#and that’s what this song is about still. but where is the viscera…. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rats-and-robots · 2 months

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Hi. This is gore for gore's sake. Dead dove. Do not eat. I am not kidding. Please trust me. Read the tags.

With that said;

Tervantias the Archmachinator, for all his pride, knows he isn't perfect. For all he boasts, there is always more to learn. New instruments begging to be tuned to his songs, his ever-changing collection of pitches and tunes. And yet his claws always ache to primal urges when something refuses to fall into place.

Bones crack and crunch.

Blood bubbles out of the poor thing's nose as the beast above it buries into its gut, coating its snout with gore.

Claws press at yet-unbroken flesh to give leverage as it pulls at muscle. It twists its head and yanks. Once. Twice. A third time and the meat comes free.

The body of the prey lay motionless, save for the motions of its predator. A sharp snort through reptilian nostrils and the beast lifts its snout to throw the meat back into its gullet.

The arena is filled with chatter and meaningless laughter about the show that has just finished. A few souls glance anxiously his way as he leans forward, towards the display. His head still, but his ever twitching, ever moving body continues its motions.

So that creation needed... Just a touch of tweaking. A metal hand taps rapidly on a flesh one, like the dancing legs of a spider. Interesting.

His mind is already spinning, never stopping, but it churns just a touch faster. A third hand raises to his face, metal claws slipping in and around the wet musculature. The sting is but a strum of a string to the symphony of sensation that plays in his whole self. A background song of pain and ache and burn and pleasure to every movement he makes.

Someone speaks to him. He mutters some words to appease them and urge them to leave him alone, his pitch eyes never leaving the beast and his imperfect creature's corpse.

He steps back, his gaze finally ripping away. The same gaze turns into a flurry of movement, twitching this way and that as he considers, contemplates... Not really looking where he is going but moving with a grace unusual even to those around him. His own... 'kin', would he even deign to call them that. He pushes a finger through his cheek-flesh-muscle and groans softly as the fresh puncture sharpens his thoughts.

He has an idea for how to improve his design. He'll need certain parts, though. And they are no cheap thing to get. His servants will scavenge what they can, but...

He slides back into his sanctum, his home, his orchestra hall. A sigh pushes out from his chest, the red muscles of his torso glistening as it relaxes ever so faintly. Frantic movements become more organized. His claw retreats from the wound in his face, a mere bead of blood expressing itself from the muscle. The sounds around him, the ever so faint hiss of mechanics, the groans of pain, the mad laughter, the... Everything. It's too much to put to words. It's not perfect. Perfection is such a boring state, anyways.

Claws slide through his hair, smearing the faintest of red through the silver, and three other arms make silent but strict orders to those around him. He has work to do and he will lose himself in it for a few hours more. First, however, is the poor soul who happens to be closest to his claws. He does like to think himself immune to the frustration of failure; a savage, beastly emotion so beneath one as he. Unfortunately, 'likes to think' does not make something a fact.

He moves without seeing, lips pressed into a thin line. A sharp jab silences the flesh-thing, a single tool cutting through armor, skin, flesh, fat, muscle, tendon, and cord. The screaming becomes hollow gasping. Viscera of veins bulging like blue and red spiderwebs, yet not quite bursting as he peels back layers. Cuts that look jagged, yet expertly avoid any major vessels to curb excessive bloodshed.

Yes, the scene is gory... But too much blood spilled would make this far too messy. What's the point in art if you can't see it? In music muffled under cloth so thick to drown it out? It's a song he has played many times before, one that may not carry the same joy as the first listen, but still instills him with some level of calm. So many layers of excess in these beasts, yet it was Aeldari who birthed Sai'lanthresh?

Epidermis peeled from dermis peeled from fat peeled from muscle. Tendons quietly clipped to free spasming and contracting musculature from bone. The creature wheezes and thrashes, but his cuts remain precise. This is no experiment, no delicate procedure. This is but a collection and dissection. No need to restrain or subdue the thing, much less waste any of his toxins to still them.

It twists and falls off his table. He merely blinks and turns to place the extracted muscles into a secondary pan. His claws click quietly and he glides around the table to pluck their spasming form off the ground, setting them back on the table. Some organ has burst so fluid and mucus leave a slime trail from the ground to the table. The stench is but a rise in the chorus and he clicks his tongue. Blood has begun to spill more readily, ripped from its veins by the thing's thrashing. All the more reason to finish quickly and--

The door beyond his curtain is opened, then closed. His lips peel back from his teeth in a grimace, but he chooses to feign ignorance of the visitor. He moves to instead begin extracting bone, the creature letting out a whistle-like noise as it arches... Then falls still. Shock, likely. Normally, he would reawaken them with a jolt or an injection, but his attention is more on the light footsteps drawing near to him as he recognizes them.

Ah...

This could be interesting.

"Aezyrraesh." He clicks his teeth with the name.

"Frustrated, Tervantias? At least this time your new experiment made it to the finale, ah?" The Dracon's words carry amusement and taunt, but it bothers him none. His eyes stay on his little project, only a slow blink to even acknowledge the man had even said anything.

"What do you want?"

"..." That isn't the response Marazhai had wanted, this he knows. The pause and the faintest sound of grinding teeth only confirm that, "I need a favor. A control worm--"

It's such a pathetic request that the haemonculus laughs. His head tilts up and finally twists towards the Dracon, "Is it truly so hard for one pathetic worm to find another?"

Marazhai seethes, lips curled back in a snarl, but catches himself, "I need one of custom make." His eyes flick over the haemonculus as the conductor straightens his back, "One for the mon-keigh who continues to predict our movements."

Tervantias tilts his head, contemplating this. Beneath him, without assistance, the creature under his claws expels its life and its previous meal. Boredly, he looks down at it, then carelessly hooks a finger under it and flips it off of the table, back to the place it had previously occupied on the ground. The smears left behind reek of bile and pus. He waves to an assistant to clean it and the body up, "Why should I waste my talents making something for some mon-keigh creature?"

Marazhai's jaw clenches, "The Reaving Tempest is falling out of favor and respect--" Tervantias turns towards him slowly, head tilting, mechanics twitching, muscle glistening, "--w-with the other Kabals because of its meddling, and if that happens then--" the haemonculus draws closer to him, one hand spinning a syringe of some kind, another cutting a fresh laceration into his own skin, the final two sliding behind his back, "--then... You do as well..." Marazhai doesn't realize he's been shrinking away, slowly stepping back until his heel hit the metal of the other table.

Marazhai has always been such an entertaining plaything. Had another been chosen as Dracon, he might not be so bold to approach the second of his patron's command. But that faint glimmer in the back of his eyes as the haemonculus towers over him. He was not one to own, but to be owned. He just has yet to realize it.

"Reason for you, yes... But I can find another patron. This bothers me little. So I will ask again." He leans over the shorter drukhari, his half-lips sliding into a smirk, "Why should I make this... For you?" The bloodied hand that left a deep cut in his pale skin comes forward and presses up under his jaw, the blooded finger swiping across the pale skin of his cheek and leaving a broken smear of red.

