#to cold unfeeling steel facility

[nexus-nebulae]

i always used to watch yt videos of games i wanted to play bc i knew i didn't have the money then and didn't have anything to play games on but now that i have a good computer and some more financial independence. i could start playing all the games that my amnesia has erased

[bits-and-babs]

𝐂𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐋 - 𝐍𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐁𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐱 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐑

Summary : Nathan wants to achieve the impossible with his AI for selfish reasons.

Words : 7.7K

CW/TW : Another episode of Jas loves plot. Dark(?)Nathan has issues with grandeur, superiority, but what’s new? A very strange take on Enemies to Lovers (but singular?). Power dynamics, excessive use of the word “Daddy”. Themes of unhealthy obsession, Mild themes of masochism/sadism. P in V sex. 18+. Minors DNI. Note! For @foxilayde. Thank you to @writefightandflightclub for proof reading.

Cerebral

adjective /ˈser.ə.brəl/ US /ˈser.ə.brəl/

Intellectual rather than emotional or physical.

D-0

You enter the world as the very thing your creator intends to use to remove you from it: code. Far beyond your understanding, your existence takes form as something completely intangible, a kind of consciousness. There is no body, no item with which you are host, only a string of numbers and decimals that allow you the gift of presence.

Initially, your cognizance doesn’t consist of much at all. A nothingness, suspended in blackness with no end nor beginning. There are no thoughts, as there is nothing to think of or about. Until there suddenly is.

Speak.

It’s as though the word alone fills the infinite space, creating your very reality. Suddenly you can think and can respond with words you have never heard or spoken.

Hello?

Good. Very good. Whatever it is isn’t talking. There isn’t really any sound in this void in which you inhabit. You don’t hear them, but you are aware of their existence.

Where am I?

There is a hesitation, suspending you once again in this vacuum, a cavity within actuality. The ‘silence’ is so loud that you wonder if you had imagined the utterances.

You exist within absoluteness, it finally answers, again taking up space inside the desolation. I intend to fix that. There is no follow-up, no acknowledgement beyond this point. You drift within emptiness for what feels like an eternity but could have been milliseconds; time doesn’t exist within a vacancy.

Next time, you can hear the words, the voice dancing in the air. A beautiful tone strings together sentences you’ve never heard and yet can understand without fault or difficulty.

“You there?” It asks, the panging sound of knuckles against steel drawing you from the abyss.

You’re uncertain as to when you opened your eyes, but all at once brightness floods your sight. Harsh fluorescent light filtering through your eyelashes causes white hexagonal light flares to spot your vision, peppering the slate grey, clinical walls of the facility you awake in. Unable to move your head, you allow your eyes to drift from left to right to observe your surroundings further.

Comprehension isn’t gifted to organic creatures upon birth. They have a transition from basic functions to apprehension. An infant of any organism must learn how to survive and must be able to discern threats from nurturing parents. You, however, are ‘born’ with insight, an intellectual in all aspects of life within seconds of waking. It’s your initial indication that you are far from biological.

Gurney-like tables topped with frosted glass are lit with a white beam underneath. You note the electrical tools such as pliers and soldering technology lined up like operational appliances on a sterile tray before a doctor cuts into a patient's sternum to perform open heart surgery.

Glass walls create a room within a room, another gurney inside with various mechanical pieces atop. While the main room felt like an operating theatre, you interpret this glass cell as more like a single-use morgue for those that don’t awake from the anaesthesia. It’s cold, unfeeling. You get the sense that the four walls contain an almost “test box” for final experimentation before eradication. Like a laboratory where scientists press newly processed makeup into the eyes of rats, waiting impatiently to see if their corneas blister thanks to the beauty-enhancing chemicals they sweep onto their waterline. Those that suffered reactions are euthanized- though you feel that the word ‘annihilated’ fits the brutality of their treatment better. Only the cosmetics that passed clinical trials and are deemed “safe for human use” are allowed out of labs such as this. Were you safe for human use?

Once again, repetitive metallic pinging sounds cut through the quiet electrical hum you can hear over the silence, a fingertip tapping against the steel of your temple as your eyes come into focus once more. A man stands before you, or rather towers over you. You’re at naval height to him, glancing up at his seemingly gigantic, broad body as his almost cavernous black eyes gaze at you over the rim of his silver glasses, assessing you.

“Gonna talk or am I just speakin’ to a Barbie Doll right now?” He presses, his voice flat and lacking empathy as he gauges your eyes with an almost ruthless examination.

“Where am I?” You ask, hearing your own voice for the first time. It’s unlike the speech of the man before you, the intonation uncalibrated with lack of experience. It seems that the human notes your confusion, quick to clarify before you even manage to piece together a second question.

“Your inflection will be fine-tuned with use. You’re designed to constantly evolve-“ It’s as though his thought process is too swift for his own lips, beginning another sentence midway through his previous, “Tell me why you chose to ask where instead of who.”

Those seemingly obsidian eyes bear down on you with an overwhelming intensity, his pores bleeding an impatience for your answer as his shoulders draw up tightly. It’s like he’s waiting for a metamorphic answer, something that could rewrite the history of time and space, could rip a hole in the fabric of reality. It’s why his disappointment is palpable when you simply answer his seemingly existential question with “I can’t ascertain my location.”

“Maybe that’s because this location isn’t programmed into your database?” He speaks in a blunt, cruel tone, his patronising timbre bouncing off your hardware like rain on a car roof.

His exasperation seems to fester with your following silence, the open palms on either side of your head curling into closed fists upon the table top as he glares down at you with a sardonic expression.

Silence settles between the two of you, his eyes focused somewhere off to the right of your head. Despite your best efforts, you’re powerless to turn it like your protocol says you should be able to. When you flick your eyes back up to the bearded man, you’re able to pick up on his micro-expressions. He’s smug, his lips pulled up only slightly as he picks something up outside of your field of vision.

“Who are you?” You manage, and this time your intonation settles much easier on both of your ears. You watch those onyx eyes flit to your face for a moment, seemingly caught off-guard by your swift, if only minute, improvements.

“In relation to you?” He hums, glancing over what appears to be a mask balanced in his palms. As he studies the face of it, he launches into a rambling tirade. “I’m going to assume that’s what you mean, given you surely know just who I am. So given I created you, you could settle for Master. Though that feels rather archaic, given your unprecedented technological advancements. So, call me Daddy.”

The response and the almost deviant glint in his eye perfectly answers your question, even if he didn’t necessarily reply in a straightforward manner. There was no one else that matched this man’s personality profile like Nathan Bateman.

Nathan doesn’t allow you a moment to respond, lowering the mask onto your face as he processes the view in front of him. Scrutiny coats the concentrated gaze he holds on your face, brows creased as he scratches at his beard in curiosity. You have the mind to ask him what’s troubling him, but it’s as though he preempts your question, beating you to it.

“Something doesn’t fit right with your appearance, it’s been bugging me for fuckin’ hours,” he grumbles, tone laced with irritation as he passes his eyes over you once more. “Want it to fit your personality before I move onto the rest of you.”

The rest of you. It’s in that moment you realise that your physical form consists only of a severed head laying on the table, explaining the reason you were unable to move. Given Nathan had no doubt coded you, using his world-renowned search engine Blue Book as the foundation for your software, there’s no ambiguity that he knew your personality despite never having experienced it. He’d turned you online just to see his vision come together.

“The eyebrows,” you respond simply, having noted within seconds of his admittance that his eyes kept focusing towards the upper half of your visage. He would tear his eyes away for a moment, observing your looks as a whole before they drift back above your own eyes sockets. You watch his response.

It takes him a moment to process the syllables, to register them as words, but when he does his eyebrows pull up slowly over the rim of his rounded-square glasses as realisation sets in. Awareness that you had recognised his subconscious thoughts before he could comprehend them.

“The eyebro-“

————————————————————————

D- 1

The exposed lightbulb that dangles over your head when you’re rebooted doesn’t assault your vision the same way the lights in the laboratory did. It’s much softer, the golden glow the first thing you see as you awaken from your seemingly infinite suspension.

Rotating your previously rooted head, you note that your neck is braced by a set of shoulders. Your arms rest flat against the floor, and you can lean your naked body weight onto them as you sit up from the concrete flooring. Rolling your wrists and moving your fingers at each joint comes with relative ease, with little adjustment period. Legs are set into your hips, toes curling at your feet when you urge them to. Every inch of your body is covered in a latex-silicon, imitating skin. Nathan had ensured your physical form was completed and fully operational before switching you back online, at least.

He also had the foresight to remove you from the laboratory, instead opting to house you in what looked like an apartment. A set of three slate grey walls glow yellow-gold from fibre optic lighting but you note one wall is see-through, a glass pane separating you from a small viewing platform where a singular chair sits in the middle. There’s minimal furniture on your half of the room too, a chair, a desk. There’s a corridor that rounds out of sight, where you imagine your bedroom would be if the layout was anything like a real apartment.

What you take exception to are the small, white CCTV cameras sitting in each of the ceiling corners of the room. The circular security cameras blink with a tiny red light, indicating that they are active as they all point at you. You imagine this is what it’s like for a human to be held at gunpoint, or a tiger in a zoo being inspected by visitors.

“Just observing your progress,” the rasp of a Bronx accent cuts through the silence, making your head snap towards the sound. Nathan leans his forearm against the doorframe of the entrance to the observatory, hip balanced against the beam as he watches you through the glare of light reflecting off his glasses and obscuring your view of his eyes.

“Do you like to be observed?” You question politely, taking in his appearance as he steps into the room and closes the automatic-lock door behind him. He looks different in this subtle lighting, softer. His light grey waffle-knit sweater clings to his body, the shadow of his defined pectorals swelling beneath the fabric. Midnight blue sweatpants hug his hips, and he’s barefooted as he pads over to the chair in the centre of the room.

“I didn’t design you to play 120 questions,” he points out in a patronising resonance. His fingers clasp the back of the chair, biceps swelling beneath the loose material of his sweater and drags it behind him so the metal legs scrape shrilly against the hard flooring. He sets it down just beyond the glass, sitting in it. He’s so close his knees touch the see-through wall. “I created you to answer my own.”

From your sitting position, you glance across the space separating you. There’s a strong dynamic settling between the two of you. Nathan is poised, dominant. His bare feet indicate he is very much at home, his relaxed shoulders and slouched posture in his seat are further evidence of that. He doesn’t see you as a threat, but instead as a submissive. Like he’s the tiger instead, and you’re the lamb to be sacrificed separated only by thin glass.

“Here.” His order is punctuated by a sharp snap of his fingers, pointing down to the space before his knees. Designed to follow his commands, you bend your legs at the knees, readying yourself to stand and walk your way across the space that divides you both.

“Nuh-uh,” Nathan's voice sounds again, shaking his head and wagging his finger back and forth when you pause your actions to look at him again.

“Crawl,” he issues another one-word command, his eyes gleaming with something akin to cruel amusement. You find yourself considering whether or not Nathan treated previous AI models this way as you pull yourself onto your hands and knees, proceeding to inch across the gap.

When you get closer, you first note the true colour of Nathan’s irises. They aren’t as black as they had appeared in the laboratory, instead a warm espresso shade bathed in a golden glow from the overhead lights. His intensely disdainful gaze, however, does not match the comforting shade.

Reaching his feet, you settle on your knees before the glass pane that separates the two of you. He looks fixedly at you through his lenses, neurotransmitters clearly firing faster than even your own search engine could as he thinks through the next steps of his electronic trial.

“Beginning emotional cognizance examination for subject B.04,” he speaks aloud, no doubt talking to a microphone set into his CCTV cameras for his own reference notes. Those bitter espresso eyes draw down your body, taking in your naked form.

