#the holes surrounded by bone-like fragments

[boatemboys]

actually ill post this here too im working on my martyn design and hes a little warden fella

[blackbackedjackal]

What was the weirdest thing you've worked on taxidermy-wise? It doesn't have to be like an unusual species, but maybe something odd about the anatomy when you first prepped an animal, or finding an odd color morph or something (or maybe a little of everything lol since you're very into like genetics and collecting Weird Bone specimens with wry noses and extra teeth).

One that really sticks with me is the coyote that solidified my interest in doing research on pathologies seen in the species.

Notice the strange greenish stain on both the jawbone and in the teeth? I'd never seen staining like this before and at this point had been collecting and cleaning some really strange coyotes for a while.

Unless I'm the person who cleans the animal, I'm often missing vital information and clues left in the skin or tissue to figure out what caused a certain abnormality. I'm careful about cleaning every animal separately, all the while taking notes of any initial strange things I see during the cleaning process. Before the skull was clean enough to me to notice the green staining, I did see some pitch black stains where the bullet I assumed had killed the animal was stuck in the tissue. Not an uncommon thing as I'd seen that kind of staining before. These are typically perimortem injuries, around the time of death, so the injury shows no obvious signs of healing. The bullet or fragments of it break off in the tissue when the animal is killed and will still be left in the tissue by the time I get to work. Lead-based ones can stain the bones a dark color while soaking and typically whitens up after being process, but this one didn't.

Not only were the teeth this strange green color, but the surrounding bone had a lot of heavy bloodstaining. This is typically caused from brute force impact injuries, like animals hit by cars but are alive for at least several minutes after being hit. It's usually related to bruising, but in some cases is also be seen in areas where the bone or tissue around the bone is infected. It's these dark pink spots around the orbit and jaw.

I saw where the bullet had struck the animal, but before it was clean assumed this was the bullet that killed the coyote. It's not uncommon for trappers or hunters to shoot animals in the head to kill the animal quickly but there was no bullet hole in the cranium. There was however, a fragment of the bullet lodged in the right body of the maxilla, right in where the marrow and some blood vessels that supply blood to the jaw and teeth were.

This wasn't what killed the coyote. The fragment was lodged in living tissue, long enough that the coyote was suffering from lead poisoning. here's another angle where you can see where the fragment was lodged and how bad the stain was near the point of contact.

In typical Americans hate coyotes form, someone had shot at this coyote at least several weeks before the coyote was killed. Could have been a missed shot and the coyote escaped, but people are extremely cruel and disrespectful to the species, and will shoot at them to haze and injure them, but not kill them. Injuries and infections like this will greatly effect the coyote's ability to hunt, so that can cause them to become "problem" coyotes. They're too sick or injured to hunt wild animals effectively, and will be more prone to scavenging or opportunistic behaviors like attacking outdoor pets or farm animals. Again, I can't determine why the animal was shot to begin with, but I do know why it was killed several weeks later. It was sick, injured, and probably acting really strange. At that point the coyote being killed was blessing, as it would have suffered for weeks before succumbing to it's injures and infection.

When I buy an already cleaned/partially cleaned skull online, I have to work in reverse to identify potential causes of the pathologies I see. Many sellers won't take note of any shards or fragments or foreign objects in the tissue while cleaning. I often loose important clues as to the exact cause of the abnormality. When I clean them myself, I make sure to save everything I find in the tissue and take notes. That way I can refer back to them when I find strange things like this.

Though it greatly saddens me to see any animal suffer in such a way, I know it's important work because it gives me solid information I can use to educate others about coyotes. This skull was sitting in this person's freezer for at least a year or so before I happened to get it in a bulk lot of raw skulls I purchased to clean for sales and for research. It's been invaluable already as it's one of the skulls I cite a lot when doing public education and getting the people I get coyotes from thinking more critically about the species. Many of the taxidermists, hunters farmers, trappers, etc. I work with are very interested in the research we're doing, and like to know the stories of the ones they've crossed paths with. Many of them have stopped hunting coyotes in reckless ways, and no longer view them as pests. In fact, one guy I get coyotes from went from killing maybe 5 or so a month before he met me, to about 5 every 6 months. He no longer views them as pests and pays attention to their behaviors much more closely. He now culls ones he notices are sick/injured on his camera traps or ones that are actively bothering or killing his livestock. He's had far less issues with his local coyotes overall by listening to the advice I've given him, and donates the ones he does take for our group's research. It's a win for everyone, less coyotes are killed indiscriminately, we get coyotes for research that are sourced responsibly and sustainably, and not only is he interested in our research, but he shares the information with his family and neighbors so they spread the information and have really changed the culture of how they feel about the animals and wildlife around them. It's really awesome to see.

Sorry that got into a little ramble but it's the weird animals that have really made such a huge impact on me and the people around me. I'm glad that even in death they can be used as ways to educate others and essentially "save" some of their living relatives. My goal is conservation, preservation, and education about the species, and working with pathological specimens is a big part of that c:

[lampmanliveblogs]

Fragments of the Past

Vee Week Day 2

Prompt: Mama

Part of the Vee Week fandom event (a.k.a. Veek) organized by @vee-week

Prompt: Mama

Fandom: The Owl House Rating: Teen Language: English Status: Complete Oneshot (kinda...) Words: 2 755 Warnings: Skeletons

Relationships: Vee & Other Basilisks, Vee & Camila Noceda, Vee/Masha (mentioned)

Relevant Characters: Vee, Camila Noceda, Lilith Clawthorne, Other Basilisks

Additional Tags: Archeology, Vee is a Noceda, Good Parent Camila Noceda, no beta I die like a (lamp) man

Summary Vee goes to see the remains of the last basilisk and learns something surprising.

Excerpt ”Let’s see…” Lilith said, squinting at the map Flora had drawn for her. ”Left at this next fork, and then it’s straight forward until the chamber.” There were glowing crystals in the the ceiling and along the walls, but they only provided a little illumination. Enough for the basilisks, but it was more difficult for Lilith and Camila to see where they were going. Camila had tried to use a flashlight she brought with her, but quickly turned it off in favor of holding on to her bat with both hands, ready to strike.

They were not alone down there.

The eyes of flying serpents gleamed from the shadows, holed up in alcoves and side tunnels. Larger reptilian beasts lumbered around in the bigger offshoot tunnels. Whenever Lilith, who was leading the group, got too close, one of the beasts let out a breath of fire as a warning. Whenever they did, Vee hissed at them, which made them scurry back into the dark.

Vee did not have many kind thoughts for Flora D’Splora, but credit where credit is due. She was no coward. The monsters that lived in these caves cowered to their royalty, the basilisks. Yet Flora must’ve spent hours in this labyrinth, surrounded by animals that wanted nothing more than to gnaw the meat from her bones. Whatever crimes she was guilty of, and there were a few, she had earned the title of Bad Girl Historian.

…emphasis on ”bad.”

[feyinvestigations]

As Above, So Below

This is a companion piece for the first chapter of my fic, Rabbit Hearted Boy!

[Image ID: a digital illustration of Hunter and the Collector in the Golden Guard Graveyard. Hunter is sat, leaning against a pile of bones, surrounded by bones and mask shards that are strewn about the ground. Hunter is still, wearing his mask and hood. He is looking out fearfully from the eyeholes. His cloak and boots have splatterings of purple abomination goo on them. The Collector, in their shadow form is on the wall beside him. He has a large, excited grin on their face. Their form is distorted slightly where his body passes over objects, similar to a real shadow. Remains, masks, and bits of cloth are littered about the ground among roots.]

Reblogs are appreciated!!!

Close ups under read more

[Image ID: The first image shows one of the sets of remains. it is an entire skeleton, turned on its side. a large, trunk-like root is growing through the ribcage. a skull is beside it, resting lopsided on the piles of bones. it has several roots growing through the holes in the eyes and nose sockets. a cracked golden guard mask rests on its head. The second Image shows two more sets of skulls wearing masks. one mask rests of a pile of bones, about a quarter of its mask gone. the second skull is hanging higher in the pile. its jaw is loose, one side full disconnected from the skull and other held in place. it looks like it is yelling. It's mask is much more damaged, and looks like it may fully fall apart at any minute. The third image shows a close up of Hunter, he is staring, wide eyed, toward the ground. there are tears in his eyes and leaking from the bottom of his mask, and small tear stains are visible on his cloak. the fourth image It shows a golden guard mask on its own, Hunter's black boot, and fragments of gold on the ground. The mask is broken, with nearly half of it ripped away, and a large claw-like tear in the mask. The boot beside it have laces wrapped around the ankle, and a dripping purple goo on the toe. Throughout all 4 images, parts of The Collector's body and piles of bones are visble. End ID]

[voraciousvore]

The Giant and the Princess (9/10)

Part 1 | Previous (8) | Next (10)

Content Warning: Vore mentions/ themes

Word Count: 2.1k words

------ Part 9 ------

Ajax’s mother finished cleaning and bandaging his injuries and placed a fresh cloth on his forehead. His body was slowly recovering, and the inflammation in his limbs from the poison was decreasing. Even his fever was starting to break. He had yet to wake up, but she knew he needed rest and quiet. She left him alone so he could recover in peace. 

When Ajax finally cracked his eye open, his skull was throbbing with abysmal, excruciating pain. He moaned and lifted his arm, which felt like it weighed a million pounds, up to his face, only to find a thick bandage covering the locus point of the pain. He let out a heavy sigh as his memory slowly returned, and he recalled the projectile stabbing his eye. He was probably half-blind now. 

As he slowly became aware of his surroundings, he recognized his own bedroom. He couldn’t remember how he got here; his last memory occurred in the woods. He vaguely recalled Iris standing on his face, dribbling water into his mouth. 

“Iris?” he rasped softly. No answer. She must’ve gone back to the castle. As he spoke, he felt a hard, spiky lump scratching the inside of his throat. He didn’t like the tickly feeling, which made him cough until the irritating object ascended his throat into his mouth. He reached in and pulled it out, swallowing in the process to clear his sore throat. 

He squinted at the tiny object pinched between his fingertips, confused. It was something pointy and shiny, like a lump of metal, slathered in saliva and bile. He could almost believe it was armor from a soldier he consumed, like a helmet, but it sparkled with gold and flecks of color rather than the metallic gray of iron. He brought it closer to his eye so he could see it better. His eye widened with shock.  

It was a crown. Somehow, he swallowed a crown. As the cogs in his brain chugged through his grogginess and pain, he realized with escalating horror that it was Iris’s crown. If he had unwittingly ingested her crown, did that mean...? He clutched his belly with his free hand, squishing the skin to see if he could detect any movement. Nothing. There was nothing alive in his gut. 

His stomach clenched and cramped with revulsion, and he felt like vomiting as the horrific reality sank in. His lone eye welled up with tears as he stared a hole through her precious crown. Iris was dead. He had eaten her. He couldn’t even remember swallowing her, as there was a large gap in his memory. Had he lost control, in the delirium of fever? Had she begged and pleaded for him to stop as he mercilessly bit down on her fragile form? Or did she fall into his mouth while bringing him refreshment, and he gulped her down as greedily as he drank the water?  

Hideous guilt consumed him as he pictured her last brutal, graphic moments. He could imagine her falling through the gap of his open lips and teeth, sliding down the slope of his tongue, and sinking into his gullet. A simple flex of his throat, and she’d be forced down, never to behold the light of day again. She’d land in his stomach, flailing desperately in a churning, burning, pitch-black purgatory, encompassed by slimy, pulsing stomach walls and surrounded by the half-digested corpses of armored men. The thought of her dying inside him, when he had no awareness or knowledge of her whereabouts, was too much for his heart to bear. 

Nausea overwhelmed him. He clumsily plunked the miniscule crown on his bedside table and rolled over on his side. Retching and gagging, he expelled the contents of his stomach over the bed onto the floor. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand as he stared down at the puddle on the ground. Bones and metal fragments floated in the filthy liquid. Was Iris’s skeleton mixed in there? Ajax turned away from the grotesque sight and wept. 

“Ajax? Are you awake in there?” his mother called as she walked into the room. She saw him crying, with the vomit on the floor. “Oh, you poor dear!” She stroked his clammy forehead, muttered soothing words to him, and cleaned up his mess.  

“Shhhh, it’s alright sweetie, I know it hurts,” she murmured. “But it’s okay… you’re alive, and you still have one good eye! You’re not completely blind.” She didn’t understand that Ajax was weeping over his lost love. He didn’t bother to tell her. What good would it do? She wouldn’t understand anyways. His parents ate humans as heartlessly as he did.  

His chest tightened at the thought. He’d done something so unforgivable, breaking her trust like that. Yet, he knew their love was destined to end in disaster and tragedy. He couldn’t deny his true nature. He was a giant; she was a human. She was his prey. Their relationship was never supposed to exist in the first place. He did exactly what he was biologically programmed to do. 

His sorrow was overtaken with rage as he sought subconsciously to shift the blame away from himself. If those humans hadn’t attacked him, he never would’ve eaten her. He believed, when in charge of his faculties, he would’ve stopped himself. He boiled over as he thought about soldiers, and guards, and bandits. They were disgusting, pesky, cruel little vermin. His lovely Iris should’ve been treated with love and respect by her own people. She shouldn’t have been forced to turn to a giant to find someone that cared about her. 

He poured all his emotions, his grief and regret and physical agony, into a newfound hatred for humans. He blamed them for everything that had gone wrong. His precious little princess, the only good human out there, was gone forever. All because of them, their dreadful mistreatment of her, and their violence. He stewed in his dark fury, plotting vengeance. 

His mental condition did not improve when his father failed to return home, and his mother discovered that humans had slaughtered him and displayed his severed head outside their city. Both Ajax and his mother were devastated by the loss. His hatred and despair deepened, tempered into a hardened edge like steel. As human leaders began to realize they possessed the means to take down the giants that preyed upon them, the violence escalated. More human kingdoms became involved, and started killing giants indiscriminately, even those who had been relatively peaceful. 

When the giants realized that they were being systematically hunted and exterminated, they were outraged. They responded with just as much brutality: destroying bridges and human infrastructure, devouring travelers, crushing any humans that crossed their path, menacing the cities. A targeted assault by several giants on the magical barriers around the human cities was enough to weaken and shatter them. The giants demolished many human settlements, razing them to the ground and smashing their inhabitants like insects. The death toll on both sides was catastrophic. Humans were better organized, with better weapons, magic, and ingenuity, but giants possessed the raw strength and size to wreak havoc. 

Ajax and his mother were forced to flee their home in the mountains with the escalating aggression. When Ajax healed, he was ready to fight back. Heartbroken and enraged, he shredded through human armies and trampled his enemies into dust. He hated humans with a vitriol that poisoned his soul and turned him bitter. He couldn’t face his terrible guilt for what he had done, lest he crumble, so he drowned it in bloodshed. He pined for his fallen princess and his father. No amount of destruction he caused could bring them back. 

He never allowed himself to feel any sympathy for his victims, even if they were small and innocent. He recognized that his error was in his own weakness, in allowing himself to love and be gentle in an inappropriate situation, when he wasn’t supposed to. He grew mean and cold, seeking to submerge his guilt with hatred instead. His heart was hardened. He found release from his spiraling despair and remorse by seeking revenge in barbaric outbursts. He became more ferocious and feral, like a mistreated dog brutalized for fighting. 

