#the way i became FERAL the moment we became aware of this

[gay-dorito-dust]

possessive miguel o’hara has me in a chokehold

Possessive!Miguel trusts you but not those you interact with because he knew what every one of them were thinking upon looking at you because he thought the exact same thing.

Possessive!Miguel who’d watch from his hubbub as you interact with the others in the spider society under the guise of doing something else. It completely fools everyone but not Lyla, who would often catching him stealing glances and noting how his jaw clenched when the person you were talking to decided to get a little too comfortable.

Possessive!Miguel who’d definitely leaves bite marks scattered about your body when he’s feeling particularly possessive and would hide away any article of clothing that would allow you to cover them up so that people would get the message that you were taken. But when he noticed that some had healed, he takes up the task of replacing them with more marks.

Possessive!Miguel who is your shadow, following you whilst keeping a distance, thinking he was merely watching over you, which he was but one too many times had he followed you on the pretences of looking out for your well-being, when it was just him making sure to keep you within his line of sight, sending him into an almost feral state when you seemingly disappeared before his eyes.

Possessive!Miguel who only got possessive when he’s faced with the possibility of eventually loosing you one day to someone who truly deserved your love. It’s fascinating for Miguel when he’s aware of the moment his protectiveness became possessiveness towards you; Yet despite how possessive he may get, Miguel never lets it go to darker places where he would be pushing and pushing you away into the arms of someone else.

Possessive!Miguel who’d holds onto you really tight, face pressed into your neck, whispering ‘you’re mine,’ ‘there’s nobody that you’d rather be with then me,’ ‘I need you,’ ‘you belong to me,’ ‘don’t leave me when I still need you in my life,’ ‘see the way you fit within my arms? It means that we were meant to be.’ And so on like a mantra that you didn’t know who it was made for, you or himself for reassurance.

Possessive!Miguel who’d may or may not keep you inside the house when he feels as though something bad was encroaching and his first instinct was to assure that you were safe, even if it meant keeping you locked inside until further notice but he makes sure you have everything that you require until the danger passes over.

A/n: I kinda ran out of stuff to put here and this might seem a little lacklustre but at least I tried and gave it an attempt. Plus half of this probs ain’t within the realm of possessiveness but eh.

[jihyocentric]

usually, getting to see jihyo pliantly lied down and reactive to a certain display of dominance wasn’t so easy. not because jihyo strictly wanted control or because she was against showing an intimately needy side of her to nayeon — that was nayeon, after all. it was simply more interesting, and it became their usual dynamic, for jihyo to take charge in bed.

hormonal changes could be a pain to deal with. by the end of the fourth month of her pregnancy, jihyo was well aware that she was being affected by it, only that now, with the pregnancy of their second child, jihyo didn’t feel the usual fatigue caused by the increase of certain hormone levels anymore, but her strong sex drive was making nayeon crazy.

“put it back in!”

nayeon would have found it cute, the way jihyo pouts and bucks her hips, the puffy lips of her core against her limp cock making a slick noise that could get nayeon hard again on itself, if it wasn’t for the fact that it was nearly morning and she had been fucking jihyo since late afternoon. nayeon felt dizzy, after coming inside jihyo so many times she’d lost count, and the idea of doing it again makes her tremble.

nayeon hates to see jihyo cry if it isn’t for pleasure. the crystal clear tears almost make her give up and notch the soft head of her cock back into the warmth it belonged to. she resists the temptation lying under her, keeping jihyo’s wrists pinned to the bed, just so to prevent her from doing what she’d been asking for with her own hands.

“just one more. unnie, please!” a whine comes out faintly past jihyo’s lips, followed by a whimper when the grip nayeon has on her wrists become tighter. “just this time... unnie, fill me up!”

it’s her weakness, when jihyo calls her unnie. even after all of those years together, and especially when her cock is right over or inside her dripping pussy. with jihyo asking so nicely, saying no to anything she could possibly ask for is not an option for nayeon.

so nayeon grants her wish, pulling a hand away from jihyo’s wrists while the other keeps them where they are — nayeon’s back was starting to bleed after the constant, abrupt contact with jihyo’s nails, slightly stinging from being bruised, but it was nothing that nayeon couldn’t handle. she pumps herself back to full power, wasting no time and sinking into jihyo once she wasn’t soft anymore.

nayeon can’t fathom how her body still manages to move after hours of draining sex. she lets go of jihyo’s wrists, supporting her own weight on her elbows, grunting because the bump between them prevents her from fully pressing jihyo against the bed. she’s as careful as she can be, thrown on the edge too soon, embarrassingly worked up from being repeatedly called unnie, losing her senses as jihyo clenches tightly around her.

none of them last long. jihyo comes first, gushing around nayeon while trying not to scream, and the built up pressure in nayeon’s stomach dissolves right next, caving in to jihyo’s wish and filling her up. nayeon nearly passes out, her body shaking as she pulls out and moves away, falling weakly on the bed next to jihyo and closing her eyes in exhaustion.

“i’m sorry.” jihyo mutters after a while.

it takes her a few seconds to recover from her last orgasm, jihyo can barely move, but she lies on her side to face nayeon, feeling guilty for keeping her up to deal with her hormonal matter.

“babygirl,” nayeon babbles. her eyes open and she releases a whimper as she inches closer to jihyo, leaving a loving kiss at the tip of her nose. “you almost killed me. such a feral little kitten.”

“stop talking to me like that.” jihyo whines, cheeks pink. they’re silent for a moment, until jihyo brings a hand to nayeon’s arms, a frown on her face, the regret hitting her immediately. “i hurt you.”

nayeon shakes her head. “’s nothin’, hyo. all good. i like it when you get needy, and it doesn’t hurt.”

“but this looks painful,” jihyo squeezes nayeon’s arm, hearing a soft whimper from nayeon. “i’ll take care of this when we wake up.” she promises.

“you have to reapply it after three hours, nayeon.” jihyo says, concentrated on spreading the ointment on nayeon’s arm. she had already applied it on her back, a thin layer, because that was all nayeon could have if she didn’t want her shirt to glue on her back.

jihyo pulls away then, looking at nayeon, who’s rubbing her covered tummy lovingly, eyes shining with love as she enjoys her last moments with them before she has to go to work.

“were you listening to me?” jihyo asks, a soft smile on her lips.

“uh-huh. not sure if i can reapply it on my back though.” nayeon answers, whining when jihyo goes for the right arm, despite not feeling any real pain. it was only an instinctive response to being taken care of the same way jisoo would when she got bruises.

“unless seulgi is there, you won’t.” jihyo says, sharp eyes making contact with nayeon for a brief second.

“so jealous.” nayeon coos, amused.

“i’m not jealous.” jihyo retorts. nayeon teases her again, but jihyo’s attention is back on nayeon’s arms.

this time, the ointment is resting on the table and jihyo wasn’t focusing on the bruises she’d mercilessly left on nayeon, but on her soft muscles that, unfortunately for jihyo, were quite apparent even covered by nayeon’s shirt.

“you got squishy, nayeonie.” jihyo mutters.

nayeon gasps. “squi- i’m not squishy!”

jihyo squeezes her arms, curiously palming nayeon, playing with the flesh with fondness. “definitely squishy. so soft. can't even feel the muscles.”

a tiny voice screams for ‘mommy!’ and jihyo has to leave then. nayeon remains with her mouth open and out of words as jihyo tends to jisoo.

what jihyo says in the morning lingers in nayeon’s mind throughout the day.

nayeon had stopped going to the gym regularly after she found out jihyo was pregnant — she had to be close to jihyo all the time, and work was the only excuse jihyo had to keep some distance from nayeon.

(it’s not that any of them wanted distance to begin with, but nayeon could be too much, too possessive, too obsessed with the idea of protecting her most beloved ones that she became a hassle.)

but nayeon wasn’t squishy. at all. jihyo was certainly just trying to tease her, of course that was the case…

“’m not that squishy.” nayeon mumbles to herself, quietly whining from time to time while trying to get work done.

“enough.” a coworker, yeri, lets out a sigh. “can you stop rambling? some people are trying to work.”

“kim yerim,” nayeon gets up from her chair swiftly, the sound making another coworker flinch, loud enough for them to hear from relatively far. “first of all, we’re on a break. you don’t get to silence me this time. give me your opinion on something.”

“you have…” yeri looks at the watch on her wrist. “two minutes.”

nayeon looks around, finding empty seats at the firm, with the exception of one coworker. they didn’t seem to mind her conversation with yeri, so nayeon proceeds to flex her biceps, smiling proudly when she sees a faint line that indicated she still had some muscular mass on her arms, but nayeon couldn’t decide if she was squishier or if jihyo was only trying to mess with her.

“what do you think?” nayeon asks, a convinced smile on her face.

“about what?” yeri blinks, emotionless. nayeon clicks her tongue, bitter when she realizes yeri was, by far, the worst person she could be asking to analyze her muscles, but every opinion mattered. as long as they rubbed her ego, of course.

“these babies. big, aren’t they?” nayeon pushes yeri into agreeing, walking closer to her. “wanna see them closer? jus’ don’t touch them ‘cause my wife…”

“ew, no!” yeri squeals. the coworker behind them clears their throat, clearly annoyed with their antics, which was nothing different from their usual routine at work. “they’re not big, though. that friend of yours, momo, was that her name? she was… something. something you’re not, im. am i allowed to go back to work?”

“hey! she’s married. and why are you so cold?!” nayeon whines, sitting back on her chair. “so mean to me.”

yeri glues her eyes to the monitor on her table once again. “only when you keep talking to yourself for hours when i’m trying to work.”

nayeon huffs but remains silent — even she, herself, sometimes wanted to keep quiet. there was nothing she could do, however, to fight the need to express herself through her voice when she wanted to. the only problem was that nayeon wanted that perhaps too often.

“i didn’t think you were coming today.”

momo shows nayeon a smile that deeply irritates her. it’s as if momo is mocking her, trying to get under her skin and managing to do it. nayeon wasn’t there to discuss her frequency at the gym, so she doesn’t reply momo’s snarky comment, but she stops in front of her while momo is going through her set, working on her triceps.

“do you think i lost my arm muscles?” nayeon blatantly lets out. instead of starting her set, she watches momo and drinks water — well, at least she was at the gym. it didn’t matter if she was going to exercise or not. being in such an environment was already enough.

momo agrees with a humming sound. “even jihyo has more than you.”

“of course she does not!” nayeon whines. “maybe in the past, i’ll admit i wasn’t that active. but she called me squishy today. squishy! it’s not like i totally stopped coming. and even if i did, i still do other stuff to keep these babies,” nayeon almost loses her breath while rambling. “like… like lifting jisoo. she got heavier. and… well- there’s also bbuyo! that cat is chunky. i’m the one who handles the groceries too, and…”

nayeon was truly affected by the idea of losing her beloved muscles.

she’d worked hard for them — really hard, because nayeon wasn’t the biggest fan of the gym before, but she liked how her muscles looked and how jihyo would constantly ogle them, and so she started enjoying the place. going there meant she got to spend time with momo and keep her babies safely growing under her skin.

“mrs. squishy, i would like to exercise in silence.” momo replied. at least nobody was judging nayeon for being loud, unlike it was at the firm. that was because most people had their headphones with them, or else they would be giving nayeon cold stares.

the way momo refers to nayeon her gets her off guard. “what did you just call me?”

“if you want your muscles back, you should start exercising instead of whining and looking at me,” momo dismisses her question. “have you stretched already?”

nayeon huffs. “yeah, but i won’t forget what you just-”

“good. here, take this.” momo steps away from the cable machine, handing nayeon the attachment for triceps. “this will do. you’ll see them back in a week.”

nayeon pouts, trying to execute the set, but momo hadn’t changed the weight on the machine. “too heavy.”

momo wants to tease nayeon again, because that had been light for her and nayeon was already asking for lighter. she doesn’t, because then nayeon wouldn’t stop sulking and, most importantly, talking about how she wasn’t squishy. momo wanted peace and quiet if she was spending an hour with im nayeon.