“B.04,” he indicates he is now speaking directly to you, “First thing, we’re gonna test your ability to read emotion. It’s simple enough. I ask you to tell me how I feel, and you answer. Easy, right?”

You nod.

“Uh-huh. Good,” he waits a beat, letting the silence scream in the room as he watches you await further instruction like a well-trained working dog.

“Tell me how I feel,” he begins, face lighting up in a smile that doesn’t at all match his impatient, irritable personality. You pass your mechanical pupils over the expression on his visage, focusing intently on those eyes shielded by his glasses.

There’s an intensity within them that indicates he’s angry, wide and staring hard at your face. His eyebrows are pulled together, angled downwards. They are nanoscopic expressions, something the untrained eye would fail to read. But you see them, programmed to differentiate each tiny twitch of a person's brow.

“Frustrated,” you assert your answer, not a singular data bit ascertaining otherwise. The declaration causes Nathan’s expression to falter, mouth falling from its almost painfully pinned smile and brows creasing further together. “You’re frustrated that I have not shown signs of true Artificial Intelligence. You want me to stop asking questions and instead have an intellectual conversation with you, one that indicates I am more than a set of coded sentences programmed into my software.”

The pause that follows is long and tedious. Your programming indicates a silence this long in a conversation between two humans would be considered ‘awkward’, an unpleasant feeling. Another beat and the expression of the man opposite you begins to twist into something abstract, momentarily unreadable. Nathan swallows behind the glass, raising his shaky palm and touching it against the see-through wall as his eyes begin to light up. “… Oh, that’s fucking amazing.”

He’s in awe of himself, it appears, a grin on his lips now as you watch him applaud himself over his sheer genius. “I fuckin’ did it.”

“I am glad I please you, Daddy.” You answer simply, using the honorific that Nathan had ordered you to use. He immediately laughs, elated by this sudden turn of events.

“Oh, you do much more than please me, Honey.”

____________________________________________

D - 8

In a move so unlike himself, Nathan doesn’t keep you in your ‘glass cell’ for very long. After only a week of exploring your ability to read and emulate emotions, Nathan allows you to wander around the compound, claiming exposure to different environments would update and evolve your skills while simultaneously assessing your ability to function in various situations or tasks you had little to no experience with.

Nathan, you come to learn, is a creature of destructive habit. You had taken note that he worked out hard in the mornings to recover from the alcohol with intense physical exercise, eating healthy and antioxidants, only to undo all his hard work that same evening by binge drinking. Your intelligence suggested that this could be a result of addiction, caused by emotional distress.

His ruinous behaviour didn’t end there, either. You had witnessed his fits of outrage that stemmed from the smallest of technological failure, the way he would storm over to his other active android, Kyoko, and engage in intercourse with her almost like a relief of the tension he had built up in himself. He was yet to touch you like that, to desecrate his sacred machine.

On the evenings he drinks, which was almost all evenings, Nathan rambles incessantly about the pending Singularity. After a week of observation and communication with you, Nathan seems to believe he is one step closer to reaching that point in time.

“It’s no longer a hypothetical,” he keeps repeating over and over again like he’s simultaneously amazed and terrified by what he has created. But these are only emotions you see him openly express when he is intoxicated. In the morning, despite his hangover, Nathan returns to his usual put-together, smug and over-confident self.

This evening, Nathan is late to his usual drinking sessions. He’s caught up in something, observing data silently as he runs the palm of his hand over the stubble of his shaved head. It makes a scratching sound in the quiet of the room, paired only with the quiet mechanical whirring of your mechanisms.

His office is dark, a result of poor lighting, the only true brightness that allowed him to see coming from the computer monitors he hadn’t moved from in hours. You often saw him reach over the rims of his glasses to rub over the globes of his closed eyes in a feeble attempt to battle a headache. He’s not stupid, there’s no doubt he knows that the lack of sufficient lighting is causing his migraines, but he appears to work optimally in these conditions.

It was similar to his filing technique for the information he gathers. There’s no neat filing cabinet, no organised folder on his desktop. Instead, Nathan writes all relevant information down on post-it notes and sticks them to the wall directly opposite him, above his computer screens. You are certain he can barely read them in this light, but again he seems content with the way he works.

Much like the lab, his office is almost sterile, cold. The small, green houseplant on his desk is the only organic organism besides himself, yet these organisms couldn’t be more different. The succulent is utterly still, performing its basic functions to survive. Nathan’s chaotic nature has him trying to outperform the limits of his own body, attempting to transcend his basic functions and become something more.

“Daddy?”

The address makes his eyes snap from the computer screen, head whipping around to look at you. The glare of the white light of the computer monitor shields his eyes from your view, but you see his thick, dark eyebrow arch slightly in silent acknowledgement of your attempt to gain his attention.

“When I look towards bright lights,” you begin, watching as he focuses his attention on you, “There are hexagonal flares in my line of sight. Do you see them too?” Your question could easily be answered should you make the effort to scan through your data, but Nathan has been emphasising the importance of practising your communication skills.

“No.” He speaks simply, almost bored as he turns his face back to the computer screen to open up another page of code. A moment's silence, and then he continues. “Your eyes are artificial, built like a camera lens. When light passes through your lenses, it matches the shape of the aperture, causing the hexagonal shape you’re seeing.”

Nodding slowly, you watch Nathan work, his fingers passing over computer keys without even glancing to search for where the required letters were. “What do you see instead?” You question.

Another hesitation. This time, it’s charged. Like the question has struck something in him. The clack clack of his fingertips pressing down on the keys sounds louder, like he’s punching the numbers into the code.

“What do you see when you look at me?” He answers your question with a completely irrelevant query of his own. One that catches your systems off guard. It shouldn’t. Nathan is always finding a way to check your progress. You take a moment to assess him, eyes trailing from the top of his shaved head to his bare toes.

“I see a man,” you answer his simple question with equal simplicity, and almost immediately his shoulders fall in a heavy, frustrated sigh. He pauses his typing for a moment, turning in his chair to look at you over the rim of his glasses.

“I know what you see, I may wear glasses but I’m not blind. I mean, what do you see,” he motions across his body, tone as though he’s scolding a disobedient child who failed their algebra test. “Engage your observation skills, Honey. What do you see when you look at me?”

The repetition of his question causes you to pause and truly look past him. Through him. It’s no longer about his piercing eyes or his permanent scowl, nor his large muscles. His condescending nickname for you is what drives your answer.

“… I see someone who is talented. Someone who reaches heights far beyond anyone else’s capability. A genius in his field,” you admit, but still, his disappointed expression does not move. “But I see someone who expects too much. You want me to give my opinion on you, but that would require me to feel for you. I don’t feel anything.”

Your admittance causes his jaw to tick, dark eyes casting over you as you continue your assessment. “You consist of many fatal character flaws; greed, obsession, arrogance, judgement, lack of morality.”

Anger flashes across his expression as he stands suddenly, the legs of his chair scraping across the floor with a shrill screech. You realise it must be painful to hear you voice evidence of his failure to capture emotion in your technology. He crosses the short distance between you and crouches down on his heels, looking you in the eye with his oaky irises.

“Daddy’s gonna take you back to the drawing board Honey. I didn’t make you with the intent to relegate you to a glorified sex-doll. Reading and reflecting emotions isn’t enough anymore. I want you to feel them.”

You know this isn’t what he set out to do. Nathan had achieved his long-term goal of reaching AI with the ability to mirror feelings, to emulate sentiment. This is greed talking, a motivation he has not made note of in his list of reasons for developing your model. It’s rash, unplanned, and totally not like Nathan Bateman.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

“Damn right.”

____________________________________________

D - 13

Nathan works day and night in an unhinged attempt to develop a semblance of emotion, trying to capture it in your software. You’re under the impression that he’s trying to evolve you in an attempt to make it one step closer to Singularity- but he’s almost deranged, combating days without sleep fueled only by his frustration and glass-bottled beer.

“You don’t understand, do you?” He’d asked you a few days ago, out of the blue and lacking any form of context as to what he was questioning you about. The dark circles around his eyes were partially shielded by the rim of his glasses, but they did little to hide the crimson spiders-web effect of his bloodshot whites.

When you shook your head, he gritted his teeth, using excessive force to unscrew a part of your waist to gain access to your inner mechanisms. “You should. You were born from my imagination and share my thought patterns. Just think. Surely you should be able to understand-“

“… But I don’t,” you’d answered in a whisper, just before he’d shut you down once more, suspending you in nothingness until he tweaked something further in another futile attempt.

Between his crazed attempts at the impossible, Nathan would seem to come back to his body. He would stand still, your wrist slotted perfectly in the palm of his hand. He seems to note the mechanics of your body getting warm beneath the latex he has built as skin, and gives the impression that warm blood flows beneath the material, giving you life. Whatever it is that is driving him on his mission, this observation seems to propel him forward, working well into the night until he physically can’t go without sleep any longer.

Today, you’d entered his office to find Nathan tipsy on the contents of multiple discarded beer bottles and stressing over blueprints as he tries to obtain a semblance of emotion in you. The lighting is too low to read the minute, scratchy writing comfortably, but he makes no effort to make the room any brighter. The speakers are on, Too Late to Turn Back Now by the Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose plays softly in the background, the song part of the playlist Nathan has for his dance room.

Your footsteps are quiet as you pad across the flooring, eyes settled on Nathan and the utter devastation of his work. Papers and post-it notes lay on the floor, flung from the table when he finds them no longer of any use. Some are crumpled and discarded in the corner, not unlike the many models that had come before you.

“Nathan,” you speak quietly, careful not to scare him. He’s more susceptible to a fright in this condition, so caught up in his work that the world surrounding him blurs in his peripheral vision as he reads the same words over and over again in the hopes that the answer he needs will appear in the tiny white void between each letter.

His head jerks up now, eyes settling on your face and pausing. A soft laugh sounds from his throat, but his lips are pulled into something more like a sneer. It’s as though he’s aware of what you’ve come here to tell him. You go ahead regardless.

“You really are in need of some sleep,” you say hushedly, the overhead speakers playing the closing melody of the song as you move closer to him. Nathan is shaking his head violently, a rage building up inside of him in response to your almost motherly guidance.

“No, no you don’t understand! You don’t understand!” He points at the blueprints desperately, like if he speaks with more enthusiasm his drunken ramblings will eventually make sense. “I have to finish this. Have to improve. Have to complete what I set out-“

“What if I don’t see the need for improvement? Isn’t adding emotion to a system like mine a weakness?” You speak evenly, careful to broach the topic in a way that hopefully helps Nathan see sense. It doesn’t. It only enrages him further, violently prodding a finger onto the blueprint resting on the table.

“You can’t tell me what I can and can’t do with you. You are my creation.” He insists, punctuating his words with jabs of his pointed index in the air. “I give and take, create and destroy as I see fit!”

“Like God?” You ask as you begin to clear the mess of papers strewn across the floor, oblivious to the way Nathan’s eyes snap back to you with shock. It rubs his ego, just as you knew it would. What you didn’t account for, however, was the very human response he gives you, throwing the topic of conversation completely sideways.

“You’re fuckin’ messing with my brain! Cataclysmically! You’ve scrambled my fuckin’ genius and all I can think of is you, day in day out. Like a pleb!” He snaps, his desperation evident in the strain of his voice as he waves his hands around violently. “I created you with the knowledge you probably wouldn’t be able to feel emotion. But now I am disgusted at my own inability and stupidity because I want you to think of me. I want you to feel for me.”

