, it almost felt soft. “I won’t let you.”

“Trying to defy death, hmm? You’re choosing to take the hard road just as I did. If I don’t have enough time left to change your mind, all I can do is wish you luck.” Numb fingers tugged their mask down to press a kiss to her forehead. The old, scarred-over bite wound on their neck was taking on the same purplish hue as their arm.

---

She woke up the next morning with her head resting on their chest. She couldn’t hear a heartbeat.

Shinguuji Korekiyo was dead.

After she came to that realization but before she could figure out what she should do about it, they stirred, feebly trying to shove the blankets off.

“Too hot,” they mumbled, rolling over (or trying to — the attempt wasn’t very successful with half her weight still on them).

“Kiyo?” It had been weeks since they had anything temperature-related to say that wasn’t complaining of being too cold. Not to mention the bigger issue of their lack of vital signs. Straightening up fully, Himiko leaned over them to meet their eyes. They were groggy and unfocused, but they clearly seemed to recognize her.

“What? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I guess I have in a way,” she responded, choking out a shaky laugh. “You.”

They sat up slowly, giving her a perplexed look. Did they not even realize what was going on? Surely they had to feel different. She reached out and laid a hand on their chest, just to be certain. Was she so exhausted that she just missed it before? After flexing their wrist, stretching their arm — stiff, maybe from the lack of blood flow? — they overlapped her hand with their own.

“I see. I didn’t imagine becoming a zombie would feel so pleasant.”

“Pleasant? How can you be so calm?”

“I actually feel better than I have in quite some time,” they admitted. “It’s rather comfortable. I do seem to have a certain degree of numbness, but it’s a worthwhile exchange to be free from all the recent pain and discomfort I’ve experienced. Considering my mind seems to be intact, at least as much as I can tell from my own biased perspective, death might not be so bad. If nothing else, it gives me something new to study.”

“Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better, but I don’t know if it’s normal to accept something like this so quickly.”

She was forgetting, of course, that Kiyo had never quite been normal.

---

Over time, it became clear that them saying they had “a certain degree of numbness” was a bit of an understatement. If she happened to touch them when they weren’t looking, they only seemed to notice about half the time. Their pain tolerance, already high, had increased to such an extent that it was very possible for them to sustain serious injuries without noticing. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like they were in any danger of dying again.

They were still capable of healing, just at a slower rate than a living person. The bite wounds were gradually becoming less evident, flesh repairing itself in defiance of the laws of biology.

That didn’t save her from the unpleasantness of acting as their doctor.

Her first lesson in zombie surgery was a jarring one. The glass shards embedded in their leg likely could have been avoided if they had as much feeling as they used to, but there was no point in agonizing over could have beens. The good news was that they barely seemed affected, glancing down at the heavy wounds with little more than bemused intrigue.

“Ah. I thought something stung a bit. We should probably take a moment to deal with this,” they said smoothly.

“Um, yeah, probably. It really doesn’t hurt? You’re bleeding a lot. What if you run out or something? We don’t exactly know all about how this whole zombie thing works.”

“It’s alright,” Kiyo said. “I think. If I can heal from injuries, it follows that I must still be capable of regenerating my blood supply. However, leaving broken glass there could cause problems. You should remove it.”

“Me? Why?”

“You should get used to tending to my wounds just in case there comes a time when I’m unable to do so myself.”

---

She got plenty of practice. Most of their injuries were minor, but she dutifully took care of each one nevertheless. When she really thought about it, sometimes she wondered if they acted a little carelessly on purpose just to give her experience. They’d always teetered dangerously on the edge of masochism, and now there was the added temptation of learning more about zombie physiology to boot.

Sure enough though, that time Kiyo mentioned did come eventually. So far, it seemed nearly impossible for them to die again, but that didn’t do much to diminish the dread that flowed through her when she saw the exposed muscle and bone of their arm, flayed open like so many of the other shambling zombies they’d seen over the past several weeks.

They grimaced when she started to clean up the wound. It was barely a flicker of pain, but even that was significant considering how much they were able to get through without batting an eye.

“Apologies, dear,” they murmured. “Continue.”

“Sorry. Kind of weird how quickly this has become normal.” She leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to their lips before continuing.

Pulling the edges of the wound together and stitching it up nice and securely...She wasn’t the neatest with her sewing, but she was getting better, and Kiyo always insisted they didn’t mind.

“Beautiful work, my love,” they praised, smiling down at their rather Frankenstein-esque arm. “That’s much better already.”

Himiko just smiled, wrapping the arm up again in their usual bandages.