He tried not to dwell on Iris, and the unspeakable thing he had done to her. He struggled to block the memories of her out of his mind. One day, while attacking a human city with a few other giants, he almost fancied he smelled her distinctive scent mixed in with the crowd. He knew such a thing was impossible; she was dead. He drowned his grief in destruction, smashing and eating humans indiscriminately. As he ripped off the roof of a building, grabbed a handful of people, and shoveled them into his mouth, he imagined he could almost taste her. He pushed the thought out of his mind and continued to rampage.  

History ran its course. With both sides devastated, the humans finally called for a truce with a proposal. Humans and giants clearly were not compatible, since giants couldn’t control their hunger for human flesh, so the humans would use their magic to find the giants a new place to live. While many giants, including Ajax, rejected what would essentially be banishment, cooler and wiser heads prevailed. Most of the giants were weary of war, and believed the bloodshed against their smaller kin was excessive. They were aware that the retaliation from the humans, while brutal and excessive, was not entirely unjustified, since giants had eaten so many of their people. 

Human magic was powerful, and held promise for a new world, one with sufficient food to better support the giant population. The current realm that they inhabited alongside humans was not sized for them, and they struggled to survive off a diminishing population of prey. So, as a collective, the giants accepted the offer. The most powerful human wizards used their magic to open portals to other realms in order to find a suitable place for the giants to live. 

Like the others, Ajax settled in the new fertile lands. Time passed. He never forgot the princess, as hard as he tried, but he eventually moved on, married a giantess, and settled down. She bore him two sons: Chester and Jasper. Ajax didn’t want his boys to suffer the same heartbreak he did, or fall into similar pitfalls. He raised them in a way he saw fit, so they wouldn’t be soft and weak. He was very harsh on them, perhaps too harsh, in order to toughen them up. Even after hundreds of years, he still suffered temperamental fits of violent rage over the injustices in his life that he took out on his sons. 

Overall, his offspring disappointed him. Despite his best efforts, they didn’t turn out to be the ideal image of strong, stoic warriors that Ajax aspired to. They were small and scrawny for giants, taking after the more feminine traits of their mother, and soft and compassionate in character. Jasper, with his jovial nature, never took anything seriously, and Chester was more interested in activities like reading and writing than engaging in manual labor to build muscle. They were spineless, since they never had to fight in any wars or suffer real hardship, and Ajax resented that quality in his progeny. 

Ajax was at least satisfied that he succeeded in ensuring his sons only saw humans as food. Humans were rare in this land, the Land of Giants, but they occasionally appeared when magical lightning storms transported them from the human realm. He made sure to catch some humans and feed them to his sons as special treats. Jasper always slurped up his humans with glee. Chester seemed more sullen and sad when he ate his share, but he didn’t dare disobey his volatile father, lest he suffer a beating. 

His sons grew up and moved out, and he didn’t see them as often, since they sought to distance themselves from their strict father. Chester was more of a recluse, and moved into a modest cottage out in the woods, away from any major townships. He spent most of his days in seclusion, working from home on freelance writing gigs. His life wasn’t unpleasant by any means, peaceful and quiet, but he was a bit lonely. 

That would change when a magical lightning storm brought a human woman out to his neck of the woods… 

(Author's Note: This is where my story The Giant ties in, which tells Chester's tale. However, this story still has one chapter to go, so stay tuned!)

Part 10

[transgamerism]

blood and foam

rating: T

characters: The Dark Urge, Lae’zel, Shadowheart

summary: “The Dark Urge is birthed from its prosthetic womb, carrying a new parasite and a gaping void in its brain. A Nautiloid falls from the sky.

Destiny awaits.”

ao3 link (follow for content warnings and description tags) or read below

(many thanks and especially manly kisses to @necro-hamster for giving this a look and making sure it is fit for the public eye)

The Dark Urge tumbles out of its chitinous egg, the bone and sinew womb that kept it contained. The floor rumbles beneath its cheek, the smell of acid and burning filling its nose. Everything aches and burns, this body that trembles like a sickly foal as it shuffles to its feet, unfamiliar in movement and surrounding. Its head throbs horribly, the vile grub digging around in its brain an uncomfortable sensation that makes its eyes water.

It stands in the destroyed hatchery for a moment, reacquainting itself with breath and life. The presence of limbs it can control and a head that can think, though the thoughts are troubling and jumbled. Every twitch of its eye brings fragments, a wood and stone city, a river of blood, dark tunnels. One thought bullies forward into the front of its mind: escape. Rip and tear through the fleshy membrane of this vessel, gnaw its way out, be free.

The slick corridors may have once been twisting, but now fire and the great claws of red dragons have given the Dark Urge only one way out, and they take it, moving at a swift crouch. This is familiar, the stalking, the creeping, the keen ear listening for movement. So too is the way its heart races at the sound of a voice, a tinkling whisper, brushing against its flesh. A rush of excitement spills down its spine, the promise of prey. The cooing little brain speaks to it from inside the elf’s skull, defenseless and in need of help. It’s sticky soft in the Dark Urge’s hands as it pulls the creature out of the skull, and it yields easily to its claws.

The Dark Urge thinks of its own brain, full of holes and gaps, and the pictures become reality, ripping and tearing the mind meat of the intellect devourer in its clutches. It shreds with claws and then teeth, playing more than eating, though it does indulge in swallowing a few precious morsels as it does its work. The taste is foul but the feeling is elation, and it drops the dead thing to the ground, a pile of trembling pink viscera.

The next living creature the Dark Urge encounters seems less edible, a yellow thing protected by a shining silver carapace, perfect at deflecting the Dark Urge’s claws and teeth. It is also armed with a long, wicked talon of its own, aiming it at the Dark Urge as it hisses curses. The Dark Urge hunches into a defensive position, mind racing as it considers points of escape and how to pry the edible fleshy bits from the silver shell, when a new attack leaves it prone, clutching its poor shattered skull.

Images accost it, sights and smells: a star streaked black sky, the smell of blood, others with yellow faces, the flash of silver swords, the arched back of a red dragon. A curious creature, pink fleshed and topped with fluffy white hair nearly obscuring small horns, utterly naked and scored with scars, flaming eyes peering out of a snarling face.

The Dark Urge flinches away from recognition, understanding that pink beast to be itself, perceived by another. It blinks up with new understanding at this Githyanki, the title pulled from its connection with the other. She no longer has her blade leveled toward its throat, but sneers down at it all the same. “You are no thrall,” she says, though her tone is uncertain. The Dark Urge, too, is uncertain, but rises to its feet. She’s a small warrior, but it can feel the controlled power coming off of her. This Githyanki would have made a very poor meal.

She further demonstrates this barely a moment later, when they are beset by small fiends, imps that flutter on naked batwings and throw fire with their hands. The Githyanki uses her sword well, and appraises the Dark Urge as it descends on an imp with clawed hands, ripping a wing off and flinging it over the side of the Nautiloid (another word lifted from the Githyanki’s mind). The remaining imps fall easily, leaving the Dark Urge coated in stinking sulfurous blood.

The Githyanki drops to her knees a few paces away, stripping the clothes from a corpse and holding the fabric pile out to the Dark Urge. At its questioning look, she clicks her tongue and says, “Reaching the helm will be easier if you are less exposed. Quickly!”

The Dark Urge takes the clothing and puts it on, muscle memory having it tie the boot laces before its mind catches up, same with the shirt buttons. It feels odd, fabric separating it from its bloody work. Was it like this before? Was it used to cotton and wool softening its body against slaughter?

The Dark Urge is familiar with this, tethered to the leash of the Githyanki’s command, ripping through a few more intellect devourers (armed now with twin daggers found on another corpse, and small handheld crossbow), but seeing another trapped within her own nautiloid womb gives it pause. Behind each blink are images, blood blurred and aching, of entrapment within the mindflayer mother’s cradle. Each time the half-elf pummels the glass with her fists, the Dark Urge feels a sympathetic pain in its own hands.

It defies the Githyanki’s demands, releasing the half-elf from her prison, reveling in the rush of disobedience, of choice, even as it makes the Dark Urge’s guts heave with uncertainty.

The half-elf rises, her long dark braid swinging, and for a moment the Dark Urge expects the smell of coppersweet rot and roses, sees a long blonde plait in its mind’s eye, but then the feeling is gone and this Shadowheart is thanking it. The Githyanki scowls.

“What is your name?” Shadowheart asks, and the Dark Urge blinks. There is only flesh, and broken brain matter, and the urge to rip and tear. Aside from that, and the flickering tingles of memory that tease at the corners of its mind, there is darkness. And yet, on instinct, the Dark Urge’s mouth forms an answer.

“Étaín,” it says, a hundred times, a thousand, the name it has always had. Easy and natural on the tongue, and yet it bids forth no association. Just a bit of flotsam bobbing back and forth on the cool dark waters of its destroyed memory.

“We’ve wasted enough time,” the Githyanki snaps, stalking away toward where she’s certain the helm lies. Étaín and Shadowheart fall in behind her, Étaín’s mind a lapping tide of foaming secrets still.

[dead-philosophy]

Of Yore - part I

Gentle wind stirred the field of golden wheat, golden beneath a cold, grey, alien sky. The beginnings of a storm.

“What will you do?”

He called out to the warrior in bronze just across the way from him. Dried viscera still clung to his armor in places, though he had tried to wash it away. The nipping teeth of the wind raked undulating patterns through the grizzled grey-brown fur of his cloak, mirroring those that danced across the wheat. Crimson pteruges clinked softly against his cuirass. He turned his gaze to the smaller man, a deadness in his eyes. The left one always twitched.

“I don’t know.”

The gladiator made the man feel so small, standing near him. A little rat in the shadow of a hound. He did not mind that. Unspoken mutual respect existed between them. The little rat savored the low rumble of the hound’s voice above the ambient whisper of the wind. He smelled petrichor. His chest felt full of sharp things, bits of glass and needles and his own shattered bones, anxieties that made their home there. Things he could not say lived behind his eyes like worms. How could he say them? He would ask something instead.

“Do you still want to die?”

The troubled warrior’s amber eyes washed over him like the heat of a campfire when one stood too close. He savored that too, it was all he could get.

“I…”

The hound fell silent. His eye twitched. The rat stared up at him, the wind tousling his dark hair, his many yearnings thrashing in his gut like lampreys. Maybe something unspoken passed between them, but maybe he was just hoping it did.

“If you die, I want to die with you.”

Areshkar awoke with a start, his thin shirt clinging to his sweat-slicked torso. His hands gripped the hem of his moth-eaten blanket, his knuckles starkly white even against his sun-starved, pallid flesh.

Had it been a dream this time, or a memory?

There was no way to know anymore. Things had grown so fuzzy, it terrified him. Memories were all he had left. He drew a shaky breath, pulling aside the blanket and cautiously crawling out of bed. His bare feet padded softly against the cold floor, his eyes burning. Tears grew at the corners of his eyes and he spitefully rubbed them away with the back of his hand as he made his way over to the corner of the room. It was the only part of his quarters that had any semblance of order, as the rest was covered in a haphazard array of his belongings -- a rat’s nest. Open books and sheafs of parchment littered the floor, and an assortment of bladed weapons sat atop any available piece of furniture, some with cleaning supplies lying beside them. Clothes, whether they were clean or not he could not recall, lay draped over the backs of chairs or crumpled in piles on the floor. Some of them no longer fit his Warp-altered frame, but he did not have it in him to work out just which ones. Moths fluttered around the room, gathering around the multitude of flickering candles atop the creaky wooden dresser, thick ropes of melted wax affixing them to its surface. He approached the table in the far corner, its surface draped with a worn crimson battle standard emblazoned with an open maw. Fragments of bronze-finished armor laid there, beside a tarnished plasma pistol much too large for Areshkar’s own hands. A stasis vial sat surrounded by a series of tiny figurines carved from bone; several pointy-eared hounds in various poses, and a miniscule bust immortalizing a face lost to time. A face that lived forever in Areshkar’s head.

Areshkar did not reach for any of these things, instead reaching for a scrap of grizzled grey-brown fur just large enough to drape over his shoulders, moth-eaten and marked by scorch-holes. He picked it up, stroking it reverently for a moment. His gaze settled on something else, a faded pict-print with a dark stain in one corner. A picture of him.

The Rat King clutched the scrap of fur to his chest, breaking into haunting, mournful sobs; anguished cries of loss and longing that echoed through the bowels of the Lacustrine.

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Header by keltii-tea

Chapter 9: A Fox in Sheep’s Clothing

By the time Mia started to wake up, Heisenberg had just about run the gamut of every insult he could fling at her.

While she lay unconscious he'd paced back and forth, muttering under his breath, shaking his head, stumbling on the jagged fall of rocks the helicopter was currently strewn over. It lay there, a beached, gutted whale, spitting black smoke once the engine caught fire.

Heisenberg had stood, staring at it, yearning for a cigar, pawing through his pockets as if one might materialize, and when one didn't, he spent a good thirty minutes ripping apart the remains of the burning helicopter with his power and smashing the pieces into fragments of metal.

Now, he collapsed on a rock, breathing hard through clenched teeth, and waited. The sky was pale and hard as a sheet of ice, a light snowfall dusting the mountainside and stunted, twisted pines surrounding the crash site. The furrow of dark earth carved into the ground by the crashing helicopter had already frozen solid.

The wilderness rang around him, vast and silent.

For now, anyway.

He hunched down into his trench coat, hands deep in his pockets, eyes narrowed as he stared at Mia Winters, unconscious before him like a soldat seconds before its reactor kicked in.

Mia lay sprawled on a piece of metal scavenged from the helicopter. Her gray-brown hair was tangled around her shoulders, her lips slightly parted, blood dripping from a gash on her forehead. Her bullet wound had already sealed up, just a pucker of scar tissue over her sternum. Heisenberg leaned over his knees, watching her, waiting.

He could make out, faint as a wasp's hum, her heartbeat. His Cadou turned over inside him, a restless movement, echoing his own impatience.

He wanted to be proved right, and he wanted it now.

How'd you hide that secret from Chris, then? he wondered. But then again, they'd never cottoned to Ethan's little mold problem. Maybe the BSAA weren't as all-seeing and thorough as they liked to pretend to be.

To be fair, neither was he. His plans, inevitably, fell apart at the seams, carefully-constructed though they may be, and he'd had to get good at improvising. Easy, when one was as fond of explosions and rusty buzzsaws and spectacle as he was.

Now, there was no chance of buzzsaws or spectacle. This place was bleak as an old bone. As for explosions- well. The helicopter flames were already dying out.

Soon, the cold would get in.

Mia stirred. She twitched. Her lashes fluttered. Heisenberg didn't move from his rock as her eyes opened, as she stared up at the pale sky.

"Wake up, Mia," Heisenberg said. "You fucked up big time."

"Heis..." she rasped.

She gasped, then scrambled onto her hands and knees, reaching for her back. She touched the ragged hole in her sweater and froze.

"Yeah," Heisenberg said. He spread his hands. "What's with that?"

She put her hand down and, slowly, sank onto her haunches. "Get the hell away from me."

"Nothing doing. You owe me one, sweetheart. I saved your life."