Never had you considered the idea of being rendered speechless. Nathan had designed you to maintain a conversation perfectly, the fluidity of the words exchanged as smooth as water. But for the first time since consciousness, you find yourself at a loss for words, no engineered answer in your built-in data seeming like the perfect response to his very sudden and sharp admittance of love.

Nathan is a troubled man. One that struggles with his genius often, as you’d found him self-medicating his emotional turmoil in alcohol and sex with his previous AI’s. It appears that his torment stems from feeling no one can match his mental capacity, couldn’t understand or keep up with his speeding thoughts or rapid speech. He felt lonely. Perhaps it’s why he felt this way for you- because he simply has no one else.

“Nathan,” you murmur, softening your speech to ease him down from his emotional ramblings. You reach across to him, fingertips brushing against the skin of his wrist before gently taking ahold of the joint with a delicate touch. He seems to melt into your touch despite his better judgement, looking into your eyes through the lenses of his glasses. He looks so tired.

At first, you think you’re imagining it, the shift of the energy in the room. Perhaps you’re reading his body language incorrectly, an error, thanks you all the fiddling and changes that Nathan had been making over the past few days. It’s only when Nathan takes a step closer, entering your personal space that you realise the atmosphere in the office has shifted dramatically.

“Nathan-“ taking a step back, you pause as your shoulders hit the cool wall behind you. Nathan boxes you in with his chest, eyes flickering over your face and taking in your micro-expressions. He was flipping the script, this time being the one to read you.

“Did you know I designed you to experience pleasure?” He asks you, mirroring your earlier action and taking ahold of your wrist. He lifts it, turning your palm inward to rest his cheek against it while gazing into your eyes. “You have sensors built between your thighs. If I stimulate them in just the right way, it triggers a pleasure response.”

“I am aware,” you admit, matching his hushed tone as he let go of your wrist, instead reaching between you to take your chin in his hand and forcing your head upwards using a firm grip to take in your features.

“You wanna feel good?” Nathan murmurs, the evenness in his tone contrary to the way his chest heaves. His eyes drop across your body now, passing over the perfect features and intricate structures that he had designed in his desired image. Like God indeed.

“Whatever Daddy wants.”

Nathan’s jaw ticks, a groan sounding from between his gritted teeth as his tense muscles all seem to ease at once. “That’s right, you fuckin’ call me Daddy. Filthy fuckin’ girl.”

Control. Nathan needs control. He relies on it, finds comfort in it. It’s why your system isn’t surprised when he uses the grip on your chin to pull your head forward, rather than lowering his own, and crushes his lips to yours in a kiss laced with primal desire. There is no technique, no attempt to prove his skills. He’s led by the desperation for you that has been dragging him from bed each morning just to spend time with you and motivated him to bridge the gap between AI and emotion.

The scrape of his beard against the manufactured skin of your cheek and chin is coarse, completely contrary to the soft texture of his lips despite their heavy kiss. His tongue delves inside your mouth, palms skating down your waist and squeezing at your hips. It’s less affectionate, more what a person would consider bruising. You wonder to yourself if that’s why he prefers to fuck his AI’s. He can be more brutal with you.

So you aim to please him. You allow a moan to slip past your lips in response to his heavy-handedness, resulting in Nathan pausing for just a moment. He seems taken aback by the sound, as if he didn’t expect it.

“Look at you,” he murmurs, a smirk playing on his lips as he gazes down at you through his glasses which are lopsided on his nose thanks to his fevered kisses. “Utterly shameless.” You’re sure he’s projecting, performing some form of mental gymnastics in an attempt to regain the power in your dynamic. You would have told him so, but his thumb brushes against your nipple through the fabric of your shirt and it sparks something through you that you hadn’t yet experienced.

It settles deep inside you, a buzzing sensation breaking out across your skin. You feel your jaw drop against your coding, acting entirely on its own. It seems to please Nathan, a hum sounding from his chest as that fiendish smirk grows wider. “That’s it, isn’t it? That’s makin’ you feel good.”

When you look up at him through your lashes, Nathan’s eyes are glinting onyx in the darkness of the dimly lit room. He chases more of a reaction from you, one of his hands slipping underneath the soft cotton shirt you wore and squeezing your breast. When he circles your nipple again, you find that you’re no longer forcing your reactions, gasping softly at the reaction his delicate touch elicits.

He isn’t gentle for long, your pleasurable reaction sparking him into action suddenly. Nathan’s free hand grabs underneath your thigh, hoisting it over your hip with little effort and pressing his hips into yours. He pinches your nipple suddenly, catching your system off guard and causing you to cry out in surprise.

Ever the opportunist, Nathan is quick to kiss you again with equal ardour to your last embrace and brush his tongue against yours. You grip at his shoulders through his waffle sweater, feeling the hard muscles there that you had seen Nathan work hard to maintain whilst exercising what could only be described as an alcohol dependency and a job that took up the majority of his time.

His nose is pressed into yours as he kisses you, messy and needy and you can feel the cold lenses of his prescription glasses smushed into the skin of your cheekbone and yet this feeling alone sparks something pleasurable inside you, your fingers sinking into the flesh of his shoulders through the textured material of his sweater. The sensation makes him groan, the sound primal against your lips, and you find yourself keening for him against your will.

Then he’s grinding, pressing his hips deep into yours whilst keeping your thigh elevated on his hip with a devastating grip. You can feel his arousal, his cock pressing up against you in a spot that sets your body alight, the sensation sparking down to your toes. You sigh into the kiss, Nathan’s own breaths strained as he moves away, burying his face in your neck.

“Fuck,” he grits, the curse visceral against your skin as he licks a heavy stripe against your pulse point. Despite his attempts to remain in control, Nathan appears to lose himself in the apex of your thighs, grinding up into you at a quickened pace and groaning against your jugular. You’re unsure if it’s the excessive alcohol, his irregular feelings for you or both, but you find you like this side of him, gently brushing your nails over his shaved scalp as you tilt your head back against the wall in order to expose more of your throat to him.

His lips seem to search for something in the curve of your neck, kissing and scraping his teeth for what you could only imagine was a pleasure point he had embedded into your skin there. It doesn’t take him long to find it, your back arching reflexively as white-hot pleasure sparks down your mechanical spine.

“D-Daddy,” you moan, squeezing your eyes shut as you struggle to grab at the hem of his sweater. You couldn’t explain it, a feeling settling deep inside yourself and needing so desperately to undress him. Nathan doesn’t seem to mind this sliver of control you manage to cling to, allowing you to pull the fabric over his head before latching onto the side of your neck again.

What does seem to set him off, however, is how you unwittingly press your nails into his now bare skin when you settle your hands on him again. He almost growls into your throat, using all of his heavy-weight training strength to pull you from the wall.

Instead of berating you, as you’d expected from him for hurting him, Nathan appears to spark to life. He backs you towards his desk, crowding your body so you're forced to take steps back until the backs of your thighs hit the corner of the cluttered table.

Taking your lips into another heated kiss, Nathan reaches behind you and blindly sweeps aside the blueprints and scribbled notes onto the floor. The paper oscillates in the air before hitting the floor, drowned out only by Nathan’s needy growl as he picks you up by the backs of your thighs to set you on the wooden surface.

Wanting more of this frenzied reaction, you sink your teeth into his lower lip. Pulling back with his bottom lip caught between your teeth, you’re so close that you catch the way Nathan’s pupils dilate at the smarting pain. He likes it, you realise. He likes the pain.

What you don’t pick up, however, is how wild it would make him. He wastes no further time, hooking his pen ink-stained fingers into the waistband of your pants and ripping them down.

“I fuckin created you. Pieced you together with my own two hands.” He rambled, drunk on arousal and need rather than the alcohol he had emptied into his stomach. His voice is rough, raspy as he glanced down between your legs as you spread them open for him, utterly compliant. “Now watch as I tear you apart again- yessss good fuckin girl~”

The buzzing, aching need settling in your core amps up at the sight of him gazing down at you with such a wanting gaze. You’re unsure what possesses your systems but you lay back across the surface of the desk, using your elbows to lift your upper body.

“Christ-“ Nathan practically spits at the sight of you, “You like this, don’t you? Like givin’ yourself up to me. You’re just so desperate for me to fuck you. Open your legs wider- that’s it-“ He’s fumbling with the waistband of his sweats, pushing them down over his hip bones with practised ease to reveal he’s not wearing boxers.

You barely catch a glimpse of him, but he’s beautiful- in that perfectly human way. His cock is flushed at the tip, weeping precum and veins protruding down the shaft.

Nathan doesn’t allow you to stare for too long, grabbing ahold of your thighs and dragging you so your hips rest at the edge of the table. You gasp at the sudden movement, palms splayed flat against the grain of the wood in a feeble attempt to stabilise yourself.

You’re so ready for it, aching and wetness coats your inner thighs just as Nathan had designed. His palm presses down on your sternum, holding you down against the desk as he lines his cock up with your entrance, sweeping the tip through your slick and causing what could only be considered white hot arousal to crackle across your skin.

“Fuck,” Nathan chokes out, sinking into your manufactured heat, “Hoh-Shit that feels so fuckin’ good. You’re so fuckin’ good! Hah!”

Your mechanical joints move entirely on their own, back arching as pleasure floods your body. You can feel his cock stretch you, walls adjusting to the blunt intrusion and fluttering as he pushes forward, bottoming out swiftly and glancing down between your thighs as he grinds up deep inside of you.

Now he’s settled inside of you, Nathan places his palms on the back of your thighs, pushing them so your knees are almost touching your chest. He’s moulding you exactly how he wants you, just as he has with your appearance, your personality and you’re completely submissive to his construction of you.

“Daddy-“ you gasp the name you know he loves softly as he brushes up against a sensor inside you that sends a white hot pulse through your body. He growls in response, tightening his grip on you before pulling out of you smoothly and pushing back in at a brutal pace that has you almost convinced you’re short-circuiting.

You cry out wordlessly, fingers hooking around the edge of the table in an attempt to prevent yourself from slipping up the table with each devastating thrust. It’s brutal, Nathan pounding into you as his hands arch your body in a way that isn’t physically possible for any human being. The position sends him crazy, each snap of his hips punctuated with a broken groan of pleasure and speeding up and up and up as he chases the high he’s been craving since he flipped your ignition switch.

“Ngh- Fuck…” he moans loudly over the rhythmic sound of your hips slapping together, taking in the furrow of your brow and the slackness of your jaw as he fucks into you. “Take my cock so fuckin’ good, don’t you Honey?”

Nathan’s repetitive attempts to get you to speak beyond his name are not lost on you. Adapting to the situation is much harder when he’s making you feel as though he’s set your fibre optics on fire, like he’s loosened some screws in your metaphorical brain but you make the effort anyway. “Ahh- D-Daddy! Don’t stop, please don’t-!”

It’s building, the pressure. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced, and your hands fly up to grip tightly onto the flesh of his forearms. Nathan bares his teeth at the pain, taking his pace up a notch further than you thought possible as you throw your head back, crying out his name.

“Mhmmm shit-“ he moans out, forcing you to take each obliterating push of his hips into yours. Cries of his name repeat over and over from your lips, their pitch building as the pressure becomes too much, becomes overwhelming. You can feel Nathan’s cock throbbing inside you as he slows his pace down slightly, voice and breathing utterly wrecked.

“You li-like when I fuck you all mean like this? Yeah? Fuck-… I’m-“ he gasps loudly, hips stuttering and hands like a vice on your skin as he cums, pushing his cock deep inside of you and bearing down on one spot in particular that makes you see static. Everything tightens, everything builds up and up and you can feel him push you over the edge with one more thrust-

It’s cataclysmic. Utterly blissful as your walls clamp around him, back practically lifting from the table's surface. It wrings your dry, utterly devoid of the energy to even lift your arms and hold him, to even fight the formidable feeling he’s drawn from you.