“I’ll always be here to sew you back again. For now, we should probably both get some rest.” They were only a day away from the village of their hopes.

#himikiyoweek2021 #himikiyoweek #himikiyo #korekiyo shinguji #himiko yumeno #danganronpa #dr #drv3 #m

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vampire--dad · 4 years

Text

Part 1 of my Witcher!Jaskier fic (that originally just started as a Geraskier drabble thing and spiralled wildly out of control) (and also doesn’t have a title yet bear with me here)

——————

“Roach, you take care of him now, won’t you?” Jaskier says softly, petting her nose. She huffs and nudges his chest. He chuckles. “Good. Keep him out of trouble.”

“And you give me shit for talking to her,” says a familiar gruff voice. Geralt approaches the stables with his pack slung over his shoulder, clad in his black armour. Jaskier pulls an apple from his pocket and offers it to the horse, who chomps it down happily.

“Well yes, because you’re always so bossy and grouchy with her. Someone’s got to be nice to her. She’s a wonderful horse.”

Geralt sets his pack over the back of the saddle before turning to Jaskier with his arms folded, ignoring the comment.

“I don’t need the horse to take care of me or keep me out of trouble.”

“Sure you do. She always brings you back in one piece, don’t you, Roach?”

“Jaskier, I don’t need to be taken care of.”

Jaskier sighs and shakes his head, finally turning to face the witcher. His yellow eyes stare into his soul, reigniting a fire he’s spent years trying to put out.

“Fine… but bring yourself back here safely, alright?”

He regrets saying it to his face, but he means it. Over the years, Jaskier has learned to carefully conceal how much he cares for Geralt. He knows it won’t go anywhere. He knows Geralt doesn’t feel the same. He can’t. He’s a witcher. He’s not capable of it. Yet Jaskier still yearns for him.

Geralt scoffs and lifts himself onto Roach’s back. “What, worried you’ll lose your main source of income?” he says with a mocking tone. Jaskier hides how the comment stings. Is that really what Geralt thinks he sticks around for? That’s just an excuse to stay. The witcher digs his heels into Roach’s sides and rides off without another word.

“Yeah, something like that…”

It only takes two days for the townspeople to start asking where the witcher is. They fear he’s dead. Jaskier brushes off their worries and fills the air with fantastical stories instead. It’s not uncommon for Geralt to be gone for days at a time. It’s not until the end of the first week that Jaskier finds himself starting to worry as well. The innkeeper is kind enough to let him stay until the witcher comes back, so long as he fills the hall with music. Performing becomes a distraction from the worry that gnaws at the corners of his mind. Geralt has never been gone for more than a week.

As he lays in bed among the scratchy old sheets, he faces the fact that this worry is borne from more than just concern for a friend. He knows that if something were to happen to Geralt, it’d kill him too. And he knows he’s an idiot for caring so much. Witchers don’t feel. That’s what Geralt has always told him. He never believed it until he realised he was in love with him. Then it became a crushing truth. Geralt could never care for him the same way he does. It’s not the witcher’s fault, it’s his own. He wishes he could stop, wishes he could put out the fire that burns under his heart and burns it to a crisp every time Geralt looks at him.

By the end of the second week, the innkeeper threatens to throw him out if he spends another night in his room moping. The worry consumes every corner of his mind now. He tries to sleep. It doesn’t work. He waits by the window, staring at the town’s gates. Waiting for the White Wolf to ride back into town unscathed. But he doesn’t. Rather, he’s carried by two men, covered in blood. Roach follows behind them. Jaskier races out the door, crying the witcher’s name.

“We found him in the forest,” the men say as they struggle to carry an unconscious witcher to a bed in the inn. “He killed… whatever that thing was, but it just about killed him.”

Jaskier barely hears them. He grabs his pack and spends hours tending to each wound on Geralt’s body, only to find that another one has started to bleed what little blood he has left. He peels the blood-soaked clothes off his back. He can’t tell what of it is Geralt’s and what’s from the monster. It doesn’t particularly matter. He notices as he tends to a wound on the witcher’s temple that he feels cold. Geralt always feels cold, but his skin is practically freezing. Jaskier curses. The bastard can’t die on him yet, he won’t let him. Roach is lucky the stable boys like her and care for her free of charge.

He stays by Geralt’s side for days. He quickly turns from freezing cold to hot to the touch. Jaskier spends what little coin he can spare on herbs to treat the infection. The witcher never wakes, but he groans in pain in his sleep. Each one feels like a punch to the gut for Jaskier. He tries to be gentle, but since he doesn’t know where the infection is coming from, he needs to clean all of the wounds as best as he can. The shallow ones are all but gone within a few days. He’s never quite gotten used to how quickly his wounds heal, but it’s at least slightly comforting to have less to deal with.