“are you sure you want to sleep now, baby? it’s too early,” jihyo says softly, brushing jisoo’s scalp calmly. “we can read a book together.”

jihyo knows jisoo would hardly agree on staying up any longer. jisoo had already done her homework, eaten dinner and taken a shower, so she was allowed to rest now. surprisingly, she had even refused to watch cartoons, and jihyo rarely allowed her to watch those before bed, but jisoo had had a long day, a day certainly longer than jihyo’s from the way jisoo described it to her.

jisoo answers jihyo with a noisy whine. words become too complicated when she’d been actively using them all day, so jisoo closes her eyes and jihyo understands that her answer is a no. she’d much rather stay on her mommy’s lap and fall asleep in complete silence.

jihyo knows that she shouldn’t let jisoo fully rest on her lap, over her belly, and she doesn’t know how that can be comfortable for jisoo given the fact that her tummy was more evident now, but she allows the baby to stay there. the still-growing baby could handle it inside her tummy. that lap was still exclusive to jisoo, and jihyo would let her have it until her belly was too big.

until jisoo’s breathing becomes fainter, jihyo keeps caressing her head and her back, resisting the urge to stay there with her baby because jisoo would eventually wake up if she stayed. the bed was too small and jisoo moved a lot while sleeping.

bbuyo stays there when jihyo places jisoo on the bed and covers her with a warm blanket. he’s busy playing with his fish toy, but attentive to anything that could cause the house’s baby any harm during her sleep, like a full time babysitter.

just as jihyo is making sure that the lamp isn’t too bright, she hears the sound of footsteps getting closer.

“hey,” nayeon whispers. “sleeping?”

jihyo nods. “played too hard today. her teacher said she’s becoming more energetic. not as shy anymore.”

“then i’ll just give her a kiss. this soon-to-be social butterfly needs to rest.” nayeon coos.

nayeon does her best not to make any harsh sounds, but bbuyo looks annoyed to see her. the couple shouldn’t be there, as it was jisoo’s time to sleep, and it didn’t matter if they were her parents. he even stops chewing his toy when nayeon gets close enough to kneel next to the bed, quietly meowing when nayeon presses her lips to the baby’s forehead.

“’m sorry, kitty. i’ll go away now.” nayeon pats his head a couple times after pulling away.

the first thing jihyo notices when they leave the room is that nayeon is sweating. she’s flushed and wearing tight gym clothes, and jihyo wants to curse when she’s instantly aroused by what she sees. the hormones. jihyo hated them.

“im nayeon!” jihyo whines suddenly and crosses her arms, apparently mad at nayeon. she leaves nayeon standing alone, heading to their room quickly, acting quick before she attacked nayeon the same way she had done the night before.

“i’m wrong!” nayeon accepts defeat, walking fast to match jihyo’s pace. “but what did i do?”

“me. and now i’m pregnant. and these hormones…” jihyo storms into their room. “it’s embarrassing. i feel like a teenager again.”

“oh, you’re horny.” nayeon grins. jihyo sits on their bed and looks at nayeon sharply before burying her face in her hands. “well, i should be mad at you. hirai momo called me mrs. squishy because of you.”

“what?” jihyo laughs. the heat pooling at her stomach is no longer there, dissipating as she laughed.

“since you think i’m…” she avoids using the word ‘squishy’. “no longer muscly, i went to the gym with her.” nayeon crosses her arms, attempting to look angry. “turns out these are still as hard as a rock.” she flexes her now sore arms, showing jihyo that she was wrong.

“you took that to the heart, didn’t you?” jihyo taunts. she taps the empty place next to her, inviting nayeon to the bed despite her being sweaty. she was always sexier like that anyway, and jihyo wouldn’t mind to change the sheets. “sit here.”

“i know you regret and all, so no need to apologize…” nayeon sits on the bed, clueless about jihyo’s prying eyes on her. “but if you really care about me, you’ll have to deal with her if she calls me that again!”

jihyo nods, amused but pretending to take what nayeon says seriously. “i will. she won’t mess with you, i promise.”

the topic seems to die there as jihyo moves to nayeon’s lap. nayeon smiles, holding jihyo lovingly despite spending the day worried about her muscles because of her, but none of that mattered anymore.

“hi.” nayeon greets her.

“hi.” jihyo replies, excessively sultry, big eyes scanning nayeon as if she was a hungry predator who was about to catch a prey. “i’m so wet for you.”

“of course you are,” nayeon teases.

“you don’t understand… i’m wet all the time. because of you. this is your fault, im nayeon,” jihyo whispers, nose brushing against nayeon’s. “knocked me up and now i have to deal with all of this.”

“i’ll do anything to fix what i’ve done.” nayeon replies, honest and hard in her pants, despite worrying about her night of sleep. her body would be ready for jihyo as long as jihyo wanted her, and that was what scared nayeon. “but… we’ll sleep tonight, right?”

“maybe.” jihyo kisses her then, pushing nayeon backwards so that her back was against the bed. “by the way, you’re not all squishy. these are hard,” jihyo squeezes her arms. “but you’re huggable. that’s what i meant. you’re arms are soft when they hug me, not when you’re lifting weights.”

nayeon groans. “you totally did that to tease me!”

jihyo laughs. “i totally did that to tease you.”

[reds-writings]

i love your blog more than i’ve loved anything on earth before.. can you maybe write something about 1995 rust and reader working a late night together and taking an awkward and romantically charged truck ride to the bar together?? oh im a fool for some good old yearning. hope you’re doing well i love what ya do

ahhh! thank you so much! i too love some good ol' yearning so i whipped some up quick! enjoy, darlin! (this takes place in the middle of the first of many and the start of something new and jj)

“We oughta call it a night.” Your voice rang out in the empty space of the precinct. It had to be bordering nine thirty and your body was begging for release from your hunched-over position, having been pouring over a surplus of articles for the past couple of hours. The slope of Rust’s shoulders jerked slightly as if forgetting where he was or that you had decided to hang back with him in the first place.

“Time is it?” He rumbled out, using the heel of his palm to rub at a tired eye. 

“9:37. You good to drop me off still?” You replied after a quick glance at your wrist. Your truck was still in the shop but you couldn’t complain much if it meant being around Rust a little extra. 

“Don’t worry about it. Sleep decides when it wants to find me. Even then it never really takes hold.” The casual admittance threaded with his perplexing way of describing what troubles him would never fail to bewilder you. 

“Well…if you ain’t sleepin’ anytime soon could you be persuaded to stop for a drink on the way back? My treat.” 

Rust had the humor to snort, a sharp and haughty sound, “If the company you keep makes a lady pay then they’re shit.” 

“The company I keep mostly nowadays consists of Marty and the feral cat taking up residence in my yard every now and then.” 

“Therein lies the problem.”

‘He likes to be spoiled. What can you do.” You shrugged playfully while beginning to gather your things. 

“The cat or Marty?” That finally made you shoot out a laugh and he squashed down the distant desire to preen at your amusement. 

Not fun outside of parties. Fuck you, Marty. 

“We’ll grab a drink or two.” He relinquished. You pumped a fist in the air in a small celebration of victory with a hushed hiss of a ‘yes!’ The day was long and you could use a beer paired with the continued company of the wiry enigma. 

As you mosied over to his truck and hopped in you batted your lashes in what dramatic fashion you could muster through your fatigue, “Free drinks and the voluntary companionship of Mr. Cohle? Gee, did I strike lucky-”

“I don't recall sayin' free.” He lit a cigarette with one hand and began to steer out of the lot with the other. It was concerning how such a mundane act could start to get you all hot and bothered. 

“With you stickin' your nose in my business about what friends I do and don’t have they became free, I believe there was the implication of mighty disdain towards makin’ a lady pay.” A dainty finger wagged in his direction.

“I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of a lady-” The swat of your quick hand at his arm served as an interruption to his bullshitting. He was funny. When he wanted to be. Maybe not hardly ever but sometimes the mood struck whenever the stars decided to align just right. You thought it foolish to think the odds were specifically in your favor during moments like these but seeing him even a little bit at ease couldn’t hold you back from running right into the arms of said foolishness itself. Marty would dub you delusional. He could also kiss your ass.

Plain and simple.

“Because of your outright boorishness, I will be demanding some top-shelf finery tonight.” You half-sassed while he blew smoke from his sloped nose at your theatrics. The way you could go from suppressed and professional to the feisty spitfire sitting beside him now would soon throw him on his ass sooner than preferred. His liability to stop it was growing weaker with each car ride despite everything in his mind screaming to bring it to a severe halt. He wanted you far away from him but wanted you in constant proximity a hairsbreadth more.

“Low shelf. Maybe.”

“Top or bust. Consider it initiation as my new form of company. Just how it goes, friend.” You jokingly admonished and it was considered final.

Friend. He detested the warmth that took siege over his being.

[constantcrisis19]

Bleeding Out - Part 3

Simon "Ghost" Riley x GN S/O

Main Page

Warnings: Blood and injury, Needles, Violent thoughts, References to Ghost's backstory.

Ghost grit his teeth when you went limp against his back, his desperate grip on your thighs tightening in a way that would have been painful for you if you weren't currently conscious. He pushed into the medical tent like a man on a mission, ignoring the various moans and cries of suffering soldiers and shoving past anyone who didn’t get out of his way fast enough.

He gently lowered you down onto one of the open beds, your sweaty hair falling into your face as your head lolled to the side, Ghost reaching out in a brief moment of weakness to brush the limp lock of hair out of your face before turning his attention to the wound on your thigh.

The neck gaiter that he had tied in place over the injury was stained a deep red, the cloying scent of iron so thick that Ghost could practically taste it even through the thick fabric of his balaclava as he peeled the sticky soaked cloth away from the wound in order to get a look at the damage. 

He felt grateful for his mask since he couldn’t help how his face twisted up into a snarl at the frankly obscene amount of blood that had oozed into your clothing, soaking your right side all the way down your pant leg to your boots, staining the material a deep crimson.

One of Ghost’s hands released his hold that he had on the cloth that he’d wrapped around your thigh in favor of grabbing the wrist of the person that had made the mistake of touching his arm, his grip so tight that he could feel the bones grind together under his fingers.

“Uh… sir? I’m here to help, what’s the situation?” A soft voice abruptly broke through the rush of blood ringing in Ghost’s ears and he was unceremoniously dragged from whatever haze he’d fallen into, causing him to violently snap back into focus.

He managed to pry his dark gaze away from your sallow figure, bringing his attention to the person who had been brave enough to approach him, the wide green eyes of a medic warily watching him as if he were a feral animal.

Ghost let go of the medic’s wrist as if the touch had burned him and he curled his fingers into a fist in order to hide the way that they wanted to tremble and, in an attempt to distract himself from the panic he could feel lingering on the edge of his awareness, he turned his attention back to the saturated fabric that was plastered to your leg.

“Deep laceration on upper left thigh from a bullet. They were conscious and verbal about two minutes ago before they began showing signs of hypovolemic shock and became unresponsive.” Ghost replied in rapid fire as he pressed down on the wound, continuing to apply steady pressure and trying to ignore how your unnatural lack of reaction to the painful contact made him want to hit something.

“Okay. Elevate their legs and keep applying direct pressure to the wound. We have a category one! I need a suture kit and an IV, stat!” The second half of the medic’s commands were directed to the rest of the staff that were bustling about the packed tent, more medics hurrying over with the necessary supplies, and it took every ounce of self control Ghost had to keep from taking a swing every time someone accidentally brushed up against him in their rush.

“Blood pressure is dropping, start them on two liters of LR.” The green eyed medic warned as someone set up an intravenous drip, pushing the needle into the tender skin of your right arm before taping the tube down to keep it in place. 

More people joined the fray and Ghost viciously repressed the urge to bury one of his knives deep into the eye socket of the medic that bullied him out of the way since he knew that it wouldn’t do him any good in the long run, so he stepped away and allowed the other man to take over, the medic cutting your pant leg away from your thigh and pulling the unsalvageable neck gaiter away, letting it hit the floor with a wet sound before replacing it with a sterile pad of gauze.

Ghost just stood there and watched in complete silence as the medical team surrounding the cot all frantically tried to keep you alive, all their voices blurring together into a cacophony of indecipherable noise as the feeling of something wet dripping down his side distantly registered. 

He looked down at himself and swallowed back bile at the sight that greeted him. The majority of Ghost's right side and thigh had been stained by your blood due to the fact that he’d carried you for so long, the thick red liquid marring his already filthy fatigues. 

He numbly tracked a drop of crimson with his eyes as it slowly oozed down from his hip to his thigh before being soaked up by the fabric near his knee, the sensation of blood creeping down his leg making his skin crawl.

Ghost’s gaze snapped up from his soiled fatigues when someone came up next to him, his eyes darting over to the medic that had been brave enough to approach him, their hand hovering over his shoulder for a moment before thinking better of touching him and dropping their limb back to their side. 

“We have the situation under control now, but we’re already running low on space so we need you to wait outside the tent, sir.” The medic spoke softly, the woman hovering in a way that spelled out her desire to usher him out of the medical tent, but he didn't move. Ghost’s feet were rooted to the spot, medics and patients alike all moving around his still figure as if he were a shark in the water. 

“No.” Ghost declared bluntly as he turned his attention back to the crowd swarming the cot that you were laying on, noticing how the medic shot him a startled look out his peripheral vision, but he didn’t care. Let her judge him, let her question his intentions. Let her think what she wanted, but he wasn’t going to move until he got confirmation of either your recovery or your death.