Marazhai squirms like the very wriggling grub he desires to commission from the Archmachinator. But his tongue swipes across his sharp teeth, "I could bring you more parts for your beasts," the hand tightens and Tervantias's expression doesn't budge, "gift you the others of the mon-keigh's crew," white hair falls in a cascade onto Marazhai's shoulder as Tervantias tilts his head one way, "...what else would you have from me for such a simple little request??" Marazhai hisses up at him, hands bracing on the table behind him.

"I will have both of these things... And I will have a revisit to your anatomy, Dracon. You ask me to lower myself to such a task and so you, yourself, shall also be lowered."

With a twist of his wrist and a swift strike, the haemonculus stabs the syringe into Marazhai's throat. He revels, for a second, in the shocked gag before his thumb presses the plunger down. He leans in, watching the green liquid color veins and open them up, spreading faster as Marazhai's heart quickens. He slides the tool out and sets it aside, watching the puncture hold the fluid well.

"Let us begin. Don't act as though you will not take pleasure in this." He loosens his grip, but his other hands abandon their post behind his back to come forward and begin to carelessly remove his armor, "You requested these depths before." He motions with the hand previously holding the syringe to a servant of his.

Marazhai hisses and curses him, his hands clawing at the haemonculus's arm, but... Tervantias knows he isn't really giving it his all. His blade is easily in reach, after all. Another table is brought forth, this one angled upwards. The Dracon's back hits the metal and hands swiftly secure him down.

The Archmachinator hums, pleased, and moves away to collect his tools, taking his sweet time as Marazhai fights the inevitable flow of the toxin. It's somewhat impressive that he hasn't screamed yet--

...Ahhh...

There it is. A smile twists the exposed muscles of his face into a grimace as the toxin finds Marazhai's heart and the man's scream rips through and echoes in the air of his Opera. His eyes slip shut for a moment, contemplating his options as his newest specimen thrashed and cursed him. He could check on his previous addition to the young man. See how well the new tissue was settled in.

He opens his eyes and turns to look at his subject--no longer Marazhai to him, but another project, another song to compose. He is on his back, it will be no small task to cut through his body to get to his spine. All the more fun. His claws wrap around three tools; A saw of some make, two clamps, and a gun-like machine.

His claws are his scalpels. He sets upon the man with practiced ease. Without fanfare, a Y-incision is cut. Skin peeled back. The gun-thing is put to use firing pins through the skin and into the table, holding him open like the wings of a beetle on a collector's wall.

Just as with the pitiful creature before, Tervantias ignores his subject's thrashing. This one is restrained, though, and it makes for easier cutting of muscle. Not for extraction, of course. No, this one will have to be put back together.

Sheets of muscle are pinned as well, the rippling striations and folded groups reminiscent of bird wings. A glance upwards as Marazhai stills. His eyes are distant, his jaw clenched tight. Drool trickling down in a steady stream from one corner of his mouth. Tears bead up in the corners of his eyes. He must be desperate not to let them fall. It isn't the cutting doing this to him. No, he has been wounded so before, gutted thoroughly before. He would not shed tears, even in pain, for something so simple as a wound.

No, it is the toxin. Causing certain glands to release more than they should. We, as humans, would call similarities to these releases as adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins. Tears simply follow suit and his drool is but a by-product. Marazhai is feeling everything... Tenfold. No, twenty. A hundred, if not ever more.

A whimper spills from the proud Dracon and Tervantias laughs, "So soon? A proud beast turned to mewling. And I've not yet touched your guts."

"Wh-what did you... What did you do to me...?" The tone was meant to be that of anger, or even fury... But desperation comes instead. He does not admit his sick delight in the haemonculus's claws.

The Archmachinator does not respond. Instead, the saw comes to its duty. It slices away the bone of the man's ribcage, eventually allowing their release on the subject's cavity. Marazhai gags on his screams. They bleed, in spades, they bleed. It spurts in wet fountains, painting the tool and the metal and gore of Marazhai's flayed hide.

"You make a fine distraction, Marazhai." His voice, calm and even, still cuts through the buzz of the saw. He stops only when he can remove the sternum as if a simple lid on a specimen jar. He sets it aside. His claws gently move through the man's organs, testing the connective tissue that holds them in place, his flesh hand soiled by the blood of his ribcage.

"A pathetic Dracon, but a deliriously fine specimen." He expertly carves one organ from the others, without disrupting its function. He twists it delicately to set aside, then moves to another. Again. And again.

And he speaks as he does it, "Truly, I have considered bartering with your sister for you. Every new request she has..." He slips metal fingers around Marazhai's heart, feeling its rapid pulse, unable to beat any faster. He leans over, "Your name dances on my tongue."

He pulls on the organ, watching the thick veins and arteries pull like a wet rope out of his body, blood drooling from any little nick in the membranes. He tilts his head, eyes flicking up to Marazhai's face. His turquoise eyes have paled with pain. Nearly a silver-blue. His pupils are mere pinpricks as he just stares back at Tervantias.

"You are no leading figure. You are but a toy." He presses the organ to his lips, teeth taunting the ever-moving muscle. His tongue slides over it. He could easily bite. Simply resurrect Marazhai after he bleeds out... But the expression on his face... He cannot help but revel in it. Blank. Obedient. Malleable. He chuckles, the sound reverberating in the opera house, before setting the heart aside.

He considers Marazhai's form for a moment. Almost mechanical, how his organs' connections--veins, nerves, tissue, and arteries, all--bend like cords back into his body. He can see the shimmer of his modification in the pool of blood that is the man's chest cavity, all but emptied of viscera. He turns to a small device, a pump of sorts, and begins to drain that pool, letting him have a closer look.

For all his fun, he does have a goal. His claws gently run along his spine. Tilts his head one way... Then another. The augment has bonded quite nicely. Though there is a bit of misalignment here... He clicks his metal claws and picks up a pair of forceps, cutting open the thin membrane protecting the shimmering white nervous augment and holding it open with the forceps. Delicately, he pulls four inches of tiny wires like worms out from the soil of Marazhai's tissues. They squirm in his grasp like them, too, searching to grasp onto something, anything. He moves them slightly upwards, and they shoot back in, spreading out and settling again.

Marazhai's right arm will function just slightly better. Not that the man would notice, nor appreciate it. Not that Tervantias does it for his benefit. He does it to see it put in its proper place. He releases the forceps and continues his slow examination of the spine through the chest. One nerve-set at a time.

His long hair falls into the cavity one strand at a time, a trickle of white stained with blood.

Marazhai groans above him. A claw flicks and stabs into the man's thigh, drawing that groan into a raspy moan. A thin tongue slips out and licks fresh moisture onto exposed fangs, but he says nothing. He continues his observations, but slowly drags that claw, carving the shape of the muscle beneath into the flesh. Marazhai's voice pitches slightly higher, cracking.

"I knew you would find yourself enjoying this." Metal clicks and chemicals hiss. He injects more of that concoction into the man's shoulder, causing him to spasm. His wrists strain at metal and his flesh tears at the pins--though they hold. His knees draw upwards, stopped only by two of the haemonculus's hands to keep them out of the way. He acknowledges it no further, but leans back a bit. One by one, he pulls the organs back to their places. Slides a fluid along them to repair connective tissues he had expertly severed. Pain slowly ebbs away from the man and he whines his protest.