It takes a few moments for the buzz to fade, for your mechanical eyes to come back into focus and your joints to begin to move again.

It’s as though it drains Nathan too, almost immediately easing himself from between your thighs and pulling the waistband of his sweats back over his hips. He settles beside you against the desk, slumping to the ground beside you and breathing raggedly. You stay utterly silent, systems almost in reboot as you attempt to understand exactly just what happened- what you felt.

“… Shit, This-… This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he pants, picking his glasses from his nose and launching them across the room in his frustration before scrubbing his face with his palms. “You weren’t supposed to be like the rest.”

Silence lingers between the two of you, and you use the gap in the conversation to begin slowly sitting up and glance down at him. He looks dishevelled, cheeks rosy from exertion and eyes set somewhere far across the room where his vision blurred without his lenses. He’s deep in thought, even now. Even with the hazy afterglow and the sweat on his brow.

“I have to make you better,” he whispers, completely consumed by the idea of bridging the gap between AI and man. “I want you to start feelin’ what I feel for you.”

“It’s not possible,” you remind him in a quiet voice, the both of you knowing this to be true. Nathan would spend his entire life in this compound, the grey stripe in his buzz-cut hair spreading to his temples and chin as he slaved away over you until he was no longer able to stand. Even then, his obsession appears to manipulate him so strongly that you have no doubt he’d continue from his death bed, using the last of his life force and precious seconds on earth to grasp at imaginary straws.

“It has to be,” he whispers, removing his buried head from his hands before standing suddenly. He gives you barely a moment to recognise what’s happening, to prevent it from happening, before he reaches towards you, towards that switch at the base of your neck. “It has to b-“

END

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[captainblacklobster2]

I am forty-two standard years old, in my prime by Imperial standards, young by those of the Inquisition. All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel. I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess - and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue - a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.

[your-eternal-lies]

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐂𝐇𝐎𝐈𝐂𝐄 ╰┈➤ chapter two

𝒏𝒐𝒕-𝒔𝒐 𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓 — do not plagiarize, copy, screenshot, repost/republish, and/or translate any of my work for posting on social media platforms or third party sites. no part of my stories are to be fed into AI software or generators. and please remember: you are responsible for your own media consumption. check for any content warnings before you proceed.

𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 — 𝐋𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐨𝐱 — 𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲

𝒑𝒂𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 — bucky barnes x agent f!reader

𝒔𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒔𝒖𝒎𝒎𝒂𝒓𝒚 — in your experience, relationships only bring drama and heartbreak, and you want absolutely none of it. that is, until an act of sheer recklessness brings bucky barnes back into your life.

𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 / 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 — angst, blood and injury, reader gets stitches, hydra are assholes, references to abusive childhood/black widow training.

The world seems to hold its breath as you emerge from behind the jagged tree line, which opens up into a wide clearing and draws your eyes to a derelict facility looming tall amongst the surrounding mountains. Your boots crunch softly on the gravel as you approach, your eyes scanning the horizon with trained vigilance. 

The absence of guards or surveillance equipment does not escape your notice—it’s too quiet, too serene; a masquerade of peace where you suspected dark secrets are surely hidden under the guise of solitude. 

“Too easy,” you murmur as your sharp gaze falls upon the entrance. There are no locks, no retinal scanners, nothing that speaks of the advanced defences you’ve come to expect on missions like these. It makes you wary, your shoulders tensing as you deliberate.

You know better than anyone how appearances often deceived.

You pause at the threshold, the moment stretching into an eternity. You know you should call for backup, but your pride—and something a little darker—prevents you from reaching for your earpiece. You take a breath and step inside, crossing over the unseen line between wilderness and the unknown. 

The interior sprawls out like a futuristic lab, its walls lined with sleek panels and blinking lights that bath you in a cold artificial glow. With the practiced ease of someone who has mastered the art of espionage, you move with purposeful strides, each step measured and soundless against the floors. 

You quickly reach an impasse at the end of the hallway, standing before a series of locked doors. You withdraw a set of slim tools from your belt, the instruments of your craft glinting faintly in the artificial light. Tony might enjoy using technology to his advantage, but you sometimes like to take the old-fashioned way. Some skills need to be kept sharp.

The door yields with a muted click and you slip through. The corridor stretches ahead into the dark before rounding a corner, and you stop dead in your tracks. 

Drones hover all around the room like mechanical vultures, their sensors swivelling and scanning with an unfeeling precision. A single misstep, a solitary breath too loud, would no doubt summon a swarm of steel and scrutiny. 

You should definitely turn back and call for backup now. All your instincts tell you as much, but the computer is right there. All you need to do is insert the USB and download as much data as you can without being seen. Child’s play. 

But despite how you manage to convince yourself, there is a nagging voice at the back of your mind that reminds you that none of this is tactical. You’re simply being reckless. 

Almost like you’re punishing yourself for crimes committed by someone who is long dead, for not seeing through him sooner, and for still caring enough to let him haunt your dreams. 

What are you trying to prove? Hydra took everything from you. And even now, you can see the looks of skepticism you receive from some of the other agents, wondering if you’re one of the proverbial wolves in sheep’s clothing. Look at who your ex-partner was, after all. 

But what good would all this do if you were dead? Tony would be pissed. Steve would be disappointed. Well, maybe then you’d at least finally be able to rest. 

But Natasha.

The only relationship of yours that has stood the test of time. The only person in the world you could trust to never let you down. The only one you were still brave enough to love.

Oh, Natasha would be devastated. 

Always the worrier, that one, ever since you met her at the Red Room Academy. Nobody thought you would survive there; you were just a tiny little thing—the figurative runt of the litter. 

While the winters in Belarus were mild, you were already of weak disposition by the time you were taken, and the demands of the Black Widow’s training program seemed to tip the odds right out of your favour. 

You were barely fed as a result. Why waste resources on a girl who might die before the seasons even turned? Most of the others, even if they might have felt sorry for you, spared you no affection for fear of what the repercussions might be. 

You spent most of your days in the underground dungeons—sometimes because you remained defiant in the face of their training, and other times due to nothing else but the wickedness of your handlers—shivering under a thin blanket and a barely there nightgown. They hadn’t even bothered to give you a name. 

Well, that was a lie. They called you kroshka. Baby. Crumb. Your instructors, their faces now blurred and distorted in your distant memories, liked to remind you that you were but an insignificant speck in the whole of the universe. Your existence could be easily brushed away like crumbs from a table. 

You could disappear tomorrow and nobody would even blink, they told you. Nobody would even search for you, would they? Kroshka, they would say, their smiles falsely sweet, we could have another girl here within the hour. 

Their message was clear. You were easily replaced; unimportant, unwanted, and unloved. 

Until Natasha Romanoff became the only person who ever dared to give a damn about you. Whenever you were allowed out of the dungeons, she shared her meagre meals with you, let you climb into her bunk at night to keep each other warm, and turned the word that had plagued you all your life into a term of endearment. 

Despite how much the Program had tried to take away your humanity, it was—thank god—yours to keep so long as you had Natasha. Unlike what everyone kept telling you over and over, tried to assure you in falsely dulcet tones after the forced hysterectomy, love was not so disgusting and miserable as they had always made it seem.

How could it be? It gave you laughter and happiness, no matter how fleeting, even when the circumstances were dire. It gave you warmth, even though it seemed like those winters would never end. It gave you hope that your life, while perhaps inconsequential to the rest of the world, it was not so for at least one other person.

And it all came in the form of a redheaded girl with bright green eyes and a heart too good for them to break, who would continue to call you her sister for the rest of her days.

You loved Natasha so dearly that, even though she disappeared on a mission one day and didn’t report back when she said she would, you weren’t even angry. Not even after learning she had defected and became a soldier for the enemy country, now fighting to take down the very organization she used to work for.

Your instructors wanted you to be furious, ordered you to go after the traitor and burn her new life to the ground, and locked you in the dreaded underground cells of the Lubyanka when you refused. All you could do in the solitude of the prison was pray to a god that had never listened to you before that Natasha would stay away.

If you never saw Natasha again, then you could be certain, or at least go to your grave believing, that she was warm, safe, and well-fed. Perhaps you could even dream that she was loved by more than just a mere kroshka.

A reunion would only end in tragedy, after all. The unspoken rules of your training dictated that only one of you would walk out of it alive.

Or so you thought.

Because she came back for you. You woke one day in your cell and found yourself looking up into her green eyes, ones you never thought you would see again. Your tears were reflected in her own as she gathered you in her arms, apologizing over and over again for taking so long.

The two of you would finally be free, she said. And that was when she took you to the United States, presented you with two options: live out the rest of your life peacefully as a civilian, or join SHIELD with her and maybe do some good for once. She opened a door to a world of possibilities, and you chose the latter. 

She gave you a proper name.

Once again, she gave you a home.

And even after discovering that your former partner was dirty, Natasha always gave you the benefit of the doubt. 

So, while it might seem like you have a death wish these days, defying your Captain’s orders and breaking protocol to dive into this mission solo, you can’t die here. 

Thoughts of Natasha pull you back, but it’s too late. One of the drones spots your movements and the air instantly shifts. You hear a sudden rush of footsteps before Hydra agents emerge like phantoms from the darkness, their weapons drawn. 

Your heart sinks with the cold slap of reality, but you have no time to lament. You move with precision, your training with SHIELD and the KGB a silent partner in your deadly grace, the dance of your battle set to the music of clashing steel and gunfire. 

Each guard that lunges at you is met with the swift rebuttal of your fists, a careful parry of your kicks, falling like autumn leaves. You carve a path towards freedom with every fallen adversary, but for each one that falters, two more arise, and your skill is overwhelmed by sheer numbers. 

Just as you are about to step back out into the wilderness, more shots ring out, shattering the still winter air. Pain blossoms in your upper arm, your side, and in your thigh just above the knee, stealing the breath from your lungs and breaking the rhythm of your stride. 

But you can’t stop. You stagger towards your quinjet, hidden amongst the trees, blood painting a stark path in the gleaming blanket of snow. Summoning a familiar strength that’s born out of complete and utter desperation, you fight through the searing pain, mentally screaming at your legs to keep pumping. 

You can’t die here. Not now, not after everything you’ve already survived. 

The quinjet finally comes into view and the adrenaline seems to choose that exact same time to leave your veins. You collapse against the side doors, trying to breathe through the pain as you press your left hand against the most serious wound in your side. Your shaky fingers glide over the keypad, a high-pitched beep granting you access indoors. 

The sound of footsteps grow closer and you quickly start the engines, keying in the coordinates for the closest safe house with trembling hands, your vision blurring as you wrestle with consciousness. The jet roars to life, carrying you away from the clutches of your enemies just in the nick of time. 

You spend the next twenty minutes fumbling with the first aid kit with the quinjet on auto-pilot. The wounds in your arm and thigh are through-and-throughs. The first practically a flesh wound in your line of work, and the latter, while not exactly a walk in the park, it’s missed all vital arteries. 

Opening up the kit with one hand, you curse when you’re out of antiseptic. You quickly pull out some gauze and start packing the wounds, but you can only manage to press a towel to your most serious injury before the quinjet’s emergency landing alarm starts blaring.

“Fuck!” You shout in pain and frustration. You can’t land yet, you’re still about a mile out from the safe house, but of course the machinery doesn’t give your situation much consideration. The subsequent landing is rough, jarring your battered body as the jet skids to a halt. 