And the poor soul who drew the short straw and was tasked to give Ghost the news better pray to whatever God that they believed in that it was the former.

“I’m sorry?” The medic asked, their incredulousness battling with their self-preservation in the face of Ghost’s blatant refusal to be separated from you. Ghost turned his head just enough to make eye contact with the medic standing next to him, the rest of his body eerily still in a way he knew other people found off-putting as he leveled the medic with his signature cold stare.

“I’m not leaving until they're either stable or dead.” Ghost declared, his tone leaving no room for argument, but the medic he was talking to was either an idiot or was unaware of Ghost’s reputation because she stubbornly persisted. 

“But-” She began to say before Ghost unceremoniously cut her off.

“How’s their condition?" He asked, his voice low and rough. He could feel the cooling, sticky blood oozing between his gloved fingers as his hands clenched and released reflexively, his fingertips tingling as he wished for the familiar weight of his rifle.

“Uh, it's still too early to tell…” The medic began hesitantly before sighing, seeming to reluctantly accept the fact that Ghost wasn’t going to be leaving anytime soon. "But we're doing everything in our power to help." She told Ghost with a worried frown, her concerned gaze like a physical weight, her unwelcome sympathy causing Ghost to glance away before he did something that would make Price give him that disappointed look in order to wipe that fucking annoying look off the young woman’s face. "Do you know them? Are the two of you close?" 

The question caught him off guard and helped clear some of the red from his vision, Ghost’s dark eyes shifting back over to the cot he had deposited you on as if magnetized, his gaze visibly softening from his usual blank stare when he caught a glimpse of your familiar figure in a gap between the medics swarming you. 

Ghost watched as personnel read off stats from the various machines that you were hooked up to, each announcement so bogged down with medical jargon that Ghost could only pick up on a few terms here and there as they worked to keep the area around the wound clean as it was meticulously stitched shut.

"...yes." He admitted quietly and, while Ghost wasn't exactly thrilled with telling some random medic about his attachment to you -in fact, he would rather go through several hours of torture over voluntarily being emotionally vulnerable- it was a necessary risk he had to take if he wanted to appeal to the women's sentimental side and gain more leniency when it came to being kept in the loop about you during your stay in medical. “Are they…? Will they pull through?”

The medic opened her mouth to reply but was unceremoniously cut off when the people that were crowding around your cot burst into a flurry of movement, the medics shouting to each other as they all scrambled for medical supplies. And while it may have looked chaotic, it was clear that there was in fact a method to the madness.

"We have a shortage of A+ and O- reserves. We’re going to need to perform a direct donor-to-patient transfusion if we have a chance of bringing them out of critical condition." A random voice that Ghost didn’t recognize called out just loud enough to carry over to where he was standing, and Ghost's blood ran cold.

"What blood type are you?" The medic next to him suddenly asked, sounding equal parts frantic and determined, her tone pulling his dull eyes away from the medics crowding around the cot that you were laying on to her. Her eyes were wide as she stared expectantly up at him, Ghost eyes widening as he caught onto what she was implying.

"I’m A+." Ghost replied immediately, already rolling up his sleeves to reveal his pale skin, his body moving before his mind even caught up with what he was doing, his feet taking him toward you and subsequently all the medical personnel that were currently treating you.

"We have a compatible donor!" The medic trailing behind Ghost yelled to be heard over the commotion as she followed him, easily keeping up with the rapid pace he’d set. It didn’t take long for him to be surrounded, Ghost ignoring how each unsolicited touch reminded him of the smell of petrichor and rot, the telltale squirming of maggots against his skin, and instead stubbornly kept his gaze locked onto your sallow face now that he was close enough to see you.

"We're doing an emergency transfusion." A male said as he rushed over to the pair, giving the female medic at Ghost’s side a needle and a tube while another medic simultaneously rolled up his left sleeve and wrapped a tourniquet around his bicep before tapping his inner elbow with two fingers in order to find a vein.

“Sir, have you had any unprotected sex in the last six months? Or have any blood-transmitted diseases we need to know about?" The male asked as he wiped down a patch of skin before pushing the hollow needle into Ghost's vein, almost as if he already knew that Ghost was clean and was just asking because it was protocol… so it seemed that his reputation proceeded him.

"No. None." He replied, holding eerily still and watching with keen eyes as medics prepped the major arteries in your arm, connecting you up to Ghost on the other side of the tubing.

Ghost felt an odd tugging sensation in his arms as the transfusion began, glancing away from you for the first time since he’d walked over and down at the tubing just in time to see blood so dark that it almost looked black being pulled out of his veins and down the tube, lazily making its way towards your own arm.

"Here, take a seat." The female medic from earlier said as she reached for his arm, Ghost jerking away from the threat of her touch and causing her to pull her hand away, the woman intelligently choosing to instead gesture to the unoccupied chair at your bedside that someone had dragged over. "Let us know if you start to get dizzy or feel nauseous, alright?" She asked as he obediently sat down, her kind eyes a stark contrast to the usual distant and clinical gazes he'd get from most medical personnel who worked for the military.

Ghost gave her a single, succinct nod in lieu of a verbal reply and turned his attention back to the blood that was traveling through the tubing, his free hand loosely wrapping around the arm of the plastic chair that he’d claimed. 

“The blood is dark.” He said suddenly as she began to step away, halting her in her tracks before she once again turned to face him, what was originally meant to be a question coming out more like a statement because of the cold numbness that was spreading from his chest and Ghost fingers subconsciously tightened on the unforgiving arm of the chair, his grip now more of an attempt at grounding himself than anything else.

When Ghost managed to pry his gaze away from you, he noted that the medic looked surprised, the shock only lasting a few seconds before she seemed to some conclusion or another and her features softened into sympathy and understanding. She clasped her hands in front of her and gave him a soft, reassuring smile as she patiently explained the phenomenon to him.

"Oh. It's perfectly safe. What you're most likely used to seeing is the bright red blood, yes?" She asked and Ghost was begrudgingly impressed with her ability to maintain steady eye contact with him when there were even some higher ups that he’d had the displeasure of meeting who couldn’t say the same. 

He didn’t look away as he nodded, confirming what she’d already suspected and she shot him another gentle smile before continuing. "It's just a chemical reaction with the oxygen in the air that makes it that color but, while it's in your veins, it's actually much darker."

Ghost is the one to break eye contact first, unable to keep looking at her kindhearted expression without wanting to scream at the woman that he doesn’t want her compassion, that she shouldn't waste such a useless emotion on someone like him, who didn't want or need it.

He nodded to make sure that she knew that he’d been paying attention and turned his attention back to you, his hands clenching as he resisted the urge to reach out and take your limp wrist into his own, to measure each sluggish beat of your heart from the source despite the slow beep of the machine next to him.

“Give it to me straight. I want to know if they’ll live.” Ghost said suddenly into the silence that had descended over the two of them and the medic took a deep breath, her lips thinning into a thin line.

"Well, due to your help, they’re odds have just gone up exponentially. They'll probably need a few transfusions though, and you'll need breaks between every one in order to eat, drink and replenish your strength. It's not going to be pleasant for you, but it's doable." She stated softly, her hands unclasping as she paused for a moment in order to seemingly think something over before voicing her thoughts. "Though, you're free to stop giving blood anytime you'd like, I'm just saying there's a better chance that they'll pull through if you do multiple sessions."

“I’ll give whatever it takes.” He admitted quietly, his tone determined and reverent in equal measure as he gave in to the impulse to reach out and lightly brush his calloused fingers over the thin, sensitive skin of your wrist, sliding up your arm to the joint of your elbow where the tubing was taped down before just resting there.

He could never tell the medic the truth about how far he was willing to go for you no matter how nice she seemed because the level of devotion he held for you was something that would scare off any normal person. 

He would most likely be stripped of his rank, discharged, and locked up in a padded room with white walls before being drugged up to his eyeballs if he ever confessed to how deep his obsession with you runs.

He would do anything to make sure that you would stay with him. He would destroy cities, tear down governments, kill anyone who got in his way without a second's hesitation. 

He would go to the ends of the world to bring you back, so giving you his blood, that he’d already spilled several pints of over the years -enough for him to be dead ten times over- for a violent cause that wasn’t even his, was nothing compared to the atrocities that he’d be willing to commit for you.

[drifting-pieces-blog-blog]

Breaking down the comics: The Insanity Plea.

Moon Knight, Issue #7: The Moon Kings. 

OKAY. I was not going to include this issue in the list of important ones. It's a weird one. (there are a lot of weird ones. This hardly ranks in the WEIRD list, but it's still weird). 

And then I saw the first page. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: JAKE LOCKELY. 

This is epic. Last issue we have Steven becoming aware and I will argue that this is the exact moment that Jake became aware of himself being not Marc. 

LOOK AT HIM. The care he takes to put it on. The way he looks unsure in the mirror, not sure if he's going to like what he sees. If the image there will match what he feels inside. 

Still calls it a "disguise". Jake honey, there's no disguise. No one cares enough about Moon Knight to do anything with a 'secret' identity. And anyone that does care already knows who Moon Knight is anyways! (they all think it's Marc. Marc just has that rep). 

Denial. 

So this issue opens with Crawley running to Jake with news on the street about some new drug that's capable of destroying a city. 

Where is this drug hailing from? Chicago. Seems on the next full moon, they plan to unleash this drug on Chicago. 

Jake calls Marlene from his cab radio. 

"Who - Oh, Steven -- I was just going over your stock portfolio and --" 

"Stow the Steven Grant Jive, Lady -- I'm still Jake Lockley at the moment. But speaking of your precious pretty boy millionaire... Book a room for him and a companion at the Drake Hotel in Chicago -- And two singles for Frenchie and Mr. Bertrand Crawley, Esquire." 

Jake's getting a little 'tude when it comes to Steven. 

Is it resentment? Possibly. Jake's lifestyle is completely at odds with Steven's. Perhaps Jake feels that Steven could be doing more to help people. He spends all his time with the poor and downtrodden while Steven relaxes in the mansion. 

His feelings about Steven do start to widen the gap between the three men and it will become a problem in later issues. 

It also makes me angry that later authors took the Marlene relationship with the three boys and made it between Jake and Marc. 

Marlene did NOT like Marc and Jake was often at odds with her. If Marlene was going to go running to any of them and have a child, it would have been with Steven and I'm so angry that the writers completely forgot about Steven and made it with Jake. 

All that being said, the very next panel has Marlene completely ignoring Jake: 

"We're going to Chicago together, Steven? That's wonderful! But--" 

"Grant'll be home after I scarf some of Gena's chow. Ciao." 

Jake hangs up. 

"The Lady's a gem. Grant don't deserve her." 

It's really hard to tell whose side he's taking there. Is he being serious and ragging on Steven again? Saying he doesn't deserve someone as devoted as Marlene? Or is he saying that Grant actually doesn't deserve someone that refuses to listen to them? 

The debate is real. 

Back in Chicago, we see some suspicious men pouring barrels of a drug into the city water supply and the next morning, we see unsuspecting citizens drinking the water. 

We then start to see people freaking out, becoming feral and attacking other people. 

Flying into Chicago, they get reports of people freaking out and causing riots. Moon Knight heads down to try to stop the fights while Marlene heads to the hotel, Frenchie keeps in his chopper, and Crawley heads off to find out what's going on. 

Frenchie stops at a water fountain for a sip after a little investigating then heads back to the chopper. 

Whoopse. 

Frenchie freaks out mid flight and crashes the moon chopper into the water. (Someone start the crashed chopper count.) 

Marc watches in horror as his only friend crashes and he dives in after him. 

***That's not how you do CPR MARC***

So Frenchie wakes up and instantly tries to kill Marc. Marc knocks him out and ties him up. Marc has now figured out that the drug is in the water. 

He puts Frenchie in a safe location. "I'll be back for you, Frenchie. If I have to fight my way through every madman in Chicago--I'll be back!" 

I stress again that Frenchie is Marc's only friend that has stuck by his side through hell and back. Even through his mental health breaks and strange life style. 

You have to wager that Marc has a soft spot for Frenchie. He knows how important he is. 

He rushes to the hotel on foot so he can warn Marlene not to drink the water. 

Marc tries to call Marlene from a payphone but mid warning the operator freaks out and cuts the call. 

Annnnnd Marlene drinks the water. 

But Marc has bigger issues as mobs of affected people show up and try to beat him up. 

Meanwhile the drug makers put on werewolf masks and declare themselves leaders of the city and command the affected to burn it to the ground. 

He then makes demands for money or he'll destroy the city, effectively holding the city hostage. 

Marc tries to take out the leader and chases him down to the subway where he gets gassed by the concentrated dose of the toxin. 

Marc does not have a good time. 

He hallucinates a sign to read "Moon Kings" and thinks he's on the moon being attacked by moon monsters. 

