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anika-ann · 3 months

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Back and Forth - part 5

Part 5 - Backdrop

Type: series; agent!reader, inhuman!reader

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader Word Count: 16500 🥹 (bestie I-)

Chapter summary: In which secrets are revealed - by you, by Steve... and by your captors.

Series masterlist

Warnings: pain and unhealthy relationship to pain, mentions of chronic illness and chronic pain (and the relationship to it), blood, canon-typical violence, gunshot wounds, issues with self-worth, implied emotional abuse from a parent (or just shitty parenting), brief torture, mention of human experimentation and Nazi doctors, multiple mentions of death, plenty of swearing

A/N: ALWAYS MIND THE WARNINGS; dividers by @firefly-graphics 💕; moodboard is for the vibes and does not necessarily reflect reader’s appearance

A/N2: Going full circle, sweet readers - aka yes, the beginning might sound familiar, because it is where the prologue came from. And yes, it’s a very long chapter, but it truly feels it works better as one. If you do wish to split, the best point is at the two thirds (the divider). Dooon’t though :)

The exhaustion was coming and going in waves, alternating with pain, concern and fruitless determination.

You wondered if Steve felt the same; you assumed he did. Asking would feel a little silly though; you didn’t see the point and frankly, you and Steve had never been close enough to just sit down on a couch and share your feelings, keeping them close to the vest except for the heat of your occasional arguments. So you stayed quiet, alone in your wondering.

The pulse of pain in your legs dulled a while ago; you let your head lull back against the wall you were leaned against, the thud sounding just as dull.

The irony wasn’t lost on you; you and Steve were colleagues, very reluctant friends as best, guarded and unsure about the other most times despite him being one of the most honest people you had ever encountered. It was true that you stood by his side and he did by yours, but there had always been an invisible wall between you. By the irony of fate, now, when an actual wall separated you, you could feel the figurative one crumble down.

It was surreal and frankly scary; which was just as ironic, given your circumstance that should feel much more terrifying. And yet… you couldn’t help the little warmth spreading in your chest, knowing your back was aligned to the same wall Steve’s was, mere inches apart, and while admitting certain things to him hadn’t been pleasant, in hindsight, it felt good. No matter the outcome, you had no doubt that if you survived, you’d remember these moments fondly, at least to some point.

And yes, it probably made you a masochist; but what else was new.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the files?” Steve’s low voice snapped you out of your musing, making your heart jump a bit in fright.

It shouldn’t have surprised you he asked one of many questions you didn’t want to answer. It was another of his annoying and endearing talents – and you rarely gave him the satisfaction of replying fully, just for that. But what the hell, right? Maybe you were about to die here. And you had just thought about how telling the truth, while embarrassing, felt liberating too.

“Would you have listened?” you questioned him back anyhow.

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

You heard him shift, the clank of metal and a low hiss escaping his lips making you gulp. You weren’t the only one battling pain.

“I would have heard you out. I admit I was angry at that time and I wasn’t… behaving as I should have and I’m sorry. But I would have heard you out.”

A brief barely-there smile curled your lips as he apologized again. Steve Rogers, ladies and gentlemen, unable to bear the fact he himself had been less than a gentleman. You might have been far from a friend and even farer from being able to tell you knew him and understood him despite having screamed at him the opposite, but you understood enough. Even if you sometimes wished you didn’t.

“But would you have listened?”

He didn’t reply.

You both knew the answer: no. He wouldn’t have, because he was the damn Captain America and he believed he knew the best, blindly following his inner compass pointing the true North even should all hell break loose, and those files weren’t a real concern anyway, were they?

Damn him.

And yet. As you challenged him further, you couldn’t stop the warm feeling in your chest humming louder, because yes, that was who he was, and you liked him that way, even if he was driving you mad at the same time.

“Or would have you just waved it off, because you are invincible?”

Silence stretched again.

You closed your eyes and tried to focus on hearing his breathing through the wall, still startled and relieved at how easy it was to do so. It was a good distraction from the pain still radiating from your wounds; and it kept your hope alive.

Dum spiro spero, right?

Despite the situation – or maybe out of spite, given both yours and Steve’s nature – you were still breathing and so was Steve. As infuriating as he was, you knew your heart would break to pieces if he stopped. Unable to walk or not, you’d find a way to break through the wall in mere seconds if he stopped talking to you.

Which he did just now.

Something in your ribcage contracted painfully, your voice shaky when you spoke his name, praying he was only offended at you calling him out. After all, being shot really fucking hurt, so you’d rather not move at all, let alone try to crash through concrete; that was the sole reason for your prayers. Liar, whispered a breathless voice, but you ignored it, your heart hammering against your sternum.

“…Steve?”

Blood rushed through your ears, making it impossible to tell, again, whether you could hear him breathe at all, or whether it was just your wishful thinking; long bony fingers of an invisible hand curled around your throat and squeezed at the mere thought that the latter was the case.

You swore, you swore to all Gods you knew, that if he had lied and his fresh bullet wound wasn’t just a graze, if he was actively dying right now and you didn’t even know and you couldn’t tell, if this infuriating bast-

“I don’t think I’m invincible,” he said at last and you released the breath you were holding, the coil in your chest loosening.

A brief flare of anger tried to replace the heavy weight on your chest – because God, you could kill him yourself for giving you a scare like that – but it was hard to stay mad at the man. It was, in fact, one of the most maddening things about him. That, and the fact he made it impossible not to care about him; a deadly feature on someone who was always the first to rush to catch a bullet with someone else’s name on it. Because he did think he was invincible.

God, he was such a likeable ass.

“Oh? Could have fooled me, really,” you sassed him, pretending you didn’t only barely manage to choke out the words. Honestly, it was a small miracle that you did, considering you had just swallowed the hysteria threatening to creep into your voice.

The responding groan of annoyance had the corners of your lips turn upward. It was like a drop of honey melting on your tongue; warm sweet satisfaction and relief at once, calming your nerves. Steve sure had plenty of fight in him left and you could kindle that fire if you pleased.

He had plenty of spite left too; and that was a very good thing.

“Don’t get snarky with me now.”

“Don’t bullshit me then,” you threw back, earning a huff – and then, a sigh, a few beats of silence, as if he was gathering strength to deal with your bullshit.

Frankly, at times you were surprised he still found that strength.

The other thing you noticed, however, was the pattern of his breathing not having changed. It was erratic in comparison to before he had projected and remained that way. There were many things this could mean, but one – the most likely one – had your heart clench painfully.

He hadn’t dodged the consequences of getting hurt in spectral form. It wasn’t just a startle; his pain did linger, just like yours would have. Your own chest ached at the realization; and your heart raced, because surely it was just a matter of time before he’d ask.

Ask the one forbidden question.

Then, guilt twisted you stomach for not having prepared him for the aftermath of getting shot as a spectre; however, the wise insistent voice in your head reminded you that you couldn’t have. You couldn’t have afforded him to know – you still couldn’t.

And it would have never been an issue if Tony damn Stark hadn’t insisted on dragging you to the stupid charity auction and Steve hadn’t agreed to it and then if he hadn’t projected, but he just had to be the ultimate good guy and take care of his injured teammate by any means necessary. Mr. Hero. Mr. Invincible. Case on damn point. You might have not been the best agent the agency had, but you used your brains at times and if they had only listened goddamnit-

“I don’t think I’m invincible…” he repeated slowly and you bit your tongue as not to protest to such claim again, taking a deep breath instead.

Silence stretched; then, a wavering breath of hesitation, his own this time. He was probably pondering whether he should tell you whatever he was about to say; whether you could be trusted not to turn that against him later.

You gulped, guilt nagging at your mind again.

You truly must have been excellent at your open despise for some of his decisions and him himself if his reluctance was anything to go by. Then again, that was hardly any news – his shouts from earlier had been enough of a testament to that. Even as the moments were hazy, wrapped in a fog, his voice still echoed in your ears.

‘Forget you hate me.’

‘Forget you think I don’t deserve the smallest bit of my fame.’

‘Forget that you think I’m just a glorified science experiment.’

God, he really had no idea in how high regard you held him, did he?

Sure, you hadn’t considered him entirely flawless, even as it was a close call; but you knew he deserved every bit of the reverence some people had in their eyes when they met him. Sometimes, it was just hard to remember that when he was flaunting his perfection right in front of your peasant Inhuman eyes, when you knew you could never reach that perfection yourself.

And yet, for whatever reason, he must have decided you were worthy of his trust; or perhaps he, just like you, thought there wasn’t much to lose anymore.

“But… people deserve a strong leader,” he whispered, the determination in his voice almost scarily firm even as he spoke with strange softness. “Agents need to feel they have someone they can lean onto when they feel like they have no more strength of their own left. They need order and someone to follow when everything else is chaos. They need someone fearless when facing the horrors we face every day. They need someone who swallows their own pain, so they find it in them to continue even when they feel like giving up, someone to take all the punches and kicks and stabs in the back and keeps going nevertheless, because-“

“No.”

His voice fell silent at the single word that spilled from your lips without a warrant, just like the tears that suddenly seemed to find their way to your cheeks. You didn’t think to blink them away before they were already out; you hadn’t realized they had started gathering in your eyes in the first place.

The breath you dared to draw was shaky, hesitant, and painful. Every single word Steve spoke drove a small needle through your lungs; painfully familiar and yet so foreign.

Be strong.

Be fearless.

Don’t let them see.

Get up. Now.

Swallow your pain.

I believe in your potential.

You are a marvel.

You have a duty.

Do good.

Do not dare to fail.

Lead.

Inspire.

All but the last two echoed through your head, spoken in your late father’s voice, clear as ever. Warm and distant; high praise and endless disappointment; a gentle touch and its screaming absence. The light at the end of the tunnel and the ball and chain at your neck, all at once.

It was hard to breathe, your mind hazier than your vision, emotions swirling in your chest violently; guilt, anxiety, longing, compassion. Recognition. Clarity.

Steve Rogers had it different, so much different, and yet, the weight of his burden felt familiar. Only his burden was the heavier for all the watchful eyes following his every move, as reverent as judging; with yours right there in the sea of millions, just waiting for an opportunity to lift yourself up on the ruins left behind by his failure, because if even Captain America made mistakes and wasn’t enough at times, then you could all shine just the same and there was still hope for lousy ordinary people like you to be excellent.

Didn’t you all wait in the shadows of his greatness, praying that he’d prove to be human like the rest of you – and stayed terrified of it at the same time?

Because he had a point, didn’t he? If not even Captain America could lift himself up after getting knocked down, then the rest of you might as well call it quits and abandon all hope.

Steve Rogers lived in own personal circle of hell just to keep you all a little further from your own.

He remained silent as you fought to form words after his admission; rendered speechless and stunned.

“Steve, no. I mean… yes. I— you’re not-“

The cacophony of feelings awoken by the epiphany of how painfully familiar these feelings were tasted salty on your lips, for the nth time in the past few hours. You struggled to explain, but you couldn’t just leave it at ‘no’, you couldn't, because while you heard him, you truly did, he was also so, so wrong.

And yet, he was terrifyingly right. Hadn’t you benefited from his immense strength just moments ago when he projected and treated you? Hadn’t you been insanely grateful for the strength that had nothing to do with the serum, with being a supersoldier, but had everything to do with being Steve Rogers?

The Captain America himself.

It was no wonder he had seemed like an angel at times, looked like he’d been carved by an ancient master of sculpture; a Greek demi-god, a Titan. If he truly believed what he said – and there was no doubt he did, it now screamed from every move, every decision, every tinniest gesture of his that you could recall in your pitiful state – he might have as well been Atlas himself. The world's beast of a burden.

And that was one hell of a burden to take on for one person. Even a person like him.

“I mean… you’re right, Steve, obviously. But… you’re wrong, because that’s just--- too much. And because we---we need to know you’re only human too, that you’re--- well,” you hummed, chuckling humourlessly, “if you are human at all, that is.”

He didn’t scoff, but it was a close thing. A funny sound he should make more often. It did sound quite human.

“I’m plenty human… and I’m not perfect,” he spat the word as if it burned his tongue, drawing a lovechild of a sob and a chuckle from your throat.

“Oh I know. You’re a stubborn reckless son of a bitch.”

And yet, you’re the best of us.

You let your eyes slipped shut, shaking your head, feeling like crying and laughing indeed as he chuckled, a breathy surprised sound.

This was the strangest fever dream. Were you and Steve really talking like this, so scarily open and unapologetic? Had you really just told him he was a stubborn and reckless SON OF A BITCH? If you had the courage and hadn’t you been in plenty of pain already, you’d pinch yourself to make sure it was still reality, as surreal as it felt.

“…I practically asked for that, didn’t I?” he noted self-deprecatingly and you could hear a faint smile in his voice, driving the corners of your lips up as well, the dangerous warmth in your chest rising again.

Warmth and the feeling that with a wall between you, with the note of humour in his voice, with his touch having been so gentle and careful, you could trust him and tell him what you thought without consequence.

Most definitely a fever dream, with your brain drunk on blood loss.

“Yeah, a little bit,” you said, unable to keep the smile from your voice too, despite your heart thundering in your chest.

That smile was quick to slip as something whispered in your head to continue, to share the thought that had your smile slip just as quickly. The mere idea of saying it, of indirectly revealing a huge tender area he could poke at if he pleased, made digging a bullet out of your leg look like a simple inconvenience – but he had to know. He had to realize; it was honestly baffling a man of his intelligence was absolutely blind to the powerful impact he had on others.

“The problem is… well, that other than that, you just might be less human than all Inhumans combined and that’s… that’s a really hard standard to meet, you know?” you whispered, almost soundlessly, unsure you truly wanted him to hear.

The response came much more swiftly and much more baffling that you had expected. If voices could frown, Steve’s was most definitely frowning.

“I think you’re meeting it pretty damn well.”

You snorted, humourless laugh gathering in your chest and threatening to burst out – you only contained it from the fear of the intense pain returning if you shook too much. But your hands rose on their own will, palms up; a mute gesture of confusion he couldn’t see.

“Since when? You projected here just now because I needed your help to do what I should be doing on my own. You nearly ripped me a new one when I was irresponsible and projected without a second thought to protect Natasha and Sam – which I don’t regret in the slightest, by the way – but that doesn’t exactly meet that standard either,” you added, words spilling without filter now that you opened the floodgates. “About two weeks ago, you literally shook me to snap me back because you thought I was going to pass out before I could do what needed to be done – and you were right. As always. You knew I couldn’t do it even before I did, so really, thanks for the attempt at compliment, but we both know not even you believe you could ever mean it.”

You were breathless as you finished; and the aftertaste of your words was bitter as truth often was.

You could scoff again. How could he mean it?

‘Meeting it pretty damn well.’

Right.

You weren’t that deep into your fever dream to believe that; to believe he believed that. As if meeting that standard was even possible by anyone but Steve Rogers himself.

Steve Rogers. Captain America. Your direct superior.

You gulped, panic seizing you as the small alarm in the back of your mind reminded you with urgency that you were still talking to your Captain, this was reality, and he could easily bench you and maybe, maybe listing all your shortcomings of the past weeks wasn’t the best idea if you wanted to keep your damn job.

“And I know that’s not alright, but I’m… I swear I’m trying to get better,” you added swiftly, lump growing in your throat as the silence that followed your words. “I can get better and I will!”

…Captain, Sir.

You only swallowed his rank and the sir because it felt like he’d think you were mocking him. Not that it mattered; because Steve remained quiet.

You could hear him breathe – without any real change, so you didn’t think the reason for his silence was loss of consciousness.

Which meant that the reason was the complete loss of the last remnants of respect he could have ever held for you.

It was selfish of you, but for a moment, you almost wishedhe had fallen unconscious somewhere during your monologue or at least entered some altered state of mind which would make him forget you had said anything at all, because then he wouldn’t have that muchreason to fire you, to send you back to Coulson like a faulty goods, demanding a refund.

You should have kept your stupid mouth shut.

You should have—he was going to fire you. He was going to take away the one thing you were remotely good, at, he was going to--- he was- fuck, fuck, fuck-

Finally, the sound of your name washed over you like a calming tide wave.

It didn’t sound condescending. It didn’t sound unkind, despite you having basically asked for the exact opposite by serving your failures on the silver platter. If anything, Steve’s voice seemed to waver, thick with an emotion you couldn’t quite understand.

“You are more than meeting the standard. You truly are,” he said again, sighing and for some reason, it sounded as if he was gathering strength to do… something. “But you’re wrong. I… the truth is that I knew I couldn’t do it.”

You sat up straighter, frowning; curious and absolutely dumbfounded – for many reasons.

One was obvious – you had no idea what he was referring to. Two – did he just… was that praise? He truly sounded as if he meant that you were somewhat good enough in his eyes. Since when? That was just too insane even as the past 24 hours were the very definition of insanity. And three – he was once again admitting to some sort of a shortcoming, which was surprising too to say at least.

And your voice reflected all that.

“Do what?”

He sighed again, his breath hitching, the smallest noise signalling pain escaping him, one you probably wouldn’t have heard hadn’t it been for your enhanced senses. You winced, guilt gnawing at your stomach again even as it was already tight with apprehension.

Do what?

“Watch you pass out again, knowing you got shot,” he whispered, effectively turning you into a statue, every muscle, including your heart, freezing. “I always try to plan so nobody gets shot. It’s my responsibility to ensure that no one gets hurt, let alone like that, and yes, sometimes that fails, but… that is the primary objective. To bring everyone home. And then you go and… I simply couldn’t take that again.”

You blinked, a strange feeling settling in your gut, one you couldn’t seem to grasp.

You felt like an idiot. You must have looked like one too, because you had no damn idea what the hell he was talking about.

You understood every individual word, you understood the sentences, but you… didn’t understand.

Worse, you did understand, but that understanding didn’t fit into the big picture, didn’t explain what that had to do with him making you snap back.

Irritation flared up in your gut as your brain raced and kept coming up empty of any coherent image of Steve Rogers. You had thought you had begun to understand better and better; and then his last words shattered the picture again, leaving you baffled.

And frankly, you despised being put into a position where you felt like less than a half-wit.

“…why? Does it really hurt your pride that much, that someone from your troops would disobey your order and mess with your perfect plan? So much that you throw the plan out of the window just to throw a fit? Just so no one gets hurt on Captain America’s precious watch?”

The moment you asked, you knew the questions were much sharper than he deserved, meaner and entirely unfair. You knew it was a lame defence mechanism clicking into place the moment it even remotely appeared that the sincerity in his voice was giving you just the last piece you needed to complete the absolute puzzle he was; because that was just not right, it couldn’t be. It never had been right.

‘I couldn’t watch you pass out again, knowing you got shot.’

He couldn’t be saying that. He shouldn’t be saying that. It made no damn sense. He couldn’t- that wasn’t--- yes, you had established he cared about bringing everyone home indeed, but that wasn’t--- it didn’t sound quite like what he was saying.

What was he saying?

Your body, your brain specifically, had rebooted, neurons firing all messy as you tried to make sense of this and was now coming up with either absurd explanations or none at all.

Steve’s laughter was both bitter and genuinely amused, snapping you from your thoughts.

“Sure, that too. But… it’s up to me to keep everyone safe. I need to do it. I want to keep everyone safe. Including you,” he added, almost softly and the shudder that ran down your spine was unlike anything you had ever felt.

It wasn’t… bad, not necessarily, not when you let it happen. It was the thrill of danger, the call of unknown, luring you in; and at the same time, something pulled at your heartstrings so violently you weren’t sure anymore whose chest hurt more. Your eyes burned and so did your lungs as you couldn’t take a deep breath all of sudden.

He really cared, didn’t he? He cared so damn profoundly for everyone under his command it was a wonder he got up from bed in the morning with such heavy responsibility on his mind. And somehow, that group of people he cared for included you.

He would have taken that bullet for you even if he hadn’t in his spectral form, wouldn’t he? Because that was the weight he had taken upon his shoulders, the weight of the world indeed, the weight he agreed to carry whenever he picked up his shield.

The symbolism of choosing that weapon – a weapon as much as a tool of protection – had never been lost on you, but it now appeared heavier and more tangible than ever.

You gulped, letting the new unbelievable piece of knowledge wash over you, another shiver brushing your body.

And still.

Even with all he said, even if you were crazy enough to believe him, it still made no damn sense that it would make him shake you awake and snap back over two weeks ago. And it didn’t explain why he kept putting himself into the position of your own personal guard dog so often whenever you were to project on a mission.

“I… okay.”

You were the farthest thing from okay, but that was beside the point.

It just made no damn sense.

“But that is what you do, always. I am safe. Even if I do get shot out there,” you said slowly, not sure if you were reminding that to yourself or him. “Even if I get beaten up to a pulp and keep going long enough to almost bleed out after that… it’s not real. The pain is, yes-” More than you’d ever know… or as you already know, you thought, swallowing against your dry throat.“And I do have to push through it hard to keep the spectre going, but--- that’s it. All that happens to the real me is losing consciousness and some serious exhaustion, Steve, it’s not-”

“Until it isn’t,” he interrupted you with urgency, causing your voice die out mid-sentence. “What if I fail? What if I fail to protect you, leave you there unconscious and vulnerable – your real body? What if one of those days your abilities act out? What if, one day, the injuries of your spectre transfer to your body, without prior warning? Look at us now. Nobody could have predicted this and yet here we are. Not to mention the pain you feel, passing out… that’s not nothing and we don’t even know the long-term consequences of that. So no, I--- I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let that happen to you again.”

‘I couldn’t let that happen to you again.’

The last words echoed through your skull in a bizarre echo, the room out of focus despite your gaze turned to the opposite wall and your frantic blinks.

It still didn’t make a lick of sense, none of the things he had said, words built on fruitless pondering about what-ifs – except it made the perfect sense.

Hadn’t you worried exactly about that just a few moments ago? When Steve had got shot right in front of your eyes – an image that would haunt you forever, you suspected – even if it had been just his projection?

Yes, you had much more reason to worry; the transition of the effects of the serum to you wasn’t complete either, since you hadn’t exactly grown several inches tall nor gained a hundred pounds of muscle, so it was reasonable at least to assume the transition of your powers to him hadn’t been complete either. But you could see what he meant: powers, no matter how useful, were a volatile thing. You had seen how difficult the beginnings with Daisy’s powers had been and how she was still discovering what she could do to this day, almost two years later. And she was someone whom you considered extremely capable with her abilities.

Was it truly so unfathomable that in his overbearing responsibility for his team, Steve would worry about things going awry with your powers, resulting in you being a lot more hurt than anticipated?

Something had grown in your throat, making it hard to speak, but you pushed the words out anyway, even as they had the strangest taste on your tongue.

“You… never told me it worries you. You never told me that it bothered you.”

You never told me that you cared, not only if I get hurt, but if I hurt. Never told me you cared. Not like this. Not… for me.

Even as your whole frame shook under the weight of the realization, your chest too full for you to breathe properly, gaze swimming in tears you had miraculously kept from your voice, it dawned to you how it all added up with him being the one guarding you.

He truly didn’t trust anyone else with it, but not because he was so full of himself.

With everything you knew about him, when you had gathered all the facts, it should have been clear in any moment when you hadn’t been at odds with him. It had just never clicked, not when it was you; apparently, to him, a part of the Avengers just like any other of the heroes he called friends. His team.

You were the newest addition. Your powers were ones of the most unpredictable and volatile, possibly more than the Hulk’s, even if less deadly.

He felt the responsibility in his bones. He wanted to make sure, personally, that you’d be okay, because that was what he did.

“No, I didn’t. Not without my concern shouted in harsh words instead of spoken in clear ones.”

You gulped, brushing over the slightly veiled apology. He had apologized enough; he had done his atonement a long time ago. Not to mention you hadn’t been exactly receptive to what he might have been trying to say besides clearly being disappointed in you, so there was he wasn’t the only one to blame.

There had been a lot happening under the surface; things you should have known that or at least guess, but you had refused to even consider there could have been anything written between the lines for the fear of revealing another deeper layer of perfection you could never even hope to reach yourself.

And for the fear of falling for him deeper.

Too late, wasn’t it?

Because there was no going back now, was it? Not with the memory of his soft touch. Not with the memory of him admitting he cared so profoundly, even if not in the way you foolishly dreamed of and dreaded all the same. Not with being a wall apart and yet finally allowing yourself to see him. Not with him letting you see him.

What was adding a little insult to the injury?

“You never told me how hard it is to control your strength either and… or how much it hurts to heal. Or how heavy your responsibility feels,” you said, not having the will to silence your mind.

You never even hinted there was so much more to you. You never shared that you feel like the rest of us, that you are so perfectly imperfect and human, just a speckle of fault that makes you all the better person; just like there’s but a speckle of green in your cerulean eyes that make them all the more beautiful.

Jesus you needed to get a grip before your loose tongue revealed even more of your unhinged train of thought. Maybe it was the time for that pinch to your forearm; to remind yourself you were very much in reality still; even as the ever-present breathy quality of Steve’s voice reminded you that he was in a very real pain, just like you.

“I didn��t think you needed to know. And it gets easier with time… most of the time anyway,” he added with a slightly humorous note before he grew serious again. And softer. “A far cry from keeping an astral body and controlling it, even when you’re in a lot of pain.”

It was but a hint, a dangerous hint to the great scary secret you harboured. You had been forced by circumstance before, to project while you still felt the aftermath of your spectral injuries by circumstance, since missions didn’t tend to wait until your imaginary yet painful wounds from previous projections healed. And yet; all Steve could have been talking about was simply getting hurt as a spectre and staying focused on keeping up the illusion anyway.

An illusion a bit like the one in his words; you doubted ‘it got easier’. You knew enough about what it was like to hurt. It didn’t get easier; it just became a routine to ignore it for the sake of something else. For others. For the job. For survival.

Just like it became easier to build impenetrable walls to protect what’s left, no matter how little the scraps were. Just like it became easier to let another of his compliments fly above your head, or at least to pretend it had, while it effortlessly climbed over the ruins of the very wall that had fallen when you and Steve ended up here and it touched you in your very soul.

“It gets easier with time,” you echoed his words with an absent smile, resting your cheek against the literal wall, almost as if the little turn of your head could offer you a glimpse of him. You wondered if he believed you that you meant it any more that you believed he meant what he was saying. “And I don’t know… it’s what you do that feels pretty impossible to me.”

You thought he shook his head; the quiet rustle of fabric and the note of something in his voice made it sound as if he had shaken his head.

“It was never my intention to make you feel like anything less than absolutely incredible,” he whispered sincerely, the grip he had taken on your heartstrings insistent, tugging again. “To make you think I believe you are anything less than that. What I actually believe is that you are that and more.”

You blacked out for a moment.

You must have blacked out, because when you came to, there was a static noise in your ears and burning in your eyes; your palm was laid over your ribcage, the feeling larger than life still swirling in your chest so hot and brutal you must have felt the need to make sure your body remained in one piece, unchanged.

However, the wavering rise and fall of your chest told you that hearing Steve say that, in the sweetly sincere voice and sounding as if it was simply another fact of life, had changed you fundamentally.