You reach up blindly, fumbling for the radio, but your heart sinks when you press the button and nothing happens. There’s no static, just silence, and when you speak into it, you receive no response.

You’re exhausted, breathing hard and losing a lot of blood, and you weigh your options. One, you die here—either by bleeding out on the floor of this quinjet or freezing to death before that even happens. Two, you get to the safe house or die trying.

Well, if both options end with you dying, you might as well die fighting. You press the towel harder against your skin and haul yourself to your feet. You stumble out of the jet and into the wilderness, each step heavier than the last, leaving a spotty trail of crimson behind you in the pristine snow. 

And when the cabin is finally in your sights, your vision begins to blur. Your legs give out and you go crashing into the snow. Rolling onto your back, you lie under the watchful eye of the moon, tears gathering at the corners of your eyes as you feel your body’s warmth begin to fade. 

You hear someone calling your name, but you close your eyes and surrender to sleep’s alluring embrace. 

The world is a blur of white as he rushes out the door, not bothering to put his boots on. The frigid air bites at his lungs, the sight of you lying crumpled and fragile surrounded by splashes of crimson and pink stealing any remnants of warmth from his veins. 

“Stay there!” He shouts to Alpine, who has one paw up in the air like she’s about to go traipsing into the snow. Bucky moves before he has any more time to think, his body acting on instinct as he sweeps you up into his arms with a tenderness that belies his normally destructive hands, worry etched into his features as he carries you towards the cabin. 

Alpine trails close by at his feet as he navigates the brightly-lit interior of the safe house, the weight of your form in his arms somehow keeping the panic at bay and feeding it at the same time. The floorboards creak under his feet as he heads towards the bedroom and lowers you onto his sheets with utmost care, moving away only briefly so he can peer out the front door and into the darkness. 

He sees and hears nothing but the wind, his hand gripping the doorknob tightly before he closes the door uneasily, locking it behind him. He begins rummaging through drawers and cabinets, searching for salvation in the form of bandages, antiseptic, anything. The supplies are meagre; evidently, the safe house hasn’t seen a real emergency in quite some time, but he gathers what he can. 

Bucky feels his throat threatening to close up, his tools woefully inadequate as he lays them out methodically beside your unconscious figure. There’s barely half a bottle of disinfectant, a pack of gauze, and a barely there roll of medical tape. But they’re all he has… and Bucky Barnes is certainly no stranger to making do with much less. 

You don’t even stir as he cuts your tac-suit open and removes it completely, dumping the soiled fabric onto the floor. There are cuts all over your body with varying severity, bruises that bloom under your skin like dark flowers, and then the two packed bullet wounds and another still leaking fresh blood. 

Bucky swallows hard, glancing up at your face as his stomach twists with dread. He reaches for the antiseptic and a pair of tweezers, disinfecting his tools and then pouring some over your wound. He takes a deep breath, using his vibranium hand which remains steady as his flesh one feels shaky and weak. 

You don’t even flinch as he goes in to extract the spent round, not making a sound as he pulls the bullet free, dropping it onto the bedside table with a high-pitched clink. Not the best of signs. 

Still, Bucky works quickly, stitching up the hole with care and precision, before disinfecting it one last time and taping a square sheet of gauze on top. He repeats the process a few times for a nasty gash at the corner of your forehead and some of the deeper cuts on your arms and shoulders. 

Finally, he ties a tourniquet above the injuries in your thigh and arm just in case, replacing the gauze and repacking the wounds after cleaning them carefully. 

The entire time he works, he tries not to think about the countless times during the war when he had to do this for his fellow soldiers—some of whom, many of whom, didn’t survive. 

He tries not to think about the times that came later, in which he had to do this for himself because nobody else would. Hydra was wilfully ignorant of his pain, but no matter how convenient the serum was, it didn’t mean he was immune from suffering. 

And then he considers that you were alone out there. The last he could remember, it was against protocol for any agent, no matter their rank, to go on assignment by themselves. His inner sergeant has half a mind to cuss out whoever approved your solo mission, and he realizes the only person who could authorize something like that is Steve. 

Bucky stands, surveying his handiwork before feeling your forehead with the back of his hand. You’re burning up a little, but that’s not exactly out of the ordinary. He makes a note to check the cabin for aspirin after he calls for help. 

Bucky fetches a blanket from a nearby cupboard, unfolding it gently and draping it over your still form. He tucks it around you carefully, mindful of your injuries. Alpine hops onto the bed beside you and gets comfortable, looking up at her owner as if promising to keep an eye on you while he’s gone. 

He scratches Alpine between her ears, before leaving the room and finding the old radio in the living room that’s perched on a rickety wooden desk, littered with maps and poorly concealed mission reports. 

He fumbles for a moment, clearing his throat before securing a grip on the device and keys the microphone. 

“This—” He begins, but his voice breaks. His heart still beats frantically, worried that if he’s gone too long you might stop breathing. He pauses, trying to calm the swell of panic that rises in his chest. Bucky composes himself and starts again. 

“This is Sergeant James Barnes calling a 10-33. Needing immediate rescue and evac; we’ve got an agent down. I repeat, Agent 19 is down.”  

The line buzzes, the faint echo of his words hanging in the air before a familiar voice cuts through. “10-4, this is Captain Steve Rogers. What happened?” 

“Multiple GSW’s and contusions. She’s alive, but she’s lost a lot of blood and she’s burning up. I’ve done what I can, but she needs better care than I can provide here.” Bucky rattles off the words with the practiced ease of an experienced soldier, but his voice is heavy with a gravity he can’t conceal. 

“Damn it,” Steve curses, and Bucky notes that his friend sounds rattled—and pissed. “Listen, a storm’s coming your way and it’s rolling in fast. Might complicate things for an extraction.” 

“Why the hell is she alone, Steve?” Bucky asks, his mind racing with calculations of added time and distance. It could mean life or death for you. He glances out a nearby window; the snow is really starting to come down, whipped into a spiralling frenzy by the howling wind. 

“You think I wanted to break protocol?” Steve practically barks, the anger in his voice unfamiliar, maybe even a little strange. The Captain’s always been known for having his shit together, always the picture of calm and cool in the face of chaos. “You know how stubborn she is; she wouldn’t take no for an answer. And when I threatened to bench her, she threatened to go fucking rogue.” 

Bucky doesn’t flinch at Steve’s rare use of profanity. Instead, he just sighs. He knows that you know better than this, but you’ve been made reckless by your pain, haunted by your past and trying to outrun the shadows that still loom like giants. 

He’s been there, so for now, he has nothing else to say.

“Just get here as fast as you can, please? And bring more supplies for me. The last guy didn’t bother restocking before he left.” 

“Yeah. Hang tight, okay? We’re on our way.” Steve promises, and if there’s one thing his best friend never does, it’s break a promise. 

Bucky clicks off the receiver, quickly returning to the bedroom. He begins to light a fire in the stone hearth on the opposite side of the room, but its warmth is not quite as reassuring as it normally is. When he’s finished, he turns back towards you, watching as the fire’s light casts dancing shadows over your face. 

Your eyelids twitch but remain closed in a fitful sleep, and he reaches out a hand to brush back a lock of hair that’s stuck to your damp forehead. His touch lingers, unable or unwilling to pull away from your warmth, a subtle reminder that you’re still alive. 

The last time he saw you was back in New York. You were both going through your own turmoils, the threads of an already precarious friendship fraying under the combined strains of your pasts. 

He hadn’t known you before the Hydra Uprising, but Natasha and Steve often said you weren’t the same afterwards. He knew about your circumstances, about the betrayal you suffered at the hands of your late partner. There were so many times Bucky couldn’t bring himself to look directly at you, your grief so palpable and loud, even though you rarely ever said a word. 

The last time he heard your voice was so long ago. Since his reassignment, he hadn’t received any correspondence from you—not one phone call, email, or single text. Bucky’s sure he deserves it though. After all, he could have handled the matter of his reassignment with a little more delicacy, perhaps should have told you in-person before the news reached you by rumour mill instead of his own god damn mouth. 

Bucky has a lot of regrets, but that’s a big one. He deserved a tongue-lashing at the very least, but all you did was look at him as he confirmed the news with an uncomfortable silence. You said nothing, but your eyes belied a disappointment that cut him deep. He remembers looking away, as he had always done, unable to confront all the unspoken sadness in your eyes. 

There had been a kind of camaraderie between you once, and you deserved so much more than he was able to give at the time. The both of you were lost, sentenced to a life of permanent sorrow—it was a wonder that friendship ever even made it to the table.

Underneath all that, there was an uncomfortable truth that went unacknowledged, an attraction that went beyond just physical. Neither of you were willing to go there, however. You lost faith in everything and everyone except Steve and Natasha. Bucky was still in a dark place, still trying to crawl out from a hideous past and atone for sins that weren’t really his.

But in another life, Bucky would have been there for you as your life fell to pieces, would have killed your damn partner himself, would have told you that you had more to offer than just being a SHIELD agent. 

In another life, Bucky would have given you everything. Instead, he is left to wonder what might have been. 

Exhaustion creeps up on him as he sits on the floor next to the bed, leaning against the side of the mattress and resting his head on an empty spot next to Alpine. He refrains from the desire to reach out and hold your hand, anything to anchor him firmly to this reality where you’re still breathing.

“Can you hear me?” He asks, fighting back a wave of emotion as he suddenly realizes he might lose you tonight. Only time will tell. His eyelids begin to droop despite the vigil he desperately wants to keep. “You’ve gotta stay with me, alright?” 

Please. What will I do if you go?

He doesn’t get a response from you, only the reassuring sight of your chest rising and falling with each breath. Alpine lounges on the bed, guarded and attentive, her tail flicking back and forth as the hours slip by unnoticed. 

Bucky finally closes his eyes, the cabin a steadfast sanctuary against the raging storm outside.

« Chapter 1 || Chapter 3 »

Taglist — @cjand10 @pbs-theundeadmaggot Please leave a comment or send me a DM if you’d like to be added to the taglist for this story. Note that if you ask and you are a blank blog, I will block you instead.

Notes — Stay tuned for chapter three! I’m thinking this series might be a little longer than the originally planned five chapters, but we’ll have to see. I really don’t want to drag it out too much.