"Be silent. This is for my enjoyment." He looms his face close to Marazhai's, "Not yours." A taunting smile, and he returns to his task. Diaphragm folded back into place. Bone seamlessly mended back to bone. Muscle tissue reattached. Marazhai began to snap insults at him, just now feeling the height of the second wave of the injections, but they have no sting. Flesh returns to its place, and no scar is left behind. He trails a finger down the man's chest, then flicks it away, snapping for a servant to release the man's binds.

He hears rather than sees Marazhai's body crumple off of the table as he turns his back.

"You will have your control worm, Dracon Aezyrraesh." He waves a hand, "Put your armor back on and crawl back to your Kabal. I will send you word when it is done."

"You fucking bastard, you can't--"

"I took my payment, Aezyrraesh. Be grateful I did not take more. I would happily risk your sister's wrath for more."

Silence. Well, as silent as the Anatomical Opera would allow in its gullet. He tilts his head as he plucks an egg from a jar, pulling various syringes and tools from different shelves to begin modifying the embryo within.

Silence is interrupted. The attempts that Marazhai makes to move under the influence of his toxins are amusing to listen to. He silently adds finding an extension to the toxin's effects to his eternal list of projects.

He doesn't even glance over his shoulder as he hears Marazhai finally move to attempt putting his armor back on. He knows the man desires attention, even a look of disgust or annoyance, and he will deny him even that. He will bask in the man's suffering for it. He does tilt his head a bit as he hears a heave and a splatter. A groan. He chuckles despite himself.

Marazhai hisses a final insult before stumbling towards the curtains, towards the exit. What a shame. He had somewhat hoped for some begging. He can only laugh to himself at the thought of Marazhai goring himself later to try and chase what he had given him. To satiate himself. His eyes finally turn, easily finding a hole in the curtain to watch Marazhai's back as he shoves himself through the door out.

His backplates are crooked.

Tervantias clicks his fingers in a snap, "Someone clean up that mess."

#cw gore #cw fictional self harm #cw vomit #cw surgery #cw body horror #cw sadism #cw masochism #cw noncon #as... consensual gore is definitely a thing in this universe to this species #tervantias the archmachinator #marazhai aezyrraesh #tervantias/marazhai #sub!marazhai #man *I* need a cigarette after this #lmk if i need to add more tags #i think i covered it all

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disruptivevoib · 26 days

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mx voib how on earth do you go about designing your hmsw variants, i'm so jealous

Oh I feel fancy now!

Anyhow, I don't have any distinct go-to process but generally having a good idea for the au or the concept I want to design them based on and stemming from there.

Many of my more baseline Aus are close to my canonical designs. With the re-designs of Eleutheromania having a half/half Heart to match the Mind design and make him more distinct.

Then there are the more abstract things like the "Death Thirds" Which is an au I've not really spoken on, and I don't recall if I've posted them here. Though I know I have on Twitter. (I recall CJ liking the Soul design)

Those are meant to be more ethereal, uncanny and inhuman designs. They are VERY self indulgent and more an experiment than anything. Though I knew I wanted to use the Mind design off the album cover for CCCC as baseline inspo for Mind. Soul happened kind of accidentally tbh. I was doodling and he came about.

Theres a set I'm drawing right now which have been far more in-depth. But thats because they stem from an existing media. But that's all I'll say on that one!

As for the smaller guys... I wanted to draw an HMS which was closer to 'canon' in some ways or just different from my typical used for the Song Pieces! They actually well exemplify some thematics in terms of square mind, circle heart, triangle (with rounded edges) soul. Which is a motif I've had since even my VERRRRY very very first concept ideas for my HMS designs!! Shape language is very important to me, and its something I highly suggest learning about or messing with.

I also like to take their canonical clothing; Mind's leather jacket or black vest, Heart's hoodie, Soul's jacket and apply or manipulate it to fit a design. The stripes in my Soul jacket I believe aren't how the real jacket CJ owns is but more so ripped from Kai @/calamarispiderart ?

But yeah! Overall. Themes, motifs, things like that are key in my designs.

Pluto is also a good show of that. I wanted to make sure he looked as faded and washed out as he felt. So his hair is white and his colors, even his Heart and Mind's colors are desaturated and a little off. Lacuna Mind leans into navy and teal while Lacuna Heart is nearly pink!

The Swap designs are also a good example. Viscera is a Whole with nothing in him, and while now I see Soul as more exemplifying that- Whole needs to exist in this au more physically. So— Viscera takes that place. He's a husk and a shell. The half mask with an empty void on the otherside showcases just as much. And for as uncanny and blank as he seems, he is soft. His face is always very soft and maybe a little bit sad. Ennui, Swap!Mind maintains the half/half motif of my Mind designs if only to keep him recognizable. But, his source is a jagged and sharp edged heart and the strings run in a simplistic but sharp form of a heartbeat. Electricity forced to be another way. His features are also softer still from the typical Mind design! Even in what he wears! Judge I have fewer notes on other than his blindfold is not present and in its place is his brain source, obscuring both his eyes if he technically has them at all. Astray, Soul, is faceless. For what is Soul supposed to even be without the mask? Especially when he doesn't know much of anything at all.

Sooo yeah! Just. A big ramble that boils down to the answer of... I try most often to make sure the designs convey the personality or story of the character in some way. Themes and motifs or ideas from or for the au also play that same part.

Course I cannot tell you why the au where they are in eternal snow, Mind has white hair. That is far more a "felt like it" moment than anything else.

Sorry if this is too broad or non specific. I can probably go more into depth on particular designs but yeah! And sometimes a design is one and done. Other times they need many thumbnails or concepts to cycle through. My own designs for the canon HMS have changed a lot in little ways since I began drawing em!

#voidthoughts #hope that helps.#I'd get images and write or draw on them but my tablet did die yesterday so im in the awkward stage of #can i fix it or do i have to buy a new one #asks #thank u tho anon!!#i love character design very very much i could talk about it forever.

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overthinkingtaleblr · 1 year

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My Sally Acachalla Headcanon Masterlist

Because she won this week's poll, today's character of the day is Sally Acachalla, the voted most terrifying character of the Acachalla family. A title that she very well earned, behind her adorable pink exterior, Sally Acachalla is a tried and true horror.

Between her ability to command an army in an apocalypse and her demonic abilities that comes out when she's mad, she alone is the reason why waffles are so important in this universe. And I adore her for it.

History HC

(Sally was one of my favorites for a long time so most of this is going to be headcanons with no consideration of canon. If what I mention is said in a video and isn't just from my brain, I'll say it dw)

Sally Acachalla, much like many other Acachalla members, was not always an Acachalla. She isn't even from the dimension she now resides in, originally from the second dimension.

One of the few survivors from it, too.

~ Early Life ~

She can't remember much from before the Acachallas, a cocktail mix of being too young to remember, active damage to the mind, and subconscious suppression. It isn't something that bothers her, she's content with the life she has and the love her family gives her... she doesn't recognize it as an issue like others might.

If she did remember where she came from, she would remember a bustling city, a busy childhood. Her mothers singing along to the babbling songs their stumbling toddler came up with on the spot, laughter and hugs. The way the sky always had stars if you knew where to look, and reflected on the ocean too. the way the air smelled a little bit fresher and the food was a little less sweet.