He truly cared for people, didn’t he? He cared and he believed in them, no matter how messed up they were. That was his true superpower and no stupid alien artifact could ever take that from him. And if the damn Kree couldn’t do that, if realizing he had lost everything good he had known when he woke up in the new millennium hadn’t done it, Hydra shouldn’t even hope to succeed.

They could develop the antiserum, they could strip him from whatever power Doctor Erskine had gifted him, but couldn’t take that. And that was the reason why even if you damn well died in here – and fuck did you not want to die – he would win. And they’d lose. Because they might eventually succeed in knocking Captain America down, but Steve Rogers would get back up and end them.

And damn, did he deserve better. He deserved the truth.

“I never meant to question your leadership either, Steve,” you responded in kind at last, trying your hardest to ignore the creaky quality of your voice. “I follow your orders, though sometimes with a few adjustments, for a reason. I… I would follow them if they led me through to hell because I know-- well, I know you’d send me there for a good reason. I just… couldn’t follow them that back in that base, because I knew better.”

“Because you were trying to protect me.”

He voiced your true motivation so effortlessly; and yet, his words were wrapped in such an agonizingly tender awe you nearly choked at the tone – and at your own laugh.

Because it was a laughable and unbelievable concept, wasn’t it? One little you trying your best, one little enhanced human thinking they could at least help to protect a demigod.

Worked well for you both, didn’t it?

“Well. Someone needs to try and protect our fearless reckless leader, right?”

“Right,” he echoed and you could hear a smile just as tender as before, so unlike the light self-deprecating note you had allowed to creep into your voice. “Can I… can I ask you something?”

You felt your eyebrows arch involuntarily, curious – grateful for the distraction from how unbearably full and warm yourheart seemed to be.

“Pretty sure we crossed that line, Steve. Shoot.”

You regretted the choice of words the moment they left your mouth, the beat of silence that followed awkward at best; and yet, a small snort escaped you before you could contain it.

“That’s really not fu-”

“No. No, it’s not,” you agreed quickly, even as the corners of your lips kept twitching for some reason. But could anyone blame you? It was a little funny. It was absurd how all of this felt like a bad joke… even the lovely parts, which were the most absurd of it all. “I’m sorry. I didn’t--- I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

“You’d better,” he grumbled, but the scolding got lost somewhere in translation, because he sounded a little bit amused at least at your horrible choice of words.

You let the smile tugging so insistently at your lips win, feeling like Steve had done the same – at least before his voice fell quieter.

“But what I mean is… when we were fighting, when I was--- yelling at you, and you mentioned pain.”

Your smile froze in an instant, your eyes slipping shut, the feeling of your thundering heartbeat consuming you. There was no doubt where this was going; frankly, you were shocked it took him so long to call you out.

He must have been hurting this whole time, even as the only indication he had given you was his heavier breathing due to the pain in his chest.

“You… curled up, recoiled,” he continued, slow and hesitant – everything your heartbeat was not. “As if you could still feel it. It wasn’t the first time it happened either and it’s been on my mind for a while. Does it--- I’m sorry, I can’t stop thinking about it, I do realize I have no right to ask, not really. I-”

“To ask what exactly?” you interrupted him in a small choked voice, even if you knew all too well what information he was interested in.

It was funny though.

‘It wasn’t for the first time it happened either.’

‘It’s been on my mind for a while.’

There was no way you could confirm what he was saying, but he had no reason to lie. You weren’t sure Steve Rogers was capable of lying, or at least being capable of being good at it. You had no prove but you felt it in your bones that he was telling the truth, tiptoeing around the uncomfortable question awkwardly as if he had been there before indeed. As if he had wanted to ask before.

He had noticed.

Of course he had fucking noticed, who had you been kidding. He was too observant for his own good; and too respectful to ask before. Perhaps he had thought the pain was simply something that had passed in a few minutes – you had been careful to hide it – and thus he had thought it was not his place to pry.

‘I do realize I have no right to ask.’

Except he had every right. As your superior who needed to know your condition to plan missions accordingly – even as you pushed hard enough not to let it affect your results in the field – and as someone who was experiencing the pain no one had warned him about right now.

You didn’t know whether you should burst out laughing or silently weep, the two tendencies pulling you in different direction so skilfully you ended up doing neither, giving Steve the opportunity to ask his question.

“To ask how much of that pain you remember when you snap back. How much of it… you feel after.”

You let your eyes slip shut, your stomach somersaulting despite knowing it was coming.

You could lie. You could tell him it was but a brief temporary side effect which would pass. You could deny you felt anything at all, leaving him thinking it was something he was experiencing due to the questionable power switch between you. The former could come bite you in the ass if you wouldn’t be able to reverse the artifact’s effect eventually; that was, if you’d live long enough to even try. The latter would mean leave Steve thinking he was the problem, the pain not being a universal part of the glorified power you had, only some shortcoming on his side.

Neither of the options seemed fair – in fact, the latter felt downright nasty, sending bile up your throat.

Steve had been doing everything in his power, quite literally, to ease your suffering. He had done justice to the golden part of his mocking moniker and had been nothing short of a good man, offering compassion, kindness and honesty. As much as any kind of lie would make your life easier, you didn’t think you’d be able to look yourself in the eye in a mirror. Steve deserved better than a lie or even a half-truth.

Sharing that burden with him now didn’t seem as scary as it had before either. He was only human too; he was the one person who would, given his past, knew that feeling pain didn’t mean one was completely helpless or useless.

Not to mention that chances indeed were you weren’t going to make it out of here. The least he’d deserve was to know the truth; and to know he wasn’t weak or messed up to feel the pain still. That, or you were both messed up.

The silence stretched as you took a deep breath, gathering courage. While sharing the burden whispered of relief, you weren’t a complete idiot. You had no doubt that Steve was going be less than thrilled to learn you had been hiding this from him. Dread pooed in your stomach as your heart threatened to jump out of your chest, but at last, you forced the words out with a sigh.

“…all of it. I… if it’s something big, I can still feel it even days after, gradually fading away. A bit faster than an actual wound would take to heal by my estimate, but… yeah.”

Dead quiet.

If the silence before had stretched, the quiet that followed this was endless. And deafening, even with Steve’s still ragged breathing.

“So it’s not just me now. It never switches off when you snap back,” he more stated than asked, suddenly sounding at highest alert. And stunned.

You could hear it in his voice, bubbling just under the surface of a matter-of-fact voice, gasoline waiting for a lit match. The anger – and a whole set of emotions you hadn’t dared to guess – he was holding back was almost palpable, even over the wall. There was no going back from your admission; but the safe way was to carefully choose your next words, as to minimize the damage.

And yet.

Maybe you had a death wish. Maybe you were a bit too reckless – that had to be the reason why the words you chose were precisely those, throwing back his assumptions even if with without malice, but with a tiny shrill of satisfaction.

“No. Contrary to the popular belief, it doesn’t.”

A beat of silence; the lit match nearing the gasoline, almost as if in slow motion, anticipation of a catastrophe to sweep the world.

Then, the explosion; a lick of fire on your cheek even if the only thing that happened was Steve tugging violently on his chains as if he wanted to hit anything in reach and a frustrated noise that sounded almost like a growl, causing you to wince and squeeze your eyes shut tighter.

“Goddammnit Spectre! Why wouldn’t you-"

Steve cut himself of mid-sentence, a deep breath of his reaching your ears, even as taking it must have hurt like hell with his spectral wound. And then another. A low noise full of something you couldn’t quite decipher.

But when Steve spoke again, it was on normal volume, perhaps even lower. “How many times have you… why would you-- I’m sorry. It never--- it never even occurred to me. It should have. And I’m sorry.”

Your eyes had snapped open at the first sorry; at the other, you were blinking uselessly, mind having come to a screeching halt as if his reaction had pulled at some sort of a figurative emergency break.

Except everything in your now screamed there was an emergency.

You understood nothing. Not anymore. Not how his anger could have given way to some sort of guilt.

Guilt? How could he have felt guilty?

Everything in your insisted it was wrong, so so wrong, the world not making any sense again. Except just as fast as the shock had overtaken you, soft understanding pushed it away in an annoyingly gentle manner that made a lump grow in your throat.

“You couldn’t have known,” your caught yourself whispering, a tug at your insides insistent as the realization started to take root; Steve felt responsible.

He felt responsible for your choices.

It was absurd. It was stupid. You had taken him for a noble jerk, but not a martyr – not this kind of martyr anyway. Not an idiot.

“I could have asked. But I assumed instead. I’m truly sorry,” he repeated, causing you to blink again, realization dawning to you anew, this time much more logical. That… he had a point in that. That was exactly what you had threw back at him earlier. He was quick to catch on; you less so. You were beginning to understand that despite the intriguing, terrifying and liberating conversation, your brain was registering your blood loss more and more by the minute. It had to be if it was so slow. “I’m sorry not only that it’s happening but for not being understanding of it.”

The thing was, you weren’t sure you’d tell him even if he had asked.

Scratch that. You knew that you wouldn’t.

“It’s okay. Apology accepted, Steve,” you echoed your words from the auction, a brief smile passing your lips as you did so. Your face had grown damp with tears again, you realized distantly; released pressure, dark secret coming to light. Relief.

He hadn’t yelled at you – not really. And he knewnow. You almost wanted to laugh. He knew.

His guilt was misplaced however, you we aware as much; he shouldn’t have to ask. Such thing was expected to be listed on file. Except you had made sure that it wouldn’t when erasing Andy’s records of your sessions.

The sudden urge to sooth Steve, feeling a physical manifestation of how he was beating himself over the fact he had made a half-wrong guess where he shouldn’t have, the burden on his shoulders having now grown another ton heavier as a consequence, slammed into your weary bones.

“It’s okay, Steve. I was hiding it. You simply couldn’t have known.”

“But why? Why didn’t you tell us?” he demanded, urgency bleeding over his shock, his investigative Captain mode activated again. Hadn’t it been that he was asking uncomfortable questions, you’d smile at the change. The man with a plan. A man of action and analytic mind. Steve Rogers, ladies and gentlemen. “You never took breaks after you got hurt. Not as Spectre anyway. If… if the pain lingers… if there is nothing that can to be done about that once it happens, why wouldn’t you let us know you needed time to heal?”

Because you’d take away the only thing I can cling to, your mind but breathed out weakly, fresh tears rolling down your cheeks, hands flexing into fists, brief panic seizing your throat at the mere idea of thathappening. You’d take away the only thing I can do with my life. The only thing I know how to do.

You couldn’t tell him that. You had whispered too many secrets over this wall already, the majority of your defences down. But not this one. This one you had to keep in order to keep your sanity, to keep your place.

You were still an agent. There was no more place for whining; god knew you had already whined for enough to run out of a limit for years and years to come.

But you could still tell the truth. You should. Steve deserved nothing less; but you deserved to have some dignity left dammit. You scrambled to gather the last remnants of your pitiful shield and put it up, along with scraps of rationality.

“I’m an agent – I need to be able to handle pain, more than most. And I can,” you said firmly, ignoring the pull at your muscles as if your wounds wanted to confirm your words; or disprove them “Pain is a part of our life every day.”

“… it really shouldn’t be. Definitely not like this,” Steve protested, voice sounding a little weaker than before. You couldn’t tell whether it had anything to do with his physical state or whether he was simply struggling to protest when he actually agreed with you.

Pain was an undeniable and inevitable part of life; for some people more than others. He should know, shouldn’t he?

A hundred-pound asthmatic with a list of illnesses longer than your resumé in what probably felt like his past life; now, a proud sturdy shield taking punches and bullets left and right to protect others.

He’d know all about pain; back then and now. It suddenly barely made any sense that you had ever kept this from him if you looked at it from this angle. Then again, that was Steve Rogers.

Your life would be a lot easier if Steve Rogers and Captain America – your boss – were two separate people. But they weren’t. Looking back, you truly hated it as much as you loved it, every single day.

With a bittersweet smile on your lips, you wiped at your cheeks.

“I suppose it shouldn’t, but we don’t get to choose. You of all people should know that. You used to live it. You’re Captain America – you still live it.”

He a took a deep breath, sounding outraged and defeated at once – because you were right.

“True, but-“

“But nothing,” you interrupted him, indignant to make him understand. Without revealing too much. He was a smart cookie – he didn’t need all the information. “I have to handle it and I do. Thousands of people handle pain every day. What I have is no different from other chronic conditions, except it is. I have an advantage. Because to a large point, I can prevent it. Unlike other chronic pain, mine is simply an occupational hazard that occurs if I mess up as a spectre. And my occupational hazard is way kinder than any other agent’s, because when other agents get shot, they bleed. They die when they bleed out. I pass out. So really. I’m the lucky one.”

You expected it would shut him up; you expected him to ponder over your words.

You were wrong. Again.

“That is debatable,” he threw back in an instant, though not unkindly. A gentle reprimand rather than a challenge to argue. “And you can still bleed. And it doesn’t answer my question, not entirely at least.”

“I know,” was all you said.

You’d let him pick to which of his words it applied to. It applied to all of them.

“…I’m not… ordering you to answer it,” he continued softly, voice quieter again. “I understand you can have plenty reason to keep it to yourself, I just… I want to understand so we can adjust your schedule to accommodate your needs. You already give more than enough. This… this is beyond anyone could ask of you.”

You smiled bitterly, for once able to stop fresh tears from spilling even as his words struck you straight into your heart.

Of course he would think that. Of course he would want to do that.

Stupid big-hearted hypocritical dumbass.

And what about what we ask from you? What about you ask from yourself? you wanted to retort, but swallowed your rhetorical questions you already had an answer to, opting for a tired smile instead.

“That’s not necessary, Steve. I’m fine.”

Most of the time. And when I’m not fine, I have to be anyway.

He repeated your name, somehow sounding both compassionate and pissed beyond belief; patient and insistent.

“Why?”

You almost, almost grinned, recalling Simmons’ words with stunning clarity, the words etched into your brain and bones, her British accent included.

An absolute marvel. You… you are a marvel.

And who wouldn’t want to be that? Even if for a while? Who wouldn’t swallow their pain, their cries, their blood?

A marvel.

It was embarrassing almost, to cling to it like that, you knew that.

And yet. Something about Steve’s voice, the gentle insistence, the genuine desire to simply understand you, pushed you to tell the truth. He’d understand. You had kept telling yourself he wouldn’t, because he had always put on this brave invincible face – or maybe you had believed he did, to make him even more unreachable – but the truth was that he truly was the one person who could understand all too well.

“I can’t afford to have a weakness. Not another one.”

I can’t show any weakness was written between the lines and you had a feeling Steve read just as easily as if it was written explicitly in all capital letters in your blood instead of in ink.

“You’re only human too,” he whispered, so damn quiet and as tender as his hands had been. “You’re allowed to be human. It’s no different than Bucky having a prosthetic, than people taking time off to heal and then rehabilitate after a physical injury to their non-astral body. We would never allow you back to field if-”

“I can handle it!” you exploded at once, a raging fire licking at your veins the second he implied you were unable to do your job properly, the job you had trained for your whole life, since you were a damn child, you were just fine, dammit! “I’m not a charity case, I don’t need any special treatment! I’m nothing less than-“

“But you don’t have to handle it, that’s my point!” he snapped in response to your shout. The authority and conviction his voice held, even on normal volume, had you shut up in immediately. And listen. “And it doesn’t make you less of an agent to be treated accordingly to your condition! I didn’t mean to say that we wouldn’t let you into the field because you’re weak, because I know you’re everything but that – but we wouldn’t let someone with a healing gunshot wound into the field either. All I’m saying is that if we knew, you wouldn’t have to suffer. You’re a person first, an asset to the team next. No one would think any less of you. You deserve to rest, you deserve having your needs met, you deserve to be treated like a damn human being!”

A sharp inhale and exhale; a brief moment to process what he said while he gathered strength to speak again. A brief moment for you to gather the pieces of the world he had shattered for you.

In that moment, a strange feeling of peace washed over you, one you imagined one might find in an apocalyptic world, a place when all that had been known was ruin and fleeting wistful pleasures, when the sun came of for the first time in centuries; so peculiar, incomprehensible and untouchable. But warm. And beautiful.

“Why--- why wouldn’t you--- don’t you-?”

“Not where I come from,” you whispered, smiling tight and bitter through the tears even as Steve couldn’t see you.

The metaphorical sight of that sun was beautiful and you basked in it. But it was as gorgeous as hurtful; tied to the knowledge it would not last.

A pregnant pause followed your words and you knew. You knew you had said too much. Shared way too many things that no one but your therapist should know – and that was already one person too many and she was aware of considerably less.

And then, creeping horror. Steve was quiet – for too long. Deadly quiet too – couldn’t hear his breathing.

Panic hit you like a ton of bricks all over again, digging into your heart with sharp nails, deeper than before with a profound knowledge of the universal truth.

This was how it went, didn’t it? You opened up to someone too much, you told them about your pain, about your most pitiful secret and they showed understanding and compassion – and then they died. One of the great reasons why you had kept it secret, why you had insisted on being in the field so much; if you weren’t there, if you weren’t doing what you were meant to do, people died. They would too if anyone learned and you got benched for your comfort.

Death followed your potential confession in so many ways. You knew that, always had, so why had you been so stupid again to-

You should have never told anyone. Especially not Steve.

“Steve?! Are you-“

“You deserve nothing less than having your needs respected and met,” he said slowly, every syllable carefully measured, unshakable despite the shaky breath he had finally released and you could kill him, your heart thundering in your chest at the brutal scare he had given you and his words alike. “You deserve better than that. You always have. And you are sure as hell going to get that when you’re with us.”

With me, said the steel in his voice.

The shudder running through you had nothing to do with cold, your breathing shallow and quick, something in his voice, something untouchable and so perfectly tangible and the realest thing you had ever touched, forcing you to listen and accept, and accept willingly, because what he said was nothing but the very essence of kind.

This was who he was. Righteous and fair. A vessel for violence to be unleashed, if necessary, but an infinitely kind man. It had nothing to do with you – he would do that for anyone, you were more than aware, because care was in the very core of Steve Rogers; but to have it aimed at you still felt like the warmest hug you had never known, one you got without working hard for it, without deserving it first for once.

It felt like Steve’s large hands gently cradled your heart, fingertips running over the cracks mended with concrete, smoothening the rough edges. It was terrifying because one second of his superhumanly strong grip and the hasty repairs would crack irreparably; but it came with a soft thrill and warm waterfalls of tears running down your cheeks instead, because every tender stroke whispered there was not the tiniest need for caution. Not if these were his hands.

Was it strange to still see them as impossibly strong even if you now carried the supersoldier abilities yourself?

He was waiting, patiently so, you could tell as much – but he expected a reaction. Of any kind. A scream, a scoff, a whisper. A protest or a confirmation, a vague hm. Anything.

What he received was a creaky voice and a bargain, a whisper sounding so shallow in comparison of how terribly profoundlyhis words touched you and rearranged your soul.

“I’ll remember that if we make it out, hm? But only if you take your own advice and allow yourself to be a human too.”

“Sounds only fair,” he whispered warmly. “Deal, Spectre.”

‘Deal, Spectre.’ Just like that. As if you two hadn’t just agreed to try to fundamentally change., but agreed what time the next training session would start.

But the lightness was deceiving; you were both all too aware. But what was a little promise when you had no idea how long you’d live, right?

“Deal, Cap. …but don’t you fucking scare me like that. Don’t you dare to stop talking to me or to close your eyes,” you said sharply and damn, you meant it. Hadn’t you had bigger thing to process, you’d smack the wall and imagined it was him.

Holding him damn breath, was he trying to kill you?

“Sorry. But one of the strongest people I know told me it doesn’t work like that. No amount of talking keeps someone awake.”

You gulped even as the corners of your lips twitched a bit as his sassy response – bless his observation that after dealing with such heavy matters, humour was the most welcomed reprieve. You wanted your reply to reek of snark, but probably failed. Because damn him, you were still too deep into processing what had just happened and he was not sparing a single opportunity to compliment you – the feeling it elicited inside you was foreign and difficult to contain.

“Sounds like a smart girl. But she fails to take into account that hearing a voice might not keep a person awake, but can be just… nice,” you said, not fighting the softness that crept into your voice anymore. “So unless the other person is being an ass… it can feel really good to hear their voice.”

It was too intimate to say that, scarily so; but the warmth that enveloped you when you heard his response was worth it, you thought.

“I like hearing your voice too.”

One of the important things agents were taught at the SHIELD academy was keeping track of time when there was virtually no way to do so; no watch, no phone, no indication of a day or a night. How to keep your head straight, when deprived of one of the basic stimuli – daylight. No training done purely in kid gloves ever worked, so this, being held captive in a room without windows, was how you practised.

And yet; you had no idea how long you had been in captivity. It was a fact that no training could have prepared you for everything – like getting shot twice, having your friend (colleague, Steve was colleague, a superior) shot in front of you, having your powers exchanged – but that made it no less frustrating to not being able to tell how long it had been.

You had a few indications, sure; there was only so many hours one could survive without water, but all that your parched throat, dizziness and occasional zoning out told you, was that it hadn’t been three days – because you were still alive. The water bottle the asshole who had shot Steve had thrown in was staring at you mockingly, your fingers twitching at weak moments of pondering whether you should simply give in; but since you could resist so far, you knew it couldn’t have been that long. Given the blood loss and the fact you hadn’t passed out, your rough estimate was that it had been a few hours.

But god, were they endless.

At least you had good company still; Steve’s soft check-in reached your ears again, a ghost of an exhausted smile passing over your lips.

“What was your favourite class at the academy?” he asked then, causing you to chuckle self-deprecatingly.

It was selfish. Self-centred. But it was the truth – but could anyone really blame a person for liking doing what they were good at?

“Gymnastics. I… I had a head start,” you admitted reluctantly, Steve’s voice warm as he hummed in response.

“That’s fair. It does sounds like you’re underselling though.”

Your smile widened, a small spark of a giddy feeling that was most definitely not supposed to arise in your chest flickering to life.

“What did you like the best back at the camp?”

“Hand to hand,” he replied simply, the smile in his voice puzzling you as much as his answer. You had purposely asked about the camp, thinking he might… tell you about what it was like before the serum. It was naïve, you berated yourself; this was nothing but small talk to kill time, while Steve no doubt kept working on any possible solutions to your shitty predicament. You were an idiot to think- “That is after I was shown that size and strength don’t always matter. That I could still win if I worked hard to improve my skills. And had a bit of smarts.”

Your shoulders sagged, the warmth in your chest spreading again. He was being honest. Open. And the vague image of a small guy kicking arse due to his brains and determination alone was most endearing and powerful. And you had it now to keep; because Steve had shared it with you.

While this was just a conversation to kill time while your hazy brain too vainly tried to come up with a way out of this mess, it was more than you had ever talked. More than you would ever talk in the future, probably. If you lived long enough for the future lasted for longer than another few hours.

You had right to feel like weeping, you thought briefly, to feel like someone had reached for the rug under your feet and tugged, causing you to hit the floor hard; but you had no right to feel an unfamiliarly powerful tug of longing for things that wouldn’t come. And yet you felt it anyway.

You were more than ready for this whole insanity of Hydra captivity to end – one way or the other. And yet, there was an unfairly large part of you, circling around your heart, that wished some things to linger. The delicate bond you and Steve had threaded together over the past few hours was precious beyond anything, as palpable as the wall between you.

Precious things never lasted.

And you already missed it.

You should never get attached, it was the number one rule, but you were the troublemaker sometimes, weren’t you?

When you spoke again, you hoped the sudden acute dullness in your ribcage couldn’t be heard in your voice.

“That’s fair,” you echoed his words, a brief intangible image of his smile flashing in front of your eyes.

He had to be smiling, right? It seemed-

Your heart leaped into your throat, back straightening as the sound of multiple footsteps coming from behind your door reached your momentarily enhanced ears despite the ever-present low whooshing of blood in your temples.

“Steve-“ you whispered tightly, and that was how far you got before the lock was rattling and people started flowing into your cell. People, plural.

A man in an obnoxiously luxury suit. A three-man army with confidence of men with enough firepower to have a back-up weapon of a back-up weapon, Mr. Hydra Douche With A Twitchy Finger included. A man with a briefcase, in a telling white lab coat.

Instinctively, before you could think better of it, you scooted closer to the wall, instantly regretting it as a jolt of pain shot up your aching legs – and as a ghost a smile passed over the Mr. Hydra Douche’s otherwise blank face.

You swore that if you got your hands on him-

“Morning, Agent. Or should I say afternoon? How are we doing?” the man in the suit – clearly the Head Douche – asked with feigned politeness and had your gaze not moved back towards the doctor, you would have felt like spitting on him just for that. But it had.

And you recognized the man in white. You had seen him before, you were sure of it, despite the light fog wrapping around your brain tighter with every passing second of your heart racing.

You had met him at the Tower, you had no doubt about that and the fact alone caused goosebumps to rise on your arms, your stomach somersaulting.

You didn’t know his name; if someone asked about him, you probably wouldn’t have been able to describe him. He wasn’t any kind of conspicuous, yet he was here. He wasn’t memorable –then again, that was the point of undercover, wasn’t it? That was the mission of double-faced assholes. Be bright enough to get hired to the Avengers Initiative; be the right amount of ordinary to fit among all the extraordinary minds of the scientific department as to not stand out.

If you had enough strength to stand up, you’d punch his fucking teeth out.

“You fucking son of a bitch,” was what you settled for, earning a half-smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“Rich, coming from the daughter of the ultimate All Work No Play Bitch,” he replied calmly, the vindictive tone like a slap to your face, causing you to recoil further.

That, and the mention of your mother.

You did not disagree with his assessment, you supposed; but she was your mother. Was she with them? Was she not – and had the hurt her?

Bile rose up your throat at the idea of either of those being true. It shouldn’t have – you didn’t care, you shouldn’t care, not anymore, god knew she certainly didn’t – but it sent a violent shiver down your spine anyway. You bit the inside of your cheek, trying to supress the tremble.

Fuck him. Fucking fuck Hydra as a whole.

“Now, now, no need to call anyone names…” Mr. Head Douche said, even as he seemed rather amused by your exchange. “We have more important matters at hand. Doctor Barret?”

A low voice sharp enough to cut steel spoke before the doctor could take a single step in your direction, causing your heart to skip a startled beat even as it spoke in your favour; even as it was Steve.

“Leave her alone.”

The suited man briefly looked as if behind you, a supposedly pleasant smile on his lips that came out as a sleazy one, condescending. It made your hair stand on its end. Then again, this whole room, this whole situation had done good enough job of that already.

“Patience, Captain. We will deal with you in a minute. No need to be jealous about your inferior getting the bigger company.”

Your gaze snapped up, alarm bells ringing for two reasons.

Steve wasn’t alone either.

And you were the one to get the welcoming wagon.

Why? Why you first?

You weren’t a complete idiot; Steve was the more valuable one in terms of intel and strategy. He was the one with supersoldier serum they had been trying to neutralize, even as now they could probably poke both of you like lab rats and get some ‘intriguing’ results for sure.