Meanwhile, Marlene is in the hotel freaking out. She starts calling for Steven and saying she doesn't know who she is anymore and blames him for making her crazy like him. 

It's.... It's not a good look. 

Yeah, I get it. She's on drugs. But considering earlier she made a joke about how Steven doesn't know who he is and it's going to drive her crazy too.... 

Issue #8: Night of the Wolves. 

This cover is pretty famous as Moon Knight goes and it's been redone a few times for varient purposes. 

Yeah, Marc is still having a bad time. He starts to hallucinate that the subway train is a monster and he has to kill it. 

He manages to sort of snap out of it and saves some people on the train from being killed by others affected and then stops the train before it crashes. 

The fact that Moon Knight isn't as affected by the drug or is fighting it off is one of the first instances where you see how Marc isn't as affected by mind altering drugs. Something Marc loves to brag about when facing telepaths or villains that try to mess with his state of consciousness. 

Marc manages to find Crawley and he's still not having a good time telling real from hallucination. 

Crawley is not affected! Because he's only been drinking booze. 

Look, I'm not a huge fan of this particular issue, for reasons I'll get into in a moment... But it did give us this: 

******There was a sewer man****

(Someone start the sewer count)

So they make it out and Marc makes it back to the hotel to find it ransacked and an affected Marlene waiting to kill him. 

She stabs him and runs back into the dark, ready to stab him again. 

"No Marlene! Don't do it! I'm Steeven! I love you, Marlene! I... I love...you..." 

What strikes me about this is that he remembers times of him kissing her as Steven. He knocks her out and pauses. 

Steven Grant just declared that He, STEVEN GRANT, loves Marlene. 

He ties up the unconscious Marlene and is clearly conflicted about leaving her. Crawley shows up and informs him that he found where the bad guys are. 

Moon Knight arrives in time to see a shit show. 

The cops are at war with them and the mob is attacking and the bad guys are trying to get away. 

Moon Knight is injured from being stabbed by Marlene, and the military has shown up ready to put down the riots. 

The bad guys are about to dump the last of their drug in the reservoir and Moon Knight tackles them! 

An epilogue ties it all up at the end: "After three days, the shoulder stab wounds are healing quite nicely and Chicago's lakefront skyline looks almost serene." 

The drug is wearing off and the water is being purified. 

We see the group gathered at the water watching as the mangled Moon Chopper is pulled from the lake. 

What a way to get a new chopper design. 

The writers admitted that they fell out of love with the original moon copter design and really wanted to redo it so they…crashed it and started over. 

This becomes almost a rolling gag because that chopper is constantly crashing, blowing up, and landing in buildings on people. 

So why am I not a big fan of this issue? Marlene. She takes a lot of pot-shots at the boys in this one. 

While the boys have been slowly advancing and figuring themselves out, becoming more separate, and finding their own individualism, she has been pushing back. 

One could argue that she’s afraid. She doesn’t understand what’s going on and she sees Jake getting more time away from her and enjoying himself, Moon Knight taking more time to be out all night, and Steven even starting to find his own interests. What’s left for Marlene? 

On the other hand, Steven’s sudden realization that he loves Marlene is also a big step. He himself loves her. Not Marc or Jake or Moon Knight. He has his own feelings. 

I also dislike how the “Look I’m crazy and you made me crazy” aspect is used, even if it is used in a ‘she was drugged up’ sort of way, because it seems to reflect something she was afraid of. As if she’s seeing what’s happening to the system and worried it could happen to her as well. 

This is a BIG problem in the mental health community. People have long feared that things are contagious and that they will be hurt by those that are not of ‘sound mind’. 

And having everyone ‘go crazy’ in this issue and having it lead to them being hyper violent really puts me off. 

Though, one point in favor: The one person that doesn’t ‘go crazy’ and hurt people is Moon Knight. He shows restraint when fighting the people that are attacking him. He’s worried about hurting them. He sees through the hallucinations and knows that what he is feeling is not his own. 

At this point, does he consider his brain to have been touched by a god and molded to resist these things? Or does that come later with one of his many many dealings with Khonshu and death? 

Or has his brain been affected by Khonshu at all? Perhaps there is more to it than Marc understands (not a far stretch since Marc is not the brains of the operation). Could it be that having DID protects his mind? 

After all, DID is formed as a trauma response to protect itself. “You were the only real super power I ever had.” 

[whumpering-heights]

Living Nightmare, pt.2: Captured

[thanks to the interest of people in this story, I've dusted it off! I might redo the first chapter soon with some retcons, but for now enjoy the creature having a Bad Time ^^ its pretty short but sweet]

CWs: nonhuman whumpee, panic, death/dying mention, dehumanisation, it as pronouns

MASTERLIST

Tagging: @why-not-ask-me-a-better-question

When the creature woke, he first became aware of the deep ache in his side. The wound was closed off, but his insides were still knitting themselves together. He blinked, trying to get his bearings. 

He couldn’t smell his Mother. He wanted to press his wrist against his nose and have her scent closer, but he was bound. Trapped. Prey.

His arms were wrenched behind his back, attached to the concrete wall with a heavy chain.

He tried to scramble upright, and found his legs were shackled together, too. He could kneel upright, but couldn’t find the footing to stand.

Panic rose in his chest and he bared his fangs, useless against a hard wire muzzle that let him open his mouth but not bite. He closed his eyes, braced for the pain, and shifted into a small child he had seen once. Their tiny wrists should slip out the cuffs.  

But the metal circles just hissed and slid closer. He hadn’t fixed his voice yet, so the scream of frustration coming out his tiny mouth was animal and rough. He snapped back, more because he broke his concentration rather than because he wanted to, and thankfully the cuffs expanded back with him.  

He was captured. He wasn’t a human, he wasn’t supposed to be on this side of the game! But he was, and if humans played games like Mother did, he was going to die. Soon, if he was lucky.  

He started pulling against the steel entrapments, uncaring of how it cut into his fresh and bruised him. He bashed the muzzle against the chain, as though he could bite through it even without the device on his snout. The pain was nothing, he had to leave!

Something snapped in his ankel as he trashed about, but he barely felt it over the panic now fully gripping his heart. He threw himself all over the cramped space, snarling and screaming. Just wordless at first, but once he realised not even his desperate struggling would release him, he started calling out for his Mother.

Her name was one of the few words she didn't mind hearing from him.

He knew it was useless, though. Even if she wanted to save him after how useless he had been, after the betrayal of leaving without asking, she couldn’t reach him anyway. He was her only way into the human realm, he knew that. And yet, he cried for her, calling until his throat was hoarse. 

He missed his Mother. He wanted to hear her voice. In an effort to calm himself, in what must be his last moments before being eaten, he sang softly to himself. 

His muscles ached, the sidewound had opened again and created black tracks all over the cell where he had squirmed.

Eventually, he just lay panting and sobbing on the ground, all of his limbs burning with exhaustion and straining against the cuffs. His ankle had started knitting together again, but still throbbed.

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

Leonard looked at the CCTV footage, and winced. The creature was frantic and feral. There was no sign of the scraps of sentience it had shown earlier, as it called for its creator in-between snarls and shrieks.  

Next to him, his supervisor, ms. Alice Derringer, pursed her lips. 

“...Adams, care to explain why we have a crazy OR creature inside our facility right now? I don't recall giving the notice for another test subject.” 

“Right. When Ray comes off the plane, we'll have the lab guys check out the sample we took. They're having a field day with it, as-is. And it does seem to be able to call for its creator. But even a dog can bark. I don’t see how-” 

“No, but I’m telling you, it spoke!” explained Leonard, feeling foolish. “It-it said that Morgan was its mother, and I think it might be Ray’s. I think that's what it said, anyway.”

She didn't look very convinced.

Then, through the tinny speakers, came Rebecca Morgan’s voice. Alice and Leonard, being the only in attendance who'd known the woman, felt as though the floor fell away for a moment. Had she returned somehow-? 

But no. Looking at the screen, they could see it was the creature’s mouth that was moving. From it’s throat came an exact imitation of the entity that now called itself Mother, the former Facility member gone rogue. The creature was singing a lullaby in her voice, while rocking back and forward slightly. 

“That... That’s impressive mimicry,” admitted Derringer, catching her breath. “Is that what you heard, Adams?” 

“No, I’m telling you, it can actually speak! And even if it’s not Ray’s, then it can lie. There’s sentience there, I swear.”  

Ms. Derringer pinched the bridge of her nose. Although the blonde woman was only a few years older than him, Leonard felt like a child around her. She seemed to calculate something as she peered at him, before nodding. 

“Very well. You’re fortunate you’ve been such a good agent, Adams. I will entertain this thought. Though, for Ray’s mentality’s sake, I sincerely hope your theory is incorrect.”

[black-occamy]

Remadora Microfics, Day 3: Cellar

Written for @remadoramicrofics October prompts, 1054 words

I've read a few REALLY GOOD microfics for this prompt during the day and almost gave up on writing mine, but then kinda realised that hey - this is honestly SUCH A GREAT exercise to write daily! (I might skip a couple days still)

Written as part of my Occamy-verse AU, so: everybody lives, everybody lives HAPPILY, there will be insane amount of fluff and cuteness (although not in this prompt), there will be mentions of polyamory.

TW: blood, injuries, implied self-harm

Read under break or on AO3 🖤

Whatever happens, don’t open the door before dawn.

The interior of the cellar was darker than she thought it would be. The scent was overwhelming - a sharp, metallic stench of blood mixed with a feral odour, intensified by the narrow space. A shadow, huge and terrifying, hunched in one corner.

Eyes, burning like liquid gold, flared within the mass of grey-brown fur.

It wasn’t dawn yet, Tonks realised.

She must have made a mistake while setting the alarm on the clock, mixing up five with six or something stupid like that.

****

“Whatever happens, don’t open the door before dawn,” Gemma repeated, probably for the third time already. She had walked Tonks around the cottage, showing her the kitchen (“One first-aid kit is over the sink.”), the reading room (“You probably won’t be able to sleep, so you can pick something to read.”), the workshop (“Another first-aid kit.”) and the cellar. It was a small, dark room right opposite the workshop door. Safe for a couch under one wall there was no furniture. There were no windows either - perhaps because they would be more difficult to protect with wards and spells than the stone walls.

“There are a couple of blankets prepared in the workshop, older ones that Remus can take to the cellar with him if he wants to. Other than that, he won’t need anything until he transforms back. If the healing spells don’t work enough at first, there is a stock of bandages in both kits.”

Tonks wasn’t sure, but there was something automatic in the way Gemma said that, almost as if she recited the words from memory. Then it dawned on her.

“How many times did you have to do that?” she asked and it was Gemma’s turn to fall silent. “You know, when Sirius… wasn’t around?”

When there were only two instead of four, she thought but didn’t say Some part of her wondered what it would be like to have Remus on her own. To not have to share him with the others, even though she loved them too.

“A lot,” Gemma said finally and gave her a long, scrutinising look. “Like I said, I can stay tonight as well. It’s all right if you’re not ready, Dora.”

“I’m ready,” she scoffed. “Plus, I’m an Auror as well, remember? I’ve seen my share of shit.”

“I know,” Gemma’s finger trailed the sigils burnt on the surface of the door. “It’s just much harder when it happens to the ones we love.”

****

She stared at the huge shape in the darkness and tried not to move.

Training kicked in and Tonks became aware of more details than she could consciously perceive in those few moments between opening the door and realising her mistake. The sofa under the wall lay crushed. There were deep gashes on the door from the inside; so deep, in fact, that it was a miracle the door was even holding together. Splatters of blood were visible on the stone floor even from here, even in the dim light.

And there was a growl. Deep, unsettling and growing in intensity with every second, as the golden flares of the werewolf’s eyes began to move closer.

****

Remus arrived via Floo in the mid-afternoon, about two hours after Gemma had left. Tonks greeted him with a smile from the plush armchair, where she sat reading “Dryad’s Desire”. 

“Sirius is still sick then?” she asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.” Remus shook the ash from his shoes and vanished it away. He didn’t look at her. “Are you sure about this? There is still time for you to Floo back to Grimmauld and switch with Gemma…”

“And sit with my sick cousin, listening to him reciting his last will between coughs?” She snorted, placing the book on the table. “Give me a break, Rem.”

He chuckled softly and remained silent for a long moment. 

Tonks sighed, “Look, I get it that you’d prefer an animagus company to mine…”

“You know why, Dora.”

“Yeah.” Bites don’t transfer the curse to the animal form. When she heard that the first time, she tried to convince Sirius to teach her, but so far he adamantly refused. She wasn’t sure why. Deep down, she suspected that maybe - just maybe - the others didn’t believe her commitment to their relationship was strong enough.

She didn’t like to think about this.