A little older now, doing yoga with her mothers, cartwheels and pirouettes to herself. The black birds who followed her while her mothers were away, and the people they were underneath. Her father is one of them, a surrogate of course, but the families were always close and they agreed to babysit. They kept her out of trouble, sung songs with her, some did science of the body and other the science of machines. Wanting to learn to fly someday, following the birds as they flew overhead with arms outstretched. Accidentally burning the couch when left alone for once.

The adults shooing her to bed at nine after a party suddenly went sour, whispering about what was just on the television. A little to loud to be ignored, much too soft to be distinguishable. Waking earlier then ever before in her life and leaving the house with her surrogate father's family at one of her mother's discretion. Not knowing how bad things really were until they were too far away to beg her mother to come with her. The start of the apocalypse.

~ End of the World ~

Her preteen years being spent bitterly underestimated and fighting for every chance to be recognized as capable by her father and uncle. A virus that spread like rabies and worked like fiction. It was bad enough what it did to people, the mindless violence, the inhuman behavior... Sometimes it was easier to pretend that they were never human at all, but was never worth the scolding. She was still offered care and affection, but didn't want it anymore. Unless it was her mothers, and they were long, long gone. Losing more people than just them didn't mean much when she still felt hollow from the first loss.

She fought with fire, keeping friend and foe at arm's length with the blaze. Sparks from her machines mirrored the ones from her eyes. Knives were hidden in her coats and she wasn't allowed near matches after another couch incident went way worse. She wanted to make an identity for herself, even if it meant being defined by the carnage and viscera. Her surrogate family coming up with a plan to try to save the world, finally giving them a direction to work in. She was too determined to be left behind and forced herself after them.

She was bit.

I'll stop with the artistry here. Because of her alien body, the virus attacking the world struck her differently. Where the rest of her current family could take the form of birds, she couldn't match it anymore. When trying to change shape, the feathers never came in, and limbs bent at odd angles. She was almost a zombie, but not enough to be tossed to the hordes. Too much of her mind remained for her to be undead, but not enough for her to be familiar.

She was a different person, like she was as a child before it all went wrong. Once more, she danced, she sang, she craved sweets and attention. She was almost innocent... until she was denied something. Her attitude still remained and she refused to be treated like a monster. Impossible to contain, horrifically fast and threateningly strong, no one knew how to control her anymore, and it became disheartening. Even more so when the team realized her memories had been scrambled, to the point where she couldn't recognize the names and faces of her own mothers. Her surrogate father couldn't take it anymore and left Sally with her uncle.

He was not the best at monitoring children, he never wanted one of his own anyways, and Sally wound up consuming the beta test cure for the zombie virus. It neutralized the virus in her, making her bites no longer bring the threat of death, but it didn't make her better. And also possibly doomed the world in the process. Furious, her uncle turned his back and walked away, muttering. He didn't even notice when she was lured away until she was gone.

~ Sally's First Day of High School ~

She's almost fourteen now. If the world was normal, she's convinced she’d be in high school-- something she only conceptually understood from movies and stories. Approached by a tall man when her uncle wasn't looking telling her she would be late for her first day, it made just enough sense for her to follow the stranger with no questions. Away from her uncle and dimension with nothing in the sense of regrets or real memories.

The world was different on the other side of the door. It was brighter, with incredibly green grass and an empty blue sky. There were no sign of monsters or decay, and though Sally noticed she couldn't be bothered to question it. High School was always seen as something magic and far away for as long as she could remember, who was she to argue that it couldn't also be safe?

Of course, this place wasn't safe either, it was just dangerous in a different way.

Before realizing this, Sally managed to find one of the other newcomers to the school, an unnaturally tall teen with a gaping hole for a face. He was scared and shy, avoiding large groups and attempting to find some way away, which only made her want to talk to him more, like a moth to a flame. Upon realizing they were both new and the same age, Sally declared them as being best friends (maybe more), taking him by surprise. The teen was expecting to be seen as a monster if he ever left the house, one who needed to be hunted down or in some other way hurt because that's what he was told would happen. Sally was the first person to see humanity without looking past his face, or lack thereof.

It didn't take her long for her rebellious spirit to come back with a vengeance, realizing that something was wrong with the school without ever really knowing what a school was meant to be. When the owner of the school eventually grew frustrated and ordered for her to have her memory wiped and basically made a sleeper agent, she knew her time to escape was soon. She managed to spin it back around on her escort, forcing him into suffering from amnesia instead and yanking him through the portal they were meant to cross through before anyone could get their baring.

Not only had she escaped with her memories, but she kidnapped the boy who was meant to be her supervisor as well. The lost pair were quickly scooped up by a kind woman with bright eyes, the first Sally had seen in ages. It wasn't long before they were taken in, but Sally still remembers the important faces from the school... though the fact that she left her self-appointed best friend behind still has yet to sink in. It doesn’t bother her— she finally got to live a normal life… well, whatever “normal” means around here.

General Headcanons

Birth Family - Her mothers are Medusa and Cleopatra in the second dimension, with Gregory Gregory. Gregory the second's brother acting as a surrogate. Despite the wiki saying her father is "mister Jenkins", I see her father as Zachary Zachary, since it matches Gregory's naming convention. Her mothers sent her away so that they could attempt to mediate things without worrying about her survival, both of them being powerful in their own rights, but they are not invincible and was eventually overran. Sally takes a lot after both her mothers, even with needing a surrogate.

School - Sally and Billy were enrolled for school when they were taken in by the Acachallas, after a couple of years of tutoring help from Maddie, but they were enrolled at different schools. Billy goes to the same public school that Spencer would eventually go to, but Sally attends the same high school as the creepypastas.

Why Waffles? - I think waffles are a comfort food for her, I think it’s become a thing where she already loved waffles and what they meant to her before she was bit. Afterward, she loves it conceptually, pouring all of her passion into it because it’s something that makes her feel warm and happy and she can consume it quick and easily. It means something to her. That passion can overflow into fury easily if misused, thus the waffle demon. Also, the cure thing that she ate was contained inside of waffles and I think she remembers that— there’s a chance she craves it because her body is conditioned to remember it as a “cure” thing.

General Powers

The Waffle Demon - Actually an incredibly screwed up version of what would have been Sally's bird form, the Waffle Demon is warped by the bite Sally sustained while in the second dimension. Giving her the traits of zombies and removing many of her more bird-like traits, if not all of them. It triggers when she's upset because it's supposed to help calm her down, but that too has been warped, only acting as a way to channel her rage.

Pocket Dimension - I have no idea where she got that, but she probably stole it from Darth Calculus while escaping his school, or somehow created it herself with her own two hands. There's also a chance that she created it right in the moment where she needed it and then deleted it from existence again and that's genuinely horrific (Summary : IDK WHERE SHE GOT THAT AND IT SCARES ME)

Shrinking People - and then selling them as dolls? I have no idea what power that is. It’s honestly really scary that she did this to several normal people first before her parents found out.

Being Death's Boss - HOW DID SHE MANAGE THAT—

Catch-All Explanation - there's a chance that one of her mothers, probably Medusa based on the lore, was a god of some kind. Likely a god of destruction or death, and that makes Sally a demigod growing into developing powers as she ages with little to nothing if anything at all holding her back. That explains the past three things with “Sally is a demigod and has those abilities through that.”

Taming Dinosaurs - See, that last one goes for other things too. Tell me taming an extinct animal would be hard for a demigod of death, because I think it sounds scarily easy.