So why you?

Saving the best for the last? Did they think you were weaker, that you’d crack more easily? Did it have anything to do with you being Inhuman? Did it have anything to do with you being the one, momentarily, in whom the serum effects were manifested? Why-

When the man met your gaze again, calculating, it felt like an icy liquid injected straight into your veins, realization slamming into you with full force along with your panic skyrocketing.

You were the leverage.

They could probe you all the wanted, they could punch and kick and cut, and they would torture Steve – because they knew enough to realize he would not want it on his conscience, not him of all people, not after they had watched you interact – and they wouldn’t have to as much as touch their more valuable prisoner.

Your gaze involuntarily flickered towards the briefcase in Barret’s hand as he stepped closer to you, your chest suddenly too tight to breathe in.

Don’t let them see. Don’t let them see that you’re scared.

You weren’t naïve enough to think you managed to hold face despite the anxious chant in your head.

The boss beckoned wordlessly to two of his brainless henchmen as Barret set the briefcase down, opening it with the lid towards you, obscuring whatever was in from your vision; but it wasn’t necessary.

You were too busy gulping and measuring the two men who approached you and stood each by your side in a blink of an eye, large greedy hands already reaching out.

“Don’t touch me-“ you blurted out, hands curling into fists in an instant to ready yourself to what would probably be a pathetic fight but still a fight.

They gripped your biceps in a vice and pulled you up to your feet before your weary sweat-soaked body could take a single swing at them, holding you upright with your feet barely touching the ground.

And then one of them kicked the back of your knees the same moment they dropped you low enough to force you stand, sending you instantly to the ground due to the weakness in your legs, their hands but a thin rope keeping you from falling face-down on the floor.

The majority on your weight landed on your knees. The rest was held up by your thighs.

Your agonized cry got drowned in the blinding pain seizing your body, tears springing from your eyes as you felt like you were going to be torn from inside out.

An agonizing déjà-vu; except now you had no strength left to keep your pain for yourself.

It hurt. Goddamn fucking Jesus, it hurt, pain consuming all your senses, only leaving space for vague awareness of the dull sounds of Steve’s protests and loud cries of metal as he vainly fought his bound again.

Bless his soul, he was not about to give up even when it was clear there was no other option but that left.

You wished you were that strong.

As you hungrily gasped for air, Steve’s efforts having fallen silent upon a promise of catching another bullet, you blinked your eyes open. Vision blurry with tears, you noticed the doctor had put on thick lab gloves – and was now holding a part of the Kree artifact.

Of fucking course.

Through the white-hot pain still gripping at your brain, your felt a tiny part of you sigh in relief. You supposed it could be worse than being about to get exposed to the effects of the artifact; then again, at least knives and needles were predictable enough. You had no idea what this thing would do now. Send the powers back to their rightful owner? Pass them on? Or take them altogether, somehow absorbing them?

“Fantastic, fascinating thing, isn’t it? We knew the item would be valuable as soon as it appeared on the auction list, but to have such unforeseen properties… had we known, we could have saved ourselves a lot of work,” the boss pondered out loud, tilting his head to side a bit when you grinded your teeth and tried to meet his insane eyes even as your head was spinning and it was hard to focus on anything.

“What work?” you hissed, biting your tongue hard when one of the asshole henchmen tugged at your arm a bit, sending a fresh wave of undiluted agony through your wounds.

You didn’t know where you found the will to ask. You doubted he’d take the bait. But if you were about to pass out from pain and blood loss alike, you might as well be useful to Steve and whoever was hopefully coming to the rescue – and collect your body – eventually.

“That might be the oldest trick in the book, Agent. Tempting the supposed villain to reveal his plans… but frankly, I think you should know, if for nothing than for appreciating my genius,” he boasted, so smug and proud of himself you wanted to tell him to bite you.

But knowing Hydra were goddamn lunatics, you didn’t, because he might do exactly that – and you were not interested.

God, your head was spinning. You were sure that one rapid movement and you’d throw up.

“By all fucking means.”

He raised his eyebrows, clearly amused. Fuck him.

“…cute. You see, you wouldn’t believe how troublesome you can be, Agent,” he said, causing your breath to catch in your throat and your thready thoughts to scatter. Huh? “We really counted on all of you to be much more capable, but in the end, forgive me, you especially turned out to be a real pain in the ass. A real disappointment.”

It was absurd – the most absurd thing of all, you supposed, despite the past hours being a complete funhouse – but being called a disappointment, by a Hydra lunatic, felt like a blow to your solar plexus, shame filling every ounce of your being for a moment.

How utterly useless a person had to be for a Hydra lowlife to find you disappointing, for whichever reason he was cryptically referring to? It truly felt like you hit a new low.

And yet. A defiant smirk somehow found a way to your lips, however weak, a little piece of pride at having made their lives complicated, even if unwittingly.

“My pleasure,” you said, pointedly ignored.

“The data was right there. You had them in your grasp and then you failed to deliver them to your base of operation. Doctor Banner’s and his team’s contributions to our uncomplete attempts to develop the antiserum would have been invaluable.”

…what?

“I mean, their motives for researching the scraps we left behind would obviously be of the purest nature, retracing the ‘big bad Hydra’s’ steps, developing the very antiserum we were working on themselves in order to find an antidote to it, believing we already had the substance in possession. And we’d have it delivered, a sample and a formula, developed and perfected by them. It was brilliant. They could have done all the work, found the solution we needed. But no. The data was planted for you team to find, the perfect bait… and you had to go and muck it up, didn’t you, Agent Spectre?”

Blank.

Your mind turned blank.

Your jaw had fallen slack, ears filling with a strange static noise growing louder and louder with every word he said. And yet you could hear him perfectly clearly, hear him paint an image so bizarre you would have had trouble comprehending it had you been entirely healthy, let alone when missing around two pints of blood.

The reality he described felt everything but real – but it made sense. Despite the plan being absolutely insane, it made sense. And you had to give it to him, it indeed was irritatingly brilliant.

But at the sae time, you could have laughed at the irony, downright wheeze at the cosmic sense of humour.

The data. They had planted the data which you had felt so desperately useless for having lost, the ones you and Steve had fought about.

The blankness of your mind was replaced by a rapid fire of thoughts, even as they seemed to come too slow as seconds ticked by and you were holding your breath in anticipation of his laughter, anticipation of his revealing he was just pulling your leg for laughs, a confirmation you had somehow misunderstood, .

But it didn’t come.

Because it was the truth.

You had messed up, but in a different way than you thought. Not by failing to deliver the drive. They had wanted you to find the files and deliver them; and you had taken the bait like a stupid goose, your instinct to protect the team, Steve in particular, flaring up.

Failing to deliver the flash drive had actually been a good thing. Because otherwise you would have helped Hydra to have the scientists with the AI do Hydra’s work for them instead of just offering vague scraps which doctor Banner and others could barely work with.

Screw exchanging powers, screw the existence of an artifact that caused the switch; THIS was a large mindfuck you weren’t sure you could ever wrap your head around.

Your failure had meant Hydra’s failure. And Steve, precious annoying Steve, having snapped you back before you could have delivered the intel, had actually been a hindrance in Hydra’s evil plans as well. He had been angry with you for taking a risk, he had cared, and so he had broken your concentration for it and you had thought that it meant he thus put himself at risk – but in fact, he had unwittingly got himself further from getting caught in Hydra’s bullshit.

You were stunned.

And rendered entirely speechless with both awe and absolute horror.

“Is that your impressed face, Agent? I can’t quite tell with all the panting for air and smudged black-tie worthy make-up,” the boss hummed mockingly.

You kept absently staring at the Hydra pin on the lapel of his suit, your mind still racing and trying to fathom the things that could have happened and hadn’t.

Hydra didn’t have an antiserum. They had wanted the AI to figure out what they couldn’t. They wanted to hurt Steve in a most effective and most painful way possible, no doubt. And you could have delivered that opportunity to them on a silver platter. You had almost assisted to Steve getting hurt, even more than he was now.

The idea made your ribcage feel tighter.

Fresh panic filled it instead of air when you realized that Steve was quiet, again. He had been quiet for a while now.

Why was he quiet?

You strained your ears despite the loud frantic thump-thump-thump of your own heart echoing in your head, slightly relieved you could still hear his ragged breaths.

“Well, that plan is obviously in the past now. We have something much more effective – a way to take all your powers, hopefully, and maybe even replicate them. Bless the Kree.”

Fuck the Kree, was your thought, but you bit your tongue.

Only when Doctor Barret took the other part of his artifact in his hand as well and rose to his feet, eyes unmistakably set on you, you realized how terrifyingly still everything and everyone had been. Almost robotic. Perfectly obedient; perfectly compliant with Hydra Head Douche’s wishes.

Had he made them comply? The brainwashing program? Was that what awaited you after?

Barret barely took a single step towards you. You immediately tried to move backwards, meeting the unrelenting resistance of the men who held you instead.

The only thing you managed was causing yourself more pain, the grip on your arms growing strong enough to bruise.

“Well, we’re nothing if flexible,” the Head Douche hummed, shrugging almost jovially as the other Trigger-Happy Hydra Douche stepped closer to you as well. “You see, it looks like now we have two supersoldiers now and that changes the game completely too. Generations of scientists thought replicating the serum’s effects was impossible – Doctor Banner being one of the few who live to tell the tale, but your DNA is… vastly different to the Captain’s and yet. You carry his abilities now – and he carries yours, without your bodies visibly changing. I wonder… if we start probing you, we could have a whole new set of data on how to synthetise it...”

You gulped. You had worried about them reviving Daniel Whitehall’s program of brainwashing people to make anyone do Hydra’s bidding; but the mention of the doctor’s other favourite pastime had a shiver ran down your spine.

You hear a soft rattle of chains and you knew Steve was fighting hard to do anything – and then there was quiet again, sharp one at that. Your heart hammered against your chest. Did he pass out now?!

Steven Grant Rogers, you open your eyes right fucking now or so help me god-

“And we can actually have Captain Rogers’ samples, even if tainted by your own… mutation? There are so many questions to be answered. I wonder… if I simply take this, and have you touch the other part, will that make me a supersoldier, just like that? A game of hot potato, so to speak? Is it that simple? To think we went through all that trouble and all we needed was a piece of an alien rock… or is it genetics too? How can we only find out, huh?”

You just glared, forcing your muscles to stop the tremble the man’s words fought to leave in their wake.

Somehow, the fact theydidn’t have a single idea what would be their next best step was so much worse than the opposite, bile rising in the back of your throat and burning.

They’d do anything to get their answers. They’d do everything.

And you were alone.

“Our brightest minds have been analysing this extraordinary piece of work for the past hours and came up with nothing conclusive, nothing that would tell us what will happen…” he said, eyeing you thoughtfully, beckoning to the Trigger-Happy Douche, who put on a single glove himself, taking one part of the artifact from the doctor without his skin making contact. There was no glow to the metal yet; neither of these men were Inhuman, apparently. Then again… were you? Still? “So we must resort to the old-fashioned trial and error, it appears. I wonder if the transfer will be complete… if we take that power from you right now, before you can heal, will it be lights out for you, darling?”

Your heart seized in your chest, the rest of your body outside your control; you attempted to tug yourself free despite the roar of pain it caused, not moving an inch.

That was one option you hadn’t considered yet. If it was this simple, as the Hydra Head Douche just said, if he stole the healing factor from you, you’d— right away. You had lost too much blood already, you had no doubt.

You’d be dead before you could as much as breathe in once.

The shudder that ran down your spine was violent and rattled your bones; you had no strength to stop it.

‘Will it be lights out for you, darling?’

You closed your eyes; and then there was a frustrated sound from behind the wall and you snapped them back open, a blissful flicker of relief.

Not unconscious, apparently. Good.

And then it finally dawned to you, the reason for Steve’s silence; and it made spite rise in your gut along with anger and completely unfair fondness.

Steve Rogers was still fighting; he was still fighting to help despite his unbreakable bounds. He was trying to focus and project, even though the pain.

He truly was stronger and more determined than the entirety of SHIELD together, wasn’t he? If he was about to go down – and you prayed he wouldn’t, you prayed he’d get home somehow, back-up arriving just in time for him to survive somehow – he’d go down fighting, taking as many Hydra lunatics as possible. He deserved so much better than he was getting. He deserved and needed you to get your shit together.

You weren’t dead yet.

There might not be hope left, but that didn’t mean you had to go down without a fight. If you’d die trying to make these bastards lives a little bit more miserable than they were, you could not only take fear and regrets to the grave, but also a fair amount of satisfaction.

You lifted your gaze to the Head Douche’s face with gritted teeth, eyes hard. You hoped.

“Nah, I hope not,” the man mused, eyes following Doctor Barret who now approached you with the other half of the artifact. His eyebrow rose along with your awe, as the artifact lit up with uncomfortably familiar symbols in your proximity. Still an Inhuman, it seemed, at least in body. Still capable of being a pain in the ass. “That would be sad, wouldn’t it? We’d like you to tell us how exactly your abilities work. Even if the Captain seemed to get a hang of it pretty quickly…”

“He’s trying to do it again, I think,” sounded from behind the wall, the new voice startling you despite your determination and making your stomach drop.

Hydra might have been reduced in numbers, but sadly grew in brainpower, apparently. Fuck them.

“Tsk-tsk,” the Head Douche licked his tongue, extending a hand towards the doctor, stepping to you himself. “That’s not wise. We don’t want to waste any more bullets, do we…? Really, SHIELD and Avengers need to work on teaching their agents not to get attached. It makes you all so weak.”

The gun was out of a holster you had missed earlier and aimed at your forehead before you could as much as startle.

And then the safety of it clicked, your view of the man’s face partly obscured by his hand and metal, forefinger firmly resting against the trigger.

Your heart jumped to your throat; your determination bled out of your body in an instant, horror replacing it.

One minuscule movement and you’d be dead.

It didn’t matter if you’d miraculously survived the power switch, if there would be no power exchange at all, since no one knew how the artifact worked, not really. For all you knew, it could have had a mind of its own, you had seen a monolith that changed into liquid seemingly at whim before, you had seen too much insane to believe you knew anything at all.

But that didn’t really matter anyway, did it?

You had thought so many times in the past hours that you would never seen the world outside of this cell, that you’d meet your end here – but it had never felt as tangible as the cold muzzle of the man’s gun hovering an inch from your head.

“Let’s make one thing clear, Captain. You try to project again and each of you gets a bullet. Equality is a virtue, after all, isn’t it,” he announced rather than asked, voice flat all the same as he threatened and mocked what Steve had fought for even since the damn 1940’s. “But I feel like I should inform you that the gun is aimed at Agent Spectre’s head, ready to make her open her third eye to eternity.”

You winced at the imagery and squeezed your eyes shut, a ghost of pain you had never felt circling at the centre of your forehead already.

“Where should we aim at the Captain’s body, what do you think, Agent Spectre?”

“Steve, please stop.”

The words were out of your mouth before you could think twice, quiet and shockingly calm to your own ears.

And even more surprising was the soft sound of metal and fabric as Steve shifted and a single deep ragged breath of his – and the silence that settled after.

He listened to you.

It was as scary as soothing.

You’d get to live a few more moments. And hopefully, he wouldn’t get punished by another gunshot wound. It was a little naïve to believe Hydra would have had any morals and wouldn’t shoot him just to prove a point, but a girl could hope and send a last wish, right?

You had two of those. For Steve to survive and be okay. And for every single person who was in this room with you to suffer unimaginable pain. You weren’t as virtuous as Steve was; had it been a little more realistic than it was, you’d have even wished for you being the one who would be the cause of it too.

The gun lowered minutely, the safety clicking back on, the softest shift of the air telling you the Head Douche let his arm fall to his side. You allowed yourself to breathe in shakily, eyes fluttering open despite your eyelashes growing heavy with tears.

“Touching,” the man commented, unimpressed. “I guess the other shoulder will do then, Mitch. Be ready. Now, as for you, darling, you just stay still. I believe it’s time to proceed. After all, discovery requires experimentation.”

Another violent shudder rocked your body as you recognized the words; the man smiled slightly, a twinkle of vicious glee in his hard gaze when he noticed.

A fire of rage lit up every achy cell in your body.

Asshole. Revelling in suffocating people with fear. Smiling when he had his henchmen to do his dirty work. Feeling so powerful with brainless goons to protect him and do his bidding. The perfect stereotypical bully, all the worse for Nazis being his divine inspiration.

You had no chance of overpowering him whatsoever and he had aimed a gun at you just a few seconds ago and yet, you couldn’t but spit the words burning on your tongue, disgust dripping from your tone despite being aware you truly shouldn’t poke the bear. Or the ancient strange octopus they worshiped for that matter.

“You really should lay off reading all that Reinhardt’s crap.”

The Head Douche cocked his head to side, one corner of his lips rising as he stepped away to make space for Doctor Barret and the glowing artifact.

“That’s doctor Reinhardt to you, Agent Spectre,” he corrected you, the dark glee in his face shining brighter. “He was quite the visionary. I’m glad you’re familiar with his work. Because if this simple exchange doesn’t work as we hope, we’ll move on to his methods. I heard the last Inhuman he had in his care, while still carrying the name you just used, ended up in so many pieces they had trouble reconstructing her body to stitch her up. They barely succeeded, even with her regenerative abilities… I think bleeding out from bullet wounds would be the merciful route for you, wouldn’t it?”

You weren’t proud of it, not in the slightest. But as panic slammed into you, you trembled, your lower lip wobbling.

You had heard the story of Jiaying. An Inhuman who had fascinated Reinhardt, or Doctor Whitehall, as he had been known later. At the death’s doorstep himself, he had been freed from SHIELD’s prison and got his chance to finally examine the woman who hadn’t aged. To experiment. To cut her open, taking a sample of anything he could, and another and another, eventually succeeding at reversing his own aging process.

And dumping the remnants of her body, only for her husband to stitch her up; ironically, for both her to become a villain just as bad.

You supposed Head Douche had a point after all. A bullet would be a mercy, even as that was hardly a pleasant option.

You had no doubt they would shoot you one more time the second they’d find out they stole Steve’s power.

Then again, maybe they would take great joy in seeing you die slowly and in pain, digging into your wounds for fun and took a few samples anyway, in the name of science, despite already getting what they wanted. That was the kind of fuckery Hydra did, didn’t they?

And then, they would do the same with Steve.

But if he was the second, that meant he had more time. And by then, the backup might finally arrive.

The glow of the artifact felt warm, even as the metal still hadn’t touched you; an undeniable reminder of who you were. What you were.

Last flare of fight rippled through you, but it was gone just as fast.

You’d be too slow. You could eliminate the henchmen who held you, maybe, if you pushed hard through the pain, but they were still gunshot wounds. You had already seen and felt the results of standing up, the damage to the muscles too severe. And even if you by some miracle managed to get rid of the doctor too, there were still two other people, both of them with a clearly twitchy finger. Anything less than superspeed combined with superstrength was useless.

You were useless.

You closed your eyes.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” you whispered, trying your best to block your hearing so you wouldn’t hear his reaction, whatever it might be.

You didn’t want to leave this world hearing his disappointment. You had had enough of it throughout your whole life. You were ashamed enough all on your own, but you didn’t have any strength, will, or chance to keep fighting.

So you slowly breathed in and out, vainly trying to relax as you felt the artifact pulse near your cheek, and you accepted your fate.

Had Steve been in your place, he wouldn’t have – you were sure of it. But you weren’t him. Despite what he had said, unlike him, you were only human. And the fact was that even if you did somehow neutralize everyone in the room, Mitch and whoever was in Steve’s cell would just… neutralize Steve.

And you couldn’t have that.

You squeezed your eyes tighter, feeling your body shake even as you tried not to give them the satisfaction of seeing you scared. You cursed the lonely tears rolling down your cheeks. You sent a quick prayer to whatever messed up God listening.

And then you realized it wasn’t you who was shaking.

It was the ground.

And it wasn’t shaking – it was quaking.

In your mind’s eye, you smiled and then laughed – hysterically. These assholes should quiver in their boots. They had no idea what force of nature was about to hit them.

Agent Daisy Johnson had been a force to reckon with even since she had joined; but Quake would take them by storm.

Or more precisely, by an earthquake.

“What the-“

Before you could let the relief envelop you, a deafening noise swept over the room, the wave of sheer power seemingly shattering your bones.

When darkness pulled you under, it was with a weak, but real smile on your face.

Next chapter

Series masterlist // S.R. masterlist

That’s right, folks, Quake is coming 👀

This chapter took a long time and I'm aware... life's been happening (and not always in a good way) and this chapter was a long one and heavy one to write, despite the oy it brought me. Please, consider leaving a comment if you can - let me know your thoughts, I love reading them!

FYI, I couldn’t resist Quake making an appearance and I couldn’t resist the heart to heart over the wall, it was actually one of the scenes I’ve had written down first along with the screaming match at the beginning of the series 🥹

I hope March is kind to you 💕

#fanfiction #steve rogers x reader #steve rogers x you #steve rogers imagine #steve rogers #captain america #captain america x reader #captain america x you #captain america imagine #shield agent reader #agent reader #inhuman reader #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fanfic #back and forth #anika ann

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sanctus-ingenium · 10 months

Note

How old are the novices when they start working on the mezian beasts as smith/knight apprentices?

i broke out the ol powerpoint just for you (zoom in to read)

initiates come from many sources both within and outside the church - from babies randomly dumped on the doorstep of a cathedral to willing donations from the laity. It is a tradition that the first non-inheriting child in a family will be given to the church, it's a huge honour for the parents. but in circumstances where the children are taken without the parents' consent (this happens quite often), the kids are transported to different cities or cathedrals without the parents' knowledge.

all initiates are given new names by the church (forenames in alphabetical order paired with a surname indicating where they first trained) and all efforts are made to eliminate any lingering familial bonds. the mandatory masking helps with this.

i wrote way more than i intended because it was something i needed to write up anyway for my own reference and to refresh my knowledge lol enjoy.

The initiates are given a normal religious education and then when they are considered old enough to do simple supervised work (around 8) their capabilities are tested to determine their life path. Here i have only illustrated two paths - smith and knight - but they can also become scribes, priests, cleaners, cooks, whatever the church may need. needless to say, the knight's path is the most selective, as ultimately there is only one knight at a time, and most of the knight novices will fail to progress.

smith acolytes aren't assigned to any one beast or master, and do basic grunt work - a lot of scrubbing armour and cleaning mechanisms - until they become junior novices at age 12, where they start to be trained to handle more responsibilities. Junior novices are assigned to holy beasts based on need (the beast's master smiths will let the church know when they need extra hands on deck). There's no real age limit to this - a novice is a novice until they become a journeyman, but at a certain stage a junior novice is expected to formally ask a master or journeyman to train them one on one (aka to become an novice apprentice). Whether or not the senior smith accepts is entirely up to them and often depends on their own workload, if they can take on an additional apprentices, etc. They often play favourites and if a novice shows a lot of talent, there could even be competition to see who claims him first as an apprentice.

Once you become an apprentice you get an intensive high quality training that lasts a couple of years until you can be considered a journeyman, someone who can be trusted to independently conduct all tasks required of his profession to a high level of skill. on this chart i only have the primary and secondary route mapped out for mercury smiths but it's the same for all smith disciplines - primary smiths are more prestigious as they work directly on holy beasts, but in truth secondary smiths, who work on commercial engines and designs, are the real moneymakers in the church.

a master is considered a master when they produce a new, innovative design which showcases their mastery of their art. a new efficient engine, a piece of elaborate metalwork, or a new application of dragonsblood - it has to impress a board of established masters enough that the smith is awarded the master rank. masters need to show proof of new innovations on a regular basis and are expected to have at least one apprentice at a time. Mercury Luca, who is in his 30s at the start of the story (after the prologue), earned his master title by designing Leun's current heart block (replacing the original heart design, which was a copy of Pantera's heart built by the late Mercury Rodrigo, Leun's original enginesmith. the heart killed him).

Each holy beast has a master mars and mercury smith permanently assigned to him, and in stables where multiple beasts are maintained, seniority will go to the master smiths of the highest ranked holy beasts (therefore, Mercury Luca, Leun's master enginesmith, is the highest ranked in the stables despite being younger and technically less experienced than the other masters). Saturn alchemists primarily deal with the matters of dragonsblood fuel and dialogue tattoos so have slightly different rankings - First Master Saturn alchemists work on holy beast fuel management, while Second Master Saturn alchemists work apart from the beasts by providing dialogue tattoos to smiths.

Ultimately, all smith apprentices will end up working at their field even if they are eternal novices who never earn enough goodwill to get apprenticed. It's not the same for knights. There can be only one at a time and a knight has no set expiration date - they might die in battle tomorrow, they might serve for thirty years straight. An apprentice knight is expected to be able to replace their master at a moment's notice, mid-battle if they have to, so are always on standby.

The novices selected from the initiates work alongside smith novices and believe that they are no different - i.e, although they have passed the requisite tests to become knights, they are not informed of this. The knight path is highly secretive and until the point of no return, when they are selected for apprenticeship, novices are kept in the dark about their potential futures.

The knight is the only one who gets to select apprentices and is often incredibly choosy. The novices are taken to be interviewed by the knight. If the knight rejects every novice during that recruitment cycle, the rejected novices can join another apprentice route, provided they passed the initial prerequisites at initiate stage. If not, they might be turfed off to go be cleaners or scribes or whatever. On becoming apprentices, the novices get their dialogue tattoos, and from then on are expected to live apart from the rest of the apprentices, in the knights' quarters. The secrets of their tattoos are heavily guarded and from this moment on, any dishonourable dropouts have to be executed to protect knight secrets from spreading even to other members of the church. Apprentices learn on the job, and as they grow older there's a hierarchy among them where the eldest is next in line to replace the knight, and so on. They typically ride in the throne room with the knight, depending on space available. most knights have about six apprentices. Because of this setup, someone as young as 12 might suddenly find themselves a knight in charge of a holy beast.

The requirements for knights are quite stringent. At the start of the story there is a recruitment crisis brewing where Leun is concerned, as Sir Heaven rejects every single novice presented to him and has no apprentices whatsoever, operating the throne room alone aside from a visual interpreter. Although Sir Heaven is visually impaired, that is not actually considered a disqualifier because knights fight blind anyway. injuries to the limbs that leave them permanently affected are disqualifying. Because any apprentice at this stage is considered to be chosen by god, they are given a merciful death. You need two working arms to operate a holy beast.

#setting: mez #yay i love rambling #hideous structural ableism? in MY catholic dystopia?#shoutout sir victory

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magici-if · 11 months

Text

Behind-the-scenes Breakdown

[AKA MY FIRST PROGRESS UPDATE]

So I'm basically done with the Prologue, which is about 25k words right now.

I also have the Chapter One outlined and I've started on it.

My personal goal right now is to post the demo under August, but it's by no means a deadline. I also work, study and have a social life lmao so I can't promise anything 'cause I genuinely don't know how long this will take.