"I don't- I don't want your pity, okay?" She shot a fiery glare at him, her hazel eyes bright in the frozen sunlight. "I'd rather freeze."

"Nothing so nice," Heisenberg said. "You would've been picked back up by Ouroboros. What, I wonder, would they have done to you when your dumbassery led to their pet Lord of the Village getting loose?"

He hooked a thumb toward himself and flashed her a grin. "Hm. Maybe you have a point. I'd sure as hell rather freeze than...whatever that would be."

"Oh, god," Mia whispered, bringing her hands to her face and running them through her hair. "Oh god. I did fuck up, didn't I."

"Yep."

"And now?"

"...Now?"

"If you're gonna kill me, kill me."

"You think I want to kill you? Mia. If I wanted you dead I'd have carried out my threat, broke your neck while you were unconscious."

"Why didn't you?" She tilted her head. A challenge. "After everything I did to you?"

His grin widened. "You were useful, weren't you? It's not every day a hostage falls right into your hands."

"Then why not leave me after you got to the helicopter?"

"Because Ouroboros doesn't get to kill you," he said. "Anyone gets to, after all the shit you pulled, it's me."

Mia stared at him for a good five-count, her face blank of expression. Then she gave a weary snort.

"Go on," she said. "Do your worst."

"Seriously? Thought you were a fighter. After hearing about your three years at the Baker estate, I assumed...well. Maybe I pegged you wrong."

"No." Mia faced him, climbing shakily to her feet. "No. That was a threat, Heisenberg. Go on. Do your worst. Can't be any worse than what you've already done-"

"Eh, you've got a point there."

"You stole my daughter." She staggered forward, her face hollow, her eyes ablaze. "You...you let me and so many others get tortured-"

Another step, her hands curling into fists. "You murdered my husband!"

She flung herself at him, the word fraying into a guttural howl. Heisenberg grabbed her by her wrists as she took a swing; she jerked to a halt with a little snarl, twisting against his grip. She was pretty strong- all that terrorist-organization combat training, he assumed- but he still had the Cadou on his side. He flung her off; she stumbled on the rocky ground, but came up with fists raised, the blood from her head wound streaking down her face and matting her hair.

"Mia-" Heisenberg said. He jerked to his feet, ducking her next punch. "Mia, I didn't fucking kill Ethan."

She stopped, panting. Blood dripped from her chin, her eyes bright with tears. "W...what?" she said.

"I didn't kill Ethan, all right? I was trying to get a rise out of you, and you fell for it like a bitch. I didn't fucking- dammit, Mia, Miranda killed Ethan. She and Redfield's huge-ass bomb that splatted her and the megamycete over the whole valley. Ethan was crystallizing. Dying already. Wanted to make the end mean something. For you. For fuckin'- everyone."

He paused. "For Rose."

Mia still breathed hard, slightly crouched. She scrubbed her knuckles over her mouth. "You're lying."

"Believe what you want to, sweetheart."

"He would never...give Rose to you."

"Desperate times. Redfield was off holding back the lycans. No one else was there to give her to." He couldn't resist another grin, showing off a hint of incisor. "Besides, Mia, don't I look the trustworthy type?"

Mia gave him a black look, but she backed off. She slumped onto a rock.

Heisenberg sidled over, standing on the edge of the slope, watching the snowfall creep closer and closer by the minute.

"So," he said.

She gave no response.

"Miranda did a number on you, didn't she?"

Nothing. He glanced sidelong at her.

"Oh, come on, Mia," he said. "It's just you and me. No one else to pour out your dirty little secrets to. No one else to overhear."

"You're despicable," she muttered.

"Yes, and?" He paused. "You embarrassed about it or something?"

"I'd rather not think about it."

"Sure, sure. I get it, Mia, I really do. When Miranda took a bonesaw to my ribs I didn't like to think about it either. I was just a kid, though. Maybe. Details are fuzzy. But I do remember what it felt like when she reached inside me and took parts of me out. And when she put something new inside. Something that wasn't me. I remember the way it moved and settled and curled up inside me. Like it was always meant to be there."

He stopped. His voice had dropped to a low, raspy growl. Mia was looking at him, now. He couldn't tell for how long.

"You were a little boy when she gave you that...thing?" she asked.

"The Cadou. Means-"

"-Gift," she finished, with a small, bitter laugh. "Yeah. I definitely looked that one up on google translate."

"I bet you did. So what about you?" Heisenberg said. He faced her fully again, hands stuffed deep in his coat pockets. "She didn't implant the Cadou in you, that's for sure. But she did something, all right."

"What tipped you off?"

"Besides you surviving a gunshot wound that should have cracked your sternum like an egg? Huh, how about your remarkable anti-aging regimen?"

She touched her cheek.

"She experimented on me," she said, after a pause. "She...injected me with...I don't know what was in that syringe. I thought I saw it wriggling under my skin, but...it could have been the drugs. I'm not sure. She kept me sedated some of the time. The rest, when I was more alert...she didn't talk to me. I was like..."

"Like an animal?" Heisenberg said.

Mia lowered her head. She hugged her arms around herself. The last of the flames from the burning helicopter died down, and the snow began to fall in earnest, blurring even the closest trees to gray shadows. Heisenberg had his coat, and could withstand the cold pretty long, but Mia just had her sweater.

"Listen," Heisenberg said. "Do what you want. Stay here if you want. I'm gonna go clean up your mess."

"Take on Ouroboros alone?"

"Yeah."

With that, he began away. He heard Mia scramble to her feet. "You won't get far," she called.

"Uh-huh."

"You know what this is?"

Heisenberg looked back. She'd lifted her arm, showing off the fancy-looking electronic watch thing she'd controlled his harness with, back on the ship. A small red light pipped on it.

"I don't know that shit," Heisenberg said.

"Among other things, it's a distress beacon," Mia said. She lowered her hand. "Ouroboros has a fix on us, now. It'll be a while in this snow, but they'll come for us-"

Heisenberg snapped the watch from her wrist and brought it hovering into the air between them. Mia didn't flinch; maybe she'd expected the move.

"I wouldn't," Mia said. "Break that, I mean."

"Oh, yeah?"

"When I injected you on the helicopter-"

"Knocked me the fuck out, you mean?"

"I did more than that." She lowered her head. Her tear-worn features, in the deepening shadows, took on a sly cast. Heisenberg began to see just how Mia Winters had evaded years upon years of consequences for all the bad shit she'd been a part of. A wolf in sheep's clothing, indeed. Or, maybe, a fox.

"That syringe was full of a slow-acting necrotoxin," she went on. "Developed to maintain control over bioweapons we loaned out to our various clients. We injected the creatures with that substance before sending them out. If the bioweapon wasn't returned within the agreed-upon timescale...full system meltdown."

Heisenberg's pulse hammered, his Cadou giving little spasms of anxiety in time. His mouth was dry. The necrotoxin, already beginning its work? Or just the sickening acceptance that someone had gotten one over him?

"You're lying," he said.

Mia smiled.

"Believe what you want to," she said. "Sweetheart."

"So- what? What's your play?"

"Ouroboros has the anti-toxin. They pick me up, alive and well, they'll administer it to you."

"You're sure about that?"

"I think it's you who should be worried."

Heisenberg advanced on her, stopping just short of running straight into her. She looked up, into his face. Even through a hostage situation, a gunshot wound, a helicopter crash, and a fistfight with a magnetic mutant on some godforsaken Romanian mountainside, she still smelled pretty damn good.

Fuck her. Fuck all of this. Little shards of metal rose from the rocks, orbiting around him as he stared down at her.

"How long?" he said.

"A few days."

"Good." He eased one of the metal shards forward, letting it draw a fine line down the smooth skin of her cheek. Her lips trembled, but she didn't back down. "Plenty of time."

He turned and began away, letting a few metal shards slip into his pockets before dropping control over the rest.

"Plenty of time for what?" he heard Mia yell from behind him.

"For me to get to the village and do what I need to do! I know it's tough, Mia, but do try to listen when I say things!"

The sound of crashing metal came from her direction. He looked back in time to see her emerge from the remains of the burned-out, smashed-up helicopter with a sleek, strange-looking rifle. Loaded, no doubt, with more of those anti-BOW rounds.

"Gonna shoot me?" Heisenberg called.

"No. Ouroboros would really make me into buzzard bait if I did that. You, unlike me, are a valuable asset."

"A valuable asset you just pumped poison into. You're betting the farm on this whole distress call maneuver, aren't you?"

She blew a plume of ash off the rifle barrel, watching the black dust swirl into the breeze. "And you'd better hope I win."

***

They set out into the wilderness.

This was familiar, Heisenberg thought, getting into the swing of things. Mia hiked along with her shiny new rifle shouldered and her affect grim, doing a good job to not look affected by the cold. While neither he nor his siblings could leave the valley boundaries, the ancient saintly statues Miranda had enforced as the perimeter- the limits, perhaps, of her power- there was plenty of wilderness between them and the village, plenty of woods and chasms, caves and cliffs to wander through.

As much as he'd craved the drowning, single-minded oblivion of the work he did in his factory, weeks or months on end of arms gloved in corpses and steaming piles of organs replaced with polycrystal and metal, he was a creature of extremes, after all, and he craved silence when the work at last grew too much, and the engine of his brain turned to scrabble and scrawl.

Oh, there were recollections of hunting, too, blood in the snow, lycans leaping and tearing alongside him, striking down sorry souls at his command, but here and now the memories rising to the top were ones of peace.

Necrotoxin must be getting into my temporal lobe, he thought, giving his head a little shake. Need to give myself a hard electric shock, stave it off for as long as possible. If only there were some jumper cables around. Peace wasn't in the cards for him. He couldn't think that way now. Maybe never.

He paused at an outcropping, squinting at the mountains visible through the mist.

"You on the right track?" Mia asked him.

"Yeah." He put out a hand, gauging the distance between two peaks. If he turned his head- yeah, that was it. He'd spent countless hours in the field of waist-high grass outside his factory, perched on the rusted treads of some old tank or heap of scrap, smoking a cigar and listening to the wind through the dry stalks as he stared toward the mountains surrounding the village. He knew them by now, knew them like the smell of sunsets around this place. The sting of each sun slipping below the horizon, another day longer in captivity.

Another day in the factory. Another corpse gutted. Another heart torn loose and machinery coiled in. A foreign thing, forced inside.

The work was endless, but it was all he'd ever known, and he'd loved it because it would set him free. In his darkest moments, in the black pits of his grief and rage and despair, he'd thought to himself will I ever be free, would I even recognize freedom even if I felt it.

Now, like in the factory, there was a job to get done, and he'd do it no matter what it took.

Is that what you want, Mister Heisenberg?

It didn't matter. Not now.

What about after?

But there could be no after. That was the way the world worked. Maybe Rose had a point, in her yearning for a human life- denial of self was the only way to find peace. And he would never be human again.

After the village, he thought what he'd done- saving Rose, saving himself- was redemption enough to spare him from the world. He saw now how it all came back around, how the end was as ever like the beginning.

There was no peace for him. There was no freedom for him.

Right?

Afternoon slipped stealthily into night. Mia kept her rifle at the ready. And when the howl filled the cold air, Heisenberg was almost relieved. Finally, he didn't have to do anymore thinking.

"Lycans?" was all Mia said.

"Yeah. Stay close."

"I've got this, Heisenberg-"

"I don't doubt your skills with that potato shooter of yours, Mia," he told her. "I'm saying stay close in case one blitzes us and drags you off." He looked her up and down. "Believe me. They're gonna go for you first."

She didn't argue, just pressed in, her shoulder brushing his back, her finger poised alongside the trigger. Another howl joined the first in chorus. Heisenberg searched the trees, but saw nothing- no lycan pack, no eyes glinting from the shadows. No reek of blood. Were they hunting other prey?

No.

He saw it, suddenly- the form loping alongside them, keeping several yards back. Small, ungainly; it seemed to shamble along, then pause, then keep shambling, its head bowed.

Mia's brow furrowed. "What the hell is that?" she muttered.

"Looks like a small one."

"I can get it from here-"

"Hang on." Heisenberg put his palm over her barrel. "Lycans are like sharks. You get blood on the ground, they go into a frenzy. Don't want to draw a whole pack on us."

"Oh, you couldn't handle that? I thought you were supposed to be a big deal around here. You certainly acted like it, once upon a time."

"Yeah, yeah, save it, sweetheart."

The shape shuffled around them, letting out the occasional small yip. Heisenberg stopped as it crawled ahead of them, behind a cluster of rocks jutting from the snow. He brought his hand from his coat pocket, levitating a palmful of scrap around his hand and wrist. It glinted in the half-light.

Mia inched forward, rifle trained on the rocks.

"Careful-" Heisenberg warned.

The shape emerged from over the rocks. Small, skinny, one leg withered. Its long hair fell in tatters over its face, coarse and gray. He made out the fangs jutting from its lips, and, too, the remnants of the dress the small lycan wore, an apron tied around its waist. It saw them, big eyes bright beneath its hair, small fingers curled on the snowy rock.

"It's a child," Mia whispered.

"A child lycan," Heisenberg said, with a laugh. Now that was fucked up.

"Oh, god." Mia's hands shook on the rifle. The lycan gave another little yelp, crawling over the rocks and dropping down to the snow. "No, no-"

"Mia!" Heisenberg barked, in warning, as the lycan's haunches tensed, bringing up his hand, electricity snapping between the metal shards.

The lycan leapt with a snarl; Mia stumbled back; the muzzle flash lit the trees, gunshot going wide.

Gotta do everything my goddamn self, Heisenberg thought. A hum of power blasted through the forest, shaking snow from the branches. Shrapnel pinged off the tree trunks, the rocks; the lycan fell, steaming, thrashing and clawing at its multiple small wounds before going still. Mia was on her knees, breathing hard.

"C'mon, get up-" Heisenberg grabbed her shoulders and hauled her to her feet. "We gotta move. Others will have heard- ohhh."

A half-moon of bite marks glistened on her forearm, shredding aside her sweater sleeve. As Heisenberg watched, the wound pulsated.

"Oh," he said again, this time with intrigue.

"Hurts," Mia managed. "Agh-"

She convulsed. The wound seemed to throb in time; there was definitely something in there. Heisenberg glanced at the child lycan, crumbling into crystal. Inside its open mouth writhed tentacles, as if in some grotesque last gasp at life.

He remembered his conversation with Mia onboard the ship. Miranda's little show and tell in the stronghold. So the lycans had in fact mutated without her interference. Fascinating.

Mia began to shudder under his hands. The wound rapidly blackened, flesh turning necrotic as he watched. No time to waste. He heaved her into his arms.

"Giving up already?" he said. "So disappointing."

"Y...y'dont...want to observe...this...?"

"Another time, Mia." He pulled her hair out of her face so she could see him as he grinned down at her. He gave her a little pat on the cheek. "I need you alive, don't I?"

She grew heavier as he hurried through the snow, as he broke through the treeline and onto a slope. The howls echoed louder, closer, a looping, overlapping wave of them from all directions. There. He spotted it against the otherwise-unrelenting expanse of trees and mountain: a ruin clinging to the mountainside, a single crumbled tower crowned with what looked at this distance like a stone angel. Some kind of church, then.

Good. Nice thick stone walls.