Remus cast a confused glance at her and Tonks realised that hair had slowly turned red. She shook her head, morphing it back to pink.

“It’ll be fine. I’ve had an hour-long lecture on what to do and what not to do, and Gemma’ll be pissed that she had to walk me through all that for nothing,” she tried to joke, and that actually brought another faint smile on his lips. “I even know where she keeps the good booze, though not because she told me.”

“I… don’t think drinking is a good idea right now.”

“It will be tomorrow,” she walked closer to him, gingerly wrapping her fingers around his arm. Remus sighed in defeat. His warm, brown eyes locked with hers, making her heart skip a delightful beat.

****

The beast will not hesitate to harm you.

Tonks stared at the werewolf. He moved out of the corner and into the rectangle of light that came from the corridor behind her. She never imagined he would be this huge. Even crouched as he was now, he was almost as tall as her. Low growl was still vibrating in the air.

Don’t give him an opportunity.

She couldn’t move. Every instinct she had screamed to do something. Wand that she used to remove the warding sigils was burning in her hand. She stared, paralysed, cursing herself in her head. How could she have made such a mistake?

Remus would be devastated if something had happened to you.

The beast stared back, blazing eyes locked with hers.

Gradually, the growling faded into silence. Tonks noticed the wounds on his limbs, long gashes that were half-healed or still bleeding. There were bite marks too, deep and terrifying. Wolfsbane didn’t help much, she thought.

But it helped just enough.

Golden eyes watched her warily as she slowly put her hand up and touched his long snout. The fur was softer than she imagined.

“I’m not scared of you, Rem,” she whispered.

[my-burnt-city]

Comfort and predictability?

There was a period last Thursday when I honestly thought I might wait for the cast list to drop and see how I felt about it before considering if I wanted to attend that evening’s show or not. I’m glad I didn’t, and not just because the Thursday cast list never did make it online. We all had a bit of a shock to our systems on Thursday; I wanted to see our show, and I wanted to be with people who understood how I was feeling. And, of course, it ended up being a really great show. For reasons I could have predicted, and otherwise...

It was a 2+ loop-show that night; I knew that I wanted to properly test the ghost loop concept and I knew that I wanted to spend time with favourites, so it was an absolute no-brainer that I decided to start my evening with an Aegisthus loop. I arrived in Mycenae to the familiar strains of Bartok and headed straight upstairs, where I was able to see the below-the-door light-flickerings of the 1:1 room. Obviously the next chunk of an Aegisthus loop doesn’t involve a great deal of travel but I didn’t cheat it; I listened to the music, I watched the subtle lighting changes, usually too subtle to stand out when the performers are present, and I worked hard to envision where on the table he would have been at any particular moment. Through the grief dance, through the entrails banquet, (through the record stop,) and down to the shower. When it felt like the right amount of time had passed for Aegisthus and Clytemnestra to have tenderly cleaned the blood off each other, I headed over to the arcade and stopped outside the Peep windows. For a moment, I wasn’t sure how to tell how accurate my timing was, given that this was loop one so I couldn’t expect to hear All Cried Out coming through the walls. But it was indeed only a moment, for just as I wondered if it was worth going over to a neighbouring space to find out where they were up to, a familiar figure in a long black coat walked in through the Palladium doors and climbed into the window.

Extremely pleased with my overwhelming success, I not only stuck with Aegisthus for the rest of loop 1, I also gave myself the now traditional treat of sticking around for the beginning of loop 2 in order to see his Hesperides dance, and it was of course WONDERFUL. After which I took myself to the familiar comforts of Peep for the rest of loop 2 to spend a little time with Tiny and Di, who had taken it upon themselves to buoy up everybody’s gloomy moods with their particular brand of absolute chaos and were accomplishing it ADMIRABLY.

I intended to finish my show by following Yilin’s Artemis, and enjoyed an extremely feral interlude with her in the Hinterlands, looking for all the world like she might snap at any moment and literally devour Agamemnon. But as we spread out into the wider space, I became slowly aware that there was a distinct absence of the usual activity levels, due to the unexpected absence of Neoptolemus! For a little while I was able to watch Artemis observing the scene, able to watch Agamemnon quietly and furiously converse with Patroclus, but then they started to go their separate ways and I had to make the choice – stick with my character and get a whole glorious Artemis loop, or switch to Pat and see what changes had to be made while waiting for a Neo who may or may not ever arrive.

One of the things that really sets live theatre apart is the capacity for things to go wrong, at any moment, without the option to just stop recording and have another try. But it’s not knowing that things could go wrong at any moment that makes it so exhilarating to watch, it’s knowing that you’re going to see something cool and unique while the performers deal with whatever unexpected occurrence the moment has thrown at them. So obviously I stuck with Pat. And although the changes to his loop weren’t super-drastic (it turns out Neo really isn’t that essential a character to the over-all narrative!), watching him go through his story without Neo there really changed the tone.

Without Neoptolemus, Agamemnon can still lure Iphigenia to her doom with the promise of marriage. It just makes it actively crueller that he didn’t even bother to get a fake husband, and makes Pat much more complicit as a witness when he’s acting as Agamemnon’s number two than when he’s more of a hanger-on. He continues to be far more active as a witness when the army gets to Troy, helping the Watchman prepare the basin in order for Polyxena to wash her own hands before ritually killing herself. With fewer people in the circle, it’s not safe for Polyxena to hang upside down, and so we all watch for an uncomfortably long time as a devastated Hecuba weeps over her daughter’s body, lying in the middle of the square for all to see. Pat can help carry the body to the relative privacy of Alighieri’s, but it doesn’t do anything to make up for how silently he stood by and watched, not even having a role of his own to carry out this time, just letting the scene before him unfold without even considering if he could or should do anything to stop it. When Iphigenia-as-Hecate arrives, finding Pat already marked by Hades, it feels very right today that Pat be the one she takes her revenge on. He’s no longer mere collateral damage, he is being directly punished for his part in the careless, casual, arguably needless deaths of two royal princesses.

For a few moments after Pat’s murder, I do wonder if he just plans to stay on the girders for a while, not having a Neo to dance with. But, delightfully, we are treated to a full (if somewhat briefer than I would have liked) solo death dance from Theo, and it is pretty fuckin awesome. It’s no great secret that I am a little bit feral about the occasions when Theo has played Polydorus, and I think a good part of that is because Theo is a brilliant solo dancer but Pat doesn’t really get very much to do on his own (and it’s not even worth talking about the Watchman where dancing is concerned). Any opportunity to see Theo let loose with some solo work is an opportunity well worth taking, so if they’re not going to let me have another Theodorus show before September 24th then we’re just going to have to keep our fingers crossed for the chance of another Lonely Pat (though hopefully without any injuries this time).

Anyway. It’s nice to know that even on a night when I am specifically seeking solace in the comforting predictable arms of the familiar, even the familiar can still surprise me. It’s been a little while since I left a show fizzing in excitement about seeing something brand-new and exceedingly cool, and it’s awesome that it can still happen, even at this deep deep point of my obsession.

This fucking show (affectionate)

THIS FUCKING SHOW

[ficbrish]

Astarion/Tav

10 years post-canon

A bit of romantic tentacle porn for the people:

“It doesn’t hurt, does it?”

She shook her head, “Just like any other shapeshifting spell.”

“Nothing we haven’t done before.”

He winked and she blushed.

Vistri wasn’t aware she was feeling a little shy until she spoke, “Why don’t we start with the elixir?”

“Take me to the stars,” he consented.

The little bottle was enough for them to share. Vistri had two little glasses already lined up, but when she went to pour them, he pulled her closer, flush against his chest.

Astarion’s kiss knocked all thoughts from her head, leaving only sense. Her nerves transformed and ignited into a blaze, his tongue guiding her to the ache of the ravenous. Vistri couldn’t breathe, only gasp. Astarion punctuated it with his teeth, biting and tugging her lip. She groaned deeply in response.

Vistri couldn’t stand on her own when he wrested lips from hers. She held onto Astarion to steady herself, grasping the front of his tunic.

He took the little bottle out of her hand, “Be a dear and open your mouth wide for me.”

She did as commanded, tilting her head back a bit as he pulled out the topper. Slowly, he poured some of it onto her tongue.

“Don’t swallow.”

Vistri held it in her mouth.

“Good girl. Now give it to me.”

Astarion relieved Vistri of her burden, drinking the elixir from her lips. Then he tossed back the rest of the bottle and fed it to her in return.

The effect wasn’t immediate, but trickled in. Gale’s tower slipped away and became the Astral Plane. Furniture grew into rocks; and walls, cliffs. The ceiling was no longer a ceiling, but an impossible sea of comets and stars.

Astarion chuckled with delight, “You know. This is exactly how I remember it.”

They relished in the illusion together for a while. Vistri proudly pointed out all her contributions, and vented about everything she thought the elixir’s effect lacked.

“I really wanted to capture the smell of it, but we just… I thought maybe an ointment would do, but Gale almost lost all the hairs in his nose when we tested it. Do you remember how the place smelled?”

He thought for a moment, “Like burnt sulfur and strawberries.”

Vistri laughed, “Strawberry?”

Astarion shrugged, “That’s the way I always thought of it.”

“Something burning, magical, and a little sweet,” she agreed.

Her fingers lightly brushed along his arms while they sat and watched the comets dance. Under the stars, the gentle and ordinary became an aphrodisiac. Her touch was a habit; her fingertips always languidly stroked Astarion’s arms when they talked together like this. She was doing the very same now, paying no mind to her gesture or the way it made his skin feral.

Astarion took her hand and dragged it downward for Vistri to bear witness to the effect she was having on him. She stopped her breath, her body screaming for his.

“What do you say, dear? Time for the rings?”

[joannerowling]

re: ask about people "reclaiming", homophobic slurs that are not from their language.

It's very true. and it's coming equally bad from both sides. On one hand, people of non-english upbringing, who never lived in the environment and neve were submerged in the culture, where those slurs originated from, have literally no business reclaiming them. It's just ignorant and disrespectful. If some western trans gay boy began call himself a pidor/pidorás (really violent slur for gay man in many slavic languages) since he is gay so it's okay to reclaim this quirky slavic word for gay ppl, i would go feral. I don't understand, why doesn't it work the other way. It so easy to think for a moment and understand that it's not your word to reclaim.

But on the other hand, english-speaking LGBTQ+ community has desensitised q slur so much, that for a foreigner, who is constantly in these online spaces, it's doesn't seem like it's a slur at all. A lot of new labels and genders and orientations are now including the slur, so maybe it okay to use. That's why im constantly stumbling upon people from my native online spaces, who call themselves queerplatonic or queergender or something like that. (the f slur hasn't reached us so far and i hope never will). I can totally see how someone just picked a label because it became so common in the US/Canada/UK, and the opposite opinions are drowned out by the louder crowds or labeled terfy.

I will say, to play devil's advocate here a little only for the sake of rounding the argument: language doesn't evolve spontaneously, and occasionally slurs can go from "slurs" to "no longer slurs" through cultural change. For example, in French, we have the word "con", which initially meant vagina and would have been used as a misogynistic insult (basically the same as "cunt", i believe the two are etymologically close). However today "con" has evolved to be used exclusively for men with a relatively large range in meaning (going from "dickhead" to "idiot"; sometimes it's applied in a genderless way, kind of teasingly - as in "t'es con" to mean "you're a bit of a dummie" or "you just made a bad joke/excessive one". It's all in the tone and context). Most, oh i'd really say 90% of French people at this point, have no idea what "con" used to mean. I've had that conversation with a French radfem once who said she refused to use it because of the original meaning, and my question to her was, what matters when identifying an insult, the word itself or the intent? It's an open one.

Perhaps this is what people hope will happen to "queer", though i don't think it's a good parallel with "con" - it could be if "queer" was used to design some completely different group or thing than homosexuals. You could argue it's already kind of happening though, many more people than you'd suspect have started recognising that "queer" and "gay" are different things (mostly because "queer" associations and media have completely stopped putting forth the fight for same-sex rights). I've seen that sentiment on radblr, "they can call themselves queer all they like but don't include me in it", as well as the firmer "queer is insulting period, and heteros don't get to reclaim a slur that was never thrown at them". Since it's not my language i'm not gonna pick one position over the other, but i guess both exist for equally good reasons.

(Like you i also noticed "faggot" is much less subjected to that. People seem a little more aware of that one and less willing to "reclaim it" or approriate it, outside of the worst of trans identified women. Why that is i don't know. Maybe because it's perceived as being more exclusively used for gay men, and violence against gay men is more well-known in general?)