Yeah so August is the personal goal, but act like I didn't say anything in case I can't make it heheh

-irina ♥︎

STAY TUNED

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ⊹₊꒷︶꒷꒦‧₊˚⊹︰꒷

A small Sneek Peek below (the incident I mentioned in this post if MC has Dark Affinity)

not joking when I say kid illusionist!MC was a menace, their parents had to literally explain to them why what they did was wrong.

Was the wife really on a date with someone else or was it just something they made up? Trust me, there's more to it and basically Illusionist!MC helped to uncover it 🤐 (tho they could've gone about it in a way better way, ngl)

#interactive fiction #if wip #progress update

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electrozeistyking · 1 month

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I am so incredibly curious about N and Uzi before…. N had to kill her…

What was life like as a married drone couple? How did they do their wedding? How awkward was the conversation about having a kid?

I’m also curious about V in this AU, what are her thoughts on all that’s going on… N killing Uzi, N having a kid, N being fricken’ depressed… She was a broken individual in the canon, is she still just as broken here? Has she healed from all that the solver’s but her through?

sorry for the many questions, but as an obsessive individual you have crafted the perfect thing for me to obsess over and i am dying for more content lol.

p.s. are there more fics to come? Ik ya only have the one prologue rn, are more chapters on their way?

Hey, no need to apologize for being curious! I quite like the amount of questions! Tells me you're interested in the AU, y'know? Anyway, let me dig up some old notes!

These aren't the full notes, though. A lot was cut, especially if they involved spoilers and/or if they made this go on for too long.

Everything was as fine as it could possibly be on this frozen, toxic exoplanet. Hell, this stretch of fine-ness went on long enough that one of them decided to propose to the other.

And by one of them, I mean Uzi.

This is based on some observations (aka the hand holding thing in Episode 6), but N was a major fucking dork when V asked him if he was thinking about proposing to Uzi — y’know, saying things like “I don’t know if I should” and “maybe she doesn’t want to go that far” and “maybe we’re fine as is?”

Then meanwhile Uzi’s been drawing up plans on how the hell she’s going to propose to this tall ass robot.

In the end, she kinda threw it all to the wind and decided to do so with no big events or plans or anything. She kinda panicked, though, so she said “Do you wanna marry me?” instead of “Will you marry me?”

N nearly short-circuited trying to say yes. He was kind of having a “Oh my goodness, this is happening????” moment and a “OH SHE DOES WANT TO GO THAT FAR” moment at the exact same time, so something may have literally sparked.

[...] there was a funny period of time where the duo kept very suddenly realizing they’re married, like it didn’t actually sink in until that moment.

In fact, N exclaimed “oh my goodness” and leaned against something every time it occurred to him.

Unfortunately, the good fluffy times couldn’t last forever.

You see, one way or another, our beloved robotic dorks somehow found themselves on the topic of having a kid. The conversation itself was fine, if slightly awkward at first (what with N being unsure he’d be good at parenting, anyway). However, just as they reached the peak of “hey, would they be more disassembler or more worker” jokes, Uzi started coughing.

Which is not normal for any kind of drone. Unless they accidentally swallow something wrong, or if the air’s a bit too thick for whatever reason, drones don’t cough for seemingly no reason. And yet, despite how odd it was, both of them tried to brush it off.

In a brilliant moment of jumping to conclusions (even if they’re the right ones), Uzi realized that The Solver was trying to take over her body.

In a panic, N tried to help any way he could, but felt like he was doing nothing in the process. Uzi just kept getting worse, and every time they landed up empty-handed, the thought he was failing her stung even more.

V tried to help as well, out of fear over what that thing would do if It took over (and because she did think of Uzi as a friend, even if she’d never admit it to her face).

When The Solver started hijacking her body during one such search to find a way to stop It, Uzi realized it was all over for her.

Whatever this thing was — whatever It wanted — wasn’t good. And so, in a moment of desperation and panic, she came up with a plan to destroy It. Hopefully, if everything worked in their favour, It’d be gone once and for all.

Of course, its success banked on N’s cooperation. Since V split off from the duo this time, he was the only disassembly drone who could possibly carry it out. Predictably, he tried to decline at first, seeing as the plan was to kill Uzi and destroy her core.

However, when Uzi explained that this was the only way to get rid of this fucking thing, N reluctantly agreed. Despite being incredibly painful, he brought out his laser gun (which is what I think it is, shut up) and the couple had one last heartfelt goodbye.

But then, just as N went to shoot her, the laser turned an awful shade red he’s never seen before and started malfunctioning — something that’s supposed to rarely ever happen. N panicked, calling out Uzi’s name... right before the weapon exploded.

V felt the vibrations of the explosion from where she stood and immediately rushed to N and Uzi’s location. She assumed that something went wrong, but what she saw was not what she expected.

Uzi was dead.

There was a Fatal Error message on her visor, as clear as day. She was in multiple pieces, with a hole in her chest right where her core was supposed to be — having most likely imploded, thanks in part to The AbsoluteSolver’s weirdness.

While N was alive, his body was in rough shape. He’d been split in two due to the blast, and his chest had been cracked wide open. Judging from how dark smoke billowed from where one of his hands should’ve been, something had gone completely wrong.

But how? There was a very small chance their weapons could malfunction, and yet... what the fuck happened?

V chose not to dwell on it too long. N’s body wasn’t regenerating on its own fast enough for some reason, and he was losing a shit ton of oil at an alarming rate.

Fuelled by pure adrenaline, V somehow managed to carry both of N’s halves and all of Uzi’s pieces back to the Outpost.

#Zeisty's Askbox #ghost drone au #tw death #tw major character death #tw injury #just in case tag #a lot of them anyway #souls is going to kick my ass (affectionately)#i'll reblog this with the actual answers at one point #this feels a bit bogged down to me already so

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asukamood · 5 months

Text

Prologue

***

We all know Augustine’s point of view, but what about Winnie’s?

[aka I took the game’s plot and made us follow Winnie instead of Augustine]

(The game was created by racheldrawsthis, I absolutely do not own the characters and as such, some off-canon elements may be included here.)

Link to the game

***

Previous part — Next part

***

Warnings: Slight angst, self-doubt and social anxiety is out of this world

Synopsis: He stepped into the building, taking in the sight. His father pat him on the back, joining him.

“Welcome home, Winnie!” He said, before returning to the car under the orders of his wife.

He stayed silent.

It did not feel like home.

***

It was a cold winter evening when the young Winnie and his family moved into the small city of ###. The child, who had fallen asleep during the journey, was shaken awake by the sudden lack of movement from the vehicle. He rubbed his sleepy eyes in an attempt to wake himself up, slowly turning to the window as his mother proceeded to park the car.

It was not snowing, yet the radiant green of the glass was covered in snow, altering its color to a shade of white. From where he was sitting, Winnie could even see the frost that had covered the road, the few people still outside careful in their step.

The car fully immobilized, his mother turned to him with a bright smile. “Have you slept well, dear?”

Winnie nodded absently; eyebrows furrowed at the implication of their arrival here.

He did truly abandon all his friends.

Imitating his parents, the little boy removed the seatbelt, before opening the door. He stood outside on wobbly legs, the limbs not used to support the weight of his body anymore.

It was cold.

His parents moved past him toward the trunk, unloading the massive cargo they were transporting that was mainly composed of boxes filled to the brim with various items including but not limited to clothing, trinkets from their old home, photos and more.

Due to his small size and strength, Winnie was spared from the duty to carry all those heavy boxes to his new house.

His new house...

He looked at the building for a few seconds, trying to find any similarities between this unfamiliar place and his house. He could not find any and his shoulders slumped as he made his way toward the entrance, behind his parents.

On the road, he caught a glimpse of the house next door, the living room still illuminated by light and the vague image of a TV show playing visible.

At least that house looked alive.

He stepped into the building, taking in the sight. His father pat him on the back, joining him.

“Welcome home, Winnie!” He said, before returning to the car under the orders of his wife.

He stayed silent.

It did not feel like home.

***

He was in his new room, curled up in a ball in his blanket. His parents were sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to tug the sheets off his body.

“Come on Winnie, were you not the one to complain about your lack of friends?” His father questioned, failing to take the covers off. “I heard our neighbors had a child your age, this could be your chance to make a new friend!” He encouraged, trying his best to hype his son up.

“If you get along well, maybe you could even go to school with him or feel more at ease here.” His mother continued. “I know you didn’t want to move out, but it was for the best if we did. Can’t you at least try to get to know the other children?”

Seeing that the little boy was still not budging, the couple shared a glance before sighing, standing up.

“Alright... if you really don’t want to go that bad, I guess we can’t force you. Call us if you need anything.” Winnie waited until the footsteps faded away before getting out of his hiding place, staying in position for a few more minutes.

***

Winnie was sitting on the windowsill, yet again curled up in a ball. Only this time, he was crying softly, the tears rolling down his cheeks eventually wetting his sleeves. He sniffled as he looked out the window, noticing other children playing together and laughing.

The sight only worsened his mood, another soft sob escaping him.

He would have continued silently crying like that if the sudden movement of his door handle being pulled had not startled him. He jumped back against the window, both of his hands on the glass.

“Wha-” An unfamiliar voice came from the other side of the door, scaring Winnie even further. “Huh? It’s locked?”

Winnie was rendered speechless from fear for a second before he finally got the courage to speak up, still on his guard. “W-who’s there? I don’t know that voice!” The question came out wobbler than he wanted, making him cringe.

“Ah!” The voice let out. “Are you the kid that’s stuck in the room all day?!” Not waiting for an answer, he continued. “Open the door first and I’ll tell ya!”

Winnie gulped. “N...No thank you!” He tried to talk louder this time, in hopes it would scare away whoever it was. “Please just leave...!!”

“Ehh~!!” The other hummed. “Why not! Just open it, will ya!”

Winnie was too scared to answer.

After a few minutes of silence, the other person’s voice reached Winnie’s ears again.

“HAAAAH-” It dramatically shouted, making Winnie flinch again, his heart pounding in his chest. What were they going to do?? “OPEN SESAME!!!”

Winnie’s face scrunched in incomprehension, the boy pinching himself to check if he was not dreaming. He was not.

He looked at the door, the silence stretching between them loud with the second embarrassment Winnie got from hearing this.

He finally left the windowsill, tiptoeing to the door, careful in his steps in hopes of being silent. He unlocked the door with a click. The sound seemingly grounded him back to reality, horror sweeping over his face as he realized what he had done. He ran back to the windowsill, terrified.

“Aw, hey! It worked!” Came the observation, the door swinging open to reveal a boy his age, wearing a bright orange hoodie. His messy chestnut brown hair bounced slightly as he moved, his amber eyes scanning the room.

Winnie, glued to the window, blinked at the newcomer, staring at him with blurry eyes.

Their eyes met and the other child gasped. “Wait, are you crying??” He approached the other, a frown of confusion on his face.

“Are you crying because I came in here?” Disbelief laced his voice, making Winnie want to disappear right here and there. “But I just got here!” He argued with himself as Winnie hid his face behind his elbow. “Do you like being alone that much??”

“I was already crying...” Winnie muttered. “And that is not the reason why...”

“Whuh?” The other tilted his head. “Then why ARE you crying?”

“...” He could feel another wave of tears threatening to spill. “Because I’m lonely...” He admitted.

“All my friends are back where I used to live, now I have no one.” He continued with an embarrassingly high-pitched voice. He was not sure why he was even telling this stranger this but for some reason, he felt compelled to do it.

Was it because of his loneliness?

“No matter how hard I try, all the kids here already know each other, it’s going to be hard for me to fit in.” He buried his face in his arms even deeper. “Even if they do hang out with me, it’s out of pity or adults telling them to because I’m new.”

Then quieter, “I don’t want that...”

He looked up once more, staring into amber eyes. “You’re the same, right?” He sniffed. “You’re only here because my mom told you to, right?”

“Well, yeah.” He blatantly replied, no hesitation at all.

He did not expect anything in the first place, so why was Winnie disappointed anyway?

“I knew it... You also feel sorry for me.”

“But I didn’t come here to try and be your friend.” The other corrected.

That got the other’s attention, wide blue eyes looking at him in disbelief. “...What? Then why...?”

“I was curious about what kind of kid you were.” he responded, shrugging. “And from what I’ve seen so far, I think you’re pretty lame and whiny and a bit of a scaredy crybaby.” He chuckled as he counted the adjectives, each one stabbing Winnie emotionally.

“Wah!” He cried. “You’re so mean!”

He clutched his heart and was surprised to see the other extend his fist toward him, a huge smile on his face. “But I didn’t say I felt sorry for you, did I?”

Winnie’s eyes widened as he realized it.

“Do you just assume everyone feels the same way you think they would feel?” He questioned, looking beyond amused. “I only talked to you once and you’re already accusing me of something I’ve never even thought of!”

“I think the real reason why you won’t get any friends is because of the way you are thinking right now!” He continued as Winnie’s muscles relaxed.

“Deciding what’ll happen in the future in your head and never actually trying to fix anything in the present.” He smiled.

“If you’re worried about people being sincere when they approach you... why don’t YOU make them be sincere then?” Winnie regarded the other boy with a newfound attention.

“I don’t do friends with people because I was told to. So, you try and make ME want to become YOUR friend.”

“Don’t push people away from the start and keep working hard, and people that’ll care about you will always stay by your side.” He chuckled. “That’s what I was taught to anyway!”

In Winnie’s eyes, it felt like a true revelation. He found himself staring at him with admiration, sparkles in his eyes. Finally, he dried his tears with his sleeve and smiled back. “...Okay!”

After this interaction, the two soon grew close and became inseparable. From morning to evening, from elementary school to high school graduation, they were like attached to each other’s hip. They performed the same activities, had the same hobbies, studied in the same class and generally acted a lot alike.

Everyone in town knew they were close.

And yet, after one winter, Winnie stopped talking to Augustine, a worry that plagued his mind and made him unable to think of a better solution.

… It was July.

And Winnie had to leave.

#cold front game #cold front #cold front winnie #cold front augustine #augustine orlov #winnie bosko #fluff #angst #fluff with a bad ending #different point of view

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clumsiestgiantess · 9 months

Text

The Walls Won’t Be There Forever (tw dehumanization, some ptsd dreams of sexual harassment)(it is about the pet trope, however condemning of it the story might be. So watch out yk?)

I ended up deciding to put out the entire first half (aka first two povs) instead of something shorter. Y’all certainly don’t have to read it all in one sitting, but here it is!

Prologue

It all started with a discovery. Then agian, someone mustve known sooner. 67 years after The Borrowers book series was published, along with various movies, tv shows, and spin offs, science finally got its hands on the real thing. It wasn't completely true to the books, though. Their reflexes were off the charts fast — probably why no one's managed to find one all this time. They also had strangely-shaped ears. However, the biggest disappointment: they were basically mice who looked like people. Unfortunately, the books are still labeled fiction for this reason. The creatures only speak in the squeaks of mice, and they aren't that much smarter than mice, either.

Which is why, within a few months of discovery, the homosapians redactus, commonly known as Mice People or Borrowers after the books, became fully known to the world as either a pest or a pet. I, for one, find it rather unsettling to see something that looks so similar to us but small, though apparently, most people thought that was very cute. So, owning a little mouse person to dress up and play with instantly became a new trend.

On the other end of the spectrum, pest services started advertising their expertise in catching 'those sneaky little creatures stealing your things'. Soon, every house was being inspected, including my own. It was around the time of my younger sister Aubrey's birthday, and following the new trend, she begged my parents to let her keep one of the creatures. My mother, who was already deathly afraid of tiny scurrying pests like mice, rats, and cockroaches, immediately rejected her idea of a pet mouse person. Especially a wild one caught from the house. Eventually, she made an exception for her birthday though, so she let her pick one out from the pet store in town. The ones that came from there had to have gone through some kind of basic training to be on the shelf.

Aubrey could barely sit still the entire drive to the store. As soon as we got there, she ran straight to the new section of borrowers for adoption while me and my mother walked over to the section for pet cages and accessories. As per normal, there was an array of products to choose from, ranging from normal glass cages with little 'bonus' accessories inside, to two level mini mansions that looked like decked-out doll houses. "Oh look at this!" my mother exclaimed, pointing to a sign above one of the cages. "These are on sale! Two for one!"

If a store puts anything, and I mean anything on sale, my mother will buy it just because it's 'saving money'. Even if we're spending that money on useless things, it doesn't matter, just as long as it's on sale or in the clearance section. "Mom, Aubrey's borrower doesn't need two cages. Just get one." "But then it won't be a sale…" She stood there thinking while I walked the rest of the aisle.

"How about this," my mother asked me on my way back. "I'll buy both cages and both you and your sister can have little pets." I blinked, "I thought we were just getting one for Aubrey because it's her birthday." "What? You don't want one?" she asked me, confused. I shrugged, "They aren't that interesting, that's all," I said, not wanting to admit that they kinda freaked me out. "Hmm… Then you can get one. And if you don't like it, or it's too 'boring' you can give it to Aubrey."

I could see there was no way to win this argument, so I nodded and headed toward the aisle my sister had run down earlier. As I started scanning the cages built into the wall, she ran up to me and yanked at my sleeve. "Do you want to see my new pet?" I didn't really have a choice once she started dragging me down the aisle. "You already found one?" I asked. "Mmm hmm," she nodded, "This one right here!" Peering in, I could see the little human-like creature standing by its cot, preoccupied with something. "Mom said I could have one too, but I'll probably just get bored of it and give it to you," I told Aubrey as I turned away from her borrower in its display cage. "What!?" she whined, "How come you get one too? That isn’t fair! It's not your birthday!" Shrugging, I answered, "I don't know, she found some deal on cages so she's letting me have one as well."

Aubrey stormed off to find Mom, while I began my search for a decent pet. I wanted one that was mellow enough that it wouldn't cause trouble, but not so mellow that it would be boring. Finally, after my sister begged me to hurry up and choose, I found one that seemed to be a good fit. She was about average height for a borrower, with straight black hair that was cut at shoulder height, and piercing blue eyes. She was probably just a few years older than me, so she would live for a long time after I bought her.

The articles I’ve read about them say that borrowers can sometimes even outlive their owners if they're given proper care, but hopefully I can just hand it over to my sister if I get tired of it. Aubrey might not want it, but Mom was relentless, so I guess it'll be their problem. Soon our borrowers were boxed up and put on the register, along with my mother's brilliant bargain cages.

After a careful drive back to the house (don't jiggle them around, you're gonna make them sick), and an even more careful trip up to my room (don't drop the box, it might escape), I finally began setting up my pet's new home. The cage was pretty simple. It's a large glass tank that takes up about half of the space on my dresser, with a wire top and two doors. The side door was for taking your borrower out; it had a bolt lock on it to keep your pet safely inside. However, the second door on the top of the cage had a simple latch on it. This was really just for easy access to things like replacing food and water. It was too high up for a borrower to reach, so it wasn't a possible escape route, but I took a mental note to duct tape it closed later.

Most of the extra stuff from the bag inside the tank were bits of furniture and decorative trinkets to entertain your pet. Honestly, most of it looked like it came from a cheap dollhouse set, but that's what you get when you buy 2 for 1 bargain cages. I spread the random decorations around the cage, leaving a large empty space at the front for me to look through. After everything was set, I picked up the small cardboard box holding the borrower and carefully opened it as I set it down inside the cage. She didn't seem to want to come out, so I checked the locks on the doors one last time and left her to settle in.

Part 1

It all started with a discovery. Humans know about us now, and they've wrecked everything from the very beginning. Of course, our kind have had some close calls before. Being seen but not caught, accidentally taking noticeable things, getting stuck in a gluetrap is always a frightening experience. There's even been books and movies made about us but still, no one found out. Until now. My family barely got a warning before the exterminators arrived, separating us. How long has it been since I've seen them? Weeks? Months? I'm pretty sure my brother is in one of the other cages somewhere, but because of the code, I can't call out to him.

The code. It's always been one of those 'golden rules' you learn when you're young, almost like instinct. I always hated thinking about it back then. In fact, when I was younger, I had nightmares about this — this awful rule that forces us to quit speaking, forces us to play dumb so the humans might leave us alone one day. I hate it. I've always hated it. Now that it's a reality, I hate it even more. It's even worse than my childhood nightmares — at least those I could wake up from.

With all the time I spend staring out a glass wall every day, I've noticed certain things about humans that I hadn't before. Of all the humans I've seen, they always either act like predators, or act like prey. The ones that act like prey are easier to deal with for sure. They won't purposely hurt you most of the time, and even if they do, they make a big fuss over it. Which is fine I guess, but they have such an overpowering scent of energy, and boy are they stupid. They're also slightly annoying, and boring, and nine times out of ten they buy you to dress you up for whatever idiotic trend is going on now. I wouldn't be surprised if many of my kind bought by them end up right back here in cages once our discovery blows over.

However, the humans that act like predators are a lot harder to read. And like most predators of this world, I'm terrified of them. I can only hope that I don't get picked by one of those. Unlike the prey humans who buy you to be their little toy, the predators buy you because they see you as an animal — an actual pet. If they scare the shit out of you, they don't care. If you make them angry, they torture you, or take you back to the store with enough complaints to get you put down.

Yeah, again, I pray that I don't get chosen by one of them. In fact, I think my best option is to sit here, not getting picked at all. That dream died almost a month later though, when a certain family came in early to celebrate a birthday. At first I thought it was just the younger one looking around; she bounced back and forth between all the different windows, peering in at each one of us just to make sure she knew all her options. This human definitely fit into the prey category. She picked hers quickly — not me thank goodness — and I let out a relieved breath.

Then, her older sister walked over and explained that their mother told her she needed a pet too. Thankfully, I learned a lot of the human language before I was abducted. I wouldn’t know half of what was going on without it. Instantly, I went on high alert again, expecting this human to be the same type of prey human that her sister was. However, as she silently paced back and forth along the wall, it became clear that she was more on the predator side. It would take her a lot longer to find the 'right one'. Keeping to my strategy, I steered clear of doing anything to attract attention. Even so much as locking eyes for a moment was enough to set humans off. I guess predators are interested in that sort of thing, though, because next thing I know I'm being thrown in a cardboard box and placed on a counter, my entire life summed up as $14.99 on the register.

My heart rate finally slowed slightly as the humans drove back to their house. Great, now I can panic. My mind raced as I realized that my worst nightmare had come true. I'd been chosen by a predator human. How do I get myself out of this? I can't just sit here and wait to be tortured! I have to get out! Frantically, I shoved at the pieces of cardboard that folded together above me, but nothing bugged. Grabbing one of the air holes, I hauled myself up so I could see how the top opened from the outside.

I had my head pressed to the hole for a while before I felt a crawling feeling down my spine. I glanced the other way and fell back in shock. The human was watching me — just waiting for me to slip up and do something wrong so she could hurt me. That put an end to any escape plans for the rest of the ride.

Next thing I knew, I was brought through the house and upstairs to the girl's bedroom. I tried to memorize the layout of the floors so I would know where to run if I escaped, but I quickly found that staying in one place was impossible with the human's movements jostling the entire box. Eventually, I was placed on a massively large bed while the human cleared off a space on her dresser. I sat silently in the box, pressed against the wall furthest from the human, watching through the air slits as she sorted out a cage for me.

Finally, after everything was placed down, Liz, — I'd overheard her name in the car — picked up the cardboard box. The motion was so sudden that I fell forwards. My stomach lurched as I unsteadily righted myself. Just as abruptly as the motion started, it stopped. I barely had time to process what happened before the folds in the top of the box gave away, revealing the behemoth human far above me. In a panic, I threw myself into a corner and watched as the human scrutinized me quietly, then stepped out of view. I heard her footsteps get further and eventually fade away.

Though I could tell she was gone, I refused to leave the sad cardboard corner I hid in. It offered the only protection I had, even if it wasn't much. All I could do was sit there, shaking with fear-made adrenaline as tears welled in my eyes. It must have been a good hour and a half at least when I'd finally stopped crying. Existential dread loomed over my mind, whispering things like you’ll die here, and you won’t last a week. Why on earth does my brain think it’s a good idea to terrify me even further than I already am?!

I shakily got up, steadying myself with the side of the box as I took in my horrible new home. The ceiling was made of a wire mesh, and every wall was made of glass. I noticed this instantly. There was nowhere to hide — nowhere I could go where the human couldn't easily find me.

Slowly, I stepped out into the glass cage, brushing my fingertips over the human-style bed tucked against a corner. The only decent thing in the entire room was this bed. My old one at the petstore was almost as hard as the floor, and this one was blissfully soft in comparison. I walked slowly along the back wall, always keeping the bedroom door in view as I passed an empty bookshelf and a dresser with a mirror made of reflective paper instead of glass. My reflection was only a few sad distorted colors.

The only other thing I had was a table with four chairs surrounding it. I laughed coldly in spite of myself, forcing down tears before they had the chance to spring up. Why would I ever need four chairs when I would probably never have the privilege of seeing a guest my own height? Though I guess the human’s sister has one of my kind, too. I can only hope they’re holding out alright. It was funny, though. They’d been picked by a prey human. If anything, they should be worried about me.

I sat down at the table and sighed, burying my head in my arms. How had it all come to this? Why me? What did I ever do to be thrown in a stupid- BOOM The door to the human's room suddenly swung open, startling me out of my thoughts. "Oh look!" Liz's sister exclaimed as she rushed to my cage, "It's at the table ready to eat! Look Liz, look how cute!" I froze, stunned. This human was LOUD, I couldn't really tell at the store because our rooms muffled everything, but sitting in a mostly empty cage — echoes vibrating off the walls — it was almost deafening.

Wait, I’m supposed to be acting like a dumb creature, right? I can't be sitting at a table in front of them. Quickly, I backed out of the chair and sat in a random spot on the floor instead. "That was so cute; maybe I could train mine to do that," Liz's sister thought aloud. She meandered back out the door. I was so distracted trying to seem unintelligent that I'd missed the sound of the cage door opening. When Liz's arm fell down from above, I nearly screamed. I soon realized that she wasn't here for me, though; she'd only come to deliver food. If that's even what she's given me. Liz left some kind of dried pellets on the table I'd been sitting at minutes ago, and I tried my best not to gag when she placed them down. They smelled extremely un-appetizing. However, as the long hours melted into days, I forced myself to eat them. I had no alternative.

The bedsprings squeaked as Liz flung herself down, tablet in hand. It had been a long, terrorizing morning, so I sat on my bed to watch her carefully. Despite living in hell for the past week, I'm still not used to Liz being around. To be honest, I’m still not used to the fact that I’m still around.

I had another nightmare last night, though it was really more of a horrible memory. For the first few days of my time in the pet store, my subconsciousness was plagued with haunting images of the exterminators, tearing my old life away from me. It was so bad that I hadn’t slept a single second. I’d gotten almost drunkenly sick before managing to sleep nearly a week after my capture. This time in my dream, it was Liz, not the exterminators, who dragged me away from my family as I desperately fought to stay with them. I was thrown into the cage she bought me, and forced to wear stupid doll's outfits and play pretend. After waking up, I doubted she would do that — she doesn't seem like the type — but I've heard what happens across the hall in her sister's room when the doors are open. My nightmares are almost daily occurrences there.