Heisenberg skidded down the slope, Mia jostling in his arms; the black putrefaction bubbled and grew as he watched, leaching the color from her skin.

Snarls filled the woods.

He picked up speed, ducking through the stone archway of the collapsed wall around the church. Claws scythed the air at Heisenberg's back; he let go of Mia as he swung around and drove his fist into the lycan's face. It snapped back with a shriek.

"Bad dog!" Heisenberg roared.

The church doorway was just beyond. A kick sent the rotted, iron-studded door banging open, blowing a cloud of dust into the gloom.

Mia gave a pained cry; black fluid oozed from the corner of her mouth, her eyes squeezed shut, lids black-veined, lashes damp with rot.

Heisenberg sent the door slamming shut, yanked two of the bolts out, fused them together into a makeshift latch. Impact shuddered against the door a few moments later, claws screeching down the aged wood.

Holding it shut with his power, he shoved aside a few of the moldering pews aside and lay Mia down on one of them. After a beat, he stuck an ancient velvet kneeler under her head. No point in concussing her- for now, anyway. Dust filtered down from the rafters as the sound of lycans crawling over the church roof echoed through, graying her hair even further. A single shaft of moonlight fell from a hole in the ceiling, giving Heisenberg enough light to work by. As the midnight moon rises on black wings...A scrap of old prayer drifting through his head. Was it still a prayer when it was spoken by God herself? Glory to...glory to...

"Dumbass," he told her. "That wasn't a kid anymore."

"I...I know that- I'm not stupid-"

"Why the fuck did you freeze up, then, huh?" He tore the shredded material of her sleeve open, exposing her arm to the air. Black veins twisted down it to the elbow. The wound itself had swollen to the size of a grapefruit, the flesh soft and mushy to the touch, pulsing with a cardiac rhythm.

"...Scared...thought...I was, I was, back in...nightmare..."

She was losing it, and fast. Muttering, Heisenberg fished the remainder of his scrap metal from his pocket and sent it swirling together into a long, pointed shape. A flexion of his power pressed it together, molding the scrap into a makeshift scalpel. Its edge shone blue-white, razor-sharp.

He floated it above his palm. He'd be more dexterous using his abilities for this. He gave Mia his belt to chew on, held her down by the shoulders as she thrashed and spasmed under him.

"Don't- move-" he ordered.

She screamed around the belt, a grating sound propelled from deep inside her guts. Fan-fucking-tastic. This was why he preferred to work on the dead. At least Teodora had done him the courtesy of laying still while he cut her open.

He lowered the scalpel to the swelling. The first cut sank in as if through butter; black fluid spurted out, hitting Heisenberg in the face. He spat it aside- tasted rancid- and kept going, splitting the growth open like a rotten tomato.

A shriek came from the wound. Nestled inside the growth, latched into Mia's arm, was a curled, tentacled thing, fetal and shapeless, screeching as the air hit it.

"Intriguing as you are," Heisenberg told it, "I need this arm attached to this body."

He jabbed the scalpel down. It skewered the parasite; the thing's keen was ear-cracking, setting his teeth on edge. With a twist and a flick of the scalpel, he ripped it off her arm and sent it splatting to the flagstones, where it oozed, trying to crawl away by its long, trailing tentacles.

"No hard feelings," Heisenberg told it, and brought his boot down on it, crushing it into sticky goo.

Mia had stopped spasming and lay, as before, sprawled, her chest rising and falling in short, quick pants, his belt trailing from her mouth.

She let it go with her teeth as he took it from her.

"Ow," she whispered.

He bent her arm up so she could see the wound, and made the hand give her a jaunty wave. "You had a little friend."

"Better...better company than...you..." She was fading fast. Heisenberg busied himself with her arm, draining the black fluid from her skin, cutting away the excess rot. But Miranda's augmentation did its job, and even as he cleaned up the wound, like he would with the rot that had infested the  bodies of so many of his prospective soldaten, it began to clot and scab itself over.

"Look at that," Heisenberg said. "You'll be all plugged up in no time."

"No..." Mia mumbled. "Don'...wanna be..."

"What was that?"

"Don't wanna be...a monster...not, not again..." She gave a little hitch of a sob. "Everyone's counting on me..."

She fell silent, her head lolling to the side. Heisenberg gave her face a poke, then made a small "Hm." of dissatisfaction.

Curious, he gave the scalpel blade, covered with her fresh blood, a lick. Hm. Didn't have the taste he usually associated with megamycete infection. What the hell had Miranda done to her?

Questions for later. He finished all he could now, then sank to the floor, leaning his head back against Mia's hip on the pew. She was out cold, far as he could tell. Probably for the best. He listened to her breathing, then tipped his head back to look at the hole in the ceiling, the scrap of sky visible beyond.

A few stars had come out, the clouds parting to show a sliver of moon. Stars didn't look like that anywhere else but here.

You're back home again, Karl.

What do you think you'll find, in the place that destroyed you, in the place you destroyed in turn?

Yeah, well. Like he'd said. It all came back round eventually.

He'd worry about it in the morning.

[papercutsunset]

Darkened States Episode 19 (Shotgun) Dream Sequence

The dream begins in the way it always does: with a warped version of the last good day.

She stands there, at the edge of the pool, seventeen again and wearing the old blue one-piece suit she hasn't touched since he left. Through the windows, the sky is wrong but, inside, everything is just fine. Down in the water, a faceless mass of people splash around. They jump in; they chatter happily at the edges; they are nothing but static and set dressing for the main event.

Down at her feet, her father tosses her little brother into the water. Jake is seven at this point (seven and tiny, seven and so very full of life), and he giggles when he comes back up for air.

And Frankie knows the scene well. She knows the face of her father-- the same aquiline nose, the same warm brown eyes, the stubble that hasn’t yet sprung fully into a beard-- and she knows his smile in the way she knows the sun. She tells him it’s time to go, that they’re going to be late. He smiles, calls her a different name, holds a hand up to her like he wants some help out without going to the stairs. She gives it to him, and he pulls her in.

The water is endless blue; his smile is endless off-white. She wants to die in it forever.

For the moment, despite the bittersweet anger polluting the memory like dye and blood in the chlorinated water, it is good. Even when they have to get out, it is good. Her heart doesn’t fall out of her chest yet.

The dream time-skips to the car that night. Her hair is still damp against the collar of her old wrestling team sweatshirt in the humid night air, a gift from her father from when he was young, and she’s falling asleep in the passenger seat. Her father says something, parked in the lot outside the apartment, but she doesn’t catch it. His voice is a warped siren. There are no words.

Instead of the house, she goes through the door of a motel she recognizes. Rationally, she knows it’s not real-- it’s one that she saw in a TV show, so it can’t be real-- but it feels real.

There is blood on her hands.

There is always blood on her hands. This time, there is more than usual. It drips from fingertip to fingertip and from fingertip to floor; it saturates the carpet at her feet. She looks up and catches her reflection in the tarnished circular mirror across the room, in the tarnished brass of the spokes surrounding it.

The other girl, the one in the mirror, sneers at her. Her eyes are ringed with thick black makeup and obscured by thick black bangs. And it's not eyes-- it's eye, singular. Behind the curtain of bangs over the right one, there is a bloody hole dripping with vitreous humor. When she smiles, there it is, threatening to pop between her teeth, ocular nerve flopping around like a dying eel. She seems more monster than girl. The surface of the glass is covered with a thin layer of yellow-ish petroleum jelly like a desperately-covered wound.

She looks at the ground. Another Frankie lays on the hexagon-patterned carpet thick and heavy with spilled water and spilled blood. It turns pink on her skin and the fabric of her short-sleeved dress shirt.

This Frankie is the better one. Her hair is brushed neat, undyed brown and held back with two butterfly-jeweled hair-clips over each ear, disturbed only by the way that she fell and the substances matting her head. The better Frankie has a gaping hole at her temple, stippled with tiny burns and bits of chrome leading into a long tunnel; the bullet's lodged at the other side, where it broke through the bone but not the skin.

Blood blossoms like dark snapdragons, red and hot and spurting everywhere from a hole in the better Frankie’s chest. She looks down at it, bends over, tries to get a better look. When she does, she sees an infinite labyrinth of fragmented, splintered bone jutting out like the teeth of some sea monster at the bottom of a whirlpool, trying to swallow her whole.

Frankie looks back down at her hands. She is holding a cleaver.

She drops it.

It falls endlessly toward the floor; when it finally hits, it bounces gently and lands haphazard at her bare feet. The impact sends drops of thick corn-syrup-red blood up to her knees.

The worse Frankie, in the mirror, laughs. “You can’t keep it up forever."

And she knows she can’t. She sees the red-spotted palms of her hands. She sees the shards of bone on the carpet and the bit of scalp on the motel bedspread.

The better Frankie, on the ground, agrees. Her teeth are bright white and smeared thick with red. “Everyone knows what you are.”

The door opens with a burst of wind and frigid rain. Standing in the doorway is a silhouette: six feet tall and dotted with stubble, with a warm smile and damp swim trunks. It’s the same way her father was dressed on the day before he left. She thinks it’s him, for a moment, when he calls her by a different name.

It isn’t. It’s Frankie again.

The disappointment escapes her throat in a sigh, and her shoulders slump. The doorway Frankie-- the one who knows what she has to do-- shakes her head sadly. “You’re just like him, you know,” she whispers. "You can't keep it up forever, Winona Whatever."

Frankie takes note of the hammer turning over and over and over in her doppelganger’s hands. Its handle is stained and worn down. She knows what it’s for.

She exists outside of herself for a moment, as the other Frankie advances with her hammer in reluctant and bloodthirsty hands. She sees it from the corner of the room: metal head to human one, over and over again, until all that remains is a frothy blood-pink labyrinth of bone shards and decimated, meat-cleaved gray-white matter and meninges.

The final Frankie shatters the mirror. She can't help but see her reflection in the shards of petroleum-slick glass.

When she looks away from it, she is alone in the room. In one hand, she holds the weapon she knows she must put to good use: no longer the hammer, but the cleaver again. Its handle is engraved with numbers. In the other, she holds a butterfly-jeweled hair-clip. It’s blue, the color of the sky and the pool.

She is all that remains. She is all that ever was.

[doghousetimes]

How Do Dogs Remember Where They Bury Bones? (Do They Remember)

Do dogs remember where they bury bones? The way my dog digs holes all over the yard, I wonder if he doesn't just dig for fun. Do you watch videos of soldiers returning home and their dogs giving them a big welcome? Isn’t it fascinating that dogs cherish the memories of their beloved humans, although years can pass without them seeing each other? Dogs are great at memorizing several essential things – and safely stored bones are at the top of the list. Read on to find out why. A dog’s memory forms around events it recognizes as significant to its survival. It has a natural impulse to conserve its food for the future. If a dog is affected by an event or triggered by strong emotion, there’s a higher chance this memory will become long-term. People believe a dog can locate the bones it buried because of its sense of smell. In reality, this is more complex. Because dogs are a part of the natural world, their behavior still reflects it, even though they have learned to live with humans. No matter how trained a dog is, it cannot escape its biological makeup.

Why Do Dogs Bury Bones? Do Dogs Remember Where They Bury Bones?

We all know dogs can smell way better than us, but how does it interact with memory? You see your dog digging in your yard once again. Although there’s nothing out there, it always comes back with a treasure. How does it know this was the precise place it buried a bone? What’s the connection between its mental capabilities and its ancestors?  Dogs are descendants of wolves, a notorious species for their hunting abilities. They work together in packs to ensure every member has enough food to survive. Yet nature cannot always provide them with the food they need, so they ration their supplies. Many other hunters do this, dogs included. (source) Natural Preservation Digging a deep hole in the ground works like a natural fridge. The bones buried inside are preserved from decay and sunlight, as well as from other animals. The earth surrounding the bones serves as a marinade, providing a more nutritious meal. The instinct to preserve some food for when it’s needed has remained in the dog’s brain and way of life. Even if dogs don’t live in the wild anymore, their resources aren’t scarce as they used to be. They have evolved quite a lot from the wild animals they used to be. They’ve adapted to how humans live and have learned to imitate their owners. Recent studies have been able to provide more insight into the behavior of dogs. There’s more to it than what meets the eye.

Kinds of Dog Memory 

Like humans, dogs have various kinds of memory stored in different parts of their brains. The ones most researched are: - Short-term memory – holding bits of information for a short period.  - Long-term memory – information stored for a long time. - Associative memory – remembering connections between unrelated things. - Episodic memory – recalling past actions. Dogs don’t have excellent short-term memory like other animals. The information is learned quickly and lost just as easily. The human species is the only one able to develop this function further.  Dog’s Memory Explained A dog’s long-term memory is a much vaster area, where dogs can easily recall past events and feelings. Episodic memories are stored here. It is where a dog’s special memories go, such as coming to their new home for the first time or their owner’s return from an incredibly long trip. Dogs have great associative memory, making them hard to fool once they see you putting your shoes on. They know it means you’re going out, and they make the connection that they’re about to be taken for a walk. Or that there’s the possibility of it happening. The same goes for more negative associations. Dogs that have experienced trauma might be afraid of people carrying sticks. A large fragment of a dog’s brain is, for its most precious sense, smell. It’s a dog’s primary source of interaction with the outside world, where many memories are created. 

The Keen Sense Of Smell 

“While we have about 6 million olfactory receptors, dogs have a staggering 300 million. Their epithelium, or nasal tissue, is about 30 times larger than ours. And while people have between 12 million and 40 million olfactory neurons — specialized cells involved in transmitting odor information to the brain — dogs, depending on the breed, can have 220 million to 2 billion.”  A dog’s nose is an incredible asset it uses every day to help navigate its world. It’s no wonder it comes in handy when digging out that bone it once buried. Its nose updates itself with new smells every day, and with it, its memory. Unique Ways Dogs Use Their Nose Dogs use their noses for communication, much like we use eye contact. In truth, more so. A dog can recognize another dog’s scent, even if it’s miles away. More interestingly, it can tell another dog’s gender and mood. Using their smell, they can remember dogs they haven’t seen for years. Not to mention their ability to know somehow what’s going on with their owners. Dogs are so attuned to our emotions; that they intuitively know when something’s wrong with us. Or celebrate when they get a whiff of joy in the air. Humans hold a special place in the minds and hearts of dogs. They take care of us just as much as we take care of them, at times more. Why shouldn’t we help them with things out of their control, like dog memory games? They’d do the same for us!

Strengthening Your Dog’s Memory

As dogs get older, their memories get worse. All their cognitive abilities experience a downfall. It doesn’t have to be a painful process – you can assist your dog in its transition into old age.  Older dogs are not the only ones that experience memory difficulties. Genetics and diseases can play their role here, as well as too much routine. If your dog is repeatedly exposed to the same environment, it gets used to it. The same goes for tricks. By repeating the same actions, there’s no chance of it learning something different. Introduce New Faces A great way to get your dog to learn something new is by introducing it to new people or new dogs. Faces and smells it never encountered before trigger responses that form new connections. New tricks do the job, too, like brand-new toys and games designed for dog memory training.  Spending more quality time with your dog will be very useful, no matter the kind of practice you decide to proceed with for the pooch. It enjoys spending time with you, and creating lovely new memories for both of you.