Another thing your second paragraph highlights is something we don't talk about a lot i think: that for how culturally diverse "queer" spaces claim to be, they are fairly homogenous and singularly minded beneath the surface. Especially outside of native English speaking countries, because the kind of people who can speak English fluently enough to access these topics have specific backgrounds (it's very visible in France because people are generally not good at English here). This is why you can find several active LGBTQIA+ groups in Paris or some big cities and will struggle to find even one in much less prestigious unis.

[zhongrin]

Hey there Mei! How have you been? Haha, I'm so sorry it's been a while since our last chat, paperwork had kept me busy since Yae Publishing House's supposed "blunder" during the Warrior's Spirit competition.

Listen, may I steal your lover for a moment? Dor– Albedo, let's have a chat. It'll just be a quick walk. Oh no, please stay where you are, Mei. I'd like for us to talk privately. Hmm? Haha, of course, I'm not keeping secrets from you. Chief Alchemist, shall we head out?

-----

"Dorian", I presume that's your true name? You've switched with the real "Albedo" didn't you? If you haven't and Cretaceus had become naturally deranged, well I'd be damned.

It's as cold as I remember here in Dragonspine, then again it'd be foolish for me to expect anything else from a near abandoned location.

Hmph. I saw that– I'd be a bit wiser if I were you. Until you're confident that you can best one of Khaenri'ah's royal captains, you ought to sheathe that sword fast. You are not even certain if I am your enemy. Why don't you act more like your successor and be less... Feral.

I only ask for three answered questions, surely it'd all be answered by the time we reach the outskirts. Unlike the other Khaenri'ahn Captain you might know, your answers here do have a bearing on how you'll leave this place. Still, I implore you to avoid hesitation and speak from the heart. And do not lie, for no primordial tongue nor eyes can deceive me. Before I became Mei's friend, I was also Rhine's. I watched her design you– albeit my preferences were one of the reasons why you had blonde hair and blue eyes in the first place.

First question, do you love Mei? "Are you serious"– of course I am. She is a friend and in all my years of living, I've discovered that it is unfortunately difficult to find people like her. I only wish the best for her. If your intentions are true, then I shall ponder over whatever you propose. You are Rhine's creation, and therefore one of our own. I could be an ally by the end of this talk, so play nice.

But once again, do NOT lie. "Kjærligheten er som vinden, du kan ikke se den, men du kan føle den"– I will know if you do attempt to lie. No wind is too "loud" for me to know the truth.

Second question, is this a scheme to get back at the Gods? As you may have noticed, I am also Khaenri'ahn– Mondstadters sure find it difficult to spot us from the crowd, hmm? Back to the matter at hand, coveting the Geo Archon's beloved spouse would surely be considered more than a petty crime in the eyes of divinity. Since the incident 500 years ago, I've threaded a thin line of neutrality when it comes to my homeland and Celestia. I must know if I could support your motivations, I do hope you understand.

Lastly, what do you plan on doing once the timer runs out? You should be well aware that your brainwashing won't last long. It was only luck that this astral fake sky aligned to grant you this opportunity. Do you intend to continue harassing her when you now have the Acting Grand Sage of the Akademiya and that "Funeral Consultant" behind your back?

... Don't ponder on the last question for too long. The answer to the first question is vital– everything else is secondary.

Now, won't you be a dear and start talking? I hate returning Rhine's experiments in more than one piece.

"wai- ansy- but- wha- aaand there they go..."

the girl stared at the two retreating back in the distance, a small pout forming on her lips.

"no, seriously, why are my friends being like this..."

"...."

"'secrets'..."

she absentmindedly toyed with the little belt on her hip, fingers clenching around nothing.

"something's..... weird...."

".... i certainly did not expect a sudden interrogation from someone i just met while being fully conscious for the very first time in this timeline," he sheathed back his sword and eyed the human(?) being in front of him impassively, "forgive the hostility. you lot have been quite... resilient, in your attempts. and suffice to say i am not in a good mood."

he falls back into step with them while keeping a safe distance away, three pairs of eyes observing each other silently before he decides to break the silence. 

"i suppose i could entertain you for a while. what an amusing set of questions. let's see..."

"for your first question - at first i have to admit, i saw her as a peculiar subject; nothing more, nothing less. but her... devotion, you could say, was admirable and fascinating. and as we spent time together, we became curious."

"how does it feel like to be loved so wholly and unconditionally by someone?"

"how does it feel like to know that there would always be that one person, who would support and follow you to the edge of the universe regardless of what you are?"

"how does it feel to be willingly given and to hold such a fragile thing, fully knowing that i would be able to simply crush them?"

he chuckled when their bloodlust clawed on his synthetic skin.

"i'm not done. that was all it was in the beginning, yet...," his face twists into a melancholic expression making him look almost... vulnerable.

when he finally resumed his speech, however, his voice is steady, and he remains stoic throughout the rest of his answer.

"love... is a concept we still struggle to understand fully. but at the very least, i'd like to think what i feel for her is something along that line. emotions were never my strong suit, but even synthetic beings evolve, mx. ansy. i'm sure you know of this quite well, don't you? at the end of the day, as i have been telling you all: i do not wish to harm her."

the snow crunch under their shoes as the two continued their leisurely walk through the blizzard. the snowstorm didn't seem to have any effect on either of them as they climbed the slopes, and so the homunculus continued.

"secondly - i know you might have a hard time believing this, but no. i do not wish to mess with the divinity by doing this. i merely saw someone who managed to light my days, to put it in simple terms. this is why i do not understand why everyone seems to be quite... hostile, when faced with the knowledge of our relationship. i understand that change is sometimes hard to accept, but change and growth is often on the same side, is it not?"

"and lastly..... when the timer runs out?"

he falls into a short silence, eyes narrowing and a small incline tugging at the corner of his lips. his soles snap a dead branch into two.

"let's just say, i have countermeasures set in place."

his footsteps stop, and with an obviously faked smile, he extended his hand for a parting handshake, "normally i would have said to please give my regards to your beloved royal knight, but... it seems like you're dealing with some issues of your own, so i'll spare you the anguish. despite such circumstances, you still made yourself check up on a friend after all, so i think it deserves at least a little sympathy."

"i believe you'll get an opportunity to continue speaking with me directly very soon, for as long as you want. so please, do not act rashly. i really do want to keep it civil between us. now. i believe that should answer all of your questions."

[random-bi-writer]

The Real Reason Why Six Dropped Mono

First we need to discuss the ending of Very Little Nightmares and compare it to the endings of the other games.

The Pretender and RCG (Ori) both “fell to their deaths”

Now let’s look at the other endings.

Six escapes the Maw in Little Nightmares 1.

Rk (Sunday) gets turned into a Nome in Secrets of the Maw.

Six drops Mono and he turns into Thin Man.

Now you might be wondering; “What’s the problem with these endings? Also they’re all completely different. What’s there to compare?”

What the last three have in common is that all the protags transformed;

While Six didn’t literally transformed in a physical sense, in a way, she went from a child tyring to escape the maw to becoming part of it’s system. Without the context of Secrets of The Maw, Six became a cannibal by eating the cannibals.

So if Six, Rk (Sunday) and Mono got transformed, what does make of RCG (Ori)? Well if we follow by this logic, it’s safe to assume that she might still be alive and got transformed as well. And I have proof-

The Pretender and RCG (Ori) may have fell but their puddles were still separate. Yet, if you watched the ending carefully, only one bubbling will show up, implying that one of them survived. And then this shows up.

While we may not see RCG’s (Ori’s) human body, we can still see her as her own raincoat.

Do I have your attention now? Okay, let’s continue.

Now we need to discuss about Six’s behavior in Little Nightmares 2 and look for what’s similar to her behavior in VLN.

In Chapter 1, Six is understandibly weary of Mono but is slowly warming up to him. Chapter 2, is Six trying her best to help Mono. There is no feral signs of Six in these two chapters, even after getting into danger a lot of times. Also since Six is basically the youngest out of the protags, I’m pretty sure that her beating up that bully was just her trying to copy and impress Mono.

Chapter 3 is when she starts acting different. She still acts the same as before but she always look surprised at Mono’s actions and wary of him. Not only that, there are cases where she seems downright bored and extremely agressive. Mono’s feral personality may have been rubbing off Six, but she shouldn’t have changed so drastically.

So which of these are similar to Six’s behavior in VLN?

Chapters 1 and 2.

What Mono and RCG (Ori) have in common is that they have both done something that put Six’s life in danger, it could have been betrayal to her eyes, yet she still tries to help them.

So where did the agressiveness came from? Well there was someone who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt others yet are still helpful.

RCG (Ori) did not hesitate to pour steam on the butler and didn’t open the door for Six. Mono may be a “violence first” kid, RCG (Ori) will not hesitate to hurt anyone that goes in the way of her safety, she only does this when it comes to strategy.

And Six acted like this after Chapter 2.

Don’t forget, the moment that Six putted on that Raincoat, she started acting differently.

So combining this observations; I can say that Six is being possessed by RCG (Ori).

So how does this relate to Six dropping Mono?

Let’s just say that even after getting turned into a raincoat, RCG (Ori) is still aware of her surroundings. Even if she can’t move anymore.

Then Six finds her, and she recognizes the 9 year old as the girl that tries to help her.

If you watch the scene where Six puts on the coat, the lights will flicker. Yet it isn’t agressive like the 1st game, it’s almost like someone just saw a kid that they recognize.

Maybe she wanted to thank Six or maybe it’s overprotective big sister vibes; but RCG (Ori) wants to help Six on any way she can and keep her safe.

Now all RCG (Ori) could do is just watch Six getting into danger over and over again because this random kid can’t control himself.

And this was the final straw.

While I doubt that she can feel the pain, I’m sure that RCG (Ori) can hear how much smashing the music box actually hurts Six, both physically and mentally.

And despite seeing this, Mono doesn’t stop.

And it made her mad.

RCG (Ori) doesn’t understand why Six would still try to help Mono after hurting her so badly to the point of what sounded like torture.

But there is no way she wants this innocent little kid getting hurt that badly again.

So she tries her best to posses Six and...

Let go.

[eric-the-bmo]

Tysm for the ask about my OC Isaac- I was so happy when I saw it. So this is an ask about your OCs! I've seen quite a few posts of yours tagged with Ceremorph vibes- who are they? 👀

Also I just love hearing about other people's OCs in general. Feel free to use this ask to rant about like. Any OC you want :D

hi hi hello!! aaa ok so! let me explain the tag system i've got real quick! It's always "[character name] vibes," to show that it kind of has? the vibes of one of my OCs, in a sense. (they're almost all dnd ocs because that's my special interest ig) This might be incoherent because I don't know how to talk about my characters in a way that makes sense but here we go!

(woahoho, old-ish art! ^)

Ceremorph is one of my villain ocs! It originally started as an AU version of one of my other characters, Ven- that AU was based on the idea of "what if he embraced his magic instead of being afraid of it?" and then oops! Ceremorph eventually became its own character in Ven's canon story. Because they're so entwined with each other (quite literally), I have to talk about Ven for a short moment.

oh wait uh quick CW for kidnapping, talk of parasites, starvation(?), cannibalism, loss of bodily autonomy/possession

Ven is a human who got kidnapped by illithids and was put through the process of ceremorphosis- it's the process of how illithids reproduce, where they lay a clutch of eggs which hatch into tadpoles. The tadpoles cannibalize each other for a while, before eventually being inserted into a suitable host. They latch onto the brainstem (or eat through the brain? not sure) to take over the mind, and slowly, the host's body changes into the body of an illithid. Ven had a tadpole inserted into his eye, it latched onto his brain stem, and perhaps this was a new experiment the illithids were doing or perhaps something went wrong, but the transformation didn't happen correctly. Ven was found two months after his disappearance, still looking like a human but with no memories of his past. What he did have, however, was a parasite in his brain and the new ability to cast magic- of course, he didn't know about that.

Ceremorph is the source of Ven's magic and has all of Past Ven's memories, but is aware that those aren't its own- in fact, it hates Ven's wife because she stirs up all of the emotions Ven had felt towards her, and Cere is very emotionally repressed and doesn't like that At All. Its people aren't very big on emotions, and it carries itself with a logical and manipulative coolness, though it can have a flair for theatrics and can be prone to anger. Cere, like all illithids, eat brains for the psionic energy, and the hungrier Cere gets, the more... feral/ less sentient it gets.

Currently, Ceremorph can observe almost everything Ven does from inside his brain- it occasionally takes a step back if things get boring, but it Watches. Cere can also take over Ven's body, but almost never does this when Ven is awake, and prefers to do it when he's asleep so it can be passed off as sleepwalking. Given how Cere can mimic Ven really well, the reason it doesn't take over when Ven is awake is due to the fact Ven himself would question the gaps in his memory, possibly causing Cere to be discovered. Also because as good as an actor Cere is, it's not perfect- it dislikes touch, and some of its mannerisms and movements are off. Despite being hidden, Cere talks to Ven: as far as Ven is concerned, it's just his anxiety or part of his subconcious. Cere was actually the one who pushed Ven to unlock their magical abilities- Cere was thrilled at the magic finally being unlocked, and Ven was horrified over the fact he tore a man apart with sorcery he didn't even know he had.