I shuddered, propping my pillows up, and sat back waiting for Liz to leave. However, the silence of the room was threatening to swallow me. The only sounds came from the slight thuds and creaks somewhere outside in the hallway. Usually, my home was filled with sounds of life. My mother, cooking on the makeshift stove, my father, stashing borrowed goods, and me and my brother, doing various chores around the house. I reminisced for a moment before regrettably returning to my horrible reality.

Suddenly, the silence was broken as the human began to humm to a song I'd heard on the radio at the store. Well I have called you darlin' and I'll say it again… the quiet hums became quiet singing as she got to the chorus. Put your hand in mine, I promise that I will be with you all the time… After another few lyrics, the chorus line came back around again, and I have to admit, I was enjoying the song. Her voice wasn't actually that bad. Then, Liz abruptly stopped mid-chorus-line and looked around, confused. I didn't plan on her to stop singing so suddenly, so I kept going, not realizing my mistake until it was too late.

I didn't know I was singing out loud. I thought it was just in my head. But as Liz's singing came to a halt, I'd actually kept going. The entire borrower secret blowing up in my face. Quickly, I looked over in shock and saw the massive girl staring at me. "Y- You can sing!?" Before I could stop myself, I blurted "No!"

What did I do? The hell did I just do!? My hands flew to my mouth as I scrambled up from my bed in terror. Liz flung herself up from her own bed as well and rushed over to the glass wall in front of me. "You can talk! You can understand me! This is incredible!" No, no, no, no! This is when the torture starts; this is when they send you to a lab for the world to reveal your secrets! Hot tears streamed down my face as I backed all the way up, crouching against the far wall.

Liz thought aloud as she began to pace the room. "How have we not noticed you guys can talk? You've been in labs for months and human speech was somehow overlooked during all that?" Coming to a sudden halt, she glanced back over at me. "Wait. There's no way they didn't catch that. Which means… Have you guys been hiding that from us the whole time?" Slowly crossing the room, Liz peered through the glass again. Her expression shifted from triumphant joy to a concerned frown. "Wait, are you.. Are you crying?" she asked, confused. No! She can't figure it out! My head screamed, my heart pounded in my ears. Everything started to blur in front of me and I honestly thought I was going to pass out. I did this. I failed. Once word got out about us, it would all be my fault.

I desperately rubbed the tears from my eyes in a last-ditch effort to undo what I'd done. She regarded me for a moment, typed something on her phone, then left it by my cage and backed off, giving me one last look before silently walking away to another level of the house. Confusion was written on every inch of her gigantic form.

My head was wrapped in a fog as I wandered over to the glass, staring at nothing as I tried to process what happened. Then all at once, pent up emotions exploded through me in an instant. "No no no! I can't believe I let her walk away like that! She's probably telling everyone right now, dammit!" I kicked the glass angrily, "Why can't they just leave us alone? Now they're all going to drag me off to some horrible lab to be studied!" Tears welled against my eyes, blurring everything out as I crawled into bed. “Please,” I begged no one in particular, “Please don’t let it end like this.” Pulling the blankets up over my head, I lay in darkness wishing I could stay there forever.

Eventually, I heard the bedroom door open. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed myself deeper into my pillow, desperately willing whoever it was to go away. The glass around me vibrated as they took something off the table and left. To my utter amazement, that was all that happened. Sure, I could hear the sounds of humans walking past from under the covers — which I never left the rest of the day — but they never came to take me away. No one came to pry me out of bed. No one even came by to ask why I was hiding. The entire day played out just like any other, with even less commotion than normal.

This changed the next day however, when Liz came upstairs after breakfast and caught me out of bed, sneaking something to eat. She came over and sat next to my cage as I cautiously backed into a corner between the glass and the stupid bookshelf she gave me. It doesn’t even have any books on it — there aren’t any small enough for me.

Liz leaned closer, watching me intently. "I left my phone here to record you talking yesterday. So I'd have proof you actually can talk." Shit. "I watched it before going to show everyone." Double shit. Liz was quiet for a while, which gave me a moment to think. So, if she showed everyone proof, why haven't I been taken away to a lab yet? I squirmed uncomfortably in the corner as she stared me down, longer than she had even on the days when she would watch me to see if I would do something interesting. There were a lot of those, and they were unnerving, but I was still thankful for them. They were so much better than all the horror stories I expected from her. In fact, I don’t even think she wants me around. Well, she might not have, until I gave up my secret.

"That video,” Liz began, startling me from my thoughts. “I mean, obviously you're smarter than we think you are but… That's not mimicking human speech that's- that's you talking in the video." Sitting back, she continued, "And you clearly have the same emotional range that we do, too…" She looked over at me again, but for the first time, I didn't flinch back. I was too dumbfounded by what she was saying. "You're.. human." What? "Well, as human as a non-human can be anyway" she chuckled.

So she saw me as… No, if she saw me as an equal I wouldn't be in this dumbass box. Also, what about the video she showed everyone? I had to risk asking. It's not like I'm helping the secret by staying silent, anyways. The video is all the proof she needs.

I took a breath to steady my voice, but it didn't help much. "So.. W-what about everyone who saw the video? Am I… A-are they…" Liz's eyes widened in shock as I spoke, and she shook her head, "No one saw the video but me." "But, you said-" "I watched the video and realized that you were right. If I showed it to anyone you would probably end up in a lab. So I kept it to myself. I deleted it after a while. It’s gone." Blinking, I stood there confused. "So.. You didn't sell me out? Why? Aren't I your… pet?" I spat the last word like a curse. I hated it, but it was true. Liz’s look darkened, and for a terrifying moment, I thought I might’ve reminded her that she was supposed to be torturing me.

However, her expression softened a second later. "Honestly, I don't know what you are anymore, but... If you really are a person, then you shouldn't be in a cage." Yes, please let me go! "But then what? Release you in the woods somewhere? Doesn't your kind survive off ours? Houses aren't safe now that we know you exist, so where could I even bring you?”

"Wait, wait. What do you mean 'houses aren't safe'?" I asked warily. I’m planning on escaping to another house if I ever get out of here. Liz shrugged, "Well, now that people know about you, they're putting up traps. Not just mouse traps, like, actual tripwire surveillance traps," she explained. I puzzled over my new dilemma in shock, taking it all in as she went on and on about the various types of specialized borrower traps.

If it’s true, and human houses aren't safe anymore, then what will happen to the rest of us? The ones that haven't been caught? There have to be some of us still out there, right? Liz must have seen the horrified look on my face because she quickly ended her explanation. "Alright, so releasing you isn't an option…" I recoiled, "Of course releasing me is an option! It's the only option! I don't want to sit in a cage forever!" I stormed over to the glass, my anger overcoming any common sense I had. "You said I was human! You said I don’t deserve to be in a cage! I didn't do anything wrong! You can't keep me in here! You can't-" My voice cracked, but I stubbornly shook my head, refusing to cry in front of this human anymore than I already had.

After a bone chilling silence, I was sure Liz would punish me for yelling at her, and I braced myself for whatever might happen. Finally, she bent down to my height and asked: "Well, what do you want me to do?" Me? Carefully, I raised my head to look at her. It seemed like she genuinely wanted to hear what I thought, but what do I think? I want out, obviously. But where? If houses aren't safe, and the outside world is a nightmare now that the weather's getting colder, where can I go?

I slowly stepped into the chair behind me and sat down heavily, pondering how I would get out of this situation. "What if.." Liz proposed gently, "You stay here? Not as a pet, but like, a roommate, maybe?" "What's the difference?" I grumbled, "I still have to stay in this stupid glass box." She thought for a bit, "Well, as long as you don't get caught outside when other people are around… you could come out whenever you like."

What? This must be some kind of trick, right? To gain my trust or something? But why? "No," I spat a little more harshly than I'd intended. "You're just trying to make me your pet. I won't fall for it." Suddenly, I was ranting, and boy was I on a role. "What is wrong with your kind!? Why are you torturing us like this!? Everything was FINE until you found us! Now we're being treated like animals just because we took things you didn't even want! Hell, you're so stupid you didn't even know they were missing! All of these exterminators and traps — why do you care!? Just let us go back to how things were! But nooo, you just had to go and, and… do whatever the fuck this is!" I yelled, gesturing to my glass box filled with useless trinkets. "It isn't fair!" I shuddered, "It isn't fair."

I guess I'm just tired of being treated like this. Or maybe I'm feeling gutsy because she didn't punish me the first time I lashed out. Whatever it was that compelled me to say that, I could tell I wasn't getting off easily this time.

Liz stood up to her full height, sending instinctive fear coursing through my veins. I scrambled backward, recognizing the danger I put myself in, and hit the back wall with an echoing thunk. Panicking as her gigantic form loomed closer to my cage. "Wait!” I cried out, “I- I didn't mean it!" "Yes, you did," Liz cut me off in a bitter voice. She sized me up, lips parted in a snarl, and for the first time it occurred to me that she could probably eat me in two quick bites. Everything began shaking. No, that was me shaking — dreading my inescapable demise.

"Did it ever occur to you that not all humans are horrible? That maybe I'm actually trying to help you?" Liz asked from somewhere above my blurry line of vision. "If you really want to get out of here, you can start by not cursing me out. Whoever got you here, whoever trapped you and brought you to that pet store… I’m- I’m not like that." The last of her words faded on her tongue. My gaze slowly drifted upwards until I was looking directly up to see her face, which had relaxed a bit. "It's just me. I don't want to hurt you, but I will, p-probably, accidentally maybe, if you keep this up." She turned, walked into the hall, and closed the door, giving me a sidelong glance before her gaze was cut off.

I was lucky. Very lucky. I thought I'd be dead for sure. As much as I hated her for leaving me in here, she did have a good point. It's a horrible idea to yell at someone about 30 times your size. Everyone knows any human would gladly take the chance to torture me for that outburst, so why didn't she? Hell, if someone a fraction of my size started cursing at me, I probably would've threatened to rip them apart.

I went through the motions again as I paced back and forth for what seemed like hours, but I couldn't find one good reason for her to not have hurt me. Other than just being nice, like she said she was… No. Never trust humans, especially when they've put you in a cage. That was the conclusion I stuck with the rest of the day. I dreaded talking to her again, but she would have to come back, this is her room, and I'm stuck in here. Eventually, Liz did come back, and she looked like she'd been trying to avoid me just as much as I was hoping to avoid her. But here we were, standing here staring at each other from across the room.

"Sorry if I scared you before," Liz finally said, avoiding my gaze. "I just… Think it over, will you? My offer?" All I could do was stare at her in numb shock. "But if you don't want to, I understand." Liz shuffled off to the bathroom, PJ's in hand. "Wait!" I yelped, then hesitated, unsure why I stopped her. "Why.. Why are you apologizing to me?”

Liz stood silently in the doorway for a minute, then turned to me. "I don't know," she sighed, "I just… don't know." Then she walked away into the room's connected bathroom and shut the door, cutting off the conversation. Is it just me, or was she acting like she was the one who got yelled at? Wait. She did get yelled at. By me. Was she actually that shaken up over what I said? I shrugged it off; humans are strange creatures, I know that well enough.

Re-making my bed — which looked more like a dollhouse bed than a normal bed — I lay down and realized just how tired I actually was as I sunk into the covers. Later, I heard Liz came back out of the other room and got into bed herself, waving off her parents as they said goodnight.

Nights always felt like my only time alone because humans rarely did anything in the dark. That's why we do most of our sneaking around after hours. Tonight was no different, and even though I was exhausted, I stayed awake. My thoughts ran off as they sometimes do, and I couldn't help but come back to Liz's offer to be 'roommates'. She said she would let me out and I could go wherever I wanted as long as no one else found out. So, it was basically my old way of life back: hide from anyone who might see you and continue doing your own thing the moment they walk away. I just.. add on a human to it, I guess.

If I agree, and if Liz isn’t bluffing to trick me or tame me, I could probably just walk away into the walls and never come back. I can escape without having to find a way to break out of here! Liz shifted in her bed and I froze, thinking she somehow knew I was plotting against her, before realizing she had no clue what I was planning. Letting out a frustrated groan, I turned over and fell asleep.

The next morning, I woke up a bit shaken. Nightmares of exterminators and cages plagued my dreams again last night, along with a few involving my newest captor, Liz. I sat up, rubbing sleep from my eyes and stopped, confused, mid-stretch. Something smelled amazing; what was that smell? Then I noticed the table across the cage.

Replacing the stupid everyday pile of food pellets was something I'd only dreamed of eating: a pancake. I raced out of bed and skidded to a halt at the table. It smelled so good it made my mouth water, and I ignored my borrower's common sense long enough to scarf it down. I think I'd been sitting there for 20 minutes contemplating every scrap of food I ever ate or stole before Liz walked in. "I see you enjoyed breakfast," she noted as she sat next to the cage. "I'd enjoy it more out there," I commented. "Well, if you agree to the deal, you can."

Glancing upward at her, I sighed tiredly. "So what exactly do I have to do? Just hide whenever someone shows up?" "It depends," Liz said, "If you're out while I'm here, I'll just say I was watching you so no one will think you're escaping." For a second I thought guiltily of my escape plan the night before. Wait, no. I shouldn't feel guilty, I'm escaping capture not running away. There's a difference.

"But if you come out and I'm not there," Liz continued, "Then you have to try and make it back into the cage so it looks like you were in there the whole time." "So I don't hide from them?" She shook her head, "No, if someone happens to look over and see that you aren't there, then I get in trouble for letting you 'escape' and you get in trouble because my mom would probably call the exterminators at that point. She hates small creatures." Liz seemed to notice me flinch at the very mention of those awful people because she added, "I'll probably just pretend to search for you while you sneak back in, so hopefully it won't come to that."

Blackmail. That's it; this is probably blackmail to get me to be a good little pet. She’ll let me out, but she threatens me with exterminators if I don’t come back to her. I did say she was the predator type, and those were usually smarter than their counterparts. The joke's on her, though, because when I get out, I'm running far away from where anyone might find me. I don’t know where, but I will.

"Alright," I told her, "I'll come back to the stupid cage." Liz sighed, bending down to my level to look me in the eye, so I could tell this was important. "I don't like keeping you in here every day either, trust me. That's why I'm offering you this deal. But we already established that I can't just release you." "Then just let me live out there!" I yelled, cutting her off. "Get rid of the cage and I'll set up a place for myself right where it was, because for some reason your kind insists on watching me constantly!" "If I treat you like a person, like I want to, won't everyone find out about your secret?" Liz snapped back.

I'd forgotten about that, but it didn't matter, all I have to do is convince her to let me out and I'll be free. If my plan works, I can finally have my life back. Or at least a part of it. "Alright, fine. I agree to your deal." Liz smiled slightly, "Did you want to come out now?" What kind of idiotic question was that? Of course I want to get out. I nodded vigorously and watched as her hand reached around to the side of my cage and unlocked the door to my prison. I dashed outside the moment her hand left the door.

I did it! I'm home free! I'm… terrified. As I stepped from my cage to the barren surface of the dresser, my senses started spiking. I was completely exposed here, and a human was staring me down from within their arm's length. Being watched from in my cage is one thing — even though the walls are glass, they are still walls. The glass would stop any immediate attack from reaching me. Out here on the open dresser, there was nothing to stop Liz from straight up grabbing me. This wasn't the kind of freedom I was expecting.

Liz seemed to understand, at least slightly, what I'd just realized. "If you like, I could leave some things out on the counter for you to hide behind. Though, I was kind of hopong you could sit at my desk." She gestured to the massive piece of furniture on the opposite side of the room. I looked up at her, bewildered. "And how do you expect me to get over there? Fly? I don't have any climbing gear, and I doubt you'll give me any." "Well, I.." she trailed off, holding out a single hand, palm up. It took a few seconds to understand what she was hinting at. Immediately, I stepped all the way back to the furthest part of the dresser, glaring at Liz all the while.

"Oh, hell no. No thank you. I'm not going to literally put my life in your — or anyone else's — hands." It only fueled my anger to see disappointment spread across her face. "You said I wasn't going to be your pet, remember?" I asked peevishly. "Just tie up some string or something I can climb. I can get there just fine on my own." I halfway expected Liz to ignore me and pick me up anyways, but she only nodded, saying she could probably duct tape a few pieces up later.

Just then, Liz's mother called her away to do the dishes. "I'M COMING! ONE SECOND!" Liz called, nearly blasting my eardrums out. I yelped and covered my ears in pain. In my family, we never shouted at eachother like that. Mostly because a human might’ve heard us, but still. In fact, we rarely verbally spoke at all. Sign was the main method of communication between us; it was best to keep quiet. The only time we really spoke aloud was when we were practicing human English.

Liz turned back around and gave me a pitying glance, "Oh, sorry I yelled. I'll be back in a bit, ok? Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone." Her parting words stuck in my head even after she'd disappeared behind her bedroom door. Did she think I would try to escape? I mean, I would if I could, but without a climbing rope, scaling this dresser would be impossible. Still, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Why would a human leave me alone out here? Weren't they all supposed to be cruel and unjust?

I paced the length of the dresser, trying to get a good view of the room. If I were to try and escape, I would have to find an electrical socket that was low enough to the ground that I could slip into it without needing my climbing gear. Oh how I missed my gear — my grappling hook. I would already be long gone if I still had it.

When Liz returned, I was sitting on the edge of the dresser, legs dangling off its side. Liz took one look and rushed at me. I scrambled backwards, screaming involuntarily at the surprising speed the giant had. "What are you doing on the edge like that!?" Liz asked hurriedly, "You scared me, I thought you might fall." It took me a moment to catch my breath. I was so certain she'd changed her mind about our deal. I thought she was coming to punish me. "I scared you?" I asked angrily, "You rushed at me! I thought you were about to attack me! What is wrong with you humans!?"

Liz took a step back, ashamed. "I'm sorry, I just- Aren't you scared? That ledge is so high for you." I scoffed. Were all humans this dumb? Probably. "Of course I'm not scared. I've lived in human houses my whole life. I've stood on much taller furniture before. I don't get scared of heights." Liz sat down on the end of her bed; I could practically see the wheels turning in her head as she thought. For the brief silent moment, I wondered if she might be angry at me for making her seem so stupid. "Oh," she said finally, "I guess you're right."

The bedsprings creaked as she stood up and gathered a few things from her desk. I was about to ask what Liz was doing when she froze, looking up suddenly like she'd just remembered something. In a few quick strides she was sitting in front of me again. How do they move so fast? "I just realized I don't even know your name," Liz said, looking expectantly at me, "You know mine's Liz, right? I'm sure you've overheard it a dozen times by now, but I don't know yours."

Wow. Everyone, and I mean everyone knew humans loved to give their pets about a hundred cute little names. It’s not just borrower pets, either. All human pets seem to have a few various different names the humans like to call them by. Never in a million years would I have thought a human would be asking for my real name. "It's Wren," I said in shock, "My name's Wren." "Like the bird?" Liz asked. I shrugged, "I guess so." She smiled warmly, "Well, it's nice to officially meet you, Wren."

All I could do was stand there, staring. Liz had such a genuine smile — maybe she does actually care about me. I can’t get my hopes up, though. I know better than to trust human beings, but who knows, there's a chance I'm just insanely lucky enough to end up with one of the better ones. I was stirred from my thoughts as Liz got up again. "I'm going to go get some things to make your climbing stuff, alright?" I nodded, and she was gone. It wasn't long before Liz returned, though. She was carrying a bin of various household supplies in her arms, and set it down on her desk.

Briefly, she rummaged through the items she'd brought, then sat down and began to work. To be honest, I wanted to be on that desk so I could craft some useful escape items, and I stewed in annoyance because I'd have to be carried to get there. That would change soon enough, though; I'd make sure of it. Liz worked mostly in silence before she was called away for lunch and I was left alone for the third time that day. It'll be so easy for me to escape this place. Almost too easy.

When Liz returned this time, she brought me a small portion of her lunch. A piece of pasta was placed on the table in my cage, covered in some kind of sauce. "Why are you giving me that?" I asked before Liz could return to her work, "Food wasn't part of the deal." She turned and gave me a curious look, "Would you rather eat the pellets instead?" "Oh, no no," I backpedaled, "I'm not complaining, I'm just.. confused." Liz gave me an amused look, "Can't I do something nice for you?" I was about to launch into a huge explanation on why her behavior was so perplexing to me, but I held my tongue and nodded in agreement. Sitting down at my plastic table, I ate another extravagant meal. At this rate, Liz was going to spoil me, but this is one thing humans tend to do to their pets that I don't mind.

After finishing my meal, I cautiously returned to my seat at the edge of the dresser. My movement must've caught Liz's eye; she turned and regarded me for a moment. "How do you do that?" she asked me. "Do what?" "Sit up there like that. I know you said it was normal for you, but I think I'd be terrified if it were me up there instead." For a while, I sat deep in thought. "Well, I wasn't always this at ease with heights, I guess. When I was still being trained on how to.. you know, steal human things, I was pretty scared."

Liz put down whatever she'd been messing with and fully turned her attention to me. She clearly wanted to hear more, but I was slightly hesitant to explain anything related to my kind. Then again, she already knew we were basically human. I took a breath to steady myself and relayed my story.

"I was about 10 at the time," I began, "average age to begin training. I'd never seen the human side of the house we lived in. My parents made sure to keep me safe inside the walls. Both my father and older brother showed me the way through the passages out to one of the exits. They started me off with one of the easiest and most important borrowing spaces: the kitchen." Liz had slowly ventured closer to my side of the room, eyes wide in fascination.

"Why is that the easiest?" I couldn't help but smile; I'd asked my father the same question earlier that very day. "The electrical socket is usually right there on the counter, so you don't have to scale anything to get up to the supplies and-" I stopped short. Should I have said that? Wasn't it also a secret of my kind that the entrances to our wall systems were often electrical outlets?

"Why did you stop?" Liz asked me. "I.. I don't know if I should be telling you all this," I answered honestly. "About your life or the entrances?" I shrugged. "We already knew the electrical socket thing, in case you were wondering," Liz continued, "It's where the exterminators set the traps." "Of course it is," I grumbled, glaring angrily at nothing in particular. "So, can you continue?" Liz asked hesitantly, "You know I wouldn't tell anyone if you reveal something to me." I thought for a moment, then nodded.

"I'd just made it out onto the counter. It was really dark because we scavenge at night, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I was so stunned my brother swore to me I stood frozen for a good five minutes before coming to my senses. Everything was so much bigger than I'd expected. Like I said earlier, I'd never seen a human's living space before, and I'd certainly never seen a human before, either. Everyone said they were big, I just.. never really understood how massive they really were until that night."

I glanced over at Liz, who shuffled uncomfortably in her seat. "Of course, I'm not scared of humans anymore," I bluffed, "Your kind are just an annoying nuisance nowadays. I was 10 though, so yeah, I was kind of freaking out." "You aren't scared of us?" Liz asked in astonishment, "Wow, I'd be terrified. Aren't we like 50 times your size and 1,000 times your weight? I mean, I've seen some people do horrible things-" "Alright! Alright! Fine, yes!" I cut her off and stood up abruptly, "Obviously your kind are horrifying. I get it, you can do whatever you want to us and we can do nothing. You don't have to rub it in." There was an uncalled-for touch of malice in my voice; I didn't mean for it to have been there, but I couldn't take it back now.

Liz sat speechless for a while, staring at me as I glowered from my place on the dresser. "I.. I didn't mean to-" "Yeah yeah, I get it. Whatever." I stormed over to the door on the side of my cage and slammed it in her face. It wasn't as grand an exit as I'd hoped. She could still see me marching off inside my glass prison. I put my crafting skills to good use and pulled the blanket off my bed, tying it up like a curtain between my bed stand and the bookshelf next to it. This created a small, and almost private room where I sat and fumed for the rest of the day. Tears burned in my throat and swelled in the corners of my eyes, but I refused to be scared. The only thing I should feel towards this human is anger — resentment. Whatever sort of sideways friendship I'd just tried to form blew up in my face. Clearly my kind had been right all along. Humans are cruel and unjust. Liz is just better at hiding it.

We didn't speak a word to each other the rest of the day. The only interactions we had were when Liz dropped off my dinner, but I refused to touch it just to make a show of how angry I was with her and her kind. My mouth watered at the scent of whatever was left out for me. Once, I've gone almost a week without eating anything, so I know I can easily survive skipping a meal. In fact, three meals a day are fairly uncommon for my kind. However, those old meals consisted of cold leftovers that didn't smell nearly as good as what was sitting right in front of me. In the end, my mind won over my stomach and I went to bed without dinner.

Liz returned to my cage right before she went to bed. I was turned away from her, so I couldn't tell what she was doing, but I clearly heard her sigh at the sight of my untouched meal. It was almost gratifying to hear her so concerned, because that's just what I was hoping for when I decided to starve a bit. My satisfaction quickly fled my system when I heard the metal-on-metal squeak of the door to my cage being locked. I flung myself upright in a panic. "Why are you locking me in!?" I asked hurriedly. I was almost certain I knew the answer; Liz was finally going to punish me. She'd already removed my dinner from the table. Is she planning to starve me?

Liz flinched at my sudden outburst; I could feel it vibrate through the desk beneath me. "Oh, I thought you were asleep." "Why are you locking me in?" I asked again, my voice a bit steadier. She stilled for a moment, looking me over with confliction. Surely I could still convince her not to punish me. If she was this hesitant, maybe I could persuade her not to trap me again. I was about to begin an argument for myself, but Liz spoke up first.

"I know I said I'd treat you like a person, but…" she took a breath and I steeled myself for whatever she would say next. "I- I don't really trust you enough to leave this open all night. From what I know about you so far, I'd guess you would try to climb down this dresser and escape, regardless of whether you have your equipment to do it. Meaning I'd probably wake up tomorrow morning to find a Wren-sized bloodstain on my carpet wherever you fell off in the middle of the night." Liz said it all so matter-of-factly that it scared me a little bit. Firstly, she'd very casually described a horrible way for me to die; secondly, that is what I had been planning to do. Not the falling to my death part, obviously, but I was definitely going to try escaping tonight.

Some of my inner turmoil must've spilled onto my face because Liz secured the latch with duct tape before responding. "I know you want out, but I can't let that happen. I'm not trying to be some evil captor, though," she added, seeing me reel back slightly at her first remark. "If you do manage to get away… I mean, good for you I guess, but it won't be long before you're taken by another exterminator and end up right back at the pet store where you started." I really wanted to strangle her right then, but I pent up my anger and abruptly turned back towards my bed.

“I don’t want you ending up hurt or dead or worse because you’re angry with me. If…” Liz was silent for a long time, and I tried not to look back at her as she sat in the dark. “If I knew you were just a small person, I never would’ve put you in that cage. I would’ve talked to you, I would’ve been.. better somehow. I- I would’ve made sure you felt safe. You don’t deserve what’s happening to you. None of you do.”