Dogs Remember More Than You Think

A dog is called a human’s best friend for a reason. It’s loyal and cheerful and shows you it loves you. Sometimes you can’t recognize that’s what it’s trying to do. It comes in a form you’re unfamiliar with, like a dirty branch or your sister’s half-eaten slipper. Consider yourself a lucky dog owner if your dog brings you its fresh dug-out bone. Dogs bury bones because they think they might taste better after some time. They also test themselves to see if they can trace back their steps and see if their prize is still waiting for them. You might not realize that you occupy a considerable part of your dog’s memories because you don’t understand how it works. You do, and your dog treasures you more than you think. Want to learn more about the dog's mind and thinking? Great books worth reading are finally here! Check the latest prices. Latest Articles Article Sources - The Washington Post, Ellen Furlong, https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/dog-love-working-home/2020/10/30/75adc50e-1895-11eb-befb-8864259bd2d8_story.html  - Why Do Dogs Bury Bones? https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/why-do-dogs-bury-bones  - Why Do Dogs Bury Bones? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Associative_memory_(psychology) - Your Dog Remembers Even More about What You Do Than You Think, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-dog-remembers-even-more-about-what-you-do-than-you-think/ Read the full article

[whitepolaris]

Perryman Mansion

On the Perryman Peninsula in southern Harford County, there exists an old and crumbling manor house. Once the estate of the Boyer family, the sprawling mansion lies on the coastline of the Bush River.

The once extravagant multi-level mansion was abandoned by its longtime tenants decades ago when Baltimore Gas & Electric Company purchased the home along with two hundred and fifty acres of land on which to build a regional plant. 

The home and property were cut off from civilization for years because of their unique location and situation. Surrounded by water on three sides, the peninsula is accessible by only one road, which is closed off to the public once it reaches the BG&E plant. On one side of the peninsula runs an active railroad line, and on the other side is the Aberdeen Proving Ground-the heavily guarded and fenced U.S. Army Post. 

Situated as such, the mansion was literally cut off from human contact. Naturally, rumors begin to spread and its legend grew. Any Maryland ghost hunter worth his salt has heard of the Perryman mansion and its storage goings-on. 

There are stories of ghostly green lights moving in patterns along the walls. Visitors say they have heard voices and other unexplained noises. Many get chills just gazing at the imposing structure and refuse to enter its doorway. Maybe that’s because the ground outside the mansion is littered with small bone fragments. And animal carcasses are commonly found along the road leading back to the house. 

Historical records also point to an old graveyard on the property, which is now covered in weeds and shrubs. Most investigations of the mansion have uncovered death-in one form or another. 

Photographs taken in and around the mansion routinely captured orbs or other mysterious lights and objects. One recent investigation of the Perryman mansion did result in the positive identification of one of its reclusive inhabitants. A strange crying spooked the team and led its member upstairs, where they were able to definitively pinpoint the shrill whine-a baby raccoon! 

Those brave enough to venture into the attic-the highest point in the mansion-are greeted by the putrid smell of decay where coal-black turkey vultures have been found silently guarding clutches of bloody eggs. 

There is little left of the mansion now. A fire destroyed much of it. The suspected cause of the fire was arson, but no one was ever charged. -Brian Goodman, acurse.com

Perryman Memories

The Perryman mansion has been almost a playground to my friends and I for more than six years. Every time I have been there something or someone has made itself known. It starts with the hike to the house. The first 10 minutes are ducking the lights of the electric company, BGE, and staying close to the sporadic trees to hide in the shadows from any disgruntled workers. This is the only area you will feel safe. 

As the large lights disappear you are surrounded by thick woods to your left and the train tracks to your right. Even if you feel you are brave enough and nothing can keep you from venturing on . . .  a train goes by and drowns out all the noise around you. You can’t hear if you are being followed in those brief seconds. 

At the end of the paved you hang a left and became swallowed by woods. A long walk and you can see far enough ahead to trick yourself into thinking there is someone waiting beside the tree lines. As you approach the mansion itself, there are rhododendrons near the stone entrance. A fence surrounds the house but there is a hole cut out to squeeze through . . . or get caught up in while trying to escape. 

There have been more than three occasions when I have heard women speaking as I made my way left of the fence. I am not the only one who heard them. Left of the house you can go to the old pier that sits sideways over the river. You almost forget that you are about to go into a haunted mansion and will more than likely have some sort of unexplainable experience. Let me just tell you of a couple. 

A group of us went into the house. Outside were bones of some sort of animal. There are always bones. We stuck together in a uniform line and decided to go through the living room and upstairs. One of us stayed behind due to fear of seeing something. I had been there so much I honestly wasn’t worried about it. Until we began to walk up the steps . . . one by one pushing each other to go faster. I heard someone whisper in a very stern and serious tone, “LOOK.” 

We all turned our heads at the same time as if in a bad Robert Palmer video and on the wall behind us leading up to the stairs a green glow seeped through. At first it was still . . . then slowly moving up. Then back down. Then up, down and side to side. A cross shape? Needless to say, we didn’t go upstairs or in the basement. We ran out of there. Another adventure also included a large group of people. We made our way to the basement . All of us going our own ways. As we explored, many of the group talked to keep their spirits up. All of a sudden a loud thump came from the first floor. My friend and I stared at each other wide eyed. Only three of us heard it. As I saw my friend’s mouth open to warn the others I demanded her to not say a word. The last thing you want to do in an old building that is literally falling apart is to give reason to freak out and run. We kept our secret until we were safe outside. 

There is nothing special about the way the mansion looks from the inside. It is the sight of it from the fence that makes you shudder. The blank gaze of hollow windows seems to warn you. -Melissa F.

[softiem]

you used to paint his skies (pt. 2)

pairing: Bokuto Koutarou x GN!Reader

overview: The one in which Bokuto is still swearing up and down that he loves you, but the nagging feeling in your chest is too strong to ignore.

word count: ~4.3k

content warnings: mentions of cheating, swearing, MSBY!Bokuto, mildly suggestive scene at the end (no nsfw), our baby Bokuto kind of loses it at the end, don’t let the fluffy interludes deceive you again

notes: I’M SO SORRY FOR LITERALLY BEING DEAD FOR 6 MONTHS,,, Here’s the second part to “you used to paint his skies” :D (I think this is better than part one — at least I hope so). Some people asked to be tagged for this second part, so those will be below. Thank you for reading, darlings ʕ ´•̥̥̥ ᴥ•̥̥̥`ʔ <333

part one.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“Baby?”

Faint sniffles came from Bokuto, whose head was currently nestled on your lap, the two of you strewn across the sofa. His arms were wrapped tight around your waist, as if he were afraid that holding you any looser would cause you to disappear from his arms. His voice was quiet, meek — nothing like the loud, boisterous ball of energy you’d grown to adore, to cherish.

To fall in love with.

Now, here the both of you were, a pile of cracked and fragmented pieces of the love you once shared, desperately grasping at whatever you could salvage from the mess.

You hummed a response.

“Are we gonna be okay?” Bokuto turned his head, his eyes staring up at you — wide, teary, and filled with a broken sense of hope.

In an attempt to avoid breaking down a third time, you cleared your throat. You still couldn’t look down at him, into his eyes that seemed to praise your very existence, even after the pain you caused.

“Please.” His voice cracked.

“Let’s not talk about that right now, Kou-Bokuto.”

He bit his lip roughly, enough to bite into the skin and draw a slight trace of blood. Choking on a weak sob, he nestled his head into your stomach once more. He couldn’t stop you from calling him that name anymore; he’d lost that privilege.

What could he have been asking for? For you to simply just call him your Koutarou again? For you not to leave him and stay in his arms? For you to kiss him and wipe those tears running from his pretty eyes as you tell him you’ll love him forever, no matter what?

Quite honestly, Bokuto didn’t know what he was asking of you; he didn’t know what he wanted from you.

The only thing running through his mind was the fact that he’d just ruined the best thing to ever happen to him.

You.

You, the love of his life. He knew you like the back of his hand.

He knew how, despite your small tendency to be romantically constipated, you tried your best to love him — even to the point of using stupidly cheesy pet names for each other.

– – – – –

“Please, baby!” Bokuto had your hands tightly grasped in his. “I swear, if you do this for me, I won’t ever ask you for anything else for the rest of my life — okay, that’s a lie because I really want ice cream after this, but you know what I mean!”

“Kou.” You drew in a breath. “I’m saying yes to the ice cream later, but those are the cheesiest pet names I have ever heard of.”

You saw the way Bokuto visibly deflated as he heard your soft rejection of his idea.

For the rest of the night (after stopping by the store and getting yourselves two tubs of ice cream, of course), the two of you sat cuddled up on the sofa half-paying attention to whatever B-list movie was recommended to you. Occasionally, you would hear Bokuto let out a deep sigh, most likely to try and guilt trip you into doing what he asked of you earlier.

Turning your head to face him, you grinned at the little pout on his lips as his eyes bore holes into the TV screen.

“Hey, Kou.”

Nothing. His attention stayed glued to the TV. The only sign that showed he’d heard you was the deepening of his pout.

“Koutaro, pretty boy. I’m talking to you,” you giggled.

Still nothing. You racked your brain for all of the possible ways this could end — every one of them resulted in the same thing.

Sighing, you brought up a finger to poke at his cheek. “Hey, dovey.”

If Bokuto were a dog, his ears would have stood straight up and his tail would have started wagging as he whipped his head around to look at you.

“Say that again,” he demanded, his eyes wide and sparkling and the corner of his lips twitching, just barely restraining a smile.

When you didn’t reply, his fingers prodded at your side — a promise to tickle you if you didn’t humour him right now.

“Say it again! Who am I?”

“You’re my dovey.”

“And who are you?”

You struggled to fight the urge to curl up into yourself as you answered him, “I’m your lovey.”

“And what are we together?” Bokuto brought his face closer to yours, his eyes going back and forth between your eyes and lips.

“We’re lovey dovey.” You completed it with a pair of awkward jazz hands.

With that, Bokuto’s face split into a blinding smile as his laughter rang through the living room. He brought you tight into his arms and buried his face into the crook of your neck.

“Yes! I knew you could do it, lovey!” Your cheeks grew warm as you were subjected to his rain of kisses on your face. 

Pulling him in for one last kiss to your lips, you whispered, “I love you so much, Kou.”

– – – – –

He knew how he was always the first thing on your mind; you’d put him as your first priority without fail, no matter how busy you were, even when he hadn’t put you as his.

– – – – –

Bokuto stared up at the crisp, white ceiling — hospitals were never a fun place to be in. He was broken from his thoughts when the door to his room burst open, revealing you in your ever-ethereal work clothes rushing toward him.

“Babe! Are you alright?” Stopping at the side of his bed, you brought his hand up to place a kiss on his knuckles.

Bokuto let out a light laugh as he intertwined his fingers with yours. “Yeah, it’s just a sprained ankle. Nothing to worry about, honey.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing to worry about’? Your coach said that you’d have to be out for two weeks!”

“That’s not too much! It’s not like I’ll be missing the whole season, angel.”

“But, Kou, you also have to–”

Bokuto stopped your worried rambling as he pulled you down, giving you a soft kiss on your lips and cheeks. He gave you a smile.

“Stop worrying, baby! Everything will be fine because I have the cutest, smartest, and kindest nurse to help me recover, right?”

“And who’s that?” You sent him a teasing look as your hands shuffled through your pockets looking for your phone.

“You, silly!” He paused before staring up at you in concern. “You are going to take care of me, right, baby?”

“I don’t know about that, Kou. Work has been hectic lately.” You pulled out your phone.

“But I’m injured! And I’m your boyfriend too! You can’t just leave your injured boyfriend alone to fend for himself! Baby!” Walking away from his bed, you exited the hospital room, tapping away on your phone.

A few minutes passed before you returned, seeing Bokuto sulking in the hospital bed, a familiar pout on his lips.

Your eyes softened as you gave him a smile. “Guess who just got two weeks off?”

– – – – –

The foundation of your relationship was built upon the fact that the two of you knew each other like no other; you loved each other like no other.

So how had everything culminated into such a mess?

“Bokuto.” You felt the way his body stiffened as you called his name.

“Yes,” he hesitated, “honey?”

“Do you remember what I told you a couple years ago? About what I thought of love?”

Feeling a prickling sensation in his nose, Bokuto squeezed his eyes shut, forcing out a few tears that had collected on his eyelashes.

His voice came out hoarse and weak as he whispered, “I could never forget.”

– – – – –

The sky was enveloped in a cloak of darkness, but not even the onslaught of exhaustion could prevent the two of you from leaning back on the picnic blanket to stare up at the shimmering stars.

“Baby?” Bokuto turned his head to where you lay beside him. You hummed in response, half of your attention taken by the stars.

“What do you think about love?”

You raised an eyebrow, rolling onto your side to fully look at your boyfriend.

The moonlight casted harsh shadows on his face, but the way he looked at you — eyes sparkling with curiosity and the corners of his lips curled into a light smile — softened the darkness surrounding the two of you.

“Where did that question come from?” You raised a hand to lightly trace over the curves and slopes of his face; your thumb caressed his cheek as he leaned into your touch.

“Answer my question first, and then I’ll tell you.” His eyes turned into little crescent moons as he smiled at you. “Deal?”

You pretended to think about it for a few seconds. “Hm, three kisses please,” you said, wiggling three of your fingers.

Bokuto laughed, indulging you with a kiss to both of your cheeks and a final kiss to your lips.

“Okay, okay,” you giggled. “You asked me what I think about love?”

He nodded.

“Well,” you sighed, turning back to face the midnight sky above you, “I think that love is like the sky — the sun, to be specific. It’s always changing, and everything is so unpredictable about it. There’s so much potential for destruction in what the sky holds. But, there’s always one constant. Do you know what it is, Kou?” You looked at him.

“What is it, angel?” His golden eyes glimmered, as if they were holding stars themselves.

Adjusting your position on the picnic blanket (you curled closer into Bokuto, who wrapped an arm around your shoulders), you continued, “It’s the sun. No matter how much it rains or snows or whatever weather catastrophe is happening, the sun is always going to be there. Sure, you can have multiple suns like those Star Wars planets, but…” you trailed off, looking into his eyes. “... I think I’m happy with my one sunshine.”

Bokuto, ever the romantic, pulled you into a nearly-bone-crushing hug as he laughed into your shoulder. After peppering kisses to your neck and jaw, he pulled away to look at you. He sported the brightest smile, but something sparkled behind those eyes of his.

“Baby?”

“Yeah?”

“I think you’re getting cheesier than me.”

You groaned, leaning away from him, “Shut up, Kou!”

He giggled before placing a gentle kiss on your lips.

“Now let’s get home before these mosquitoes eat us alive, honey.”

“And then you’ll tell me where you got that question from?”

“Of course, honey! I never break a deal!”

– – – – –

How could he forget what you said? Every word you’ve ever spoken to him, he’s grasped onto like a lifeline, as if they would be your last. He was so close to bursting — so close to pulling himself off of your lap, looking into your pretty eyes, grasping your shoulders, and yelling at you, screaming at you, asking why you would think he could ever forget anything about you. How dare you think he could ever forget anything about you?

But he couldn’t do that. Not to you. Not anymore.