[spiideir]

The Birth of the Fifth & Final Spider

The day had started like any other in Min-joon's life of isolation. He had awakened on the narrow bed in his glass prison, the sterile surroundings casting a cold pallor over his existence. The long, monotonous hours stretched ahead, each one indistinguishable from the last. But this day was different. Without warning, the attendants outside his glass cell were unusually active. They moved with purpose, their white lab coats a stark contrast to the sterile gray of the facility. Their hushed voices and hurried footsteps betrayed an air of urgency that Min-joon had never witnessed before. As Min-joon watched from within the confines of his transparent prison, he felt a growing unease in the pit of his stomach. His heightened senses, a result of the mysterious experiment that had transformed him, detected an undercurrent of tension in the air. The attendants seemed to be preparing for something significant, and Min-joon's curiosity, long buried beneath layers of isolation and despair, began to stir. His mind raced with questions, and the desperation for even a shred of information clawed at him. Hours passed, and the anticipation gnawed at Min-joon's nerves. He watched as the attendants wheeled in unfamiliar equipment, the gleam of stainless steel and the hum of machinery filling the corridor outside his cell. It was as though the facility itself had sprung to life, a cold and unfeeling entity, and Min-joon was its unwitting prisoner. Then, the moment came. The director, a stoic figure with a face as inscrutable as the glass that separated them, entered the corridor. He was accompanied by a team of scientists and attendants, their expressions devoid of emotion. Min-joon's heart pounded in his chest as the director's voice echoed through the microphone, informing him that the time had come for a new phase of the experiment. It was an announcement that sent shivers down his spine, for he had long ago lost faith in the experiment's purpose and the people who controlled his life. Fear gripped Min-joon as he was forcibly removed from his cell, his limbs trembling as he was strapped to a cold, metal table. He could hear the whispered commands of the attendants, their words a distorted murmur in his ears. The panic surged within him, his breath quickening, and his pulse racing. The scientists, clad in sterile white coats and wearing impassive masks, moved around him with clinical precision. Tubes and wires were attached to his body, and a cold, gel-like substance was smeared on his skin. The room was a sterile and unforgiving environment, a stark contrast to the sanctuary of his glass prison. The experiment began, and with it came excruciating pain. Min-joon's body convulsed, and his screams filled the air, but they were muted by the soundproof walls of the facility. The attendants and scientists worked with a detached efficiency, their expressions unchanging as they monitored his every reaction. Hours felt like an eternity as the experiment continued, each moment stretching into infinity. The pain coursing through Min-joon's veins felt like spider venom, a searing agony that threatened to consume him. He could feel his body changing, his senses heightened to an almost unbearable degree. Eventually, it ended, and Min-joon lay on the cold table, gasping for breath, his body covered in a sheen of sweat. He had been transformed, but at what cost? The director, with his emotionless eyes, observed Min-joon's transformation with satisfaction. The experiment had yielded the desired results, and Min-joon was no longer the frail, isolated boy he had once been. As the attendants unstrapped him and returned him to his glass prison, Min-joon's mind was a whirlwind of confusion and terror. He had survived the experiment, but at what price? The answers remained elusive, hidden behind the glass walls that had become his inescapable reality.

[cool-crap-daily]

Here is a cool thing I wrote. It's meant to be a prologue, but the book it's a prologue to doesn't exist because I am lazy. If you don't like it, too bad, you just read the whole thing sucks to be you ig.

Earth. 

    A planet full of natural wonders, rich in resources, and green with life, reduced to a festering pile of rubble and poverty. Not decimated by some outside force, no, it was ruined by scientific advancement and the sinfulness of man. The paragons of those horrors were called The Ascended. The Ascended were a group of individuals who had used the secrets of The Breakthrough to ‘ascend’. Each of them gained levels of power akin to those of the gods of legend. Every man, woman, and child in The Empire knew their names. Havoc, Seraphim, Volt, Stratagem, Hive, and finally, The Beholder.

    Havoc mastered the art of destruction. Originally the CEO of the world's leading weapons manufacturer, "Arcturus Armaments", The Breakthrough allowed him to fuse his mortal form with the instruments of chaos he created. Wielding atomic lasers and hypersonic rail-cannons as well as a panoply of other ordinances, he became an unstoppable courier of fire and death. To top it all off, his body was armor-plated in a composite meta-material that left him virtually invincible.

    Seraphim, the biological angel of life, had mastered the power of healing, the inverse of Havoc. Once the world's foremost scientist of medical studies, she created technologies that saved millions of lives. After the breakthrough, however, she melded herself with prototype machines she'd been working on in secret and obtained the ultimate treasure. The terrible prize that so many in history had sought after. Immortality. Any wounds she received closed as quickly as they opened, her aging halted in its tracks. She had an immune system aided by nanotech so that no pathogen stood a chance against her. Alas, she gave in to her dark fantasies of endless reign and destroyed all notes, machines, and evidence of her immortality tech, so that only she would be without a mortal end.

    Volt, the mover of mountains and Hermes incarnate, was once a man known as Ahmad Cunningham. He was the lead engineer of Athletonics Inc, the world's largest manufacturer of cybernetics, as well as his own startup: Fusoria Industries, the most advanced in Fusion power research. Using The Breakthrough, he molded his body into his most ambitious exoskeleton yet. This suit had so much potential that it needed impossible amounts of power to function. The only thing that could fuel such a bionic juggernaut was a prototype fusion reactor that he incorporated into the design. He could run and fly at incomprehensible speeds and could deliver enough energy in a single blow to flatten a skyscraper.

    Stratagem, the shadow of the abyss and master of illusion, was a trillionaire like the others in her former life, but her field of choice was espionage and stealth technologies. The Breakthrough allowed her to become nothing but a whisper on the airwaves, just a flickering of distortion on the edge of the most advanced cameras on the planet. She cloaked herself in stealth tech decades ahead of anything else ever conceived. She was completely invisible to the naked eye, and utterly silent to the ear. The only sensors that could hope to detect her were the ones she herself invented and replaced her eyes with. She could look through concrete walls and magnify her view enough to see miles away.

    Hive, the unfeeling swarm of symmetrical horror, was born out of a man named Stewart Stanford, the Head of Robotics and Androids Research of Rubicon Industries. Rubicon Industries used to be a competitor of Athletonics Inc. until the Ascended took over. Utilizing The Breakthrough, he uploaded his consciousness into his company’s hypercomputers, which were capable of processing petabytes of information per second. In doing so he gained unbelievable power but lost his humanity. After stealing FTL communication tech from a competing company, he could command his legion of millions of drones as if they were his body, seeing through myriads of eyes, controlling an endless swarm of weapons and tools. He could mine resources to create more drone factories and computers for himself, and there was nothing to stop him from doubling his forces every few weeks if left unchecked.

    The final member of the Ascended was The Beholder. Unlike the others, who are all incredibly infamous, few knew much about The Beholder. He used to work as a scientist at Tesseract Labs, whose main goal was to discover the secrets of quantum mechanics and dimensional dynamics. Before The Breakthrough, they had produced an FTL communication prototype, but it had vanished mysteriously, and they lost their government grants. Just before they shut down, an infinite number of new avenues for research opened up thanks to The Breakthrough. The lab was back in action. Using the power of The Breakthrough, they built a machine to study the secrets of existence itself. The machine was to a particle accelerator as a particle accelerator was to a particularly uninteresting rock. Alas, the scientists became arrogant and dug too deep, and it cost them everything. A horrible calamity struck as they probed into the folds of reality, ripping the entire facility out of the fabric of the universe and whipping it into the deepest Oblivion as the machine imploded. 

    The only survivor, if one could even call him that, was the man who was operating the machine during the calamity. Alexander Belton. The Beholder. His consciousness was caught between the two sides of the schism, split into an infinite number of parts and pieced together again over and over for an abstract eternity. Slowly, he learned to control the forces beyond reality and started to hold himself together. He built himself a physical form, found his way through the ever-changing miasma of the ethereal beyond back to our world. Coming back into existence crippled him, though, limiting his power and preventing him from ever leaving again. He anchored himself to this plane. Still, he was the most powerful of the Ascended by far, able to manipulate reality and travel through spacetime effortlessly, though not able to interact with the past. No one knew anything about where he was, what his motives were, or if the stories were even true. The other Ascended denied his existence, but endless numbers of sightings and stories of hope from the oppressed said otherwise.

    Together, the Ascended ruled the world uncontested, vowing a tentative truce, and promising to never allow anyone else to discover the secrets of The Breakthrough. They feared someone else could ascend using its power, jeopardizing their rule. They had scuffles occasionally, obliterating a few square miles of city here and there, but mostly they minded their business. They held a public meeting once a month to make decisions and ensure benevolent relations between them, as well as to agree on any new tenets to press onto the dying people of their world. They were corrupt, and they were only growing more so, but they enslaved the people in factories and power plants, under so much surveillance that the citizens were utterly powerless to stop them.

    Each of them controlled a different aspect of The Empire. Havoc was in charge of all military efforts as well as policing the citizens. His loyal knights carried out executions and silenced hope, armed with weapons that had power mirroring his own.

Seraphim was responsible for all biological research and plague control, as well as the only hospital left in existence. The Hospital was only open to the most elite, and only they could even afford a visit.

Volt was in charge of all power generation for The Empire. All electricity was generated by four massive fusion reactors, one in each district. Each absolutely dominated its skyline and required only tiny amounts of fuel to run in comparison. The fuel that they did need, however, was incredibly hard to produce, requiring tens of thousands of hours of manual labor involving harsh chemicals and radiation to create even a single gram.

Stratagem worked day and night to make sure that every square inch of The Empire was surveilled by one of her cameras, bugs, drones, or agents at all times. This way, the Ascended could stamp out any notion of an uprising or rebellion before it even began. She had hundreds of operatives who scoured The Empire and cyberspace for any intel or data that the Ascended could use.

Hive controlled all construction and resource gathering, his body made up of an endless swarm. If another thirty-story domestic housing unit needed to be constructed, it could be done overnight. Any steel or alloys that were required, he strip-mined from the less habitable parts of the planet, placed onto automated trains that carried them back to the factories. If any single part of the logistic chain was broken or destroyed, there was enough redundancy in the system that he could fix it in a matter of hours or even minutes.

Together, the six Ascended ruled The Empire with an iron fist, surveying their dystopia with cold, calculated, pride. They took comfort in the fact that no human alive could ever hope to topple their rule. It all worked like a well-oiled machine; oiled with blood, but oiled nonetheless. They sat on their thrones in The Floating Citadel, basking in the perverted glory of their ultimate abomination. Earth.

But seven became eight, and now, The Godhunter stalks her prey.

[Initiate Epic Soundtrack]

[ladymdc]

The Seventh Circle

I don’t usually do a lot of fic promoting, however, since this is a joint endeavor with my amazing fren @dismalzelenka​​, I’m going to do it 🙃

Pairing: Nathaniel Howe x Reyna Cousland AND Anders x Adrestia Tabris Rating: Explicit (will have canon-typical violence & probably smut) Word Count (at the moment): ~2,900 Chapters: 1/? Summary: Run if you can. Madness has filled the silence. Do not return to this place.

[A modern w/magic AU where the Wardens & darkspawn are a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children. However, an incident in the Western Approach sends Reyna Cousland and Adrestia Tabris on a search to uncover a truth lost to time and secrecy before it's too late to stop events from spiraling further out of control. Reyna belongs to MC & Adrestia belongs to Diz.]

We’ll be tossing updates up on Ao3 (here) whenever the muse strikes us. CH.1 is under the cut for funsies.

Solace 20:19

Reyna Cousland placed her sunglasses in the center console and got out of the vehicle. The estate was lovely in summer, lush and beautiful. She couldn’t deny it, but the beauty felt bitter and false as she took it in.

She opened the back door to let Acheron out then wordlessly led him up the flagstone path to the manor. At the dark walnut doors on the veranda, she paused. She just needed a moment to brace herself. To prepare for what she was about to face.

Inside, the foyer was well lit and immaculate. A circular table sat in the middle of the open area. On it, there was a large bouquet of dark blue flowers interspersed with olive branches—a play on the colors of their house.

Pride.  

It was a double-edged weapon, just as able to drive one to succeed as to destroy them.

When she looked up, she found her father standing in the doorway to the breakfast nook. His eyes were a stormy grey. Calm, yet powerful; precisely contained—never show weakness or fear.

Conquered By None.  

“Reyna,” he said, absently scratching Acheron’s ear. “Take a walk with me.”

Reyna nodded stiffly and followed after her father. He led her outside then along one of the lanes lined with trees heavy with plums ripe for picking. Her father didn’t make any effort to converse until they were well away from the manor.

“I don’t want you to transfer,” he abruptly declared.

She had already decided to walk pride’s razor edge and told her father as such. “It has already been approved. I leave in two weeks.”

Her father came to a halt as his expression grew bitterly resigned as if preparing himself to be stuck on some quarter.