"No. We don’t." It was all that I managed to say before sliding under the covers and throwing them back over my head.

Liz is lying. She wouldn’t have treated me any differently, and she might know it, too. Humans get into this weird protective, emotional kinda mood sometimes — like I know why. Either way, I'm fairly sure she only said that so she could keep me here. Yeah, she's only trying to scare me. I can survive just fine on my own. I've been caught once, but that was only because I hesitated. I didn't run when I needed to because my family had already been taken. This time it'll be different. There won't be anyone to slow me down; I'm on my own now. The gravity of my last thought settled heavily in my mind as I slid into half-asleep memories of my family and the life I used to know.

No, what the hell!? I'm back in the petstore. How? Did Liz give me back? I was standing in my old cage, staring at the view of cat food in front of me. Ironic that they put my kind next to this particular section. Sometimes cat food is exactly what we end up as. Cats are the most lethal thing you could get caught by in a human house, next to mouse traps, of course. It was rumored that the person who discovered our kind had done so because they found someone dead inside one. I turned a tight circle in my cage, surveying everything. Was it always this cramped? Suddenly, the mesh behind me cracked open and a large human hand pushed its way into my cage.

I screamed, but no sound reached my ears. I scrambled for my sad little cot, the one thing I could possibly hide under. Too little too late. The hand encompassed me from all sides, crushing the air from my lungs as the human yanked me backwards out of my cage. I recognized this human, but at the same time, I didn't. This was the human who liked to torture me while he was sopposed to be cleaning our cages. My brain recognized him, yet he looked terrifyingly different. He had the black, soulless eyes of the rats I feared as a child, and a mouth full of sharpened teeth. I desperately struggled to get away, but he only pulled me closer to his face. His awful maw glimmered in a nasty smug smile.

"Nice to see you too, little mouse," he whispered in his raspy voice that made my skin crawl. "It's been a while. Wanna have some fun?" This can't be happening. Not again. Please, not again. He pressed me into the table with such force that I gasped for breath. The human loomed over me, taunting my pathetic struggling with a cruel-sounding laugh. His fingers snaked their way up my body and I let out another soundless scream. I could feel his hot breath against my face as he leaned down closely above me. A finger slid beneath my shirt and my blood ran cold. "Stop, please!" I begged, sobbing. The human licked his lips eagerly, as if my pleas only fueled whatever else he had planned for me.

My shirt was torn over my head, leaving me helplessly exposed on the table. The assholes at the pet store don't give us undergarments. We're just animals to them. The only reason we have clothes at all is because we look so similar to humans, and we had to look decent. I whimpered as he slowly slid a finger down my torso. It inched aganizonly closer and closer to the hem of my shorts. He was taking his sweet time, having his fun as I suffered. With a satisfied exhale, he stuffed his finger into my pants, rubbing the pad of it between my legs. I whimpered, trying desperately to move away from his touch. Suddenly, something poked me in the side. The table vibrated beneath me and my vision swam. Just as his finger pressed into my crotch, darkness pooled into my vision.

Light was suddenly thrown into my face and I cried out in confused fear. What's happening now? "Please, don't! Don’t touch me!" I begged desperately. The light swung away from me and I could see the familiar trinkets that decorated my glass cage. My shirt was still on. Nothing was rubbing against me besides my blanket. I was back in Liz's room. It was a dream. Well, more like a memory.

Immediately, I started bawling — both from stress and out of relief that none of it was really happening. Liz stood beside me. No doubt it was her that had poked me in the side, waking me up. That, I was grateful for. "You're ok," Liz whispered as I continued sobbing, "It was a dream, you're alright." I hugged myself tight and slowly lifted my head, giving her a longing glance.

I don't know what it was I wanted right then. A hug, maybe? My family? My own kind? All of which were impossible. I sat with my knees pressed into my chest, rocking back and forth on the mattress beneath me. Liz dropped a hand down carefully beside my bed and offered me a bottlecap of water. I accepted it with shaking hands and took a sip, placing the cap on the floor beside my bed. Her fingers drifted behind me, slowly rubbing small circles into my back. It wasn't a dehumanizing petting, but rather a kind gesture. She was trying to calm me down as best she could without scaring me with her human-ness.

Liz still cares about me. Even though we fought and I've yelled at her countless times, Liz still cares about me. She had so many opportunities to hurt me, and would’ve had zero repercussions for doing so. She’d locked me in, but she was only trying to protect me. Why? Because she's a good person, I realized. I doubt she was even trying to trick me this whole time. She just genuinely wants to be a good friend.

The realization kinda just broke me — right then and there. I whirled around and grasped her finger in a fierce hug. I don't care what the rules say about assuming the worst of humans. This human deserves better than that. From the moment she found out my secret, she tried to give me my freedom back in the safest way she could think of. Of course, her plans were all flawed, but she was human. I couldn’t expect too much from her. I didn’t expect this much from her.

Liz sucked in a surprised breath of air at my touch, and her arm went completely still. Seconds later, she seemed to break as well. Her hand curled beneath me, lifting me up and out of the cage. Honestly, I wasn't even scared. At this point, I’ve figured she's not going to hurt me. Liz cupped her hands together, letting me curl up between them. I could feel her pulse through her fingertip as I continued to hug it tight. I concentrated on it. It beat soft and rhythmic against my erratically racing heart. In the moments afterward, everything drifted away. My pulse slowed to match her own as I took a couple shaky breaths. The only thing left of the world was our synchronized heartbeat.

Sleep came for me, but it wasn't long before memories bubbled up again and I was dragged awake in fright. When I came to, I realized neither my bed nor Liz's hands were beneath me. I sat up in a panic at the unfamiliar place around me. "It's alright," Liz's voice reassured me from behind, "You're safe." She sounded really close, and when I turned to see her, I understood why. Liz was laying down on her bed with me laying on the pillow beside her. My face flushed when I recognized where I'd been sleeping. "You fell asleep in my hands," she explained, "I didn't have the heart to put you back in that cage." I smiled slightly, recognizing that she made an effort to refer to my fake prison as that cage rather than your cage.

"Thank you," I whispered in gratitude, "I- You don't mind if I stay here tonight, do you?" Liz shook her head, "As long as you're comfortable." Shockingly, I was comfortable. More so than I have been in a while, actually. I'm sure 'sleeping with a human' broke about 20 different rules, but I'd already broken the most fundamental ones; now it doesn't matter how many I break.

“Even when you fell asleep you were restless. The only time you weren’t groaning or moving was while I was holding you,” Liz explained quietly. “Would you.. rather be closer again?” I sat up, scrutinizing her expression beside me. At first I thought she was pitying me, but by the light of a single street lamp outside the window, I could tell it was actually worry that clouded her expression. I nodded very slightly. I don’t want to have any more twisted memories tonight.

Gentle fingers slid around my sides. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. All the experiences I’ve had with this have been horrible and frightening — human strength threatening to snap me into pieces. But Liz’s touch was different; it was so much lighter. I drifted through the air before being eased down onto her chest. A few seconds passed before I even took a breath.

“Th- Thank you,” I whispered in awe. Eventually, I managed to get control of myself, and I sleepily settled back down, curled up on my side. With my ear pressed to her chest like this, I can hear each even breath rush into her lungs somewhere below me. Again, Liz's heartbeat lulled me to sleep, and this time no nightmares came to haunt me. I slept in blissful, dreamless sleep the rest of the night.

When I woke the next morning, I sat alone on Liz's empty bed. I could hear the shower running from the conjoined bathroom, though. If I listened closely enough, I could hear her singing quietly to herself. The moment brought me to the day I'd accidentally revealed my secret. Looking back… I regret it. It's not that I don't appreciate Liz's inexplicable kindness towards me; it's because I do — more than she knows. It makes leaving so much harder than it should have been. I'm escaping, I told myself, not leaving. I can't live behind glass. I need freedom. This whole illusion will shatter the second Liz stops caring about me. It's only a matter of time. Leave. Before you get hurt trying to have something you can't.

Last night was… a fluke. A moment of weakness, for both of us. Just then, Liz stepped out of the bathroom with a fresh outfit and a mop of wet hair. She took one look at me sitting on her bed and smiled. Her genuine pleasure in seeing me here almost deterred me from my escape plans entirely. “Good morning,” Liz addressed me, kneeling beside the bed so we were more level with each other. “I’ll have to put you back on the dresser while I go make breakfast. Is that alright?” Obviously, I would rather have walked over there myself, but without my climbing gear I wouldn’t make it very far. I nodded, sighing, “Just don’t drop me.” Liz offered her upturned hand and I stilled.

I’d barely been conscious last night when she’d picked me up. I was tired and in desperate need of comfort. Now, with her hand spread out beside me, longer than I am tall, my instincts started protesting against it. I took a few cautious steps towards Liz and hesitantly placed a hand over one of her fingers, feeling the heat radiating off her skin. “Wren.” Hearing my name, I snapped out of my stupor and glanced past Liz’s outstretched digits to her face. “Yes?” “You know I would never hurt you, right?” When I stayed silent instead of answering, she pulled her hand away, her voice growing more solemn. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me. If you’re having nightmares because of me, I’ll leave you alone. Promise.”

My eyes widened at the offer. It was tempting to tell Liz to leave; it would make my escape more bearable. However, I don’t want her to think my night terrors are about something she’s done, when in reality, they have nothing to do with her.

"I- Last night, my dream wasn't about you," I confessed, "It was just bad memories about the pet store I lived in, that's all." Liz gloomily avoided my gaze, "I told you you'd end up there last night before you went to bed.. I'm such an idiot, I'm so sorry. I wouldn't let that happen to you." I assumed she wouldn't have actually sent me back, but hearing her say it aloud was tons more reassuring. "Here," Liz began, standing to shuffle through the box she'd grabbed the day before. "How about I put up some rope for you like you asked? That way you can travel around, yourself."

I watched in disbelief as Liz fastened a few pieces of string around the room in various hard-to-get-to places. She had, albeit unknowingly, given me a clear opportunity to escape. After setting up several lengths of rope, Liz headed downstairs to get breakfast and I got to climbing. Scaling the bed was easy. Its side is made of fabric so I could find a foothold or handhold virtually anywhere. The lower half was lifted off the ground by a wooden frame, but it wasn't so high that I couldn't just drop the rest of the way to the floor.

After wandering around the carpeted floors of Liz's room, I came across one of the outlets I'd spotted from my vantage point in the cage. It's only a few inches — in human measurements — off the floor. Easily reachable with a small amount of climbing rope and a grapple. Obviously, I have no grapple on me, so I instead returned to the top of the dresser where the cage is, opting to sit on the ledge to wait for Liz rather than going back inside the awful glass box. Not that I could, anyway. The lock was still duct taped shut from last night.

My breakfast and Liz arrived shortly after I'd scaled the dresser. She placed my meal on the table in my cage and peeled away the tape with a slightly guilty expression. Liz turned away and looked over the distance I'd traveled with an impressed nod. "Did my ropes work alright?" she asked once I'd settled down to eat. I nodded, mouth too full to speak. The meal was heavenly; Liz had brought a little bit of something made from eggs that I don’t know how to pronounce. However, whenever I tried to plan a way to craft a grapple, my stomach churned like I'd eaten something rotten or raw. Originally, I'd have chalked it up to nervousness, but the feeling wasn't quite the same. After nearly blanching seeing Liz return to my cage, smiling at me warmly, I realized that I wasn't actually nervous. My sickness stemmed from guilt.

Guilt for leaving? Never. I want to leave. Guilt for leaving Liz alone after all she's done for me? Leaving her to think she was the reason I’d left? Maybe. Ok, yes. Fine. It's not like I have to leave right this minute, though. Besides, I still need a grapple. Oh, and it would be nice if I could have Liz take me around the house while no one's home. That way, I could map out the layout of everything beforehand. It Is always best to be prepared, right?

As I tried to calm my stomach into eating the rest of my glorious meal, Liz began working at something on her desk. Because of where the desk is, she was sitting with her back turned; I couldn't tell what she was doing. Curious, I finished my meal and stepped back out of the cage. "What are you doing over there?" I asked. Silence. At first I thought she was ignoring me, then I noticed Liz's foot was tapping along to an unhearable rhythm. She was listening to music.

I sighed, realizing I'd have to walk all the way across the room to get Liz's attention. Expertly, I made my way down the newly fashioned climbing rope by the edge of the dresser. The trip over wouldn't be all that difficult for me, it's just tiring. Wandering the room, I again stopped at the outlet that was close to the floor. It's so perfect, it's like it's beckoning to me. Just then, the door to Liz's room opened wide.

"Liz honey, I was wondering if- AHH!" I flinched at the scream. My borrower's sense raced and my mind panicked, convinced I was caught in the act of escape. "Liz's pet escaped!" her mother called down the hallway, "Ron, come catch it before it gets in the walls!" I could barely hear Liz's protests against the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears. I dashed behind a beanbag chair sitting by the outlet, pressing myself to the wall. Moments later, my hiding spot was dragged away. A cardboard box hung ominously in the air above me.

Crying out in terror, I threw myself into a ball on the floor, instinct reacting how I'd been taught. "No! Wait! Stop! I let her out, it was fine! I was watching her!" Liz's voice was joined by a few others, both of which sounded harsh and angry. I didn't dare move a muscle. Footsteps thundered around me, their vibrations shaking everything. Briefly, the image of a human's foot coming down on top of me flashed through my mind. I whimpered at the horrible notion that my life could very easily end right here.

Something tapped the floor scarily close to my head, and I scrambled away in shock. It was Liz, trying to get my attention. Both her parents were still scolding her, but she had her back turned to them and offered me her hand. I gratefully scrambled on, clinging to her fingers. Though it was by no means safe, Liz's hands were a hell of a lot safer than the floor where I could be stepped on or boxed up. "You can't have that thing running around the house like that!" her mother warned, "You have to watch it carefully." "Mmhm," her father added, "They can hide in a matter of seconds, Lizzie. You can't let it out of your sight. Your mother will have a fit if it gets into the walls."

Liz's chastised expression drifted between her parents and me. The longer they spoke, the more furious I became. I wanted so badly to join in on the argument. I'd give Liz's parents a piece of my mind. The audacity they had to call me an 'it', to speak about me as if I were a dumb little animal. However, I realized that was the entire point of keeping my mouth shut. The borrower secret was still alive, at least slightly. For all they know, I am a dumb little animal. Humans don't know we're sentient, and we don't want them to know. So, I kept my mouth shut tight, teeth grinding in loathing as I sat in Liz's hand.

Eventually, after Liz repeatedly promised to look after me better, her parents left. She locked the door behind them and brought me to her desk, setting me on its surface. "I'm… really sorry," Liz apologized quietly, "Are you alright?" Her fingers hovered around me, unsure whether she should search me for any injuries. I nodded, "I'm alright. I'm just a bit shaken." "I- I didn't even realize you were on the floor. What were you doing out there?" I tried hard not to give myself away, but I couldn't help glancing at the electrical socket I'd been looking at before I'd been spotted.

As if in slow motion, Liz turned and followed my gaze. She stared at the place I'd been standing for a long moment. "I- I was trying to get to you!" I said quickly. Liz turned back to me with a crestfallen expression. "I wanted to see what you were working on over here," I explained in a hurry, "You were listening to music. You didn't hear me call out to you. I thought, with my new climbing ropes, that I could just come to you myself, but then your mom came in and saw me." Liz only stared at me numbly. "Wh- What?" I stammered. Her gaze drifted to the electrical socket again. "You want to leave." Liz's statement revertibrated hollowly through my core. "No! No, I-" "I've seen you staring at that outlet before. I know you use those to get around houses. I can put two and two together, Wren." She turned back to me, and I expected her to scold me for trying to run away, though I wasn't, at least not right then. However, Liz just looked gut-wrenchingly sad.

"I understand if you want to run away. Humans have treated you so horribly, I'm surprised you haven't tried to get out of here sooner. But…" she took a shuddering breath. Here it comes, I thought bitterly, 'but you can't leave because you're a little pet and I don't want you to.' "But you can't stay here." I was so confused, I didn't even understand what she'd said. "What?" I asked faintly. "You can't stay here," Liz repeated, "It isn't safe. There are traps in the walls; I watched them get set up. And if my mother found you.. it wouldn't be good. There are better houses than this one, trust me."

Liz is just… letting me go? "You- You don't want me to stay?" I asked. I immediately regretted it when Liz's eyes moistened with tears. "Of course I want you to stay!" she cried, "You mean so much to me, and the thought of you getting caught or sold again makes me feel sick. But I don't want you to feel trapped here!" "I don't!" I yelled over her increasingly upset voice. "I don't feel trapped here; I feel the opposite of trapped! I have too much freedom here!�� So much freedom that I feel like I should run away just because I know I can, but I don't want to! Every time I think of escape, I feel guilty. I don't want to leave, but my instincts keep telling me I should run while I still can."

Now my own eyes fuzzed over with hot tears. "I don't want to live in another house where I'll have to hide and be alone. I want to live here, with you. You don't treat me like I'm worthless or below you, like the other humans. Ever since you found out my secret, you've tried to treat me like another human, but you can’t because that would put me in danger. You.. You treat me like a friend, and I don't want to lose that," I explained weakly.

Liz's eyes widened, tears drying up before they could come leaking out. "Then stay." She spoke so softly that I almost couldn't hear her. Oh how badly I wanted to. How badly I wanted to live the rest of my life with the one human in the world who cares. But I can't live in a cage. I won't be confined to a box just because Liz's stupid mother thinks I'll go crazy in the walls, or whatever the hell she's so afraid I'll do. "I want to," I said ruefully, "but I want freedom more."

Liz sat silently for the longest time. Eventually, she was called out of her room for something, and she stood. "I'm taking you back to the dresser," she said monotonously, "You'll be safe from my parents there." "What about my freedom?" I asked nervously. "I need some time to come up with a plan," Liz said, "but if I don't figure it out by tomorrow, I'll take you to a house where you'll be safer." My stomach dropped. Liz held out her hand and I numbly sat down, waiting for her to bring me across the room. Once I was deposited by the glass walls, Liz stepped out of the room and disappeared.

I trudged over to my bed and sat on the end, staring at nothing. After a few moments, the tears building up behind my eyes came flooding out. I bawled into my pillows, heaving sobs echoing around the stupid glass box. It just wasn't fair. All I wanted was freedom and to be treated with an ounce of respect. Was the world really that cruel as to deny me those? Yes. I already know the answer. I just hoped that by some miracle I could be given a different one.

My head was buried so deep beneath my pillows that the daylight stung when it slid through. It had been hours since Liz left, and my stomach had been tying itself in knots for what felt like forever, until the bedroom door burst open so violently it ricocheted off the wall behind it with a thunderous, wobbly noise. I bolted upright, heart flinging into my throat. "I know what I have to do!" Liz's ecstatic voice bounced off the glass walls a bit too loudly. Noticing my reaction, Liz opened the side door and motioned for me to step out of my awful prison. "Wren, I've got it!" she exclaimed, "I know how to get you freedom right here in the house."

It sounded too good to be true. Impossible, even. "How? I thought you said there were traps in the walls." "That's just it," Liz began, "You won't live in the walls!" She brought her hand up to me again, but I hesitated. "Where will I live?" I asked uncertainly. "Come on, I'll show you."

Liz waited patiently as I slowly stepped up onto her palm. The sudden switch between getting around myself and letting Liz move me was a bit sudden. I could have walked over if I wanted to, but I was curious about the plan Liz concocted. She is a good human; I trust she won't hurt me. After situating myself on Liz's palm, I watched the world shift around me. I was taken to the bookshelf on the other side of Liz's bed. "Look," she began, pulling back a stack of books with her free hand. "There's all this space behind here, and a hole at the back for electrical cords." She placed me on the shelf and I took a few hesitant steps forward. The bookshelf was much deeper than any of the books, so they sat like a wall, blocking out a hidden empty space between the back of the bookcase and the books themselves. The hole that Liz told me about was a cut-out semicircle in the middle of the back wall, level with the shelf. With a full case of books, the place Liz picked for me wasn't all that bad. The walls would be better, of course. That's the best place to stay away from humans. However, I don't want to stay away from Liz, I just need somewhere normal to live — not a glass box.

"It's.. almost perfect," I replied after looking things over. "I have all sorts of things to decorate it too!" Liz said excitedly. For a brief moment, I thought she was talking about the dollhouse-looking objects from the cage, but she pulled out a small plastic container from a drawer. "I used to decorate my desk with these little strings of lights, but I think they'll make for some nice lighting in your new home, don't you think?" Liz asked, holding up the container. I nodded, relieved. "Yes, those are perfect, thank you." I searched the shelf a bit more thoroughly, planning how I wanted everything to look, and what I might need to borrow.

"So, what's the plan? What do I have to do to ditch that awful thing?" I asked, gesturing at the glass box. "Don't worry about that. The plan mostly involves me pretending to screw up and lose you in the walls somewhere. My mom might even call the exterminators." I went ridgid at the mention of those people. "They won't find you," Liz reassured me, "You won't actually have run away, so even if they do come, they won't find anything. You’ll be right with me the whole time, and they wouldn’t think to check with me." Taking a few deep breaths to calm myself, I thought through Liz's idea.

"Ok,” I began, talking through the plan, “so you pretend to lose me, and I hide with you. Your parents freak out, but they won't find me and think I ran away into another house. Then, when the coast is clear and everything dies down, I… I get to live freely again." My voice tapered off in excited awe. If this plan really does work, I can get my life back. The realization sunk in and I beamed up at Liz. She held out her hand for me to climb on, but I grabbed it instead, hugging her fingers fiercely.

"Thank you," I said, tears choking my voice. "Hey, don't celebrate too soon," Liz reminded me, "We haven't actually pulled this off yet." "I know," I answered, "I'm not thanking you for my grand escape. I'm thanking you for caring about me enough to figure this all out. I don't know how in the world I got this lucky, getting chosen by a human who cares. I thought they were a myth." Liz chuckled, "Well in that case, you're very welcome."

Liz glanced over at the glass container on her dresser. “I don’t want to ‘lose’ you right away,” she added, “It’ll look too suspicious that you disappeared right after I got in trouble for letting you out.” “Oh,” I said disappointedly. I understood her logic, though. Liz wanted this to seem as realistic as possible, because things would go horribly for me if her parents suspected I was still in the house. “I’m thinking Friday, five days from today. What do you think?” Liz asked. “As long as I’m out of there by the end of the month, I could care less,” I responded.

The days passed by agonizingly slowly. I hate sitting around idly knowing how much work I have ahead of me. As a borrower, I’m used to constantly working on something. Even in my cage at the pet store, I busied myself with analyzing the humans that passed by. Here in the glass cage in Liz’s empty room, I had nothing to do but bide my time until Liz came back from a place called high school. I’m not used to having this much free time. I wanted to explore the room, maybe look for more hidden places I could build into living spaces, but after the scare of Liz’s mom walking in on me outside the cage, I decided it was safer to stay put. I didn’t dare imagine what might’ve happened if Liz hadn’t been there to protect me. I’d been terrifyingly close to getting captured in another box.

As the week stretched on endlessly, Liz and I crafted some things for my new home. Every day, after she returned from school, Liz took the time to open the cage door. I’d traverse the room and stash a few things for later, which Liz happily hid for me in her desk drawer.

Once she came back with a completely different attitude, though. She hadn’t even acknowledged me; she just sat on the edge of her bed looking at nothing. “Liz?” I said questioningly. I watched her flinch slightly. When she turned to me, she looked so disheartened I thought something had happened to our plans. “I… I was just in my sister’s room. She was h- having trouble with the other borrower. I forgot about her pet being.. one of you. I didn’t remember because she always calls them an ‘it’.” I could feel the color drain from my face. “What.. What happened?” Slowly, her eyes drifted to me, then quickly darted away.

“Aubrey set up some fake scene, and wanted her.. her pet to be in a little car for a few pictures. The borrower.. she didn’t fit. That car was just the wrong scale, but my sister didn’t care. She stuffed her in there — the borrower. She couldn’t even tell her to stop because, you know, your kind isn’t supposed to speak to us. Her-” Liz took a shaking breath before continuing. “Her arm dislocated. The metal pieces of the car sliced her up. She.. Wren, she looked awful.” Now Liz had turned back to me, tears in her eyes. “And the worst part? Aubrey couldn’t even get her out. She didn’t tell my parents because she thought they would punish her or take away her stupid little pet. The borrower — poor thing — she was stuck in that car for a day and a half before my sister came to me, begging me not to tell anyone.”

My whole body ricocheted with shudders. I couldn’t imagine going through that, much less without speaking to my torturer — begging them to help or stop or something. “Wh- What did you do?” I asked quietly. “I told my sister to get an exacto knife. The car’s outer part is plastic. I would cut her out of there if I had to, to make sure she got out with the least amount of injuries. The borrower, god, she was so scared. I could see it in her face. The moment I sent my sister for the knife she snapped out of the whole playing dumb act. She didn’t speak to me, but she looked right at me like I was going to kill her.” Liz’s breath hitched on a sob.

“I- I got her out, but she shrieked the whole time. She.. she really thought I was going to hurt her. Aubrey grabbed her the moment she was free. It was scary; she only made the borrower’s cuts start bleeding again. I swear she said something — probably tried begging my sister to put her down — but I spoke over her so she wouldn’t ruin the secret. I convinced Aubrey to let me patch her up. I got her cuts to stop bleeding, but she gave me that pathetic stare again the whole time. When I tried to put her arm back into place she spoke to me. It was barely intelligible over her sobbing, so I pretended not to notice for the sake of the secret.” I was outside the cage now, standing at the very edge of the dresser. “What did she say?” “J- Just begging,” Liz replied in a thin whisper. “She just kept begging me to make the pain stop. I popped her shoulder into place and she passed out. I thought.. I- I thought she’d died.”

“She didn’t though, right?” I asked nervously. Liz shook her head, “No, she survived. But who knows how long that’ll last.” After that, she became too choked up to say anything more. As fast I could manage, I made my way down the dresser and across the room to her. Seeing me standing in front of her, Liz sank to the floor and gently scooped me up, hugging me to her chest. “If I ever made you feel that scared of me, I’m… I’m so sorry. Please believe that I would never do that kind of thing to you.” I pressed myself closer against her. “It’s ok, Liz. It- It’ll be fine. I haven’t been afraid of you like that for a while now.” I know it won’t be fine — at least not for the poor soul in the other room. However, we couldn’t help them. We were already risking so much with our plan. If we tried to break out the other borrower, it would be nearly impossible not to get caught. Then neither of us would be free.

The night before the big plan day, I sat on the edge of Liz’s desk, having scaled its side with the rope that she’d attached to it. I worried over the plan, fidgeting with the hem of my clothes.