There are some scenes I'm excited for, actually: Ven is currently travelling, and locks the door from the outside so he can't leave while he's "sleepwalking." Eventually, perhaps some other characters will wake up to hear Ven's voice asking them to open the door, please, why don't you? Another scene is where Cere's hunger finally gets the best of it, causing it to take over Ven's body while he's awake and attacking a low-level antagonist, smashing open their skull with magic and devouring their brain in front of Ven's friends. Cere unintentionally reveals itself, and Ven has to wake up and realize he's committed an act of cannibalism, there's a parasite in his brain, and oh yeah! He's becoming a monster that can only live if it kills others.

And of course!!! If Ven ever dies, Ceremorph will in fact take over his corpse!! I don't know what it's planning, but it will absolutely form a cult, and Ophelia will have to fight the monster that looks like and can almost perfectly mimic her dead wife.

Since it's a dnd villain npc, I truly don't know what it's planning. Where does it try to go at night when it's not hunting? Why did it form a cult?

I had a whole paragraph talking about the seperate physical differences Ven and Cere are drawn with (sharp teeth, webbed claws and ears, etc). but even then Ven gains all those traits once his body starts to change. The floating hair is difficult, since Ven has that when he uses his magic, and Cere really only starts to float off the ground once it realizes it doesn't have to pretend to be Ven anymore and can use its magic however it wants. I'd argue the glasses, but Cere wears those when pretending to be Ven (although Ven!Cere's glasses always have a lense flare to hide its eyes). It's all a wild mix.

(behold! quasi-illithid Ven, he's not doing okay ^)

I have no idea if that was? Making sense? I'm aware there's not much to it, it's just a typical dnd villain, but I have a lot of fun with it- Cere is surprisingly easy to joke about

Anyway this probably didn;t make sense and it is! 12am now, oh goodness

but yeah i just think it's cool and tbh i made Cere bc I wanted a self-indulgent au for myself where my nervous poet was a very dangerous and pretty villain

any-vay goodnight, it's so so very cool someone's intrigued by my ocs, thank you ☆

[alphaman99]

excellent....well worth the read

Daniel Jupp

What is it that makes a human being, human?

One of my favourite authors, Philip K. Dick, was deeply concerned with this question. He asks and answers it in different ways in all his books, but probably most obviously in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which in its film version became Blade Runner.

Both remain the best novel and best film treatments of the subject of androids, or artificial intelligence in a form that resembles and is in most practical ways indistinguishable from mankind.

As our own technology advances philosophical questions about machine sentience obviously become more and relevant, but there are also multiple other ways in which the question of what constitutes a human being is a vital one.

It’s the question at the heart of an abortion debate, for instance, and it’s really a question underpinning every discussion of individual liberty. People have rights because they are people. The rights that matter most are human rights.

Philip K. Dick constantly asked the question of his characters, because he was asking it of himself. And through him, I found out that this is one of the most important questions in the history of philosophy, especially of ancient philosophy. Dick became obsessed with the Pre-Socratics because they shared his need to explore what makes us fully human. And this is very, very old thinking we are talking about, some of the oldest ideas in the history of western civilisation.

If we were to talk about narrowing the most important questions ever posed down to very simple things, to what their core essence is, we might say that they consist of ‘what am I?’ And ‘what is all this?’. What is a human, and what is the world? All of our real thought begins with these questions, which include not just our philosophy but also our art, our culture, our literature and yes, our religion, our mythology and even our science too.

I think the handprints or animal paintings on a cave that date from long before the Ancient Greeks are asking these same questions. I think the oldest surviving figurines, the Venus figures which are odd, bloated, sometimes many breasted and sometimes headless depictions of the female form (the oldest thus far discovered, the Venus of Hohle Fels, is at least 35,000 years old) are asking these two questions.

These are questions that prompt the entire history of human creativity. Whatever we possess that we created, whatever we have which is most artistic, most sacred and most meaningful outside ourselves and other living beings, is created from the point at which our species started asking these questions.

What defines us as different to another animal, the full range of our sentience, self awareness and emotion, our cognition and our capacity for reason, was born with these questions.

Asking ‘what is a human being?’ is itself one of the things that makes us human. Unless we try to understand ourselves,as individuals and as a species, we are moving through the world propelled only by instinct and animal reaction.

These questions don’t become significant again just because of technological advance. They are always significant, but we rediscover them most urgently at times of societal collapse. Societal collapse presents us with those moments where all of the long and careful answers we have built, the ones which frame our rules, our laws, our morality, are falling down around our ears.

And in these times, these circumstances, we again encounter creatures that share our appearance but share none of our inner life, creatures that wear human form but have no humanity about them.

We are wise to fear the artificial intelligence that has no limits, no conscience, no humanity. We are wiser still to fear the biological human being who has none of these things, either. And it seems to me that we are encountering and producing more and more of the latter. Whether that’s a feral youth stabbing another child to death, a Muslim terrorist committing atrocities, or an ideologically warped leftist supporting those terrorists, we are seeing more and more humans with less and less humanity.

Often, the ones who proclaim their humanity the loudest, possess the least of it.

The closest Philip K. DIck came to an answer to the question of what is a human being is that a human being has humanity. Compassion, to give it another name. And compassion not as a vain signal of virtue, and not as a thing which claims to love everyone at a remove, whilst neglecting those at home. The compassion that cannot comprehend the actions of a terrorist, and would never seek to excuse them.

We have seen compassion itself abused into its opposite. We have seen it turned into a cruelty towards the real innocents, and the real victims. In the UK we once had a man called Long Longford. Longford spent a large portion of his life arguing that the treatment and imprisonment of Myra Hindley was inhumane. He defended her. He protected her. He championed her.

Hindley, of course, was a serial killer who had tortured children to death. Both Longford and Hindley lacked real humanity, real compassion. To support evil is to commit evil. There is of course a difference between an evil action and an evil reaction, but it is a difference of degree, not of kind. Excess of alleged compassion for the guilty and the inhumane is a denial of compassion to the innocent and the human.

For me the thing that makes us human is the capacity to think and feel in ways that are different, ways that are more, than those available to an animal or a machine. We need the capacity to reason, as well as the capacity to love. Both working together prevent us from being either a Hindley or a Longford. Correct reasoning would have told Longford that the victims of Hindley were worth more than she was, as well as a correct emotional response.

In Blade Runner the androids, the replicants, insist on their existence as thinking, living beings, equal to or superior to mankind. In a way they are saying ‘we are human’, even as they despise humanity. Their surface quest is to find a way to extend their lives beyond the very short limit set by their creators. This is the same quest Gilgamesh went on in one of the earliest surviving stories we have. Their deeper quest is to understand their own nature. And this is a human quest. Their surface aim leads them to kill people and behave inhumanely. But ultimately the message is that in dying they find not just the limit of their existence, but the moral limits that make them actually human. Roy Batty in his last moments can kill or save Rick Deckard. Both have been trying to kill each other for the entire film. Batty’s last action is to choose not to kill Deckard.

And it is at this point that Batty delivers the incredible speech improvised by Rutger Hauer. The speech that confirms this was a living being with sentience and worth. But that speech is only unlocked, only made meaningful, moving and true, by behaviour, by Batty having just chosen not to kill, showing human reason, judgement, discernment and compassion. He proves with an action what he is then allowed to confirm with a speech. He reflects on the life of Deckard, and it’s worth, before he is allowed to express the worth of his own existence. In other words the poetry and reflection on his own life is only possible because the action has already made him human.

Humanity, then, is defined both by behaviour and limitation, by choosing not to do certain things, inhumane things. We must have the intellectual capacity to make that choice correctly, and the emotional capacity to want to make that choice correctly. We must be able to discern between innocence and guilt, and pick the action that makes us more, not the one that makes us less, human ourselves.

If Batty earns humanity by choosing not to kill, by understanding Deckard’s life, then conversely the kind of savagery displayed by Hamas is surely also a behaviour, a choice, that lessens their humanity, that removes their right to be considered human. Just as the actions of Myra Hindley made her less than human. You cannot take these actions and make these choices and expect the same treatment that belongs to an innocent. You have already denied that. You have already shown that you are inhuman.

To be human means to judge and evaluate, ourselves first and foremost, but others too. Psychopaths and terrorists of course also claim that they have the right to judge others, and on some religious or ideological excuse determine life and death. But the existence of false judgement that leads to barbarity does not invalidate the need for correct judgement that leads to humanity. It makes it all the more urgent.

There are objectively things you cannot do and continue to call yourself human, or be treated as human by others. The deliberate and personal and sustained act of terrorism that sees you raping women, tearing screaming children away from murdered parents, beheading babies, surely signals that it is now more humane to kill you than to let you live and do these things again. Real human life, life that still has the capacity to think and feel in ways that are more than raw brutal savagery, matters more.

What amazes and depresses me most is not just the existence of inhuman monsters like Hamas. What is almost as urgent a problem is the apparent death of a capacity to think and feel with discernment, reason and compassion amongst others. The person who can see these events and side with the terrorists. And do so whilst perhaps talking about humanity and compassion, as BLM did, or oppression, as Celtic fans did, as if any oppression we can imagine is worse than the kind that beheads babies, as if any compassion can exist whilst making excuses for beheading babies. But also the people who lack the logic and discernment, the thinking and feeling capacity, to distinguish between this and media driven hysteria on a succession of other topics, who think they are being particularly discerning and clever by displaying their own lack of humanity towards genuinely innocent victims.

We must ask what is human to be human. And we must admit that the purely savage and those who support them don’t fit the definition if the definition is to make any moral sense at all. We must demand that they be more than they are, or else we become less than human too.

Patricia Young

Excellent Daniel!!!

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Had a particular broken nightmare.

The first part I was at the drive through for Rite Aid. I knew that the little pedestal thing you speak into was secretly being used to contain this ancient and powerful artificial intelligence. But as I tried to free it I became terrified that what if I was wrong about it? What if it wasn’t really alive? What if I was arrested right here and it didn’t even matter? What would I even do once I freed it? So I started to put the machine back together and the AI started begging that I didn’t so I just. I just ran away.

The next part of the nightmare was only sorta connected. I was in my car at night, headlights on very low. I kept coming across deer in the middle of the road but I couldn’t stop. I could slow down enough that I’d just bump them, but I was terrified that even then one would attack me.

The third part I was back in the Rite Aid. There was a meeting of some sort- 13 children with strange gifts and one of them not. Most looked normal, though one was a plant monster that clung to a wall. I couldn’t tell if I was jumping from child to child or if I was someone else, hiding among the isles. They where demonstrating their gifts. I can’t remember the first, but on the second, a green haired little girl, I followed her as she stepped into another room. I made the right choice. She spoke briefly of her background, the nation they was where she’d been born but not her parents. This nation was not kind to outsiders. She then demonstrated her ability. She caused everyone in the other room to begin to violently convulse, even the unknown people watching from outside the rite aid.

Then I became aware that dream had been a memory of a TV show pilot that had been lost. I knew it should be impossible for me to remember seeing the pilot, I wasn’t alive when it came out. But I did. I was there in the pilot. I even had brief flashes of commercials! But despite my memory lining up eerily well with those who remembered the green haired girl, apparently named Basil, from the pilot. She was apparently a fan favorite among those trying to find the pilot. In my pocket I found the tape for the pilot. It was broken, special keys constructed to fit into in ways I didn’t understand. I went to a tape repair place, but they insisted they couldn’t repair a tape that old. There was a map behind the man, showing the far away states where that might be done. But there was a man there. One who insisted he had a friend who could fix it. I was desperate. I followed him to this friend, a strange man with something metal in the back of his neck. Something one of the keys to fixing the tape fit in. He didn’t like me touching the key there. He led us past his workshop, a place where he made concrete sculptures using casts of the hands of a friend he’d only met recently. There where too many sculptures for that to be possible. But we continued into the snow, to an abandoned house he said he hadn’t been living in for ten months. There where large holes in the roof where snow fell in. He took us to an old fashioned tv, switched it on to show night footage of feral dogs swarming through the house. Something about their movements was wrong. It felt like they where they, smothering me. But he got to work fixing the tape as that played. It seemed rather simple, but he insisted after a moment that he needed another piece. A simple replacement though, he just needed to go the store. We followed him out the door, but as we stepped through we weren’t in the woods anymore. We where in the suburbs, the house surrounded by neatly manicured flowers. I had a panic attack, begging the others to notice that this was wrong, but they said it was fine and that I just needed to stay in the house. I stayed in the mud room, watching the neighbors outside. With the door open they mocked me, not over the fact I had at some point become naked but anything else. I tried to close the doors. The neighbors quickly revealed the doors couldn’t fully close. I grabbed onto the handles to the two big doors, leaning back to keep them closed. The neighbors quickly proved the windows didn’t close either. I ran away. When I stepped briefly outside to run from the mud room into the back of the house a monstrous woman grabbed at me, Snow White and utterly hairless, blacked around her long nails. I kept running.