Geralt doesn’t wake till the fourth day of Jaskier tending to him. The bard is hunched over his bare torso, redressing a wound that runs along his ribcage. He’s done well to ignore how bloody good Geralt looks without a shirt on. He sits back only to find a pair of yellow eyes staring at him and just about jumps out of his skin.

“Bloody hell, Geralt! You could have said something…”

The witcher grunts and sits up slowly, Jaskier’s hands bracing his broad shoulders as he assesses the damage done to him.

“Careful, careful,” Jaskier cautions him. “How do you feel?”

Geralt winces slightly, but pain is almost familiar to him by now.

“Fine,” he grumbles. Jaskier resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“You had an infection. I think it’s gone, but you need to rest.”

“We need to go. We’ve been here too long.”

Jaskier inhales sharply. “Geralt, you’re going to pull your stitches if we leave now, and I’m out of thread to redo them, so unless you plan on sacrificing a shirt to me so I can stitch you back together—”

Geralt ignores him. They’ve spent far too long in this town. It’s better if they keep moving. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, stumbling slightly as he stands for the first time in about a week. Jaskier throws his hands up in defeat as he searches through his pack for a clean shirt.

“I’ll be fine, Jaskier,” he says with his back turned to the bard. It’s a good thing, too, for the witcher doesn’t see the pained and worried expression on his face.

They set off with Roach and what little food Jaskier can talk out of the innkeeper. The bard isn’t much of a hunter, but he’ll have to try if they plan on reaching the next town without starving, and the gods only know he won’t let Geralt hunt in such a state. Hopefully he can score them a squirrel at the very least.

He can tell the witcher is in pain. He winces at every step Roach takes that jostles him a little too hard. Jaskier can’t help but feel as though all his hard work to keep the bastard alive is going unappreciated. It always does, really, but this time it hurts a little more. He would have died if not for Jaskier’s care and the cold nights he spent sleeping on the floor so Geralt could rest.

They set up camp beside the narrow path that winds through the forest as night falls. Jaskier is quick to set up a fire before Geralt can, yet again finding himself wondering why he bothers. Geralt has never noticed the things he does for him, what would make him start now?

“What’s wrong?” the witcher asks unexpectedly.

“Nothing,” Jaskier lies. A lot is wrong, but Geralt doesn’t need to know. Probably wouldn’t care if he did.

“Something is bothering you. Spit it out.”

Geralt knows something is wrong when the bard is quiet, but he’s never been that short with him. Usually he’s the one giving monotonous one word answers. Jaskier stares into their campfire without a word. He’s stressed. He’s tired of how Geralt brushes him off, how he never thanks him for caring for him. He supposes it’s because he shouldn’t. Geralt has always made it clear he’d rather be left to his own devices, but Jaskier can’t help but scramble after him in futile hopes that one day it will all be worth it.

“Jaskier,” Geralt says impatiently. The annoyance in his tone fuels the bard’s anger. “Spit it out. What’s wrong?”

“Damn it, Geralt, you blithering idiot!!” Jaskier shouts. Years of longing and loneliness built up inside him all come out at once. “I waited in that inn for two weeks for you to come back. I thought you were dead! Then you’re carried back into the town, unconscious and covered in blood, and I nurse you back to health as per fucking usual. And you act like nothing happened, like you didn’t almost die out there. Not even a ‘thank you’ for making sure you didn’t die of an infection or for staying in that rotten inn for two weeks. Waiting for you. You never think of anyone but yourself, you prick! I’m fucking over this. I’m done.”

Jaskier grabs his things and storms off into the forest. Geralt watches him in silence until he fades out of view. Roach grumbles and nudges his shoulder with her nose. Of all things, the last thing he expected was to feel guilty… but Jaskier is right. He waited for him. He always has. He’s always the one who tends to his wounds and stitches him back together so as to not leave too much of a mark. Jaskier has followed him across this land for years and for all those years, Geralt has ignored the signs. He knows Jaskier cares for him more than he’s ever let on. He can’t deny that deep down he cares for him, too. He just never wanted to face it. It was easier not to, easier to wait for the fire in both of them to die out, and safer. But it never did. Roach headbutts his arm impatiently. He growls and pats her nose.

“I know,” he grumbles.