How I Use Sally In Relation To Other Characters

Sally is a literal social butterfly and I think that’s awesome. She has friends outside of the main family and she hangs out with them a lot, sometimes even texting them while her parents decide to be crazy. She also is able to lead people militaristically in certain situations, and is really good at organizing the people she has with her to keep safe, though she is willing to make sacrifices without warning— as if she’s playing chess!

- Billy Acachalla -

Sally’s first sibling, she and Billy stick together like white on rice!

- Maddie-Friend -

Maddie knows for a fact that Sally saw her working under DC, but wasn’t there for the incident so she doesn’t know how much Sally remembers. Meanwhile, Sally knows everything and is waiting for Maddie to do something stupid enough to give her plausible reasonable doubt. There’s a chance Sally actually harbors no ill will toward Maddie, and she does genuinely find Maddie’s relationship with Billy kind of cute (despite Billy’s protests)— but Maddie is not sure how big that chance is and it scares her a little.

- Poppy Soup -

Sally’s best friend from school, Poppy tends to be a bit reserved and sluggish, but Sally knows how to get through to her. The pair hang out when they can, doing all the things that teen girls are known to do, though Poppy tends to be a bit more rebellious then most people Sally considers a friend. Poppy spent most of her childhood raised by ghosts and the undead in a pocket dimension, and despite being practically human, she also attends the same school as Sally because of it. She finds that long periods of time around the living make her uncomfortable because it gives her an odd sense of cognitive dissonance. Sally completely understands.

Despite this dramatic backstory, Sally and Poppy tend to just act out in small ways. Poppy isn’t a very violent person, and Sally is actually somewhat distilled when causing chaos with her instead of the Acachallas. They’re on even footing in a way she doesn’t usually experience, being the boldest person in the room, and neither has to take care of the other. I do think there’s a chance Poppy could develop a crush on Sally.

- Slendy -

With her experiences with Darth Calculus feeling more and more dream-like, Sally meeting Slendy again was like meeting him for the first time a second time. She latched onto him just as quickly the second time.

- Spencer Acachalla -

One of them is a reincarnated god, the other is the boss of death and has a pocket dimension that bends to her destructive whims. When they team up, they genuinely mean to destroy everything around them and have no mercy. This is good when they’re paired together to fight an enemy, as between Spencer’s direction and Sally’s destruction they make good progress and can practically cut a chunk out of the enemy. This is bad when it’s game night and the pair decide they want to humiliate everybody at the table for their own fun.

Because their relationship is mostly built on being antagonistic as a pair, when they argue things tend to get pretty serious pretty quick. They are the most likely into the family to break into physically fighting each other first, which is kind of reasonable since they’re the two youngest… and arguably the most childish. Spencer is the one most likely not to go along with Sally’s obsessions, too, which can easily piss her off. The pair actually worked together for a large part of the Billion Year War, even after the rest of the Acachalla family split, but something happened to him by the time we see her. Either the two got in a fight and Sally won, Spencer left of his own accord, or he got taken down in the line of battle.

- Sue Acachalla -

Sue is both the oldest member of the family and the newest member of it— not just of the family but of the dimension they live in. Also sheltered in an apocalypse, she tends to be a bit confused and very fragile, but Sally doesn’t see that as a problem at all. Sally lets Sue unwind and have the life that she should have been allowed to have, there isn’t a focus of violence between the two of them at all. They have sleepovers in the living room despite living in the same house, Sally shows her kids movies that she thinks are important to experience at least once, she helps Sue take care of Hurricane and in turn helps Sue play with Freddie and Freddio… it’s nice. Sally and Sue have very similar hair texture, but Sue was always made to cut hers short and isn’t sure how to work with it, so Sally frequently offering to help her take care of it is a relief. Sue may be Sally’s favorite member of the family, she always wanted a sister.

Rapid Fire

Even though she isn't anymore, I remember a time where the character Cleopatra was in the running of being one of Sally's possible mothers (they share player models) and I decided I wanted some wlw out of this.

Following in the footsteps of her character model Alyx Vance, Sally Acachalla is blasian. I don't know all the details yet, but Medusa is canonically from South America and Cleo's page mentions Vietnam, so I'm figuring it out as I go.

Sally does not give her dinosaurs a vegetarian diet, which is good since those are 100% not herbavores, but she does mix waffles into their diets and idk how much better that is.

One of her baby teeth were lost because she bit another kid and she regrets absolutely nothing.

Sally knows how to use guns because of her time in the apocalypse, but had to relearn how to do most hand-to-hand combat because the goal was always to stay as far away from the monsters as possible, so her muscle memory wasn’t very developed.

If the timeline progresses in parallel to her, she's all grown up now! Going off the ages assigned here, she's 23 now and will be 24 on the fourth of July.

Songs and Why

- Do You Like Waffles by Parry Gripp

Considering she would kill for waffles, she probably screams along to this song every time it comes on and then turns it off when it moves on to pancakes. She is a very opinionated lady, yes she loves waffles.

- Animal Cannibal from Possibly in Michigan

Putting aside that she literally got bit by a zombie, meaning an animal cannibal made impressions on her, the song mostly matches her feelings toward Darth Calculus and the people who work under him... Those being feelings of disdain. ‘Have we met before?’

#Sally Acachalla #taleblr #taleblr headcanons #taleblr acachalla #acachalla family #eye contact /

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You Do Not Have To Be Good - Ch. 8

Story summary: Four months after the defeat of the Netherbrain, Astarion finds himself stuck in the mire of his past and all the anger and despair that comes with it. While wrestling with her traveling-companion-turned-lover’s misery, Cat makes an impulsive decision that sets off their first falling-out. This post-game short story is told alongside the full in-game story of the evolving relationship between Cat (the not-a-bard) and Astarion (needs no introduction) which varies from canon. Told from both POVs.

Chapter Masterlist

Chapter 8: Cat plays Astarion a song; then, a rat chase in the sewers.

Pairing: Astarion x female Tav

Chapter Content Warnings: violence against a teenager

Word Count: 4098

Read on AO3

A/N: Soooo definitely the silliest most self-indulgent chapter, but I think it's cute! Reminder that this is not canon compliant for purposes of fun.

The problem with volunteering one’s services to freeloaders is that the work was never, ever done.

They had murdered their way across these cursed lands. Had murdered all the cutthroats at Moonrise, then had gone on to murder Ketheric and afterwards, murdered him again as a gods-damned avatar of Myrkul. But when they had emerged from the caverns of viscera coated in viscera, they had been greeted by a somewhat sheepish Halsin and a crowd of refugees on top of the ruined tower.

Oh there had plenty of cheering, tearful thanks, all that. But, despite the fact they had dislodged what was supposed to be the final anchor of Shar’s curse, the land still very much appeared… cursed. And that is precisely what was happening, according to Halsin. The curse would begin to dissipate now. Slowly. How slowly? Oh, he did not know. These things were not common occurrences, after all. Might take a week. Might take a decade. And then he was looking at them sheepishly again, and opening his mouth, and—

“I’ll do it.”

Astarion turns abruptly at his lover’s hoarse croak.

To his left, Cat slumps where she stands. She looks magnificent, in a gore-smeared, death-warmed-over sort of way. And she is glaring at Halsin. Everyone shuts up for a moment, as if they can’t quite believe what they just heard.