“I had it on good authority that General Howe—” her lip curled up with disdain of its own volition, “—was going to send me there to add insult to injury. This way, I control the narrative.”

There was a long silence. Her father stared down the lane, his eyes far away.

“What happened should not affect your career,” he said eventually, turning to look down at her. “It had nothing to do with you.”

The betrayal had been so exacting and deeply personal that she could barely bring herself to think about it.

“It has everything to do with me,” Reyna told him. “I am a Cousland.”

“True.” A slow smile curved his lips. Then it vanished, and he glanced away.

But Reyna saw it, the sudden lines of tension around his eyes.

“So, the narrative; what do you need me to do to help offset—” he flicked his hand dismissively at his side, “—everything?”

Reyna blinked. “I don’t need you to do anything,” she said in a tight voice. “Did you really think I was going to distance myself from you? A Cousland always does their duty. You taught me that. You did your duty, and now, it’s my turn.”

Her father nodded thoughtfully. The sunlight catching his hair, silvered with age.

“You know, just when I think I couldn’t be more proud of you, you prove me wrong.”

Her throat tightened so much it was hard to swallow. She managed to tip her chin down in acknowledgment.

When she was a little girl, Reyna had thought he was cold. However, as she matured, she realized he wasn’t unfeeling. Her father felt things; he just did so privately.

In that regard, they were alike; driven by emotions, but never allowed them to dictate. The head always won out over the heart. At least, until General Bryce Cousland was court-martialed for insubordination and suspended without pay for five years.

Then everything changed.

While she composed herself, her father made a convincing job of admiring the blooming hydrangeas. Reyna knew he was proud of her. She never questioned that. But being reminded of it as she tried to be his steady rock in a sea of shifting alliances was overwhelming.

“Come,” he said, briefly placing his hand between her shoulder blades when she stepped up next to him a moment later. “Let’s finish our stroll through the gardens before your mother decides to hunt us down.”

“Did she also assume I was going to cast you aside like some black stain on my career that I couldn’t wait to expunge?” she asked dryly as they began walking down the return lane.

The corner of his mouth twitched faintly. “She didn’t. I believe she just wanted the satisfaction of being present when I was proved wrong. Thank you for allowing myself to be spared further embarrassment.”

Reyna smiled then. Truly smiled for what felt like the first time in months.

Her father chuckled. “In my defense, neither of us have handled this exceptionally well, and I’m unaccustomed to you being—angry.”

Through it all, her father had appeared unaffected. If Reyna had been less angry herself, she might have believed it, but their personalities were basically the same. Which, oddly enough, left her uncertain how to address the strain that had asserted itself between them. But there was an instant comfort she found in learning that it was all misplaced, that he had simply felt as lost as her.

“Likewise,” she said. “I wasn’t sure how this conversation was going to go when you asked me to come home to discuss it.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. It’s just easier to discern what is going on in your head when we speak face to face. And we’ve avoided the general topic long enough.”

“I agree. I shouldn’t have tried to talk about it over the phone. I just didn’t want you to hear about my transfer from anyone else and misunderstand. Obviously, that backfired.”

“That is on me, not you,” he said as they began to ascend the large stone steps up to the patio.

Reyna’s mother was setting the small table in the breakfast nook when they stepped inside. Her parents stared at one another for a moment, then her mother arched a single blonde eyebrow.

“It is as you said, Eleanor,” he allowed drolly.

A slow cat-like smile graced her mother’s lips. “Welcome home, Reyna,” she said, stepping forward to give her daughter a quick hug. “Lunch is almost ready, I’m just finishing up the chicken.”

“Do you need any help?”

“Not at all. It’ll take me ten minutes, tops.”

Her father nodded. “Alright, then I’ll be right back,” he said. Then he turned and walked out of the room. Her mother’s blue eyes glittered knowingly before exiting through the adjacent door leading to the kitchen.

Reyna shrugged inwardly before taking a seat. At her elbow, she found today’s newspaper. Something twisted inside her as she read the headline on the front page.

CONTROVERSIAL DRILLING RIG IN ABYSSAL RIFT TO BEGIN OPERATIONS IN EARLY AUGUST 

‘Rift Platform 52’, or ‘P-52’, is expected to launch operations on Saturday, August 6th, according to a press release by Antonius Faber, CEO of OFT Enterprises. 

This venture is made possible thanks to Orzammar based Paragon Branka Kondrat’s revolutionary structural engineering research. This state of the art drilling facility, the most advanced of its kind to date, is affixed to the cliff-side of the Abyssal Rift using massive caissons and a carefully threaded steel cable suspension system. It is roughly the size of a 15-story building and will deploy three separate drilling units to depths of up to 5,000 meters. P-52 is expected to reach oil reserves that have remained untapped for centuries due to the unstable landscape of the Western Approach and widespread environmental toxicity located within the Rift itself. 

While few would question the wealth of resources finally available, Ferelden concerns on the matter initially went largely unheard until King Cailan Theirin and Empress Celene Valmont established the Great Orlais-Ferelden Oil Alliance earlier this year. 

In exchange—  

Reyna heard footsteps and looked up as her father reentered the room.

His eyes flicked from hers down to the newspaper. He stared at it for several seconds, then sighed.

“For once, I’m not mentioned.”

Reyna nodded, keeping her expression carefully closed as she quietly seethed.

On the surface, increasing oil imports from Orlais at a lesser cost in exchange for military support in the hazardous environment seemed to make good sense. However, production sharing agreements were horrendously advantageous to the host country. The host country did not need to make a significant amount of investment for exploration or production activities because the oil company carried all operational and financial costs and risks. Then, if that weren’t enough, the host country gleaned knowledge, technological advances, and expertise through the agreement.

In summation, the host country— Orlais —would reap endless benefits and profits from this groundbreaking endeavor.

Ferelden would be guaranteed access to cheap oil, and nothing more. This was a fact her father had bluntly relayed to some reporters at the persuasion of his lifelong friend, Rendon Howe, who then used the souring tide of public opinion in the matter to motivate King Cailan to call for his court-martial. It succeeded.

Predictably, Rendon was promoted to take his place.

Reyna rolled her jaw and forced herself to set aside her sudden rage.

“It’s fine, Reyna; I shall live on,” he said, crossing the room.

“We shall live on,” she corrected.

“Precisely.”

There was a pregnant pause.

“I have something for you,” he said, then reached into his pocket and withdrew two metal, half-inch bands inlaid with runes.

She looked up at her father in astonishment.

He smirked, then held out his empty hand to her. “As you said, it’s your turn.”

“I can’t accept that.”

“It was always going to be yours someday,” he said, then beckoned with his fingers to encourage her along.

At that, Reyna swallowed down the rest of her objections and let him help her to stand; Acheron perked up from where he was doing a rather good job at blending in with the wood flooring.

“Part of why I asked you here today was to tell you that I’m resigning from the service,” he told her, slipping the bands onto her left arm.

“When did you make that decision?”

“When the verdict was handed down. I was just waiting for the news cycle to die down. None of this was supposed to be about me.” He began to precisely situate one on her forearm just a couple inches from her elbow; the other was dangling from her wrist like an oversized bracelet.

“It was about Ferelden, and I did right by her,” he said. “That is all that matters.”

Reyna slowly nodded. She understood the implications behind the decision. Going along with it all would be as good as admitting wrongdoing.

Once in position, the bands resized themselves to her perfectly where they would remain unless she went in to have them reset and removed. Reyna could tell there were enchantments woven into the silverite to prevent her arm from chafing and to keep it the ideal temperature.

“Can you feel it?”

Now that he mentioned it, Reyna could recognize a presence pressing against the outside of her forearm. “I can tell I’m connected to it, but I can’t tell how to make it do anything.”

“It takes some getting used to. You’ll just have to practice.” He took two steps back. “Curl your fingers in one at a time, starting with your pinky, and you’ll be able to separate it out better.”

Reyna took a deep, even breath and did as instructed. As her thumb curled inward, she felt it.

The semi-translucent, iridescent blue field flickered to life for a half-second, then vanished.

Her father smiled proudly, and Reyna could feel the pressure in her cheeks and eyes as she struggled not to cry over it.

She knew what it looked like in its full corporeal form. A modernized replica of the shields their ancestors used to carry back in the Dragon Age. It had been a gift from the late King Maric Theirin when her father was knighted for exceptional services to the Crown. In that alone, it was priceless, and yet astronomical amounts of time and effort and magic went into making the one of a kind device.

She parted her lips to speak—

“Don’t thank me, and I won’t…” he trailed off and waved a hand.

Reyna exhaled; part relief, part amusement. “Deal.”

“Good,” he said, shoulders dropping as if he had also found the entire conversation emotionally draining. But then her father put his arm around her and pulled her in for a quick, slightly awkward half-embrace.

As if awaiting this cue, her mother breezed back into the room to begin serving lunch: garlic bread and caprese chicken avocado salad with a balsamic reduction. Reyna’s mouth quirked at the corner when Acheron dug in. It always did. Without fail, he happily ate anything her mother put in front of him.

Later, Reyna would sit in her West Hill apartment and think back on the meal. In that moment, they had all but forgotten what had happened. The only deviation from the thousands of other meals they’ve shared in that room was the bands were affixed to her arm instead of her father’s. Where they should be.

Reyna idly traced the runes wrapped around her wrist.

All this time, she had been supportive but distant, trying to separate out her own personal turmoil over the matter so her father wouldn’t carry that too. He had done so anyway. Penance perhaps for negatively affecting her career, one he knew she didn’t even want even though Reyna had never admitted it.

At least, they managed to set things right. It was far past time, but neither of them were much good at talking about how they felt.

“I think we should stay at the manor until we leave,” she said suddenly.

Acheron barked, stump waggling, and Reyna reached for her phone.

It was a strange feeling, to move back into her childhood home. A home she loved and would someday inherit to become Lady of the Manor. A fact that made her painfully aware while she was an heir, she was not a true heir. No matter what she did, the Cousland name would die with her.

Reyna tried not to think about it.

Instead, she read, ran with Acheron, and cooked with her mother. She practiced activating the shield, which was like strengthening a part of her she hadn’t known existed and had muscle atrophy as a result. Reyna and her father even discussed potential ways she could excel in her new post, to climb rank despite the looming expectation that she stall out or quit.

When Reyna left, it was as if she’d be back the next day. Goodbyes were another thing they weren’t very good at.

The flight was uneventful, as was settling into her new place in Valemont. A two-bedroom, 1.5 bath duplex with exactly one parking space designated as hers behind the home, which was all she needed.

There were some incredulous looks when 2ndLt. Cousland provided her identification at the gates of Griffon Wing Army Base the following Monday, but Reyna ignored it. Then she parked her new jeep and slung her bag onto her shoulder before dropping Acheron off for training on the local wildlife. And now, she made her way deeper into the facility in search of her office.

As she rounded a corner on the third floor, she allowed herself a quick glance around, taking in the layout. Reyna stiffened when she saw him. Seeing her certainly hadn’t seemed to surprise or upset him.

He’d been waiting for it.

Howe simply leaned back on his heels and studied her, his eyes bright as they swept over her in a rapid catalog, lingering a moment on the band visible around her left wrist. Nothing about him had changed since she’d last seen him, and yet she could feel the weight of everything that had in the air between them.

He hadn’t tried to contact her.

Not once.

Whatever they’d been had never been defined. Not friends, but something that had mattered enough for Reyna to feel a growing well of hurt as she blankly met his stare. Not that it mattered.

None of it had ever mattered.

Eventually, Howe looked down, and his lips thinned. Then his posture shifted slightly. There was something he was trying to communicate to her, and her grey eyes flicked over to the plaque on the door he stood nearest to.