“Hey,” Liz said, shaking me from thought. She’d been working on something called ‘homework’ that she didn’t really want to do, but apparently had to. “I have something for you.” I turned around, surprised. “Call it a housewarming gift,” she continued, “Earlier you said that you wanted a grapple like the one you had before all this.” I nodded; I had in fact admitted that to her. Though I don’t need it to run away anymore, it would still be nice to have, especially for scaling the bookshelf. Liz fished out a few items and laid them out in front of me. A length of string, but most importantly, a shining metal paperclip.

“I knew I couldn’t make a grapple myself, but..” “It’s perfect,” I assured her, “I can make a great grapple from these materials here. Thank you.” My nervous jitters faded away as I worked at the string, twining it perfectly so I could keep a solid grip on it as I climbed. Before I knew it, Liz had to take me back to the cage. “Say your goodbyes, Liz joked, “Tonight will be your last night sleeping here.” I smiled giddily. “Do you think I can keep this bed, or maybe this table and chairs? They aren’t half bad.” “You can have whatever you want,” Liz replied. “Just get some rest, it’ll be a long day tomorrow.”

Despite immediately heading to bed, I couldn't sleep. My anxiety had returned, not from being inactive, but by the fact that if Liz and I were caught tricking her parents, I would most likely be sent back to the pet store. Most of us who get sent back don't live to see our cells again. If a borrower gets sent back and all the cages are full — and they almost always are with all the shipments of newfound borrowers — the pet store doesn't wait for a vacancy; you get put down right there and then. It saves space and effort, apparently.

No matter which way I turned, I couldn't find a comfortable spot. It didn't help that dark thoughts had begun to crowd my mind. Finally, I sat up exhausted. "Liz?" The bedsheets ruffled, and I could see her outline sit up in the dark. "Yes?" she replied. "I- I'm scared," I confessed, "What if we get caught? What if your parents send me back?" The room was silent for a moment, then the floorboards creaked. Liz stepped over to the glass wall beside me. I stepped out of bed and gazed up at her, bent over to look at me.

We watched eachother silently through the glass, until she reached over and opened the door on the side of the cage. Liz sat on the edge of her bed while I came to stand at the front of the dresser. "I would never let that happen to you," she stated firmly, "Even if my parents do catch us, I'd come up with a plan… I'd think of something. Surely I could convince them to let me keep you. Though you'd be stuck in there, it would be better than being sent back, wouldn't it?" "Yeah," I whispered weakly.

I sucked in a surprised gasp of air as Liz's hands reached towards me. Her fingers delicately folded around my sides, gently lifting me off the dresser. She held me close as she slid back into her own bed, placing me on the pillow beside her. "It's alright to be scared," Liz whispered as she settled in, "I'm scared too. But I promise you, the worst that can happen is you have to stay in the glass cage, that's all. I'd still let you out whenever you like, and I would still treat you like a person. No matter what happens tomorrow, you'll be safe, I'll make sure of it."

My head spun as I tried to convince myself that things would be fine. “Can you.. I- I mean…” Giving up on speech, I slid off the pillow and gently placed a hand on Liz’s side. I could feel her pulse quicken as I hauled myself onto her chest. “You don’t mind this, do you?” Liz shook her head with a soft smile, gently resting a cupped hand around me. I sighed in relief, snuggling into the softness of the surface beneath me. Her low breathing was already lulling me to sleep. I mumbled a soft thanks to Liz before passing out.

In the morning, I was jostled awake by Liz's movements on the bed. Still half asleep, I let her carry me back to the glass cage. She opened the top hatch and set me carefully onto my own bed. Later, she dropped off a portion of her own breakfast for me and headed to school. Liz had made pancakes, just for me. I smiled at the kind gesture. A few months ago, I wouldn't have believed that humans were capable of sympathizing with my kind. Now here I was eating her same meals and sleeping right with her, and I did so of my own free will. I'm not a pet and I never really was, at least not for very long. Hopefully, I won't even have to live in this awful glass box anymore.

It was nerve-wracking waiting for Liz to come back home. A part of me was glad she was gone, because it meant the plan couldn't be enacted, but another part of me was desperate for her to arrive, because I just might get my freedom back today. When I finally heard the sound of the front door opening, announcing the return of the humans from school, I could feel nervous momentum building in my stomach. I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified. Liz came into the room and I rushed to the side door. She slid it open and let me out. "Are you ready?" she asked as I stepped over the threshold for, hopefully, the last time. I nodded silently, too afraid that if I spoke, I might back out.

"Alright, I'm going to slip you into my pocket now. Get situated, but try not to move once my parents come in; it might be visible from outside." Hesitantly, I stepped onto Liz's fingers and slid down into the pocket of her shorts. The material was scratchy, and it was a bit claustrophobic, but I reminded myself that my freedom was just around the corner, if I could only hold still for a while. Once I got situated, I couldn't tell what was going on outside, but I felt Liz wandering around, moving things. Eventually, her weight shifted and she got on the floor. "Mom! Dad! Come quick! My borrower escaped again and-" She cut herself off and hit the floor, creating a dull thud, pretending to grab for me. I instinctively flinched at the sound. Liz briefly put a hand over the pocket's side, reassuring me that everything was alright.

Moments later, I could hear the muffled sound of footsteps pounding up the stairs. Between the harshly loud voices of panicked humans, and the jostling movements Liz made, I could tell very little of what was going on. I held my breath and stayed as still as I could, silently hoping that our plan would succeed. I didn’t know what Liz was doing, but suddenly the pocket stretched thin, pinning me down and almost suffocating me between two walls of material. Thrashing in the tight space, I came close to calling out in fear before the tension suddenly released. I fell to the bottom of the pocket, shaken. The tight space would thin similarly on occasion, but Liz made sure that the pressure wasn’t as crushing as the first time.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the voices outside died down. I heard the sound of a door locking, and soon Liz’s fingers slid through the opening above me, carefully working their way around me until she could hoist me up and out of the little space. I blinked at the brightness of the room, letting my eyes adjust to the light after being stuck in the dark pocket. “What happened?” I asked once I oriented myself. Liz sat down at her desk, placing me gently on its surface in front of her. “I’m grounded,” she stated, “but it worked. My parents think you ran away. They’re not even calling the exterminators; it’s too expensive. My mom’s hoping you get caught in a trap, and my dad thinks you’ve run out of the house.” “So.. we did it? I’m free?!” Liz nodded enthusiastically, grinning from ear to ear.

I squealed happily, overjoyed at the good news. “Just remember that you have to stay hidden now. You can’t slip up and get caught anymore,” Liz reminded me. “Yeah, obviously! That’s how my old life used to be.” “Let’s get your new place in order,” Liz suggested, offering her upturned hand. I eagerly slid in, waiting as Liz dug out the stash of things I’d collected, including the grapple I’d been working on. A few books were removed in order for us to get behind the rest. Once she put me and my things down on the shelf, Liz took another piece of climbing rope and attached it to the opening behind the shelves. She measured out the length of it all the way down to the floor. I made an internal note to make myself some climbing gloves. I’ll need them if I’m going to scale this bookshelf every day.

Liz came to my aid with the lightning. She used a few pieces of duct tape, a rarity item to my kind, to secure the long string of lights around the perimeter of my new home. A battery box sat in the corner with a little switch on its side, perfect for manipulating the electrical currents. My old home in the walls had one haphazardly built switch that dug into the electricity in the humans’ house. It had burst into flames more than a few times. I remember fearing it when I was younger. The voltage that shot through the humans’ wiring was enough to instantly fry a borrower alive. Come to think of it, living in the bookshelf will be a massive upgrade from my old home, which was filled with similar hazards. We do the best with what we have, but now that I have so much more, I can live comfortably for the first time in my life. As I continued to settle in, Liz helped me move things around. She took the furniture from the cage that I'd asked for, and placed it down wherever I pointed to. With everything in place, Liz left to have dinner while I added final touches to everything.

With the wall of books replaced, my new home was surprisingly dark. Only a slim ray of light shone from the space above the tops of the books. However, once I flipped the light switch, the place shone brightly. I marveled over how amazing my new home was. As a borrower who's been abducted, sold, and caught numerous times, I'm doing incredibly well for myself. It's tough work befriending a human, but the advantages are definitely worth it. Liz came back from her meal with a small portion for me. I ate on the ledge of my shelf, which would be like a front porch if my home were a human one, and afterwards I got back to work on my grapple.

"Are you settling in alright?" Liz asked me. I nodded happily, "This place is better than anything I could've wished for, even before the humans took over. You have a really good eye for potential borrowing hideouts." She smiled slightly, "Thanks, I tried to find a secret, out-of-the-way place that would also be a good spot to live in. My first thought was to make you a home under my bed, because no one would ever find you there, but that wouldn't be nearly as nice a living space."

We talked for a while, then Liz left again, trying not to be too suspicious to her family. When she came back, she was ready for bed. "Are you sure that the dollhouse bed is comfortable for you?" Liz whispered once all the lights were off and the house was asleep. "It's a lot more comfortable than my old bed," I mused, "but if you find anything you think might be better, let me know. I'm also going to do some borrowing of my own, so I'll see what I find." "You don't have to do that, you know." "What? Go borrowing?" I asked. "I know I don't have to, but I want to. It'll make things seem.. almost normal again." "Almost normal?" Liz echoed.

Silence pierced the room as I thought longingly of what I still desperately miss. "My family," I replied in an almost inaudible whisper. The sheets ruffled as Liz shifted uncomfortably. "I know you can't make them come back," I added, "You've done so much for me, more than I could ever ask. But I still miss them." "I'm sorry." "Don't be," I said hastily, "It's not your fault we were discovered."

The room became so quiet afterwards, that I thought Liz had fallen asleep. I stood up to head back into my own bed, when she spoke. "It's so awful," Liz said quietly. "The audacity in the way my kind treats yours. It almost makes me wish I wasn't a human, so I wouldn't have to be grouped with all the horrible people who are." I snickered, despite the gloominess in Liz's voice. "I'm sorry for laughing," I apologized, "It's just.. I used to wish I was human all the time. I've always been baffled by the way you can go anywhere in the world you want, while me and my kind are stuck in the walls and floors and attics of houses our whole lives." “Huh,” Liz huffed, “I guess I didn’t think of that.”

In the morning, Liz congratulated me again on my new freedom, then trudged unhappily downstairs. Part of her punishment for ‘losing’ me was a bucketload of chores. Her parents would keep her busy all weekend long. I felt slightly guilty; it’s my fault Liz is in so much trouble, but then again, it was her plan for this to happen. Still, I paused work on my grapple to make something for Liz. I’d have to borrow some thread to make it, so I scaled the dresser and made my way to her desk. The sewing box that held all the thread sat packed away beside a stack of books. I climbed up their spines like a wide ladder, grinning in satisfaction once I made it to the top. Good to see my skills haven’t deteriorated over the past few months. I popped open the large clip on the side of the box, carefully pushing back the lid. The amount of items stashed away in there is astounding. I could make use of every last little thing. However, as per borrowing rules, I can only take what I need, not what I want. Even if the needles sticking out of that pincushion do look very enticing.

Carefully, I bent over the rim of the box, reaching down into its depths to pull out a wheel of thread. The cover of the book beneath me slid slightly as I bent over. My fingers could touch the edge of the spool. Just a little further… The surface beneath me jolted backwards, unbalanced by my weight. I feel head over heels into the pile of knickknacks below. Maybe my borrowing skills had deteriorated a bit after all. Thankfully I hadn’t fallen on anything sharp. Glancing up at the top of the box, I charted a rather hazardous path back out. My balance just isn’t what it used to be, though. Even as I tried to get out, the items I climbed up collapsed beneath me, leaving me no possible escape. This wasn’t too worrying. Liz would help me out when she got back. However, when the door to the bedroom opened, her mother stepped in instead.

Stifling a gasp, I quickly buried myself beneath some of the items around me, praying that the human hadn’t spotted me. I couldn’t see what she was doing from my hidden spot, but I could feel her footsteps wandering the room. They were so close to leaving, but paused just before the desk and the door. “Oh, that’s where the sewing box went.” A cold chill wrung down my spine. I pressed myself further into the box of items. The whole thing darkened as the lid was snapped back into place. A slight sickness built in my stomach as my hiding spot was lifted up and carried off.

After a few minutes of swaying that threatened to make me vomit, the box was placed in a closet. My world went completely dark as the human closed the closet door behind her. My thoughts spiraled in panic. Would Liz still be able to find me in here? I have limited time now. The sealed box only trapped so much air inside. Once it ran out… I scrambled out of hiding and tried in vain to at least open the box again, but it was clipped shut from the outside. Please come and get me, I silently begged Liz. The irony of my situation was humiliating. I’ve just got my freedom back, now I’m going to die before properly using it.

I waited with bated breath, trying to conserve what little air I had. If I ever do get out of here, Liz is never going to let me go borrowing again. I’m just out of practice, that’s all. Maybe I should’ve started with something a bit easier to borrow. For a long while, I sat alone. The edges of my vision were beginning to fuzz over. At first I thought I was imagining it, but as I turned my head around and grew dizzy, I realized it was getting harder to breathe as well. I had to take larger and larger breaths just to satisfy my lungs. It seemed like hours had passed since I was trapped here, but I couldn't tell. I couldn't even think straight anymore. My nerves spiked as light suddenly filtered into the box. By that time, I could barely move. I just lay on the bottom of the box, gasping for breath. Numb from my time in solitude, I could hardly process what happened. I could faintly hear the click of the latch opening, and the sound of someone gasping in horror. The touch of fingers the length of my body brushed my skin.

Again and again I slipped in and out of consciousness, until something heavy pumped methodically into my chest. Suddenly, my eyes shot open. I desperately gulped up as much air as I could. “Wren!” Liz cried, “Oh my gosh, are you alright!?” I couldn’t even speak; all I could do was lay on my side and try not to fall back into unconsciousness. "I'm… I'm ok," I answered between breaths. "I came to talk to you, but you weren't here!” Liz exclaimed, “The only other thing that was missing was the sewing box, so I assumed that's where you were." "Thanks," I wheezed, "I don't know how much longer I would've lasted in there." "You have to be careful, Wren," Liz warned. Sighing, I moved to sit up. My head spun slightly, and my vision fuzzed in and out. I clutched my head and squeezed my eyes tightly shut to try and stop the after-effects of my near suffocation. Liz handed me a bottle cap filled with water, which I guzzled down immediately.

"Why didn't you just wait for me?" Liz asked gently, "I could've given you whatever you needed." I shook my head slightly, knowing she would ask me something like that. "I want to do things myself," I explained, "Now that I'm free, I want to go back to living normally — taking care of myself rather than waiting on some human to take care of me. Not that you haven't been doing a good job of it," I added quickly. Liz's face scrunched in thought for a moment. "I get it," she said after a while, "You want to have someone around to help out, but not to help with everything, just the bigger things you might not be able to do. In other words, a friend, not a caretaker." I smiled, thankful that Liz surprisingly did understand what I meant. You never know with humans. Sometimes they just don't get it.

I preferred not to get back into the box I'd been held captive in, so I enlisted Liz's help to get me some thread. She gave me more than enough of it, but I could certainly use the extra lengths. Maybe I could sew some new clothes for myself later, once I find some decent materials that the humans won't miss.

After that incident, I took things a bit slower. I'd rushed back into my old way of life a bit too quickly. A week or so passed as I let myself adapt to my new surroundings. Yes, I've been living in this house for months now, but I've never properly explored it. I expanded my ventures further and further from Liz's room. Before I was fully allowed out, Liz tested me on different necessary things that I'd been taught earlier in my life. With a few training sessions under my belt, I refreshed my memory on everything from finding split-second hiding places, to learning what items the humans of the household would or wouldn't miss. During my last day of training, I managed to hide so well that Liz couldn't find me, even after searching for half an hour and knowing many of my favorite hiding spots.

Once she trusted my borrowing skills, Liz started letting me off on different levels of the house to gather supplies. Normally, I used the spaces between walls to get from place to place, but with the intricate, borrower-specific traps set up inside them, I opted to stick with something a bit safer, and faster too. Finally, my life was starting to take shape again. All the endless days at the petstore worrying over how many days I had left suddenly seemed like nothing but a bad dream. Though, sometimes memories would come back to haunt me in real nightmares.

Just like the first time, Liz was always there to comfort me. Whenever I woke up in a cold sweat, I'd slip out onto the bookshelf and quietly call for her. Every time, Liz would carefully pull me into her open palms and place me gently onto her chest. I know it's corny and babyish, but sleeping closer to Liz seemed to be a cure-all for anything awful that might have happened over the course of the day. She doesn't just save me from nightmares, sometimes it’s homesickness for my family, and sometimes it’s something simple like a bad supply run.

Over time, being Liz's roommate and friend became less of a hassle and more of something genuine. Earlier, it took everything I had, and sometimes a bit more, to keep our relationship on good terms. Now, even during the rare times we do fight, I never worry that our unlikely friendship might fall apart. I've never felt this content before. For the first time in a very long time, I feel like I can spend the rest of my life right here, doing just this.

#fair warning don’t open the readmore unless you’re ready to scroll for a while lol #borrowers #g/t #giant tiny

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nani-nonny · 1 year

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I thought I’d update my pinned so here goes:

Hello! I’m LoneAnon aka Nonny aka LoneAnonon on AO3! My current fixation is Rottmnt, more specifically Future Leonardo (peepaw brainrot) hehe, so a lot of my works as of recent are Future Leo related! Check them out when you can!

Important: my response to ai with my works

Current Work(s):

•WDS or Whispers of Distant Souls aka another F!Leo returns to the past with Casey fic but F!Leo is haunted by his dead brothers. WDS TEASER

•I’m Blue… da ba dee da… aka Reunion, DMD, LCD, and WDS F!Leos collide in one dimension due to a multiverse oopsey (aka aka a silly “what-if” story where my peepaws meet :).)

•(Accidentally) Played American Football With My Newborn aka a silly F!Leo story where he takes a small baby turtle to the past to stop the krang. Never did he think being a single parent would be harder than defeating the krang. (No turtle tots were harmed in the making of the title.) father-daughter fluff snippet

Completed Works:

•DMD AU or Dead Man’s Deal AU a series with an 8-chapter main story and ongoing side stories centered around F!Leo, who returns to the present carrying his heavy guilt that lands him in the Battled Nexus as the Barbarian. DMD Fanart

•Reunion aka a oneshot where F!Leo returns to the past in order to pick up Casey Jones (takes place after the movie).

•LCD or Leonardo Come Down aka a prologue+9-chapter fic where F!Leo returns to the past with Casey (separately) and is hellbent on getting his revenge. Casey is given the task by Michelangelo to stop the Krang and save Leonardo while F!Leo faces the consequences of his actions. LCD fanart aka my pfp

•Setting Sun aka a 5 part short, interactive story where the readers’ decisions can end the story, or discover the details of Mikey’s situation. (Unedited, no beta, silly little dumpster fire aka something bad that you might not want to look away despite how bad it is) AO3 link

•Distorted Mirror aka a 4 chapter rottmnt Leo-centric fic focusing on his role as the leader in silly time travel oopsies. (The oopsies being the future timeline with the krang apocalypse hehe)

•BYMH or Between You and Me and Him aka an ongoing series where you can ask any of my peepaws anything, or tell them you hate love them. [Peepaw multiverse interview] (please state your request as for bymh)

More to see:

Upcoming Works:

•Lost Ronin aka F!Raph returns to the past under “circumstances” and it’s up to the present turtles to solve these “circumstances”.

•Estranged aka an AU where the Hamatos reunite with their long-lost sisters, Jennika and Venus. (Based on the two turtles meant to be introduced in rottmnt future seasons—we were robbed tsk tsk.) Teaser: Two Birds Jennika and Venus appearance

•(possible?) The M-Word aka a 5?-chapter post-Rise-movie angst fic that deals with Raphael’s trauma regarding what he endured in the midst of the invasion.

•(possible?) Inimitable/Spiderweb aka Big Mama imprisons F!Leo to force him to train her upcoming Battle Nexus Champions in exchange for his freedom.

•(possible?) Reunion F!Leo returns to the past once again to provide ultimate peepaw advice and give the kids the reassurance they need.

•I’m In The Wrong AU aka a joke idea where F!Leo goes through the portal to find the key and stop the krang, but he finds himself in a New York unlike the one he knows. Rottmnt x ‘12tmnt crossover

•Mystic Mirror on the wall, who the fuck are those turtles?/A Genius’s Curiosity/Mirror Realm Activities (name still undecided) aka a separated au where Donnie is raised by Draxum, Mikey raised by Big Mama, Raph raised by the Krang and Leo raised by the streets. The turtles are reunited by Donnie aka Subject 03’s newest creation, a mirror that goes beyond its purpose and creates a realm inside its reflection that the turtles use as their escape from reality.

•Attached aka an rottmnt au set during the apocalypse where Leo is too late in providing backup for the ambush attack on Casey. Upon finding her body, he finds an infant protected in her embrace. An infant with the unforgettable gleam in its eye signifying the Krang.

[Tcest DNI]

[Story tags and asks tag below]

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nextinline-if · 2 years

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Next in Line - Interactive Fiction

itch.io page | Tumblr | Ask me anything | FAQs (Previous Asks + Prompts)

Next in Line is an interactive fiction in development. It was originally planned as a visual novel. (I am still updating to remove visual novel references across social media, apologies). So, while most of the writing for the demo is complete, I am currently revising it to better fit the interactive fiction format, as well as to give players more agency. The game will be free.

You're next in line for the throne of Castelon, a fictional country very loosely inspired but not based on the ancient and medieval worlds. Particularly, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, and periods of England.

Shortly after the war ended and a month before your 21st birthday, you received a hastily written letter at the compound in the mountains, where your parents had sent you at 16 to keep you away from the war.

"King dead. James abdicated. You are Next in Line."

Your country is reeling from its King's death and the end of a decade-long war. Today, on your 21st birthday, you begin the timeless tradition of sharing the responsibility of running Castelon for the next year, alongside your mother, Queen Vivian. This tradition, known as The Harbinger Ceremony, is your opportunity to prove your ability to be a reliable ruler.

Prepare to step into a story about love, trust, and finding oneself. Can you navigate your royal duties, solve your father's murder, and find love (or friendship) at the same time? Or, will the Gods withdraw their blessing from you?

Next in Line will be rated Mature. Player direction advised. Please do not play or plan to play if you feel this game could cause any harm to you, or your emotional, or mental wellbeing. If you have questions about the content, please let me know and I'll do my best to answer!

Content will include:

Possible violence

Suggestive language and themes

Optional sexual content (will be skippable or avoidable)

References to war and the effects of war

Death and/or references to death

Some exploration of grief

Language that might be offensive - aka swear / curse words

Some bad possibly unfavorable endings that might make you hate me

Subject to change. Changes will be communicated.

Anticipated Demo Release: Late July / August 2022 (most likely August)

Demo Features:

Prologue Part 1, Prologue Part 2, Chapter 1

Choose your gender (M, F, NB), pronouns, first name, hair color, eye color

Shape the MC's future and some of their past.

Pursue romance or friendship with various characters. See characters further down this post.

Players will not choose sexual orientation - it's up to you to pursue romance if you want or simply don't. All currently planned ROs (3) are romanceable by any MC. Note: there are no poly routes available.

Romance is optional in the game. Although, it should be noted this was originally planned as a romance game so there will be a lot of optional romance content.

3 Family Mottos (based on an early choice) that will unlock various choices throughout the game.

A taste of the "Attributes" system- a personality system that unlocks additional choices throughout the game; my aim here is to make the game replayable in a refreshing way. What kind of Heir will you be?

Full Game Features:

Everything listed above, plus...

Chapters 2-14;

Characters may disapprove or become upset or angry by some of your choices - this does not prevent MC from romance. Like reality, everyone in MC's life is not always going to agree with them.

At least 5 holidays that offer opportunities to honor the gods, further relationships, or simply have a good time;

Optional sexual content;

At least 6 endings;

An extensive stats screen where you can read about yourself, your relationship with others, and the world around you.

Chapters 2-13 will each cover the span of one month. The full game will follow roughly a year of the MC's life as The Harbinger.

Features are subject to change at my discretion.

Sir Constantine Dimas [M], 26 years old, Taurus

Constantine is a Knight in Castelon's Elite Guard. He's fiercely loyal to your family and especially your twin brother, James, who he fought alongside during the Arandale War. Like you, he finds amusement in teasing your brother.

"You're not too different from your twin, both reckless royals, so you probably need someone to care for you."

F. Faramund [M/F], 22 years old, Aquarius

F is someone from your past, from before you were sent to the compound in the mountains. They broke your heart and disappeared. Whether that was heartbreak in a platonic or romantic way is up to you. Now, they're back and seemingly apologetic. Bury the hatchet, rekindle your former relationship or walk a different path altogether.

"Love and war... they both certainly know how to cause us pain."

Lady Margaret [F], 22 years old, Gemini

The mysterious Lady Margaret is a noble businesswoman who enjoys observing from the shadows. You know little about her, but she could prove to be a powerful ally, if you play your cards right.

"I can think of many ways to consume your time."

This is not an exhaustive list of characters - but some key players.

Prince James Verissimo [M], 21 years old

Your twin brother was next in line to the throne. Until he wasn't. His abdication took you by surprise. While you were sent to the compound in the mountains during the war, your twin was sent to war. You and your brother were close growing up, but it's up to you how your relationship plays out moving forward.

Queen Vivian Verissimo [F], 45 years old

Your mother, the Queen of Castelon, is a cunning and nosy woman. As a child, your father was the affectionate one, while your mother was the parent who wanted to ensure you understood the realities of the world. It was a surprise when she agreed with your father to send you away from the war. Perhaps she knew you would play an important role one day.

Lady Anna [F], 20 years old

Anna is your best friend and attendant. Where you go, she goes. She came to the palace as an orphaned child of a minor noble house. Anna is the constant in your life - the one person you've always been able to rely on. She might have a crush on your brother.

Felix Faramund [M], 24 years old

F.'s slightly older brother. Like F., he's returned to Castelon. Unlike F., Felix can be quick to anger and he's not afraid to speak his mind. He can read the room, he just doesn't care. You once considered him a friend.

Oracle Davina [F], ??? years old

Davina holds one of the most revered positions in the Kingdom - the voice of the gods. Her duties include overseeing The Harbinger Ceremony and serving on the Royal Council.

#no demo #nextinlineif #royal romance #interactive fiction #upcoming if #interactive game #interactive story #choice of games #cscript #interactive novel #upcoming demo #ro's art #artbreeder

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onlyangelxo · 1 year

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Heaven Amidst This Ruinous Hell aka The Soulmate Fic

Emotions are the first step in losing control over oneself, and that is a simple fact of life.

Long gone were the days of watching her parents shower each other with love, a faint smile on her face, expectations sky high. Now they were just a reminder of how much one stood to lose when they depend on others, and she would never subject herself to that type of loss of control; so Wednesday Addams firmly set aside the thought of ever finding her soulmate.

Forced to attend Nevermore Academy as her 17th birthday approaches, and with it, the appearance of her soulmark, Wednesday finds herself stuck in a living daydream of her parents’ making. Her plan to abscond from the town of Jericho in the dead of night comes to a halt as she is entrenched in a mystery that begins and ends with a prophecy, foretelling death and destruction dealt by her hand.