“Cat, you—you don’t have to do this alone. To clear out the curse will take a concerted effort,” Halsin sputters at last.

“An effort I can do myself. I want to get this over with and get some gods-damned sleep. Now all of you—go on. Get.”

Cat has her arms akimbo as she shoos the crowd off the top of the tower. Astarion wonders at the fact that no one is putting up much protest—but that is her power. Persuasive even when she’s channeling someone’s ornery grandmother telling small children to get the hells out of her kitchen.

Her eye catches his as she drives away the rabble, and he is hit by the sudden strong feeling that she doesn’t mean for him to join them. So he stays conspicuously by her side until the last of them shuffle off down the stairs.

“Darling, are you quite alright?”

“Of course not,” she says tiredly, without turning. “But this needs to get done.”

“Hardly by you. You don’t owe anyone anything else by this point—”

She turns to him. “I’m not doing it for them,” she says quietly. Then she immediately returns to business. “Now—I just need you to sit… ah, here,” she says briskly, lightly guiding him by his elbow and escorting him over to what looks like the remains of an inner wall of the tower, short enough to sit on. Astarion sits as directed, feeling rather bemused.

“Dearest, are you going to explain a bit? What role am I playing here?”

Cat sets down her violin case and goes about marking a large magic circle on the pale flagstones with the soot from a half-burned piece of wood as she talks, punctuating it here and there with powdered silver from her satchel. “I’m going to purify the remaining magic by creating a…siphon, more or less. Something like this—loose magic that just needs to be purified, that’s something I can do pretty easily on a large scale. I just need enough positive emotion.” She talks briskly, straightening up from her last demarcation as she finishes. She drops the wood and goes to fetch her violin. As she takes it out, she turns back to Astarion. “I don’t need you to do anything. I just… need to be able to feel you nearby.” She drops his gaze almost like she’s embarrassed.

Astarion smiles inquiringly. “You need an audience?”

“Um. No. I need you for… the positive emotion I mentioned.” He still looks slightly confused. She sighs. “You’ll help me concentrate the emotion because… because you’re my inspiration for this piece,” she says quickly, stumbling over her words. Oh yes, her face is indeed turning red under the dried spatters of various filth. But Astarion can’t talk, because he’s feeling his face heat up slightly too. Which is no small feat to do to a vampire.

All the quips that spring to Astarion’s mind die on his lips. He honestly doesn’t know what to say. For someone as jaded and pessimistic as him, the incredibly romantic idea of being Cat’s muse makes him feel funny inside. In the end he just sits up straighter. Tries to smile in what he hopes is an encouraging way.

Cat flashes him a slightly queasy smile before bringing the violin to her chin. She takes a second to tune but is ready almost immediately. She closes her eyes, bow poised above the strings, and it feels as if the murky world around them is holding its breath.

Astarion is waiting for Cat to play to hear music, but a sound starts even before she strikes a note. So quiet at first he thinks he’s imagining it, but it’s there, seeming to come from everywhere. Soft, sweet, and eerie, a sound almost like an orchestral section of strings growing gradually louder. A faint silvery glow begins to emanate from the circle. Astarion is staring at Cat, knowing she’s doing it but no idea how, when she herself begins to play. Wistful and dreamlike. That’s how she starts, wending her way through with a sound as clear as crystal.

Yes, Astarion isn’t wrong—he can hear sounds reminiscent of various instruments—slightly alien, but familiar enough. It is the Weave around them responding, harmonizing. Transforming. Around the circle, the haze of magical energy is changing. Coming into the circle, into where Cat plays, it is concentrated shadow. But coming out—it’s clear. Light.

But those observations are barely registering in Astarion’s mind because he can’t tear his eyes or ears away from Cat, half-obscured in shadow. This music—he can’t pin it down. It’s more sparse than a typical orchestral piece, but no less powerful. She flits from major to minor harmonies, from firm statements to questing, desperate runs. The orchestral Weave comes and then it goes for a long stretch where it’s just Cat playing with her heart bared in a desperate, aching tone. He feels the scraping of her bow vibrate in his chest.

He can also feel her through the massive amount of magic energy she is filtering. He’s felt her through the tadpole and through her blood—the former a sharp, painful jolt; the latter, all-consuming intoxication. This sensation of her feels like her feather-light touches when she studies him tenderly. He lets his other senses release, lets himself get lost in it. His breath hitches as he falls farther into the vortex of sound. He can feel her playing as if he is in her. In her mind. The unconscious impulses in her brain driving such complicated action are overwhelming to him. But that’s just in the background of her brain. At the foreground—she is pushing her limits, pouring everything into phrasing both delicate and brutal, wrenching out every ounce of emotion to keep the magic flowing.

Astarion can feel her searching for him through the spell in which they are both enmeshed: she as the performer, he as the inspiration she feeds from. He might have cringed from her calling for him, from how she so unabashedly sees him as someone worthy of anything at all. But instead he finds himself reaching back without a thought, with his honest feelings of awe and affection.

And Cat leans on his mind. She is exhausted. She’s been playing nearly twenty minutes now, and she’s running on fumes, but she is exhilarated—like a hound that’s caught the scent trail, almost ferocious in her elation. She’s… having fun. Happy.

The Weave comes in full-force for the climactic end. Cat’s playing is frantic, then vicious, then playful. Dancing with the Weave’s own notes, fully entwined. And then it all comes crashing to the finish.

The sudden silence is almost deafening. Astarion peers toward Cat. She was in a haze of darkness in the circle, but it’s quickly dissipating. There are still shadows wafting around after the spell is finished, but it seems as if it pulled the proverbial drain plug, and the cloying dark is now fading fast all around them, even out toward the horizon.

Cat stands, looking off into the distance, panting like she’s just run ten miles. She’s trembling. Her hands slung down by her sides can barely hold onto her violin and bow—

Astarion strides over to her. He gently pries the instruments from her fingers, he knows she wants them safe—and immediately after he puts them to the side he is reaching for her, pulling her to him fiercely. Cat melts in his arms, burying her face under his chin.

“For me?” Astarion chokes out. Cat just nods furiously into the crook of his neck, her shivering arms clinging to him.

They stand like that until, finally, Cat raises her head. Takes a shaky breath. “I had…some of the pieces, for a long time. But, it wasn’t until we met that I could put it all together.”

He smiles. Feels the flush coming on again. “I’m speechless. Honestly. Normally it’s trite poems one has dedicated to them. Not some monumental orchestral piece.”

“Well, it’s not done yet, though.”

“Oh?”

“It needs three movements,” Cat says. A grin tugs at her mouth as she looks up at him. “So, I’m not quite done with you—“she stops abruptly as something catches her eye over his shoulder. A slow smile spreads across her face. “Astarion, turn around. Look—”

He does so carefully, keeping Cat in his arms.

It’s peeking over the scarred landscape. Over the remaining wisps of darkness.

“Cat—” he breathes.

“I told you, I didn’t do this for them,” she says, barely above a whisper.

The sun looks pale, almost weak—but it’s there. For the first time in weeks it greets him. It still exists. And he can still bathe in its light.