He sets off after the bard, following the bitter scent of his anger along an invisible path. Slowly the anger fades to regret, a sour scent that stings Geralt’s nose, but he follows it anyway. He finds himself reaching for his sword at every sound the forest makes. He should never have let Jaskier run off like that, not at night. He’s going to get himself hurt. The sour scent of regret starts to become richer and Geralt finds himself feeling guiltier and guiltier as he follows the smell of sadness. He scrubs his nose as it itches at the smell.

He treks until he finds Jaskier sitting on a log, his head in his hands, a mess of frustration, sadness, and fear. He doesn’t know where the hell he’s going. He just wanted to get away from Geralt, but now that he’s not here he realises what an idiot he is. All he has is the small dagger Geralt gave to him. He’s got no chance of fighting off anything bigger than a dog. Geralt stares at him and finds his chest aching with guilt. It takes him a while to work up the courage to say anything.

“Jaskier.”

The bard’s head shoots up at the sound, but his fearful expression quickly turns to one of disgust as his blue eyes fall on the witcher. He turns his back to him.

“Fuck off.”

“No.”

Jaskier groans and grabs his things, anger bubbling up in his chest yet again. “Just fuck off, you asshole. I don’t need your—”

“I’m sorry.”

They stand in silence for a moment, Jaskier’s back to Geralt. The moonlight shines through the trees on his soft brown hair. His eyes start to sting, his bags slipping from his grasp and back to the ground. He dares not turn around. It’d kill him if Geralt saw him cry. Eventually, the witcher speaks up again. He doesn’t know where the words come from, but they spill out of his mouth.

“I’ve taken you for granted for so many years and I’m sorry. I never appreciated you. You’ve always waited for me and taken care of me, and I was never as grateful as I should have been. I’m sorry, Jask.”

Tears start to fall from Jaskier’s eyes as Geralt speaks. The desperation in his voice gives the bard hope he knows he shouldn’t have. Before he can say something stupid to ease the tension, Geralt says something that shakes him to his very core.

“I know how much you care about me, Jask. I always have. I don’t know why you do, given how I treat you, but I know…”

His voice trails off, but something tells Jaskier that he’s not finished. He’s just trying to figure out how to say it.

“I do care about you. I’ve just never known how to show it. I always thought being a witcher was more important and… it was safer to push you away. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

Geralt stares at the back of the bard’s head. He’s never been good with words. What he said doesn’t even capture half of what he meant, but he’s surprised he came up with that alone. Jaskier doesn’t move for a moment, then all of a sudden he turns on his heel and throws himself into Geralt’s arms. He’s longed to hear those words for years. It’s all too much for him. He tries his best to hold back his tears, but a few sobs slip from his throat. Geralt doesn’t say anything, he just holds Jaskier and pets his hair gently.

Eventually, Jaskier pulls away and scrubs the tears from his face with his sleeve, cursing under his breath. He’s a mess. His eyes dart about, looking anywhere but at Geralt until he says his name again.

“Jaskier…”

There’s a tinge of worry in Geralt’s voice he’s never heard. His blue eyes shine as he looks at the witcher. A pair of golden eyes stare back under a brow furrowed with concern. His own voice shakes with the strain of choking back tears.

“You always told me witchers couldn’t feel,” he says.

“I lied. It’s easier if people believe that we don’t feel… even you.”

Jaskier nods and sniffles softly.

“Do you mean it?” he asks. He has to. After all these years, he has to ask. Geralt reaches out and gently caresses his cheek with a gloved hand.

“I mean it,” he says definitively.

Jaskier doesn’t think. He just throws himself at Geralt, kissing him like it’ll kill him if he doesn’t. The witcher holds him close, his lips cold and bitter. It’s relieving. It’s overwhelming. Jaskier feels like his heart has caught on fire. Geralt thinks he’s going to melt in Jaskier’s warm embrace. Eventually their lips part and Jaskier gently brushes the hair from Geralt’s eyes. Geralt doesn’t let him go. If he’s going to allow himself to love Jaskier, he’s never going to let him go again.

“Come back to the camp,” he says softly. Jaskier nods and reluctantly slips from Geralt’s arms to grab his things. As he slings his bag over his back, he begins to apologise.

“I’m sorry I stormed off and called you a—”

“Don’t be. You had every right to,” Geralt cuts him off. The guilt of how he has treated Jaskier still lingers in his chest, so he’ll bury it with affection and that wonderful warm feeling he got when the bard kissed him. He slips off his gloves, and takes Jaskier’s hand as they walk back to the road together.

#the witcher #jaskier #geralt of rivia #geraskier #fanfic

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