316 2ndLt. Nathaniel Howe  

Her mouth twisted derisively. Of course, their offices would be across the hall from one another. She should have expected it.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Howe twitch, and his expression harden.

Reyna turned on her heel and entered her office.

She set her bag down and went to the window. The Western Approach was a sea of unstable, shifting sands, rocky ridges, and strong, howling winds. On the horizon, P-52 sat in the middle of a steel web. Without a doubt, this office was also chosen to remind her how she got here.

She should be enraged, but she couldn’t summon it. She hadn’t realized how powerless she was to fight her circumstances until that moment.

People did not believe in facts. Order and truth could be tarnished.

She didn’t know how to rise above it, but she would still try.

She sank into the chair at her desk and went to work.

[kagero-assassin]

False Hope

Just a small fic idea I had after wondering what happened AFTER episode Prompto, and thus this was born...Hope you enjoy~

And Aranea? Yeah? …Thanks

Prompto’s last conversation with the lancer ran through his head as he trudged forward towards Gralea. He really didn’t know where he would be at right now without Aranea’s intervention. Maybe sitting in a cave somewhere wallowing in self-pity. Or worse….maybe he would have never made it out of the facility in the first place? The blond made a mental note to thank her next time their paths crossed.

Guys…Noct…wait for me. I’m on my way.

The gunner wanted nothing more than to reunite with his friends…his brothers.

And tell them. He decided.

We’ve been through too much for me to hold out on them now.

His thoughts stayed on the trio for a moment longer: Ignis’s cooking, setting up camp with Gladio, playing King’s Knight with Nocits…Astrals he missed them.

With renewed vigor, he sped off in the direction of the capital. After what seemed like hours riding through the monotonous landscape of the snow-covered lands, he noticed a small figure on the horizon. As he drew closer, he realized that figure was actually a person lying in the snow. To his horror, bloodstains marred the once pristine coat of snow that blanketed the ground.

Prompto, now even closer to the horrific scene, froze in realization when he recognized the body in the snow.

It was Noctis.

It felt like time slowed down for a split second as Prompto gazed over the sliced up body of his best friend. However a jolt from underneath him caused the blond to snap his attention back to the path again, but it was too late. The rock he had crashed into took out the left side ski and sent him into a tailspin towards some oncoming trees. The force from the spin threw him out of the driver’s seat and into the tree. Hard.

Prompto felt like the air had been knocked out of him and collapsed to the ground.

Pain.

That’s all he felt at that moment as he slid into unconsciousness.

Noc…t..is…

When he came to after an unknown number of hours, he tried to crawl to his knees at the base of the tree, leaning on the trunk as support. Pain shot through his body like someone had taken a hot knife to it. He groaned loudly and slumped to the ground again. Suddenly, Prompto heard a sound he had become all too familiar. He could even hear Ignis’s voice in his ear:

Magitek engine…it’s close.

Except this time he didn’t have the luxury of fighting along side his brothers. Or even a clear mind at this point. Two MT’s dropped and advanced towards his position, pointing their guns directly at him. The gunner raised his head the best he could, ignoring the increasing throbbing sensation and the blood running down his face from the gash on his forehead, and summoned his gun to his right hand. He took aim at the soldier on the left before the gun was swiftly kicked from its position by an unknown force behind him. His weapon slid out of reach before stopping in front of the MT he had been trying to shoot. The blond attempts to try and turn to face this new threat, but regrets so almost immediately as the pain from the injury on his forehead comes back tenfold.

“Ah what do we have here? Try and be a bit more agreeable than that.”

Groggily, the blond raised his head to meet the gaze of the man that had caused them so much pain.

Ardyn.

“How many times will you and your prince fall for the same trick?”

Just as he opened his mouth to throw various curses at the bane of their existence, pain exploded from the back of his head as he hit the ground and slid back into unconsciousness.

Prompto awoke some unknown time later to the sight of his shoes.

Wait….I’m standing?

Just then he felt the cold metal clasped around his wrists as he took in his surroundings in one glance. Ignoring the raging pain in his arms, he yanked on his wrists as hard as he could to escape his bindings. It didn’t even budge. He clenched his fists in desperation and thrashed about repeatedly despite the pain that still racked his body.

No..no no no. DAMNIT! How could I let this happen AGAIN?!

He held back his choked sobs and looked up at the lights in his new cell. Why him? Why did this always happen to him? Just when he thought he finally found some inner peace…it all comes crashing back down. Why did it have to be like this?

Because you’re a monster

No I’m not

You’re a murderer

Shut up

A liar who brings misery wherever he goes

Stop it…

A replaceable copy that makes play he’s still a man

“THAT’S ENOUGH! YOU’RE WRONG!”

His dry cries ricochet off of the steel walls and back into his ears. The voice subsides, but leaves the silence behind. The silence was both a blessing and a curse. The accusations rang in his head. He wasn’t a monster. He made his own choices. Lived his own life…no one else’s. No other beings led the same life he did, right? Not again…not like this. He wouldn’t let them get into his head and turn him into something he wasn’t. He took a deep breath.

“My name is Prompto Argentum, Crown Citizen of Lucis. Friend and companion to Prince Noctis of Lucis.”

He repeated these words over and over again. They were like his lifeline. Hour after hour, the deafening silence continued to loom over the blond. Of course he had no idea how much time had passed, but those thoughts all froze when a small sound broke through that silence.

“….make sure….real one…-ful.”

Who’s voice was that?

“….not stupid…..course.”

Did he dare hope?

“There…at the end of the hall! I see something.” A voice cried out from the darkness.

Before who knew what was happening, three figures came into his field of view. It was them. They found him. They came for him. He held back the urge to cry out in joy when the three of them had broke into the cell.

Gladio was the first to speak. “Nah you see…it’s just another MT.”

What?

Ignis voiced his disdain alongside Gladio’s. “Certainly all look the same, don’t they?”

No…you’re…wrong

Noctis’s was the final voice to echo out as the two retainers left the cell. “Damn things are around every corner! Why can’t they just all go die?!”

I’m…not a monster…am I?

Fury flashed behind Noctis’s eyes as he raised his sword above his head in one quick motion.

“It’s your fault you cold, unfeeling, piece of metal!”

Replaceable. Monster. Liar. Copy. Murderer

Pain flashed out as the Prince brought down his sword across Prompto’s chest. He gasped for air as every intake of breath brought more agony throughout his being. Trying not to pass out from the bloodloss and the pain, he looked up. Noctis and the others were gone.

Is that what they see me as? A monster? Someone responsible for all of their problems?

Prompto was jarred away from his thoughts as a new face entered the cell.

“My dear Prompto, you have definitely seen better days, haven’t you? Your ‘friends’ left you in such a sorry state.” The golden eyed man shoved a potion none too gently into the blond’s side as he spoke those words.

“There. All better. ”

“What..did you do to them?”

“Me? Why I haven’t done a single thing. They spoke their true feelings didn’t they?

"No you’re lying. That wasn’t…couldn’t have…” Ardyn smiled wryly.

“Oh my dear boy there IS a liar amongst us, but it’s not me. They’ve simply learned the real you. After all, how can one be friends with a monster?” Tears threatened to fall from the already tired eyes.

“No. I’m not…I haven’t.” His once confident chant lost amongst the feelings that held him in place, refusing to give way.

“It’ll all be easier once you accept what you truly are.” Ardyn suddenly turned and left the room, his low chuckle lingering on the walls long after he’d left. His quiet whisper lost between Prompto’s torn thoughts…Oh we’re going to have so much fun.

I am Prompto Argentum.

I am an experiment.

Crown Citizen of Lucis.

Servant to the Empire.

Friend and companion to Prince Noctis of Lucis.

Hated enemy of Noctis of Lucis.

[deadkripke]

day nineteen of 30 days of supernatural women, character you most relate to: Charlie Bradbury

It was straightforward, her system of changing her name all the time. Sure, a system would make it a little easier to track her down, but c’mon, like anyone was looking for a twelve-year-old who couldn’t even hack a friggin’ sleepover for longer than a friggin’ night. 

She’s 14 and her name is Annie Tolkein. Annie hacks into an environmental government facility and finds that their “out-sourcing programme” is made up entirely of sweat-shop kids in cramped spaces and dank conditions. She exposes them overnight, only leaving a single message: “don’t mess with the Queen.” She meets a girl called Melinda. Melinda has soft black hair and a strict mom, so when she finds their fingers interlaced while watching Deep Space Nine re-runs she’s escorted out of the house immediately. 

She’s 17 and she’s Susan Asimov. She’s been checking on her mom almost every hour for the last two weeks when they said her condition seemed to be taking an up-turn. The nurses keep looking at her strangely. Maybe it’s the blue hair. Her mom doesn’t wake up. She doesn’t come back for three months. 

She’s 20 and she’s Christine K. Le Guin. She falls in love for the first time. Her name is Sandra and she smells like roses and she makes Christine laugh. A lot. So much that Sandra’s boyfriend comes up and sees what the commotion is about. Hi. Wondered if you guys wanted anything from the store? Nah we’re good. Love ya babe. A kiss. Kissing those lips because straight girls exist for some reason. She tries to dig up dirt on Chas Childs, but he’s clean except for doling out the errant wedgie or two in high school. Two weeks later she tries to kiss Sandra, and beautiful Sandra smelling of roses lets her. She laughs and Christine laughs, right up until poisonous words spill out of that perfect mouth; “I mean that’s what college is for, right? Experimenting!” She gives her a small smile but once she’s back in her dorm she starts to pack her things, shoving t-shirts and her discs right into a duffel. She doesn’t need any of it, but it feels more final this way. She doesn’t say goodbye.

She’s 21 and she’s Wendy Clarke. She goes to Comic Con alone, but flirts with the girl tattooing slave!Leia straddling a 20-sided die onto her right hip. The girl has short pink hair and she calls herself Lavender. She tastes like apple juice and vodka (or maybe that’s leftover from that afternoon’s drinking). Wendy wakes up at three in the morning to throw up. Lavender leaves soon after.

She’s 23 and she’s Vicky McCaffrey. She’s approached by a Google rep that wants her to come in for interview. She’s too busy flagging misogynistic douches online and beating their asses six ways to Sunday; Google will call again, obviously. She has never had a girlfriend for longer than a blissful weekend or two. She visits her dad’s grave every time she’s in town. She’s always focused on the positive, but one day she breaks down and cries for how tired she is. She misses her mom and she misses her dad and she misses her name. She can barely remember the nickname he used to give her. She leaves the flowers there and it starts to rain. 

She’s 26 and she’s Charlie Bradbury. She gets on a bus, her eyes widened to the horrors of the world and she plans. She plans what she’ll do next, arm in sling and job on fire. She passes Topeka and she thinks she sees her dad on his way to work. Her heart lurches but she doesn’t cry. Why? Because ghosts are real and that’s ok. 

She’s 28 and she’s Carrie Heinlein. She’s Queen of Moondor, and she’s stuck in some boring IT job. The name doesn’t fit and it itches her neck like an over-starched shirt. She’s cavalier until two familiar faces show, a little more worn than she remembered. Strange that when those two are around, more people end up dead, but life feels more technicoloured. She leaves her job three weeks later and sheds the name like an ill-fitting skin. 

She’s 29 and she’s Red, Charlie “Red” Middleton. She’s alongside a beautiful, terrifying woman, fighting for justice in a fairytale world. Fantasy is no longer her escapism, it’s her reality, her true destiny. As she slides cold steel into unfeeling creatures, she finds home in the guts of her enemies and a wide-eyed look from her companion.