Astarion’s arms are wrapped around Cat, holding her to his chest as they watch it slowly rise. As they stand pressed together, his eyes are eventually drawn to the crown of her head. He spent so long obsessing over her thoughts, her intentions. Trying to puzzle out what went on inside that skull of hers. But she just keeps showing him—he matters to her.

His eyes move back to the sun growing stronger. “We would have been out of this in a few days, you know.”

Cat grips his hand at her waist. “But I wanted—I don’t want you to miss a day. Even with this new information about that ritual… nothing is promised. I could give you the sun back today. So I wanted to.”

Something lodges in his throat and he wraps her tighter, kissing the crown of this head that thinks of him. “Thank you,” he breathes into her ear. He doesn’t dare try to say more.

They stand like that, watching the sun’s ascent for a long time. But Astarion can eventually feel Cat start to flag. She’s reached the far, far outer bounds of her strength, and she needs to sleep. Badly.

After she stumbles at the top of the tower stairs, Astarion decides to sweep her up and carry her. For the sake of efficiency, of course. The surprise elicits an indignant squawk from her, which is hilarious, and then she clings anxiously around his neck, which is adorable. She rolls her eyes when he informs her of this.

He tries to keep away from the crowds as he carries her down this tower and up the other where the lavish bedrooms are. For the most part he succeeds, because most people have spilled outdoors to bask in the newfound sun. But there are still some—Harpers and refugees—who see them, who try to say something awed or inquiring, but Astarion sweeps by them without a word.

They arrive at Ketheric’s room, mercifully deserted. Astarion helps Cat strip out of her armor, then brings her the washbowl which is still partially full. Asks her if she minds that Ketheric’s face-gunk might be in it. In response she submerges her own crusty face and rubs it, immediately turning the water gray. To show dominance, she says, when she surfaces. He snorts a laugh.

He strips out of his own half-obliterated armor. Cat lays on the bed over the top blanket, her eyes already closed. Astarion goes to sit next to her. She cracks an eye open.

“Go enjoy it,” she mutters.

“I will, all in good time,” he says, smiling. “I need to make sure my charge is in good order before I abandon her.”

“Well. There is one thing.”

“Yes, darling?”

She inches toward him, and he automatically leans closer. Her face is serious. “Astarion, promise me, if anyone else comes looking for our help…”

He tries to keep from rolling his eyes. “Yes?”

“… toss them from the battlements.”

She’s utterly deadpan. And in the sigh of affection that escapes him, he comes the closest he’s ever been to saying those three words with genuine, terrible feeling.

And he might have, if he didn’t then kiss her so suddenly and fierce that she moans into it from somewhere deep inside. He tears himself away, panting, staring down at her looking so exhausted and flushed and gorgeous.

“Go on,” she murmurs, smiling languidly at his quietly desperate expression. “I’m not going anywhere. Told you, I’m not done with you yet.”

Of course, Natale had taken to the sewers like a particularly large rat. The man had no idea he was being directly hunted, and he certainly had no way of knowing that these tunnels were a home away from home for the predator after him, after so many many years creeping around its miles of twists and turns. Astarion would feed on his prey in his own proverbial living room.

One might think the stink of refuse would cover up the blood scent, but it only highlights it for Astarion’s one-track nose. The sweet smell stands out all the stronger against the reeking backdrop.

As he makes his way through the tunnels, Astarion notices the trail is doubling back over the direction Natale had fled above ground, leading him back down toward the harbor. It makes some kind of sense. Whether he intended to from the outset of his flight or not, Natale would no doubt try to meet back up with his crew eventually. He had no way to know that his lover was likely being currently subjected to a mutiny by her men.

Astarion creeps slowly on all fours high along the damp wall of the of a passage as the blood scent gets stronger and stronger. It is almost pitch-black down this way, save for the occasional dim light from a grate far above. He sucks in the putrid air, flaring his nostrils. Natale must be close. Astarion strains to hear any faint shuffle, see any small movement below that might give away his location.

And in the next moment, Astarion hears the whistle and feels the throwing knife pierce his arm with a soft shunk.

He hisses, scrabbling along the wall, cradling his upper arm and looking around wildly. There, around down the passage across from him and around the corner where it turns, the briefest suggestion of something ducking out of sight. Astarion tears the knife out, jumps down, and sprints at his full blinding speed, dagger in hand.

He is utterly bewildered. How would Natale even know to look up for anyone pursuing him? Hells—why would he even stop to attack, unless he knew someone was after him?

In the space of a couple breaths, Astarion reaches the corner where he saw movement, but it is empty and completely still. Astarion starts to dash forward again, counting on his speed to ruin Natale’s plans.

But several yards down the sloping tunnel, and the scent is gone.

Astarion meanders around the spot where the scent stops. Stalks forward several yards more, trying to catch it again. But he can’t find a trace of it. He vaguely remembers this place—here there is no side path for a good long while, no alternate route his bounty could have taken. Maybe Natale had found some way to mask the smell; there was no where else he could have gone.

Astarion can feel frustration gripping him, his anger spiking. But he forces himself to still. To breathe slowly in the way that still calmed him despite the fact he had no need of it. He tries to think methodically through the facts before him.

Another night Astarion might have felt a bit of excitement at the prospect of a challenge. Used it as an opportunity to stretch his hunting abilities to their limits. But his mind is so utterly scattered tonight, so torn between hate and want and grief. All he wants right now is his fangs in this criminal. Wants the warm, sating blood.

Astarion muses on whether Natale might have deployed something like Misty Step, or teleportation. But he doubts it. Natale was not known for any magical prowess, and he had been running flat-out ever since he left that bar. So fresh out of prison, he would have little resources.

That’s when Astarion realizes—yes, he does know this place. But he had forgotten one thing, something that had been bothering him slightly about its appearance. He turns around, walks back toward the corner where he had seen the flash of movement. There. Wooden planks, oddly new and free of slime for being all the way down here.

He lifts them, and the rusted trap door from his memories reveals itself. Natale’s blood is smeared conspicuously on the ring that lifts it.

Astarion pauses. He had gone down below this door only once, with that sweet man, trying to get him out safe—he shakes his head violently. No. All he needs to remember is that it is a veritable warren down there, tunnels older than memory, for what purpose he could not guess. And they are low, narrow, and twisting. A fine place for an ambush, where Astarion’s strength and speed would mean little.

He allows himself a grim smile. Natale may be mad, but in this moment at least he has been clever, with a plan A and B.

The man could be sitting right down there with a wooden stake just for Astarion, if he had somehow gotten wind of who exactly was after him. That is what bothers Astarion the most—there is no way Natale should know, and Astarion hasn’t the faintest idea of how he might have figured it out. Given the risk, it would probably be smarter for Astarion to call it off tonight and try to catch Natale unawares some other time. He has his scent, after all.

But the blood calls. His hunger groans in him. And on the morrow, in the daylight, chances were another hunter not averse to the sun would snatch this temptingly large bounty. It was only a matter of time until Natale got drunk and stupid again.

Part of his mind sends an unconscious apology to Cat as he eases the door up, silent on conspicuously greased hinges. The darkness inside is so complete it looks solid. Just like that last time. Astarion slips in. Tries once more not to let the memories catch on him as he goes.

Natale is most certainly down here. The earthen passage concentrates the scent beautifully. Astarion crouches, forced to by the low ceiling. He wills his focus into his hearing, his sight which is dimmed despite his darkvision.