He didn’t realise that you’d gone silent — his world had gone silent — until your sniffles broke his reverie. His arms tightened around your waist as his head nuzzled into your stomach once again; it was a broken act of comfort.

“Honey,” the edges of his voice cracked as he called out for you. “Talk to me. Please. Don’t… don’t stay quiet.”

Being met with another bout of silence was almost excruciating. Bokuto was struggling to keep himself together, to keep his head above the water before he drowned in his thoughts of losing you.

He launched himself up from your lap, grabbing your face with shaky hands. He had tears running down his face once again. His face was blotchy, and his hair was a mess. He was a mess.

“Please, lovey,” he whispered. If you stayed silent just one minute longer, he’d collapse. He was sure of it. Fighting the urge to just sit himself in your lap, pull you tight against him, and beg you not to leave, Bokuto settled with caressing the skin under your shirt.

Finally, you broke the silence.

“I forgot to tell you one thing that night.” You moved your hand from where it was resting in his hair back to your side; he tensed at the loss of your touch.

He swallowed, his anxiety began to pile up once again. “What’d you forget, baby?”

“Even though the sun” — your voice cracked — “is a constant, sometimes it can be too much. Burn too bright and dry up everything underneath the sky. Sometimes...” you paused to take a deep breath, trying to swallow back the lump that was growing in your throat. “Sometimes the sun can do even worse harm than anything the sky could do.”

Bokuto could feel the gradual increase of his heartbeat. He shook his head, his fingers involuntarily digging into your skin. No, no, you didn’t mean that. You couldn’t mean that. If you did he… he didn’t know what he would do.

“I’m sorry, Bokuto,” you murmured, “I can’t stay here any longer.”

You tried to pry yourself out of his grip, but he wouldn’t relent. His arms were shaking as he pulled you even closer into him. He was whispering something to himself.

“Bokuto, I’m being serious.” You tried to keep your voice stable but failed miserably — it all came out shaky, your tone uneven. “Let me go.”

His whispers grew louder until you could finally understand what he was saying.

“No, no. This isn’t real. I love you. I love you. No, don’t leave. Please don’t leave. I love you.”

You called his name. Once, twice, thrice. As you called for him, his whispers grew to full-blown cries.

“Bokuto!”

“I’M SORRY DON’T LEAVE ME!”

But the only thing your eyes chose to focus on was the trail of red and purple leading down his neck.

You felt a prickling sensation behind your eyes, a feeling that had grown familiar to you in the past few hours.

Bokuto caught the wandering of your eyes down his neck, a faraway mist muddled the irises he loved gazing into; he realised what you were staring at, forcing down a choked sob. He clenched his jaw, violently cursing himself for making you feel like you weren’t enough, like you weren’t the one keeping him standing straight.

Like you weren’t his sun, moon, stars, and whatever else you filled the fucking sky with.

He gently moved your head, trying to get you to look back into his eyes and away from the bruised mistake that marred his skin. His thoughts only filled with one thing — “Come back to me, baby.”

Waves of relief crashed against him once you met his eyes.

“Baby– Angel– I’m so– I don’t– Please–” Bokuto struggled to keep his thoughts straight. Not when you stared at him with an iciness that pierced his heart every time he looked back into your eyes, hoping to find even the smallest trace of love left for him.

He let out a rough sigh, frustrated with his inability to speak through the racing of his heart. His hands, still cupping your face, lightly squeezed your cheeks to ground himself. He looked back to you, his eyes swimming with even more tears, trying to send a message to you that he couldn’t put into words.

You looked away from him, focusing on the ticking clock on the wall as you gnawed your lip. A question had been running through your mind ever since he cracked into your resolve to leave and pulled you to the sofa, laying his head in your lap.

Your eyes turned back to him.

“Can you tell me something, Bokuto?”

“Yes, yes, baby, of course. I’ll do anything you want.” He eagerly nodded, a small spark of hope sparkled within him.

“Why’d you lie?”

He felt as though you just dumped him into one of Atsumu’s god-awful ice baths.

“What’re you saying, angel?” His eyebrows furrowed. “I’ve never lied to you.”

“Earlier,” you croaked. “I asked you earlier how long you’ve been” — you couldn’t say that word; it’d hurt too much — “messing around.”

A glint of recognition passed his eyes.

Continuing, you forced your voice out, even though it grew weaker the more you tried to hide your pain, “You said that it was just this once. That wasn’t the whole truth, was it?”

Fuck. Bokuto took his hands away from your face, opting to grasp one of your hands in his. He gave your knuckles a kiss before looking back at you, his eyes teeming with unadulterated guilt and desperation.

“I-I knew them before this ever happened. We met at one of the team parties, but you weren’t there because you were at work.” He saw a glimpse of darkness shadow over your face, and his heartbeat picked up again (not that it ever really settled). “But we never did anything! Not until last night, at least.” His voice grew quiet at the end.

“And never once did it occur to you to tell them that you were taken?”

Bokuto’s lips started trembling — no doubt he’d begin crying again. He looked down, trying to avoid your glare, but his grip on your hand never loosened.

“Please, baby. I’m so sorry,” he choked out, “I’m so fucking sorry. I fucked up in the worst way possible. But I promise you, I never did anything with them before. We just talked at that one party. I promise you that. I promise, honey.”

The look in your eyes became even colder, even more distant; something akin to hatred was present as well. No, this couldn’t be happening. His worst nightmare was coming true. You’d finally learned the truth and were going to leave him. You might have called him your sunshine that one night two years ago, but, to him, you were his oxygen — without you, he was truly nothing. Just a corpse of a man, not worth wasting a breath on.

He was losing you. Again.

“I’m leaving, Bokuto.” You roughly pulled your hand from his grasp, ignoring his cries for you to please stop, to listen for just a minute longer. “Don’t you dare try to look for me.”

Bokuto whimpered, following you to where you were trying to pick up your bags in your haste of anger. Once again, he tugged at the straps, trying to steal them away from you, but his arms grew weak at the scowl pointed his way.

His breath quickened, and his heart raced. He was panicking, grasping at straws to have to rethink your choice and stay with him so he could apologise for the rest of both of your lives. He’d spend the remainder of eternity begging for your forgiveness if only you’d just stay with him.

But he couldn’t say a word. Not with his blinded panic, and definitely not with the terrible, agonising look you were giving him as you stared back at him.

Was this how you felt when he’d walked out on you last night? Hopeless. Defenseless. As if you weren’t even worth a grain of sand underneath the other’s shoe.

“Lovey, I’m sorry!” Bokuto cried out one more time, hoping that he’d reach out to whatever small piece of love you still held for him. “I said I’m sorry! Please just forgive me, don’t leave me. Please! I’m begging you! Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it a million times over. Just, please,” he quieted to a whisper, just barely reaching your ears, “stay with me, and we can get through this together.”

His face crumpled as he heard your responding scoff.

“There’s no more ‘together’ for us, Bokuto.”

Your words stung — well, they stung as much as a gunshot or a knife to the heart would sting. He pressed on, desperate to get you to hear him out.

“I’m your sunshine, right? Your dovey. Your babe. Your pretty boy. Your Koutarou. Right?” He gripped onto the hem of his shirt, balling his hands into fists. “No matter what you call me, I’m yours. And I always will be. Even if you leave me right now, I’ll never stop looking for you. You know why?”

You stayed silent.

“Because I am just as much your sun as you are mine.”

His words echoed in your mind — that twisted, gnawing feeling came back in your gut. You knew that if you stayed for one more minute, it’d be over for you, and you’d go running back into his arms that always held you so tightly. Into his arms that smelt like home. Into his arms that made you feel like you were on top of the world as long as he was by your side. Into his arms that held onto another once the two of you reached a rough patch.

You made your decision.

“Koutarou…” His head snapped up to look at you, his eyes wide and glittering with a false sense of hope. “I’m sorry. I have to leave.”

There was another feeling growing within Bokuto. It was ugly, festering in the deepest parts of his mind — coming from a place that refused to acknowledge his faults. This feeling, it blamed

you. Why would you hurt him like this? How could you hurt him like this? You said he was your sunshine, your dovey, your Koutarou! How cruel could you be to lead him on, calling him ‘Koutarou’ again? You said you loved him!

“Don’t leave me!” He raised his voice. This feeling was taking over him, and it was angry. “If you leave, I’ll-I’ll…” His voice trailed off as he tried to regain control of himself.

Your brows furrowed. He still had the energy to yell, huh?

“You’ll what?” You took a step toward him. He looked away from you, trying to avoid your burning gaze. “Tell me, Koutarou. What will you do if I leave?”

He shook his head; you knew what that meant — “I won’t say it.”

“You’ll go back to them, won’t you?” you scoffed. “Have fun, Koutarou.”

Adjusting the straps of your bags, you gave him one last glare before moving toward the door once more.

That feeling came back in Bokuto’s mind, and it was stronger than ever. Pounding against the walls he built up, it roared, telling him to make you regret hurting him, make you think twice about leaving him. Bokuto was panicking, his will to beg you to stay was growing weaker as the feeling inside him became increasingly angry at you for causing him so much pain.

He knew he’d regret the next words he’d say to you, but that realisation came a second too late.

“I’ll never forgive you!”

You froze. Turning back around to face him, your eyes narrowed. “What?”

“If you leave me, I’ll never forgive you!”

His eyes were burning into you, a raging fire behind them.

“You’ll never forgive me?” you spat.

As quickly as the fire grew, it was extinguished as Bokuto’s expression morphed into one of shock.

“Wait, baby, I didn’t mean it! I promi–”

Dropping your bags by the door, you strided toward his figure. Pushing him against the wall, you pulled him in by the collar, melding his lips with yours.

The kiss was rough, angry, desperate — an amalgamation of everything you’ve felt in the past few hours going back and forth with Bokuto.

You pushed yourself into the space between his legs as he finally recovered from his shock and tried to match your tempo, his hands pulling you close into his body. Your teeth clashed together, and you had half the mind to bite his tongue in your mouth, but you held back.

Raking your fingers through his hair, you pulled his head back, ignoring his small, pained whine. The offensive mess of red and purple blotches still covered the expanse of his neck. A scowl grew on your face.

Bokuto yelped as he felt your lips latch onto his neck, sucking your own bruises over the ones already existing from his escapade. You were rough, unrelenting in your nearly-primal way of claiming him.

Trying to ignore your satisfaction from hearing his whimpers of your name, you pulled away, looking at your series of marks covering the ones from his other lover. The two of you were left panting — him trying to meet your eyes and you trying to avoid looking at him at all costs.

Leaning into his ear, you placed a gentle bite on his lobe. He tensed ever-so-slightly.

“You’ll never forgive me if I leave?” you hummed.

His hands that were under your shirt, roaming across your back, froze.

“B-Baby, wait, I didn’t–” He tried to plead with you until your next words completely shattered what was left of his broken, battered heart.

“I think I can live with that.”

You quickly backed away from him, evading his attempts to grab at your waist to stop you from leaving, and picked up your bags by the door. Looking back at him one last time, you nearly broke your facade.

After all he’s done, you still loved your Koutarou — no matter how much you tried to convince yourself otherwise — and seeing him on his knees, sobbing, begging you not to leave for the umpteenth time, your will was wearing thin.

“Goodbye, Koutarou.”

The slam of the front door echoed across the remnants of his shattered heart and all he had the strength to do was cry. Pulling at the strands of his hair, he sobbed, begging into the air, weeping with no one to listen to him.

Without you, his world had no sky; everything was bathed in the shadow of your absence.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

tags: @katelyns-stuff @random-fandom-girl-24

[fishstyx]

it's always the quiet ones.

featuring. fushiguro megumi x fem!reader

wc. 1.4k

genre. dark/taboo, smut

tw. 18+ nsfw, noncon, intoxication/alcohol, anal penetration, virginity, choking, dacryphilia, creampie

synopsis. a little bit of jungle juice and megumi is skipping bases.

Megumi tries not to think about it sober. 

That is, what it’d feel like with one hand wrapped around your neck, breath bated as he preps your asshole with the other. Would tears well up in your eyes as he forces his cock into your twitching heat? Would cum spill from your gaping hole when he finishes inside you?

He’s way ahead of himself and he knows it, doesn’t have the slightest clue what your other hole feels like—hasn’t had a single taste of you in bed before. He’s doing his best to curb his curiosity, really, but lately he’s finding it harder and harder to put his demons to sleep when he’s got a little something in his system.

You’re not exactly in your right mind either, tonight, clinging to his arm at the party when you know it’s all he can do just to tolerate the slightest amount of PDA. But the throng of moving bodies swallows you whole and it feels like just the two of you in this time and space; you’re only able to hear each other over the blaring music anyway, as if the reality between you both is the only one that truly exists.

But then you’re wobbling in place, antsy movements signaling your approaching departure when he’s been secretly hoping that you’ll never let go. Your words come out a slur, a poorly pronounced “‘m going to the bathroom,” no vowel left unstretched as you peel away and turn your heel.

And as much as Megumi would love to play it cool, to wait for you by the door like a responsible boyfriend should, the curve of your ass in your favorite night time outfit lures him in behind you. You’re so out of it that you don’t even notice when the door shuts closed.

It’s all a blur from the moment you realize you’re not alone in the bathroom. He’s crept upon you unawares, was probably the one to lock the door properly when you completely forgot to. And if the mirror’s reflection wasn’t proof enough, he’s hunched over you now, lips barely grazing your ear as he whispers:

“I bet we could get away with it in here.”

And you giggle.

A fit of giggles.

A string of them, all stitched together by a stray hiccup or two as you raise your arms in compliance.

“I bet we could.”

You never would’ve guessed that your first time would be in a place like this, surrounded by people yet visible to no one. You can feel the thump of the music even from here, the beat of the bass still thrumming at your feet, familiar pop melody buzzing in your bones.

Is this really Megumi? My Megumi? you question in fragmented wonder, but the thought quickly dissipates as he gets you undressed. It’s such a freeing change of pace from the oppressive air that hangs outside, a heavy blanket of heat and perspiration and sweat-slicked clothing.

You’re still laughing when his pants drop, head swirling in dizzying anticipation. Because it all feels so surreal, how honest you’re being, how honest he’s being. He’s hardly ever let his touch wander before, yet now he’s pressing his hard on against that perfect ass of yours, hands ghosting over your thighs and up your chest as he rocks his hips into you.

You’re still laughing when he tugs at your underwear. He could do this all night long, dry hump himself to completion again and again if only that were enough for you, too—but the wet patch evidenced by the fabric reminds him otherwise.

You’re still laughing when his fingers meet your slick, laughing at how someone’s banging the door while your boyfriend pets your leaking slit, laughing and laughing and laughing. It’s sloppy work at best, but he’s buzzed and you’re buzzed, the core of your body practically singing with praises at his every touch. It reeks of booze and stink and sour and you can’t get enough of it. You push your sweet spot into the palm of his hand in an attempt to help him out, unable to hide your disappointment when he draws back unexpectedly.

But then he’s thumbing at your neglected little puckered asshole, painting it glossy with your own dripping juices. It’s been distracting him this whole time, after all, practically presenting itself to him from this angle—wholly unbeknownst to you yourself. You stiffen, pressing your back flush into his chest, so very sure that he couldn’t possibly be into that.