The dream fully broke down at this point. I was on the floor in the back room, putting costumes of other cats onto a thing that wasn’t a cat begging it to put on clothes so I could put on clothes.

The children where back. The ones who came from bad places where followed by people in morph suits, their color indeterminable. I, or the child I was inhabiting, had the most of these things following me.

Desperate to do something to help us all, one of the children brought forth a syringe of milky white blood. If she drank it she could be posed by her predecessor. I was possessing someone else when I prepped it to feed to her in my childhood kitchen, only for something to break and it all to pour into the sink. We all just laughed, we’d need another take now. We pulled milk from the nearby fridge. As we pooled it in we bickered on whether we should add a little red foot dye to bring back the slightly off white color from before or if plain milk was good enough. The girl who was set on drinking was tired of doing this scene however, and grabbed it from my hand to lap out the milk.

There was an older boy then, chasing me around to make me his beloved from a past life. He had done this before.

And then I woke up! And had to write all that down immediately cause what the f-

[casspurrjoybell-19]

My Feral Mate

*Warning: Adult Content*      

Chapter 5 - Part 1 - Echo

Agony. Longing. Desire. Terror. A bottomless, endless, never-ending abyss of pain. Emotions crashed over me like relentless waves, submerging my being, entwining me in an unyielding whirlpool that gnawed at the very core of my soul. Every breath became a struggle, each thought a sharp knife to the heart. Living while he suffered felt only like a cruel, unrelenting burden. As the pack warriors hurriedly carried him, my mate, to the infirmary, the world around me blurred into an indistinct haze. My legs screamed with exhaustion as I stumbled to keep pace with their powerful strides, my heart yearning to be close to him with a desperation I couldn't possibly contain.

"Please," I pleaded, my voice barely a whisper as I stumbled over yet another divot in the ground. 

The desperate words came out automatically, although I had no idea what I was begging for.

"Please..."

"I know. I know, my sweet baby," Dad's voice floated through the haze and suddenly I was aware of his arm around my waist as he hauled me back up to standing, supporting my weight when I felt like crumbling. 

"Benji is on his way. Just put one foot in front of the other, alright? Just keep walking. That's all you have to do right now."

A sob wrenched through my chest at his words, and although the infirmary loomed ahead like an omen, a mere quarter mile from our current position, I still doubted whether I could make it in my current state. With each step, my heart clenched and I clung to fragile hope as my legs trembled. Agony. Longing. Desire. Terror. Pain.

"Almost there, sweetheart. Almost there," Dad continuously encouraged. 

He basically held the weight of my entire body now, my feet barely skimming the ground with each step and as the world warped around me, passing by in shadowy hues of color and sound, much sooner than I would have anticipated, Dad was hauling me over the threshold and through the door that led to the infirmary. Chaos raged all around us the moment that we entered and as all of the loud sounds echoed through the hallway, I winced, the haze that surrounded me lifting just enough for me to lift my head.

‘Where was he? I needed him. I needed to know. I needed to touch him. I needed proof that he was alright. I needed to know that he would live.’

"No,"  the word blazed through my lips faster than I could even comprehend, not even needing to fully register in my mind in order for my soul to know that it was needed. 

Because right now, all that I knew, all that mattered, was that I needed him. I needed him. Why were they taking him away from me?

“STOP IT. LET ME GO," I wailed through an anguished cry. 

My body suddenly possessed by a fiercely overprotective being that I immediately recognized as my Wolf Sana, desperate as he attempted to rip through the barrier between our minds and take full control. Unable to find a reason why that wouldn't work in my favor, I didn't hesitate to hand over half of the reigns. If I was in my right mind, I would never do what I did next but somehow, meeting my fated mate had turned the primal part of my brain to full capacity and even though somewhere deep down, I knew that Dad was probably holding me back from flying into the treatment room in order to keep me from interrupting some important medical procedure, my wolf just couldn't cope with logic right now. 

The deepest part of Sana's primitive, one-track mind only able to focus on a single train of thought: Agony. Longing. Desire. Terror. Pain. Mate. It was horrible and selfish and mean and I'd definitely apologize to Dad a billion and one times once my sanity came back to me but right now, thrashing in his arms enough to get my own loose before shoving him to the side with more strength than I knew that I even possessed seemed like the only option. I crashed through the treatment room door the moment that I was free, stumbling blindly into the brightly lit room.  Here, chaos still raged and the air hung heavy with the combined scent of antiseptic and blood but as my throat closed up and I ripped the curtain aside, revealing the sight of my pink-haired uncle, sweating heavily as he attempted to affix restraints around the still-bleeding limbs of my mate, I didn't just see red. I saw crimson.

"What on earth are you doing?" my voice was so loud that it rang out like a gong within the tiled room and even my own sensitive ears protested against the shrill sound. 

"Stop it, you're hurting him," I demanded, launching over and clawing at his hands which were currently attempting to secure the first restraint around his mangled paw.

Unfortunately for me, Benji barely batted an eye at my outburst. Instead, the small half-faerie only glanced knowingly up at his mate Tank, who stood like he usually did, a giant statue in the corner as he patiently waited for his husband to make him useful. Apparently, their silent conversation was more than enough for Tank to move into action, guiding my hands away with a strength that, although it wasn't tight enough to hurt, was more than firm enough to send the message that I was clearly not welcome here right now. Tank was quick to tug me far enough away from the infirmary bed so that I couldn't attempt to interfere with Uncle Benji's work anymore and unlike my smaller father, I immediately knew that there wouldn't be any getting out of his hold anytime soon. 

After all, he was the head warrior of my Uncle Oasis's pack and even in my current state of frantic delusion, there was no way that I could even begin to deny that I was very much a twig-shaped pipsqueak in comparison but all of the strength in the world couldn't stop the high-pitched sound of Omega distress that involuntarily worked its way up from my core, through my aching chest and out of my throat, bathing the entire room in a distinctly somber tone that had everyone pausing to look at me. Uncle Benji's face softened once he gazed upon mine, which in its undoubtedly tear-streaked and pitiful state would probably make anyone just a little bit empathetic but as he continued to work with his hands, silently recruiting one of his medical assistants to assist with the restraints, his eyes remained locked on me.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie," he started, spouting words that somehow spoke directly to my soul. "I can only imagine how difficult it is for you to witness this and not be able to protect him right now." 

I blinked, more tears falling with the motion of my eyelids. 

"But I promise, he is in good hands here with me," Uncle Benji paused, his voice heavy with the burden of sorrow and responsibility, as if the weight of countless lives he'd tried to mend lay heavy on his shoulders. "I will do everything that I possibly can to save him."

Those words, like a gentle caress to my troubled soul, soothed me by a mere fraction. 

Somehow, I suppose it was enough for Sana to calm down enough to allow my muscles to relax for the very first time in what had to be the past hour and as I sagged a little in Tank's strong arms and took a brief inventory of my spent body, all of the energy I'd lost throughout my struggle became starkly apparent. With the adrenaline of my fight-or-flight response slowly dwindling, my body began to feel like some sort of hollow shell, drained and vulnerable and my legs, once trembling from shock, now threatened to buckle under the weight of exhaustion. So, when I was swiftly transferred out of Tank's hold and into what I could only recognize as the equally, if not more, strong arms of my Papa, I gave no protest.

"Papa..." I tried to speak but my voice was probably no more than a mere whisper, barely escaping my throat, lost to the sea of emotions whose relentless tide refused to abate as it wore away at my fragile surface. 

Papa's comforting presence enfolded me as he carried me out of the room and settled us on the waiting benches lining the hallway outside the treatment rooms. My grip on his shirt was tight enough to turn my knuckles even paler than they usually were, as if clinging to him could somehow keep the world from falling apart. 

"Papa..."

"I'm right here, pumpkin," Papa's low voice was a soothing balm against the rest of the world which seemed to have suddenly turned its back on me for reasons I was sure that I would never quite understand but beneath that comforting tone, I still sensed a subtle sharpness, hinting at an inner conflict that he was likely attempting to contain for my own sake.

"Papa, please. Please, save him," I plead, the senseless beg interspersed with choppy, helpless mewls of distress. 

"What if... What if he..." I halted, unable to finish my sentence, my throat closing up at the mere thought of.

Giving way to yet another fresh wave of sobs that left Papa tightening his hold on me, my father began rocking us back and forth as he gently guided my head to rest on his shoulder. Ever since I was a baby, Papa's powerful, Alpha scent had been my sanctuary, a barrier between me and anything that ever carried even the slightest possibility of causing me harm but now, since I'd finally met my Alpha, it felt watered-down, diluted like a knockoff imitation of the scent I truly craved. The scent that I needed. Regardless, I buried my face into the side of Papa's neck as he rocked us slowly, sucking in deep, lung-searing breaths as if it contained the only source of breathable oxygen left on earth. Who knows how long it took for me to finally unstick my face from the side of Papa's neck and loosen my hell grip on his shirt but by the time I finally came up for a tiny breath of fresh air, the night was thoroughly dark and my brain was thoroughly fried but even through the charred remains of my muddled mind, the dire need for an update on his condition simmered violently. 

So, using Papa's chest as leverage, I pushed myself up into a self-supported sitting position that was likely much more becoming of a grown man, opening my mouth with the intent to speak. However, before I could blurt out my question or more accurately... my demand... the door to the treatment room swung open and a wide-eyed Benji came tumbling out, making a beeline for my Dad. I hadn't even realized that he was lingering close by, whispering at the speed of light as he barked orders to nearby pack personnel, instructing them on ways that they needed to contribute in assisting with the issue at hand. That issue, of course, being the fact that my mate was currently doing the fucking cupid shuffle over the line of life and death. In any other circumstance, I would have laughed at that ridiculously worded thought but right now, all that I could do was focus on my next breath and hope that somewhere just beyond the thin wall that separated us, my mate was still breathing, too. Uncle Benji's long, pink hair was now pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, revealing very obvious dots of bright red blood scattered across the right side of his face. A wave of nausea washed over me.

“Jaxson, I need to speak with you," Uncle Benji whispered urgently, stealing a quick glance over at Papa and me. 

He gently tugged on Dad's arm, a subtle signal that he wanted to move the discussion away from prying ears but luckily, they only moved to the end of the long hallway, and with my keen hearing, I could still catch most of their conversation if I strained hard enough and I did.

"I'm just going to be blunt," Uncle Benji started, his voice already sounding exhausted, as if he'd just run a marathon behind those closed doors. "I've managed to get him restrained, IV'd up, intubated and sedated but..." he paused, his hesitation palpable "It's bad. It's really, really bad."

"Fuck. I was hoping... Damn it," Dad cursed under his breath repeatedly and the raw emotion in his words tugged at my heart a little. 

I could tell that he understood how much this meant to me and right now, that meant everything. He recovered quickly, though, no doubt sensing the haste in Benji's tone. 

"How bad are we talking? Give it to me straight."

Uncle Benji winced, clearly struggling with his next words. 

"Compound fracture of the right leg, a significant laceration to his face, a few additional ones on the rest of his body, hypothermia, sepsis, hypovolemic shock... Should I even continue?" 

He sighed heavily. 

"If he's going to make it, he needs numerous surgeries that I can't possibly carry out on my own. The team I have isn't trained enough for all of that. And with Daffodil and Tyrus busy being the damn Avengers in some unknown dimension right now, I have no clue who I could call who not only lives close enough to get here on time but also has the skill set necessary to help."

"So you're saying..."

Benji interrupted him. 

"I'm saying that if I don't get some trained help right now and have him on the operating table within the next thirty minutes, that man is going to die."

My brain stuttered and I sat up pin-straight with a start.

‘No way. No fucking way. Please. No. No. No.’

"Fuck," Dad cursed again. "Damn it, give me a second to think."

"I really, really hate to say this but we really don't have time to..."

"Shit. That's it," Dad suddenly exclaimed and the faint tapping of him rapidly typing a number into his phone met my ears next. 

At that moment, I sent the biggest most powerful prayer I'd ever conjured up to the Goddess. 

‘Please, let Dad know someone who can help.’

"Hey, Sebastian," Dad's fake-cheery voice interrupted my train of thought, trembling with urgency. 

"Listen. I know how busy you and Kai are with preparations for the upcoming skiing season at the lodge hospital. But if there's any way you could spare even just a day or two of your time, we could really, really use your help."