Aided by a barista she can’t seem to shake, Wednesday sets out to uncover the truth of the monster terrorizing the citizens of Jericho and how it’s connected to her.

Prologue coming Wednesday, 3/22.

#nik writes fic #Wyler #wenclair #tynid #wyclair #wednesday addams #tyler galpin #enid sinclair #wyler fanfic #wyclair fanfic #hatrh

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fioooweeooweeeoo · 10 months

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Neteyam x reader-

GENRES: slow burn cz yes??, (e2L-> frenemies2lovers), ANGST, (LOVE SQUARE ft. Neteyam x y/n, Loak x y/n, Spider x y/n), 18+ MINORSSS DNI for obvious reasons, may have sm*t in the next chapters, fluff ofcourse we cant leave that out, there will be warnings in the next chapters if said so, AND MORE DESCRIPTIONS AND DETTAILS WOULD BE SAID BEFORE CHAPTER, IDK WHAT ELSE BUT IMMA JUST LEAVE THIS HERE FIRST AS ISSS

A/n: JUST TO CLARIFY this series will follow some of the events of atwow aka the war that happens, AND DONT WORRY YALL as much as yall know what happens to know neteyam in the ending no it will not happen here to keep ur hearts contented cz I know yall are not okay still. OTHER THAN THAT, Y/N here has no specific race so to respect everyone's way of reading, I'll only mention the appearance of Y/N based on what she wears for now, but let me know if you have suggestions in the future !! And as youve read the prologue of this series, Y/N is the daughter of Trudy- and I know a lot of series opt for Norm or Max as one of the dad's, but I'll be making my own story of how Y/N is the daughter of Trudy, because one, she's a badass, two, I have a plan for how I want her to be brought up into this series/story- That being said! I hope all of you guys would be able to read this once I start making chapters- For now- here's the synopsis and Pilot chapter!

Extraordinary You

(Ik this one is a kdrama but I'm also sort of inspiring it for this series so SHUSH for whoever says smthn)

——————————♡——————————

Being born in a different planet that is practically impossible for your kind to live in is surely the most shocking thing someone would hear from another, but not for Y/N. No. Out of all the things she would be worried about? It's definitely not being in Pandora- that until a certain someone comes into the story.

Y/n has had her fair share meetings with the navi people, that being part of the specific humans who were allowed to stay on pandora through the famous Jake Sully of the Omaticayan people, the Olo'eyktan of the Omaticayan people, and the ever great Toruk Makto. That being said, being the (somewhat adopted) daughter of one of the recomms and good ol' friend of Jake, Trudy Chacon, its not a surprise that Y/n has already met their family, including the children- well- except for one, that is Neteyam te Suli Tsyeyk'itan- Prince of Omaticaya, The fierce son of Toruk Makto, The perfect little soldier- blah blah blah, you name it.

Y/n has always wished to become one of the people, and maybe even more. Stuck in a planet where your kind couldn't possibly live was a life Y/N had grew up living normal to. Learning the ways of the navi people (through research) but hopes to learn it differently was a dream Y/N has always longed for. To learn and become one of the people..

So when the time comes and two fates meet- who will say that it's not just destiny that brings them together?

(3rd person POV *YOU'RE SAYING THIS !* )

Hey! Probably an interesting way of starting this story here, something like breaking the fourth wall? I don't know- forget about my rambles but, My name is Y/N Chacon, and I live in Pandora.

Yep- that's right- it's not every day you realise that you became apart of a world wide astronomical party to fly out to this foreign planet to make it liveable for every possible human being, well- that's basically how my parents got here, I was just born here. Now you're probably wondering why lil' ol' me right there- the one that's basically struggling to get a hold of a vine 10,000 feet above a floating mountain has come to this-? Let's rewind a bit-

#neteyam x you #neteyam sully #y/n #neteyam x reader #atwow x reader #𝕗𝕚𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕖!𝚠𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚜 ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ #neteyam x human reader #atwow smut #neteyam x y/n

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etsuven · 1 year

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Kunikuzushi, the eldest child of the matriarchal kingdom ran by his mother, has come of age to be married off. Feeling trapped by the stuffiness of the castle and the strict routine he had known since birth, he decides to use this opportunity to finally gain the freedom he so longingly dreamt of through the confines of his room. Everything was planned out, even down to the little details. What wasn't part of his plan, however; was falling in love. - Newfound Freedom: Chapter 1/Prologue <next chapter> word count: ~800+ - note: not the best start to a new series, and this prologue probably isn't the most captivating thing, but i hope it seems interesting so far! i've had something like this in mind for a while, (aka i've been planning it for at least a few weeks or so) and since i've been obsessed with scaramouche as of late, i decided to place him in the story! please stick around for the next chapter where things are sure to get more interesting! (this chapter was written on 12/15/22. it took me a while to post because i had a severe writers block + i wanted to write 3 chapters just to give you guys SOMETHING)

Kunikuzushi.

The first son of the Empress of Inazuma, Ei.

A boy forever destined to be in the shadow of his younger sister.

It was an awful fate, really. As the first child of the Empress, he was never worshiped and prioritized as much as the women who constantly surrounded him. The kingdom was typically ran by women, so it was only fitting that the right to the throne would skip him—instead moving to the person who was born after him.

He didn't really have a problem with it when he was younger. Why should he? Little him felt it was too much responsibility, so he was more than happy to pass everything onto the youngest in the family. But as he got older, he began to feel... Jealous. Seeing his younger sister get doted on constantly while he only got crumbs.

Yes, he sounded like a brat, but who wouldn't feel this way?

Like any normal person when faced with the fact that they aren't favored by those around him, he was angry. Why should he be pushed aside for the sake of his sister? Wasn't he good enough? He was often reprimanded for asking those questions.

'You should know why already.' He was told. 'Inazuman royalty is matriarchal in nature. It is tradition for the women to be throned before men.' Kunikuzushi knew deep in his mind that that was the case, but he still couldn't push away the borderline hatred he held towards his younger sister, Rai.

His relationship with the girl wasn't the best, to say the least. He despised her almost robotic nature, how she seemed so prim and proper- it was aggravating. The girl was heavily favored by the Inazuman citizens, each one praising her actions, no matter how miniscule they were.

Rai often trained with their mother, studying her fighting style and practicing it to perfection. The two of them took advantage of the electric magic of their kingdom, something Kunikuzushi had yet to master due to only being self taught.

His mother's consultant, Yae Miko, also possessed the same electro magic as his family and the many other women in the nations around them (save for a few men.) He wasn't the closest to Miko, only seeing her as someone who wanted to impress the person he called his mother. Although he had to admit, she was quite good at her job, often times managing things when his mother wasn't around to do so herself.

Now, back to his mother...

Children naturally want to be close to their parents, but Kunikuzushi didn't get the attention he so longed for from his mother. Anything he did was never acknowledged by the Empress. Academic achievements, training accomplishments, simple milestones. Things that were typically praised were never even noticed by her. Either that, or she simply just didn't care.

The boy craved his mother's words of praise, but over time he learned to not expect it. He would train and study like he was constantly told to, of course, but he told himself that he would no longer dare seek validation from the woman.

Years passed since this revelation, and Kunikuzushi grew into a stunning young man. Paired with his physique from training and gorgeous features, he became the object of affection of many citizens in Inazuma, and even the other members of royalty from nearby countries.

Though they could never truly pursue him, as he was already engaged. From the moment he became a teenager, he was set to be married off to someone from a nearby country. A strange thing to be for someone so young, but it was normal for those of royal blood.

It was a weird feeling—knowing that you were set to be engaged to and eventually wed someone you didn't even know. Since the both of you were so busy with your own problems, you never actually got the chance to really meet and get to know each other. Not that he wanted to get to know you. Based on your reputation, he was sure that you were the stuck up type.

Although an arranged marriage wasn't the most ideal thing in Kunikuzushi's mind, he still found a way to use it to his advantage. It wasn't a secret to anyone who could read body language that he was longing for something more- something new. The repetitiveness of his daily life was finally getting to him.

The young prince quickly realized that his arranged marriage to you could be his way out of Inazuma. The tradition of his kingdom called for him to travel to your kingdom once the two of you were wed, and he realized one night that he could use that opportunity to slowly distance himself from you and run away.

While he did feel a bit bad for planning to do something like that to you, the temptation of freedom after so many years of silently asking for it was too much to handle. But it was too late to go back on everything now—The 'perfect' plan was already made, and it was only a matter of time before it would finally come to fruition.

#genshin #genshin impact #scaramouche x reader #genshin fluff #genshin fanfic #genshin impact scaramouche #scaramouche #genshin scaramouche #genshin headcannons #genshin scenarios #genshin scaramouche fluff #genshin scaramouche x reader #etsuven #scaramouche fluff #scaramouche genshin impact #kunikuzushi #newfound_freedom

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lunalover62578 · 2 months

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Separated but Together

By Charlie and mostly Kris (AKA @scaramarii)

Prologue

I wasn’t really there when my parents divorced. I just remember my mom yelling at my dad. I’m Amelia by the way. I’m twelve years old, and a witch in training. I know it sounds crazy, but let me tell you the whole story.

Chapter 1

We were friends for a while. Now we’re stuck together in a magical forest , but it’s not like we want to be. For you to figure out what happened to us, we have to go back a while.

It was mid-August, and school had only started a couple of weeks ago. I was very popular. Not for long though. I was getting ready for my first period class.

“Hey, Amelia! How are you doing,” she yelled across the hall. I hate when she does that. Emily was still my friend, but there were things about her that just ticked me off sometimes. The way she yells for me, she listens to me sometimes, and she breathes a little loud.

“I’m good, but why do you have to yell?” I found it annoying how loud she was.

“Why not?” she asked.

“Whatever.” And then, all of a sudden, the bell rang.

“See you after homeroom, Amelia,” she said.

“See you,” I said back.

My homeroom teacher is Mrs. White, while Emily’s is Mr. John. I like Mrs. White. I mean, she’s nice and sweet. What’s not to like? She even baked us cookies once, which was super sweet. But Emily told me that Mr. John is mean and strict. She says that sometimes he will put people in detention for a whole month if they don’t follow the rules. It was brutal. I went to the classroom and the first thing I saw was a substitute teacher. It was Mrs. Johnson, one of the MEANEST substitutes I’ve ever had (I had her as a substitute in third period once). She made us stay quiet the whole time she was there, and if we dared to make a move or sound, she would slap a ruler down on her desk. It’s SO annoying,

We did attendance, and morning announcements, and then just sat there blankly, doing nothing. Then I got bored, so I passed a note to my other friend, Hazel. I wrote, “Psst, do you want to play hangman?”

She passed me a note back saying, “No, and we should not be passing notes.” And I got a little annoyed at her for that.

But suddenly, somebody came into the room. She looked really cool. She had white silverish hair, but it looked metallic. Her clothes were black, but the sleeves were see-through with metallic dots on the sleeves. She was wearing a black skirt, and black tights.

“Hello Mrs. Johnson. I am Mrs. Grace, and I am going to be your sub instead.” The whole class cheered. We were finally getting rid of our mean sub.

“EXCUSE ME?” Mrs. Johnson looked livid. Hazel and I held back laughter.

“What? Do you think this is a joke? Frankly, you look like one.” Mrs. Grace had a smug smile on her face, though her storm gray eyes bore into Mrs. Johnson. “I imagine that your father thought that your mother cheated on him with an alien.”

Mrs. Johnson's face pinched in an odd way.

“Really? You dare disrespect me?! You look like a teenager with that outfit! If I didn’t know any better, I would say you were sixteen!”

Mrs. Grace’s eyes darkened, so they looked less storm gray and more sea-during-a-hurricane blue. Weird. She suddenly whipped out a piece of paper that she shoved on the desk. As Mrs. Johnson read it, her face took on a look of shock and rage.

“Fine.” She stood up and stormed out of the classroom, slamming the door behind her. Mrs. Grace looked amused.

“Well then.” She spread her arms. “Are you not going to introduce yourselves? I saw that your other substitute had the attendance papers, and I sort of need those.” Her pupils glinted white and her iris’ flashed purple. I looked at Hazel and saw a look of confusion on her face.

“Did you see that?” I asked her.

“See what?” “Her eyes. They were-” suddenly, I was interrupted.

“Girls in the back, would you introduce yourselves first?” Mrs. Grace said after writing her name on the board.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Her eyes are normal. I’m sure of it.” She didn’t sound so sure.

“Whatever,” I whispered back.

After I introduced myself to her, Mrs. Grace looked surprised. When class ended, she said “Amelia? I’d like to see you for a moment.” I wondered what I’d done wrong. Was it what I had said about her eyes? Or did I miserably fail an assignment? I did that a lot.

“Yes ma’am?” I kept my head down.

“Look at me when you talk to me.” I looked up, and Mrs. Grace didn’t look mad or concerned. She looked amazed. “I take it you saw my eyes change? Don’t mention that to anyone else. Non-magic folk aren’t supposed to see that.”

I stared at her. “What?”

“I’m a witch. Not a teacher. That paper was just a trick. I’ll show you who I really am tonight. And I’ll show you who you are. Bring your friend Emily.”

I started to protest, but I remembered the times when I caused something weird to happen. And frankly it was a lot “Alright.”

Chapter 2

As I waited for midnight, I stared at the text I’d sent Emily. She hadn’t seemed to believe me until I sent her a picture of the note Mrs. Grace had sent me. The clock hit 12:00. I opened my window (my room was on the first floor) and jumped out.

Emily was waiting outside, her red hair pulled up in a ponytail. She looked annoyed. She was wearing a black hoodie and black leggings, and had a backpack slung over her shoulder.

“What took you so long?”

I sighed. “My mom. I had to pretend to be asleep until she went to bed.” Emily rolled her eyes. “You’re not a kid anymore.” “Technically I am. We’re wasting time, let’s go.”

“Fine.” As we ran to the forest outside the town, I saw a purple light.

“That way,” I said, pointing towards the light.

“What? There’s nothing special about that way,” Emily complained as I dragged her along.

“Sometimes there is something special about things, normal people just never see it.”

Emily sighed.

As we approached the light, I saw Mrs. Grace’s silhouette approaching. Her eyes glittered like a snakes. She smiled thinly and creepily.

“Hello.” She looked pale in the moonlight

“Hi…” I said. Emily just stood there, mouth open wide, mesmerized by Mrs. Grace’s outfit and beauty

“Amazed huh?” Mrs. Grace said, her smile looking creepier. She seemed to notice how she looked eerie with that smile, and stopped. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Emily said, still looking shocked.

“You know me as Mrs. Grace, but really, my name is Yoru.” Her gray eyes had a serious look to them.

“No way.” I stared at her in shock as Mrs. Grace- no, Yoru- tilted her head at Emily and I.

Yoru looked amused as Emily’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “Woah.”

Yoru smiled and laughed. “You shouldn't be so surprised,” she said in a mysterious tone.

“It’s not her fault,” I said defensively. “She’s just surprised.”

Yoru tilted her head. “Alright then.” She waved her arms, and the clearing was filled with light in every color you could imagine. Then Yoru said, “So you wanted to learn how to use your powers. Right Amelia?”

I stared at her, wondering what she meant. “What?”

“You have powers,” Yoru said.

I sat there feeling like I looked as amazed as Emily did. “No I don’t,” I said, trying to find any bit of information in Yoru’s expression. But her face held no answers.

“I’d better show you my powers,” she said, ignoring what I just said. She touched a crystal necklace I hadn’t seen before. Now right before my eyes, I saw it glowing, sparkling, and sparking magic. Then after moments of nothing the glittering stopped suddenly.

“Come on! I got you tuned up yesterday!” Yoru glared at her necklace. She touched it again, and it lit up again. “There we go.” She waved her arms, and suddenly, colorful crystals sprouted from the ground. The wind picked up, blowing sparks across the clearing. The moon seemed brighter.

“Oh my gosh,” I said. Emily looked just as shocked as I felt.

“She- you- how-?” Emily didn’t seem to be able to say anything.

Yoru grinned, but it didn’t look creepy, like it had when Emily and I met up with her. “Magic.” She knelt down to pick up a small orange crystal that was shaped like a more angular water droplet. “Oh, that’s perfect.” She pulled out a string, turned the crystal into the necklace, and tossed it to me.

“What’s this for?” I tugged at the string, finding that it was slightly elastic.

“You’ll need it to control your magic.” Yoru snapped her fingers, and the gems disappeared, except for the necklace I was holding. “Well? Put it on. It’ll be easier to find out what magic you’re good at with it.”

I slipped the necklace around my neck. I felt an odd sensation in my fingers, like my hand had fallen asleep. I suddenly noticed a bunch of little glowing orbs, circling Yoru like a kettle of vultures. “What are those little things around you?”

Yoru gently picked one of the orbs up. “Oh, these? They’re like little light birds. The average human can’t see them. Your friend can’t see them either, but she’s a different story.”

“What does that mean?” Emily squinted at the witch, as if trying to see the light birds.

Yoru laughed. “You’re not a normal human, but you aren’t a witch either. If you want, I can bring you to the magic village so someone can explain it to you.”

Emily’s hands immediately went to her ears. They were incredibly pointy, which I guess I should’ve mentioned earlier, but I’d been busy dragging her out of a pit of- never mind. If I keep talking about that, I’ll just go on a side-tangent and forget what I’m talking about. “Does it have something to do with my ears?”

“Maybe.” Yoru pulled a phone out of thin air with a purple flash. She looked at the screen for a moment after unlocking it. “Huh. I must have taken longer to explain things than I thought.” She looked back up at Emily and I. “You two should go home now. Come back here tomorrow. I’ll try to explain more then. I’m sorry we couldn’t have more time to talk.”

Before I could even protest, Yoru drew a circle in the air, and in a swirl of crystal shards and purple light, she was gone. The gems and light also disappeared, putting Emily and I in an average dark clearing at midnight.

I looked at Emily. “She did not take that long to explain things.”

Emily shrugged. “Maybe she’s hiding something.” She pulled her hood over her head. “Anyway, I don’t wanna stay here for too long. This place is creepy. See you tomorrow?”

I nodded. “Bye Emily.” I watched as she pulled a flashlight out of her backpack, turned it on, and dashed out of the clearing. But I didn’t follow her. I wanted to stay, and try to do something magical, despite having no training whatsoever.

I tapped the jewel on my necklace. It glowed a vibrant red with yellow swirls. Sparks danced around the clearing. “Show us what you can do,” they seemed to be saying.

Feeling like I’d just drank my moms tea (she likes to put a lot of matcha powder in it for some reason), I waved my arms, copying what Yoru had done to create the gems. My fingers tingled, as if they’d fallen asleep.

All of a sudden, I was holding a ball of fire. It didn’t burn me. It just stayed in my hand, dancing around my fingers. I’d love to say I wasn’t afraid, but that would be a lie. I was panicking. I thought that it was going to burn down the clearing, burn me in the process.

Then the flames went out. I stumbled, realizing that I felt exhausted. The sparks were gone. Holy crap. I did not just do that. I shook my head. Maybe I’m dreaming. There’s no way this actually happened. I took a deep breath. Maybe..?

I closed my eyes and imagined my bedroom. After a few moments, the air shifted. I opened my eyes, and lo and behold, I was home.

I took the necklace off and set it on my nightstand. I closed my window, and went to sleep.

Chapter Three

When I woke up, I immediately checked my nightstand. Sure enough, the necklace was still there.

There was a knock at my door. I grabbed the necklace and shoved it under the bed. “Come in!” I kicked the pendant further away from where anyone could see it.

“Good morning Amelia!” A word about my mom. She’s probably the nicest person I know, aside from Hazel and Yoru.

“Morning,” I replied, still thinking about what happened. My eyes darted around the room, and then I saw it. One of the little light birds was sitting on my windowsill. I tried to make it look like I didn’t see it, but clearly, I failed.

“Are you alright?” Mom looked at the windowsill, but she obviously didn’t see the light bird.

“Yeah, I’m just tired.”

My mother raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yep.”

“Alright.” Mom smiled gently. “Your friend Emily is waiting for you. She said something about wanting to talk to you on the way to school.” She left the room and closed my door.

I ran over to my window, and picked up the light bird. As I looked at it, I realized that it really did look like a bird. It looked up at me, and chirped. “Why are you here?” I whispered. “Where did you come from?”

The bird chirped again. This time it sounded like a question.

“Are you asking a question?”

Another chirp. It sounded like the bird was asking me what its name was.

“You want to know your name?”

“Chirp!” I took that as a yes.

“Ummm…” I thought for a moment. “Wisp?”

The bird shook its head.

“Ember?”

“Chirp!” Another yes.

“You want to be called Ember?” I let Ember fly onto my shoulder.

“Chirp.” Ember seemed to have an attitude.

After I waved Ember out of my room (he came back) and got dressed, I went into the living room, where Emily was sitting on the couch.

“Hey Amelia!” Her ears were covered, which I wasn’t used to seeing.

“Hi Emily.” I dashed into the kitchen, dropped a piece of bread into the toaster, ran back into the living room, and sat down next to her. “Why are your ears covered?”

Emily’s voice lowered. “I saw Yoru this morning. She told me that people who wanted to catch people like me were around, and that I needed to cover my ears to stay safe from them.”

My eyes widened. “You’re kidding.” But I knew she wasn’t. Emily liked to joke around, but she would never joke about something like that.

Emily shook her head. “Oh, and she wanted me to tell you-.” Before she could finish her sentence, the toaster dinged. I got up, grabbed my toast, and went back to talk to Emily.

“You were saying?”

“She wanted me to tell you that she can help you figure out how to use your magic.” I almost choked.

“About that, I kinda figured out how to use it.” I explained what happened after she left.

“Woah.” Emily tapped her fingers against her thigh. “So you’re telling me that you just managed to hold a fire without burning anything?”

“Yep.” I swallowed the rest of my toast. “Something tells me that I can do more.”

“Well duh. You-.” I covered Emily’s mouth because she was being too loud.

“Quiet! My mom’s in the house!” I stopped covering Emily’s mouth.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“Girls! You need to go to school.” My mom poked her head around the corner, her dark brown hair falling around her face.

“Alright! Bye Mom!” I slung my backpack on my shoulder, and dragged Emily out of the house.

“Your mom’s nice.” Emily moved her hair so it would cover her ears again.

“She’s strict when it comes to sleep though.” I touched the ribbon in my hair.

Emily’s eyes widened. “Amelia?”

“Yeah?”

“Your necklace just appeared.”

I looked down, and sure enough, my necklace was around my neck. The angular teardrop shaped jewel glittered cheerfully. “What the heck?” I didn’t take it off though. Instead, I slipped it under my shirt, in case the people hunting Emily went after me too.

Emily shrugged. “Let's just go.” She grabbed my wrist, and strode on.

As we approached the entrance to the school, Ember suddenly appeared on my shoulder. I scratched his chest feathers, and pulled a granola bar out of my backpack. Right after I unwrapped it, Ember's mandible unhinged, and he devoured the granola bar in one bite.

“Holy- what was that?!” Emily’s face was as white as a sheet.

“I forgot you couldn’t see him. Emily, say hi to Ember.”

“Squawk!” Ember pecked at the ribbon in my hair.

“It’s one of those light birds, isn’t it?”

Ember twittered indignantly.

“Can you even hear him?”

Emily shrugged. “Nope.”

“Good. People would probably think they were going crazy if they heard an invisible bird chirping.”

I pushed the doors open, and rushed to the lockers, Emily in pursuit.

“Hey Amelia, hey Emily!” Hazel was leaning against her locker, her hair done in a messy braid.

“What’s up Hazel?” Emily fiddled with her lock.

Ember chirped.

“Is there a bird in here?” Hazel tilted her head.

Dang it. Ember, be quiet.

“What do you mean?” I glanced at Ember. He looked proud of himself.

“I just heard a bird.” Hazel spread her hands. “Either I’m going crazy or there’s actually a bird.”

“Ummm…” Emily glanced at me. “I think you’re going crazy.”

Hazel raised an eyebrow. She touched her hair clip, which was a periwinkle rhombus with rounded edges. It changed to a pastel green. She looked straight at Ember.

“Knew it.” Hazel grinned. “I should’ve seen that coming.” She laughed.

“Wait, you have magic too?” I watched as Ember flitted over to Hazel, obviously curious as to why she could see him.

“Yep. I thought I was the only one in the school.” She let Ember hop onto her finger. “So, when did you figure it out?”

“Last night.”

Hazel looked impressed. “Dang. And you already have a light bird? I've been doing magic for two years, and I still don’t have one.”

“So should I just let you two miss homeroom because you’re geeking out over magic?” Emily snickered.

“Frick.” Hazel handed Ember back to me. “We’ll talk during homeroom, kay?”

“Okay.” Ember flew onto my shoulder. “Bye Emily!”

“See you later!”

Mrs. White was back today. She smiled as Hazel and I slid into class, just moments after the bell rang.

“Sorry we’re late!” Hazel pulled a pencil out of her purse, and adjusted a crooked piece of paper in her binder.

“It’s alright. Please take your seats.”

“Yes ma’am.” Hazel and I went to our seats, and Ember immediately hopped onto my desk.

“He’s so cute,” Hazel whispered. Ember chirped, clearly happy with the compliment.

“Yep.”

“I hope Mrs. Grace wasn’t too rough on you yesterday.” Mrs. White was already writing the names of people missing an assignment we’d done with her. “When I met her, she was a little… how do I say it? Scary?”

Scary. That wasn’t necessarily the right word to describe Yoru. Then again, it kind of was.

“She was great,” a kid in the front row said. “But there was someone who tried to be the substitute instead of her.”

Mrs. White raised an eyebrow. “Huh.”

Hazel and I glanced at each other.

I ripped a piece of paper out of my binder. “Do you think Yoru messed with Mrs. Whites memory?” I slid it over to Hazel.

“Yep,” she wrote.

“Dang. I wonder what else she can do.” I thought about that.

Mrs. White turned on the projector for morning announcements. “I need you all to be quiet. Morning announcements start soon.”

After homeroom, Hazel and I rushed over to the lockers to talk with Emily.

“I’m ditching,” Emily said. She grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. “You two wanna come along?”

Ember hopped onto Emily’s shoulder and tweeted.

“I think Ember wants to come along.” I held out my finger, and he pecked at it. “Ow. Ember, my finger is not food.”

Hazel snickered. “So, we’re going.” She swung her locker open, snatched her things out of it, packed up, and closed it. A little after that I asked “Hazel what type of magic are you?” “Oh yeah you're probably wondering about it now?” she sounded sad as she said it.

“Well the thing is….” she continued “What?” I said eagerly “Well I don't really know. My parents who are both magic were both plant magic. But since I haven’t found my power yet. We're guessing I am plant magic” She said quietly. “Oh," I said quietly. SInce I realized this was a tough subject for her. What followed was some awkward silence.

“So where do we wanna go?” Emily said, trying to change the subject. Not so very slyly

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