“Gumi, that’s the wrong hole,” you say, voice hushed as you try to move his hand away, but it’s no use. Your eyes widen in panic as he pushes you down with ease, full weight anchoring you to the sink countertop. He’s never made show of it but he’s clearly much stronger, undoubtedly several times the brawn needed to overpower you. Your legs kick as his thumb sinks deeper—a knuckle? Two knuckles? Not that it really matters, since either way...

You’re not laughing anymore.

Because the person behind you, the one who’s ignoring your words of protest as he replaces his thumb with a pair of fingers, scissoring you apart exactly where you told him not to—that person is most definitely not your Megumi.

The knocking at the door has stopped; the silence is deafening.

And all of a sudden, you feel utterly alone.

“Megumi, it burns,” you plead, voice climbing until you can finally separate it from the thunderous quietude, but he only holds you down by the neck, spitting on his fingers before reworking your walls. 

It’s hard for you to stand still like this, but you can’t tell if your legs are shaking out of fatigue or in reaction to his ministrations. You struggle to deliberate—the sensation in your ass morphing into something familiar yet strange—while Megumi simply decides it’s the latter.

There’s little warning when he deems you ready. He comes to full halt in an instant, the instant when he finally snaps and can’t bear to wait another second. He doesn’t even give himself time to admire his handiwork, doesn’t relish in the way that your walls flutter around nothing the moment he pulls out. The very next moment, he finds himself violating you past the point of no return instead.

It feels impossibly full. 

You scramble for purchase on the counter as he doubles back, your forehead nearly hitting the mirror when he lurches forward again, desperate to relieve his pent-up fantasies.

“Holy shit, it’s tight,” he hisses, as if he isn’t fucking his lover but just some onahole fleshlight. With gritted teeth he snaps his hips repeatedly, chokehold stiffening as the pace devolves into rhythmless abandon. It feels new, it feels weird, it feels like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Your mind fumbles to make sense of it, forever oscillating between ‘oddly satisfying’ and ‘downright disgusting.’

All streams of consciousness seem to freeze when he hits a spot so sensitive you think you’re paralyzed from the waist down. You’re set ablaze, the pressure leaving you tingling and confused. Even when he misses the mark your body screams for more, pulsating with primal need.

You feel lightheaded, lack of airflow one of the few things you can focus on, and Megumi swears he can feel you suddenly clamp down on him. Every noise is blurring into each other, from your fruitless whines to the sound of his balls slapping your skin, and you can hardly tell up from down when he blows his load.

Maybe that’s what sends you over the edge: the warmth that fills your abused insides as if to reward them for all their trouble. No, you’re not cumming. You’re crying, the release of your frustration rolling off your cheeks and falling flat on the countertop, the only reprieve from the unfamiliar feeling, warm and sticky and unfair in your injured hole.

Megumi’s too busy riding out his orgasm to notice, grip on your neck loosening as you milk out the last of his semen. He watches the place where your bodies connect with intent, the thought of pulling out never quite crossing his mind. His gaze doesn’t so much as falter until you’re oozing his seed, his wildest dreams come true in vivid quality.

It’s only when he catches your eye in the mirror that he sees the trails of tears that stain your face, admires the way they catch the light when you shake your head, “No more, please stop, it’s too much…”

He hardens instantly.

🏷️ @levisbrattiestbrat

fishstyx © 2021 ✸ all content and their rights belong to me. do not repost, reproduce, or modify anywhere.

[alphynix]

Even for a fossil species from an isolated island, Adalatherium hui is very weird.

This mammal was part of an enigmatic group known as gondwanatheres, which were probably early members of the theriiform lineage – slightly closer related to modern marsupials and placentals than to monotremes. Found in the southern continents of Gondwana between the Late Cretaceous and the Miocene, these animals were adapted for herbivory with convergently rodent-like ever-growing front teeth that helped them chew through tough plant matter.

They were previously known mainly from isolated teeth and jaw fragments, with some rare full skull material, but Adalatherium is remarkable for being represented by a complete skeleton.

And it's turned out to be far stranger than anyone expected.

Living in northwestern Madagascar during the Late Cretaceous, about 70-66 million years ago, Adalatherium was one of the larger known Mesozoic mammals at around 60cm long (2') – although the one known specimen seems to have been a juvenile, so mature individuals were probably slightly larger.

(And based on its body proportions, its close relative Vintana may actually have been even bigger than previously thought. Whether this sort of large size was common in Cretaceous gondwanatheres or if this was just island gigantism is still unknown, though.)

It was probably a marmot-like digging animal, excavating burrows with its large claws and powerful limbs, and since it likely evolved from ancestors that had become isolated on Madagascar over 20 million years earlier it had developed a very unusual mixture of both "primitive" and highly specialized anatomical features. It had more back vertebrae than any other known Mesozoic mammal, upright forelimbs, sprawling hind legs with bowed-out tibias, strong back and leg musculature, and a therian-like pelvis with epipubic bones.

And then there's the snoot.

The snout region of Adalatherium's skull was pockmarked with a large number of foramina, holes that allow the passage of nerves and blood vessels through the bone. It had more of these than any other known mammal, and their presence suggests that it probably had a very sensitive upper lip and whiskery snout. Most mammals with a lot of whiskers just have one very big foramina, but Adalatherium seems to have evolved a different solution to the same problem.

It also had one other bizarre feature – a hole in the top of its nose. A large "internasal vacuity" between its nasal bones is a unique feature not known in any other mammal, and its function is a total mystery.

Since this hole was also surrounded by many foramina it may have supported some sort of soft-tissue sensory structure on top of its nose. So I've speculatively depicted it here with a leathery horn-like "shield".

[ From fig 2 in Krause, D. W. et al (2020). Skeleton of a Cretaceous mammal from Madagascar reflects long-term insularity. Nature 581, 421–427. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2234-8 ]

———

Nix Illustration | Tumblr | Pillowfort | Twitter | Patreon

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Old Bones Aflame (Part 30)

For just a moment, the world comes to a standstill. And in that moment Azula finds herself mourning her new home already. She is almost certain that they could have talked it out–sarcastically and combatively, of course. But they could have, especially if she casually waved her lack of hand around a bit. 

And maybe that’s why it hurts so much when the rock collides with her middle and the water rushes over her. 

She supposes that if she hadn’t already engaged in so many scuffles such as this, everything may have passed in one confusing blur. Sure everything seems to happen all at once but everything is quite clear. Quite simple. 

Katara gets to her feet and in synchrony the Avatar summons all four elements. Sokka tosses his boomerang at her and she deflects it towards Zuko. Toph makes a move towards Hama who lashes at Katara with her water whips.

Azula ducks and dodges under several attacks. Fire and water, air and earth. She supposes that these things do blend a bit but she can still tell who is chucking what. And she knows that Katara is squaring up with Hama as furiously as Zuko is challenging her. 

It is a small thing. A small, strange thing. But she finally realizes that she and Hama have been talking about the same horrible waterbender this whole time. 

She readies herself to throw another fireball at Zuko when Sokka catches her by her hand. And vine and rock burst through the delicate scaffolds of the floor, taking her feet. They don’t worry about her left arm. 

She would smirk if that wouldn’t be such a dead give away. 

With a burst of barely controlled fire, she lets all of them know that she can still bend like the best of them. Another rock closes around that hand. “We have her, let’s go.” Toph grumbles. 

Leaning in the doorframe, Hama pants softly. “You will not take her from me.” She growls, slouching over and putting herself between Azula and the rest of them. 

Katara’s brows furrow, she looks towards Zuko. 

“You…you care about her this much?” Zuko asks. 

Hama nods.

“She’s a firebender!” Katara declares as though it isn’t entirely obvious. “She stands for everything that you hate. She’s the person that you should have been going after instead of all of those innocent citizens…”

Hama’s lip twitches. “Whose to say I didn’t?”

It is just enough time for her to escape her binds. She does so as Zuko says, “don’t waste your time with the old woman, we’ll worry about her later…” Her fireball strikes his side.

And they are all brawling again. She verses Zuko, Hama verses Katara, and the others leaping in and out of the frenzy. All except for the Avatar who grits his teeth and pleas for them to just stop and listen for a second. 

Stop and listen.

And Azula almost did.

But then it looks as though Katara is getting the upper hand. She has Hama suspended in the air. A separate tendril snaking up her leg. She has the only person who has ever cared about her in some sick, watery choke hold. 

Azula hasn’t had a chance to test her lightningbending yet. She supposes that it doesn’t matter if she had been able to do it during Sozin’s Comet, she could do it now…

.oOo.

They leave as they had come, grim faced and mournful. Dare she say guilty. The Avatar tries to apologize, but what is done is done. 

She refuses help from the likes of him. 

From the likes of his dreadful friends. 

As the hurricanes do, they have left destruction in their wake. There is a gaping hole in her floor, a board droops down, flapping in the breeze. They have knocked over the nightstand by the cot. Her herbs are in disarray, all scattered on the ground waiting for the wind to sweep them away.

And they have destroyed Hama’s garden. An unhealthy portion of it so replenishing her stock won’t be so easy. Her beautiful flowers have been trampled and uprooted. 

 Her box of bones, once neatly sitting on the porch banister is now on the floor. Fragments of her treasures surround it like blood from a gaping, unhealing wound crushed and trampled by hateful feet.  Some of them have been kicked back into the mud from which she had pried them from. She’ll recover some of these, sure. But much of them are lost to the swamp. 

But she has lost something more precious. Azula lays sprawled out on the ground. Her locks fan out around her head, Hama can swear that little sparks are still dancing over her skin. Her mouth is bleeding or maybe the blood comes from within and exits through her mouth, dribbling down the corners. 

Her hand cups over something that had fallen to the floor. Gently Hama turns her hand over to reveal that little geode. She can still see that self-satisfied smile as clearly as the day she had found the gem. 

Hama is a woman who is always learning.

And today she learns for certain that evil comes from every nation.

[sams-sass]

Right Here Waiting

Friends!!! I am so sorry that I haven't posted in like weeks. I was taking time to relax and refresh. This is for all my Dean girls! I hope you all have a beautiful weekend. Thank you so much for reading! Much love *kisses*

Summary: You get hurt on a hunt and Dean faces the fact that he might lose you before he gets to tell you how he feels.

Pairings: Dean x Reader.

Warnings: Talk of death. Angst. Fluff. Angsty fluff. Few swear words.

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

Deans back practically rammed through the door, almost knocking it off its hinges. He dragged you into the motel room with Sam running in behind him, his arms full of weapons and bags. Your head lolled from side to side against Dean's chest as he walked backward toward one of the beds. His limp was bad, and every step was agonizing, but he was determined to take care of you first. He threw you down on the bed and grabbed your face between his hands.

“Y/N!” He screamed, his voice nervous and shaky. You didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. He shook your shoulders, his bloody hands grasping your shirt.

“Dean!” Sam yelled at his brother. It was almost as if Dean didn’t hear him, just continued to stare into your face. “Dean!” Sam tried again, grabbing Dean’s jacket this time.

"Not now, Sam!" Dean shrugged Sam's hands-off and grabbed your shirt again, shaking you even harder this time.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, grabbing his brother by the jacket with both hands and picking him up off your body. Dean pushed against Sam's hands, his breath coming in fast and hard as he tried to get back to you. "Dean," Sam said softly this time. "She has a head injury; you can't shake her like that." He let go of Dean's jacket and patted his shoulder compassionately, telling him he completely understood his brother's outburst. Dean nodded quickly and dragged his hand over his mouth, feeling the blood on his skin. He looked down at his hand, and his lips parted at the shock of seeing it covered in blood. At that moment, he realized how much pain he was in; he collapsed into Sam’s chest when his leg gave out suddenly. Sam caught him and moved to the bed, helping Dean sit down next to you and looking at his leg. Dean kicked his jeans off and saw the wicked-looking gash across his thigh and dragging over his knee. He winced at the sight of blood and his torn flesh.

"How did you get so lucky? That wendigo tore me and Y/N apart." Dean asked Sam, who seemed unharmed.

“I have a bullet wound on my arm from when Y/N shot at it and missed it," Sam said, his voice was eerily calm.

“You have a bullet…Sam!” Dean screamed. He started looking at Sam's arms, and sure enough, there was a hole in his left jacket sleeve with a stream of blood trailing down.

"I'll worry about it later. You could bleed out." Sam said, getting out the stitches and gauze. He moved his left arm as little as possible, stitching his brother to the best of his abilities. Dean distracted himself by looking over at you, your face peaceful on the puke green bedspread. He couldn't imagine what would happen if you didn't wake up. He didn't want to look in the rearview mirror again if you weren't curled up in the back seat, your eyes catching his every once in a while. He didn't want to fall asleep at night without listening to your quiet breaths, even and steady. How could he manage another hunt without being able to celebrate with you after? He didn’t want to think about it, couldn’t let himself fall into that pit of despair.

His thoughts were interrupted when Sam accidentally stabbed him; he mumbled a “sorry” and kept working. He finally finished, wiping away at all the blood and standing up. He handed Dean the gauze and flopped down next to him on the bed, slowly taking off his jacket and shirt. His hands clenched from the pain. Sam turned so Dean could clean and inspect the wound for bullet fragments. Finding none, he wrapped Sam’s arm in gauze. The brothers then passed a bottle of whiskey back and forth between them, looking back at you with every sip. Sam placed a reassuring hand on his brother's shoulder, sending him a small smile.

“She’s gonna be okay." He said. Dean didn't answer; he just kept staring at you lying on the bed.

“Sam I…” He let his voice trail off, not wanting to finish his sentence.

“I know, Dean. I know.” Sam nodded his head and looked at the ground. You had been unconscious for about two hours now, and the boys were both growing with anxiety. Sam considered you his best friend. His companion on this long and broken road. He loved you and often showed you, exposing his thoughts and feelings to you when he couldn't count on anyone else. You were like a sister to him, a familial and strong bond that couldn't break. Dean was a different story. You and Dean were more than close. He considered you an extension of himself. He found himself waking before you so you would have a hot coffee when you woke up. He found ways to touch you, to let his skin move over yours for just a moment. No matter how fleeting the time maybe. He wanted to be flooded by you, surrounded by you in the dark of night. To feel your hair tickle his skin. Your scent cascades its way through him and fill him completely. He dreamt of a time when he could look into your eyes, deeply and passionately. Dream of a time when he could run his hands through your hair, feeling the strands slip between his fingers. He thought of you every day. Whispered your name into the night.

Now it looked like you may be slipping away. He could barely stand to look at you, knowing how badly you were hurt. Your skin was starting to bruise. A grotesque handprint was on your bicep where the wendigo had grabbed you and thrown you into the cave wall harshly. He scowled at the memory and swallowed thickly. He moved and limped his way into the bathroom, wetting a washcloth with warm water. He limped back to the bed and signaled to Sam to help him move you into a more comfortable position. He laid your head on the pillow while Sam straightened your legs before moving to his bed.

“Want me to stay up?” Sam asked.

"Nah, Sammy, I'll watch her," Dean responded, sitting back down next to you on the bed.

"Okay, wake me when she wakes up," Sam said around a yawn. Dean gave him a small smile and lifted your hand in his, beginning to wipe the dirt from your skin. He gently wiped all your exposed skin, pushing the hair away from your forehead. Your chest was moving slowly but surely, up and down, giving Dean a sense of peace. He moved toward the head of the bed and leaned his back against the headboard, stretching his aching muscles. He grabbed the bottle of whiskey again and watched the amber liquid slosh in the glass. His eyes kept wandering back to you, worry evident on his face.

Your face twitched first, eyebrows furrowing and lips curling. You moaned and rolled your head slowly, eyelashes fluttering open.

“Hey. Hey. Don’t move too much.” Dean said. He pulled himself over to you and grabbed your hand within his, looking into your fluttering eyes with concern. Waking up to Dean was something you could get used to. Jade eyes and freckles were greeting you softly. You groaned and suddenly felt the heaviness in your head. The pounding and splitting ache felt as if someone filled your head with rocks and shook it violently.

“Dean? What happened?” You whispered. Your voice was raspy and weak.

"The wendigo. It threw you against the cave wall. You hit your head pretty badly." He whispered back; his fingers brushed against your cheek as he tried to assess the extent of your head wound.

“Jesus, it's bright in here." You grumbled, lifting your head slightly. Dean tried to wrap his hands around your shoulders to support you. "I'm fine." You mumbled and tried to sit up, immediately regretting your decision. The room spun, and nausea hit your stomach hard. You fell back against the bed and placed your palm against your forehead, your eyes slamming shut.

“Shit, Y/N, just lay down.” Dean’s voice sounded annoyed and concerned at the same time.

“What’s that sound?” You asked through gritted teeth.

“What sound?” Dean asked, looking around the room with wide frantic eyes.

“That ringing! Oh my god, it’s so loud.” You said, moving your hands to your ears.

“Y/N? Y/N! Hey!" You heard him talking over you, but the sound was so loud, and you were so tired. Your skin felt heavy on your bones. Your neck was unable to lift your head. You couldn't take the ringing anymore; it was so loud in your head. Bouncing off your skull like bullets. The room began to shrink around you, the corners of your vision becoming dark and blurry. Your eyes closed again, and you slowly sank into the blackness that was calling your name with its warm voice. You felt your body move but didn't wake. Felt smooth leather of the backseat of the impala against the skin of your hands, but didn’t move. You thought you heard Dean's panicked voice saying your name but knew it was just a dream. The soft feeling of sleep surrounding you in its peaceful and calming hold.

Dean grabbed your face in between his hands, his mouth repeating your name over and over again as he watched you fall into the blackness. Sam raced to his brother's side, falling to his knees on the side of the bed, looking at your closed eyes.

“Y/N!” Dean screamed. “No, no, no, no, baby. Wake up for me.” He pleaded, this thumbs rubbing circles into your cheeks.

"Dean, we have to get her to the hospital!" Sam yelled, standing up and putting his hand on his brother's shoulder. He practically pushed Dean off of you and bent at the waist, placing his shoulder into your stomach, wrapping his arm around you, and lifting you as if you were a sack. Your body fell over his shoulder. Your hands swayed, and your fingers brushed against the back of his thighs. Dean pulled pants onto his legs quickly and limped to the car. There was a growing worry between them for your wellbeing. The silent communication that they often shared was thick with concern. Sam drove to the closest hospital while Dean held you in his arms in the backseat. His hands moved over your arms and shoulders. His mouth whispering your name and soft ‘please’s and ‘not yet’s into your hair as his lips brushed your ear.

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

The hospital was bright and loud when the boys pushed through the door. Dean limping, his stitches pulling with every step while Sam had you thrown over his shoulder. Nurses ran over to the three of you and helped Sam place you on a stretcher. They wheeled you away, and the boys looked helplessly down the white and sterile hallway. The stretcher rammed through the double doors, and you were gone. The doors closed, and Dean felt his heart sink lower into his chest, hope fading inside him quickly.

Dean was sitting next to Sam in the waiting room for family. The blue plastic chair was uncomfortable and hard against his aching body. He didn't know how to feel or act. His body felt old and used. His mind felt fuzzy and disoriented. He couldn't decide if he was heartbroken or angry. His soul was in a battle between an explosion of anger and pain or silent suffering within his skin. He rested his elbows on his thighs, ignoring the pain against his freshly stitched skin, and bowed his head. Tears sprung to his eyes, but he swallowed them down, not allowing the flood to happen yet. You had to be okay; you had to pull through. You were strong. So fucking strong. You had to wake up, open those beautiful Y/E/C eyes of yours and give Dean that small smirk that made his heart stop.

“Mr. Jacobson?” The doctor asked, looking around the room and interrupting Dean’s thoughts.

“Yes?” Dean said, standing up and limping towards the doctor, Sam right next to him.

“You’re here for Serena Jacobson?” He asked, checking his clipboard. You had this all planned since you started working with the boys. You all had false papers with fake names for insurance purposes. On some, you and Dean were married; on others, you and Sam were married. Dean just happened to be the one who threw the papers down this time.

"Yes," Sam answered this time, swallowing hard and looking at Dean for a moment.

"She suffered a severe concussion and had some brain swelling. At the moment, it is still touch and go; we have her on sedatives that we will slowly decrease, so she wakes on her own." He said. Dean blinked his eyes and furrowed his brow. He couldn't understand what was being said. His world was collapsing around him as his heart rate skyrocketed. His breath became loud in his ears. His body stiff and cold. Sam placed his hand on Dean's shoulder, and his world snapped back to him suddenly.

“But she’s gonna be okay, right? Doc, she’s gotta be okay.” Dean asked, his voice small.

"Right now, that's up to her." He said, his fingers tapped his clipboard as he nodded at them and walked away. The boys found your room, and Dean thought he was going to vomit. The sight of you in that white, clean, and sterile bed made bile rise into his throat, gagging him slightly. A bed that others had laid in, been sick in, and died in filled his body with dread. His feet brought him over to your bedside. Sam stood on the other side of you; he brushed his fingers along your arm. Dean couldn't bring himself to touch you just yet. Your glowing skin looked washed out and dull in the harsh fluorescent lighting. The bruise on your arm stood out against the white sheets. You seemed so small in the bed, so weak and broken, a complete contrast to how you usually were. Dean felt the tears hitting the blanket before he realized he was crying. He couldn't lose you, not yet. Not ever.

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

You opened your eyes to a sea of color. Green, blue, yellow, red, pink, and purple surrounded you. You felt warm under the sun, its soothing heat touching your exposed skin. The grass was scratchy under your thighs and elbows. The smell of summer was heavy in the air. It's thick and sticky air pulling into your lungs. Purple and pink flowers poked out of the green grass, their faces turned up towards the sun's light. A small creek tripped and stumbled over stones behind you; the sound of it filled you with peace. The sky was so blue with puffy white clouds hanging in it as if someone threw handfuls of cotton into the air. You blinked and looked around, slightly confused about where you were.

"Y/N! Come here!" A male voice said. You immediately sat up to find the source. Your heart dropped in your chest when you saw him, lips parting and breath catching in your throat at the sight. He looked shorter than you remembered. His shoulders that you used to ride on broad and expansive in his simple white t-shirt. He smiled at you, and tears prickled the edges of your eyes instantly.

“Dad?” You asked, standing up and moving towards him.

“Hey, Y/N/N, I’ve missed you so much.” He said with another smile that stung your heart.

“What is happening? What’s going on?” You asked him, sitting down in front of him.

“You’re hurt, sweetie. We are in a space between earth and heaven.” He answered, his body leaning closer to you.

"The wendigo." You said, remembering your head wound. You looked away at the expansive landscape in front of you, understanding, settling in your bones. "I'm dying." You whispered.

“That’s up to you, Y/N.” Your dad replied, his voice just as warm as you remembered.

“What do I do, dad?” You asked him with a trembling voice.

“Whatever you think is best.” He said back, his hand coming to cover yours, and you couldn’t stop the flood that completely engulfed you with emotion. You closed your eyes and relished in the feeling of his skin. He was right here in front of you, and you couldn't stop the swarm that filled you, breaking down all your walls and sweeping you away. You wrapped your arms around your father and took in his scent, clutching his shirt between your fingers.

“I can’t lose you again, daddy.” You mumbled against his shoulder.

"We can stay for a bit; tell me about your life." He said, his hands running over your back comfortingly. You nodded and sat back again, wiping your eyes and sniffling.

"Well, I'm a hunter just like you raised me to be. I hunt with these two men, Sam and Dean; you would like them a lot. Sam is like my big brother; he looks after me and I him on hunts and just in general. He is brilliant and kind; I enjoy his company so much because there is something about him that reminds me of you," You looked up at him with a small grin; he smiled back and nodded, silently telling you to go on. "then there’s Dean, he’s a bit of a different story. He’s strong, really strong. He’s selfless and compassionate…most of the time.” You laughed lightly. “He buys me coffee in the morning and gives me his jacket when I’m cold. He is a good man, they both are, but Dean…he makes me feel special.” You admitted, allowing yourself to say the words aloud for the first time and loving the warm feeling that spread throughout your veins. Your father smiled at you and nodded his head.

"Sounds like you are doing good, sweetie." He said, with a little laugh that made you smile. You nodded your head for a moment. Your lip started to tremble, and you made eye contact with him and slowly shook your head. There was so much you wanted to say, but only one thing came to your mind.

“I don’t want to leave. I want to stay with you.” You licked your bottom lip and let it catch between your teeth.

"That's an option." He said, tilting his head to the side and raising his eyebrows. "But is it the best option?" He asked, and you already knew the answer.

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

Dean swallowed thickly and finally took your hand in his, rubbing his thumb over your wrist. Your skin felt cold, and it made him wince. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again when he couldn't speak the words. He needed to tell you how he felt. He didn't know if you could hear him, but he had to try. Had to unleash his feelings for you to know. He turned towards Sam and cleared his throat, licking his lips and controlling his emotions for a moment.

“Sammy, can I have a minute?” He said, hearing the crack in his voice.

“Of course. I’ll get us some coffee.” Sam said, nodding and walking out the room, leaving you and Dean alone. Dean turned back to you and wrapped his other hand around yours, warming your skin in between his hands. He looked down at your combined hands and opened his mouth, feeling his lower lip tremble with emotion.

"Y/N, I-I don't know what to say. I need you here with me. I need to wake up every day knowing that you are going to tell me, 'it's too early for good, morning is fine.'" He chuckled softly at the memory of your husky voice and disheveled appearance. “Ya know, when we first met, I thought there was no way this super cool chick was going to stick around. I thought you would work the case with us and then leave us in the dust. You didn't; though, you joined the family. I'm here, sweetheart. I'm here, and I'll be right here waiting for you, Y/N, always.” Dean looked up into your face and moved even closer to you, cupping your cheek in his hand. “Baby, please fight for this. I need you to fight and come back to me. I need you-I just need you, only you. I love you, Y/N. I love you so goddamn much, and you have to wake up, okay? You have to pull through and wake up, because if you don't…I don't know what I'll-." His muscles clenched at the thought of what he would do to save you, eyes closing and tears falling freely down his cheeks. "Come back to me, baby.” He whispered before he leaned forward and kissed your forehead. His lips trembled against your flesh, your hair moving from his heavy sobs. He sat up and clenched his jaw. He was beginning to feel numb. A cold and ominous breath was spreading through his body. He felt dead inside. His skin felt just as cold as yours did. His eyes just as unseeing as yours were. His heart is just as slow and unsure as yours was. He felt open and exposed to the violence that stood menacingly in the back of his mind. He let out a shaky breath and licked his lips, tasting the salty tears. He ran a hand over his face and closed his eyes.

“Y/N.” He breathed your name into the air. One could mistake it for a prayer.

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

You wiped your nose with the back of your hand, closing your eyes and bowing your head. You had an impossible choice in front of you, one that only you could make. It would be so easy to let go and stay here with your father, to live in this happy space with him forever. To get the time back, that was so harshly taken away from you two. It would be so easy to fold and let the sun warm you with its golden light. It would be so easy to watch the clouds roll by until the end of time, laughing in the grass as the creek bubbled in the background. To let someone else handle the hunting for once. Let them clean the blood off their hands. Let them dig graves in the pitch black of night. Let them be the ones stitching up wounds that leave scars along their skin. Let them be the ones who have wounds that no one could stitch up or fix. Scars that cut far deeper than the skin and into the very soul. It would be easy.

"Y/N." A voice called from a distance. A voice you knew all too well, a voice that sent chills down your spine. Dean was calling to you, his voice a breathy whisper. He sounded broken, and it made your heart skip a beat. You closed your eyes and let out a breath. You knew what you had to do.

“I have to go back.” You said, your body curling even tighter into itself.

“It’s not your time yet, Y/N/N.” Your dad said, his strong hand coming to rest on your shoulder. “But when it is, I’ll be here waiting.” He smiled at you, sad eyes letting you know this was the right choice.

“I love you.” Your voice broke around your words.

“I love you too.” He said. You closed your eyes and made your final decision.

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Your eyes opened to harsh light. Everything around you was white; all color gone from your vision. The grass no longer tickled your skin. The air felt cold, and it made your bones ache. The creek wasn't falling over stones anymore, instead replaced by silence. Suddenly, there was a beeping next to you that made you jump slightly. You blinked and turned your head to the side to see Dean sitting next to you, his hands wrapped tightly around yours. You couldn't stop the smile that spread across your face, your eyes softening at the sight of him. You wiggled your fingers that were trapped between his, giggling when his head instantly shot up, eyes wide and lips parted. He looked up at you, and a bright, warm, and happy smile touched his face, crinkling the skin around his eyes slightly.

“Y/N?” He said quietly.

“Dean.” You said, your voice soft and horse. He stood from his chair and stepped closer to you, his hands taking your face between them.

“I thought I lost you.” He whispered as he leaned down to press his forehead against yours.

“Not yet.” You said, laughing lightly.

------

Sam stepped into the room and saw his brother leaning over you, your eyes were closed, but you were smiling. Dean leaned down and touched his forehead to yours, and Sam backed out of the room quietly, letting you have your space.

------

Dean went to take his forehead off yours; you quickly grabbed the back of his neck and pulled his lips down to yours, finally letting yourself taste him. He let out a surprised grunt before quickly kissing you back, his fingers twisting into your hair as his mouth opened. He broke the kiss first, leaning back and looking into your eyes, searching for an answer.

"Y/N…I really hope that was more than an 'I'm happy I'm alive' kiss. Because I have been thinking about this for a while." He said, his thumb running over your cheek.

"No, Dean, that was an 'I've wanted to do that for a really long time, and being on the verge of death made me see that I should take chances and tell people how I really feel' kiss." You smiled at him.

“Good, because I have also wanted to do that for a really long time.” He laughed, lowering his eyes shyly.

“I heard you.” You said, taking his hand off your cheek and holding it in yours.

“What?” He asked.

“I heard you say my name when I was asleep. That’s what brought me back.” You said with a small smirk. He looked at you with a combination of embarrassment, awe, and love.

“I was right here.” He looked away and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Waiting for me.” You finished, smiling at the small chuckle that left his mouth.

“Always.” He whispered before connecting his lips to yours once more.

**I didn't know who to tag because I write so little Dean. If you would like to be tagged and you were not, please let me know!

Tags: @spnfanficpond​ @watermelonlipstick​ @calaofnoldor​