Every moment he feels like he should be on top of Natale, the scent of his blood is so strong. But there is no sound, no movement. Soon Astarion reaches an awkward intersection, where several paths converge coming from all angles. Natale’s scent radiates from more than one direction, disorienting his nose.

Astarion suddenly stiffens as a strong wave of his prey's blood-scent crashes over him from behind. He feels the graze of the stake on his spine as he lurches forward, spinning back around with his dagger flashing out and his fangs bared.

Natale bites back a yell as the dagger catches his outstretched hand, sending the crudely-sharpened bit of wooden plank flying to the ground of the tunnel. An unassuming middle-aged man, as the description said. Pale skin, straggly brown hair, neither tall nor short, big nor small. Astarion might have said the most notable thing about him was the astonishing amount of dried blood on his tunic, but that isn’t it. It is his eyes—dead dark things that reflected no light. The man makes no cringe of frustration or fear. His face is blank. It gives Astarion pause, just enough to let Natale bolt away.

Astarion doesn’t even have it in him shout something mocking as he gives chase. It is over. There is no way Natale could hope to survive. He must be running only on instinct.

That is what Astarion’s mind ruminates on as he winds through the tunnels just out of reach of the man, until Natale makes an abrupt right, and there is suddenly so much light—

It isn’t so much light, really, but the dim flicker of the smoky torch in the half-collapsed chamber might as well have been the sun itself compared to the tunnels. For a moment Astarion can’t see, can only hear the steady drip-drip-drip of water into a pool, smell the abrupt green scent of moss. And—

“S—sir!” comes the voice full of tears.

Astarion’s sight rushes back, and there is Lem, bound and beaten, propped up against one of the large stones that had scattered from the ruined ancient wall of this small but lofty chamber.

“You shouldn’t let your little maggot go poking around such dangerous places, vamp,” says Natale in a voice so calm it's foreboding. He saunters over to Lem as he casually draws a rusted knife from the rope he is using as a belt. “Not nearly so clever as he thinks, this little maggot. Word got back to me quickly he had been asking all sorts of questions, last few days. And then I see him flitting around tonight, flaunting gold he has no business having.”

Lem just sags where he sits, sobbing quietly. And that’s when Astarion sees his bound hands. His bloody, ruined fingers—

“I will say, he sang sweetly for me once I freed him of a couple fingernails he don’t need. Told me all about his dear undead sir.”

Astarion feels anger prickle through him. His eyes snap back to Natale, who is now bent over Lem, peering at him, then glancing at Astarion. Face still completely blank.

“Almost had you, I did, back there. Sloppy, sloppy. Would have thought more of a great hero such as yourself.”

Astarion suddenly wonders—why has he stopped to gape like this? This man is nattering on in front of him, right there, good as dead. He finds himself lunging—

“Ah, ah—” Natale says, an edge finally in his voice as he plunges his knife to poke at Lem’s belly. The boy shrieks. Astarion freezes despite himself.

A lazy smile stretches across Natale’s face as he watches Astarion. “So, that’s how it is,” he mutters. And stabs the blade into Lem’s gut.

Lem howls, and Natale bolts through the gap of the ruined wall. Astarion reaches for him, moves toward the movement on instinct. But he stops dead in the next moment. Looks at Lem below him slowly but surely bleeding out. Looks up again where every fiber of his body is telling him to give chase—to kill the man that mocked him, to get the gold for his head, to drink the sweet blood he has been smelling all night to fill his bottomless hunger—

Lem whimpers. Astarion’s gaze snaps back down to the boy. A bit of trash that blew into his life that he was happy to use when he needed, who he could leave here and forget about completely. That the world had already forgotten long ago. So why should he lift a finger for someone who was nothing?

Astarion’s instinct lurches between one and the other, tearing him apart, until he finally makes his decision.

A/N: The violin piece I had in mind for this chapter is the first movement of Sibelius' concerto.

This is Astarion's last hurrah as a POV! He is both a pain in the ass and a blast to write (very appropriately)

For scheduling going forward--I'm planning on doing a double release this weekend with the in-game story wrapping up in ch. 9 on Saturday and the post-game short story in ch. 10 on Sunday!

#astarion #bg3 #astarion fanfic #astarion x tav #astarion x female tav #bg3 fanfic

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lemony-snickers · 2 years

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hi lemony. Hoping u could take my request.

Are you in a mood for angst? it doesn't matter what the plot is. im just really looking for some angsty fics of Kakashi x fem reader.

hello, my dear. thank you for stopping by & i hope you are doing well! now, you sent this right after 🏳️‍🌈 anon sent this song to my inbox. i know now they didn’t intend for this to be a request, but at the time, i thought they did.

i hope neither of you mind that i’ve combined these two into one little ditty with a gender-neutral MC. <3

here is a link to the song in case anyone would like to listen to it.

Title: Cursed (AO3 Link Here) Summary: Kakashi Hatake knows he is cursed even if not everyone can see it. Word Count: 3,344 (that includes the lyrics and i’m too lazy to see what it is without them as;ldfjd forgive me) Warnings: gn!MC, mentions of suicide, references to depression and death, some suggestive language .

There's a fire in my brain and I'm burning up Oh my, oh my Keep running for the sink but the well is dry Oh my, oh my

Kakashi changes after his team falls apart. His posture is too straight—his jaw too tight. Even with the mask on, it’s obvious he’s always grinding his teeth.

Though he tries his best to let the cruel and cutting words roll off him—Friend-Killer, Cold-Blooded, Murderer—they settle over his skin like a painful exoskeleton of preconceived notions. It is a comfort in some ways because he knows no one will ever bother to look beyond it.

Someone does, though, even if he doesn’t notice right away.

They don’t see him crying in the night, don’t watch him rush to the kitchen sink to scrub the persistent, imagined blood from his fingers, but they know Kakashi suffers in the wake of Rin’s death. They visit her grave, make small offerings. They hope seeing the evidence of someone else mourning will remind Kakashi he is not alone.

He sees the flowers over Rin’s name and feels alone anyway.

Every word I say is kindling But the smoke clears when you're around Won't you stay with me, my darling When my walls start burning down, down, down?

Kakashi is too good at what he does—too precise and neat and dedicated to his craft. It might be a more admirable trait if his trade were not plied in violence. He buries himself in it, dives elbow-deep into the viscera of his enemies just so he doesn’t have to remember what is waiting for him at home.

Or rather, what isn’t.

Slowly, he realizes there is a comrade who sticks a little closer, that they linger after all the reports have been filed, sit next to him in the locker room. Their efforts pay off when his gaze begins to slide over to them increasingly often.

It’s a silent sort of companionship; the distant warmth of another shoulder or the soft clearing of a throat across the room.

Still, it anchors Kakashi a little on the worst of days. He lashes out at them sometimes, cutting words flung like kunai across a hallway when they stand a little close.

But they only smile in response and hope the fog in his brain lifts a little at the edges.

This house says my name like an elegy Oh my, oh my Echoing where my ghosts all used to be Oh my, oh my

Kakashi knows he can’t stay here. He sleeps in the barracks more often than his own bed already, which leaves plenty of fodder for gossip. But there are ghosts in the Hatake Estate and he is tired of trying to outrun them. No matter where he sleeps, they creep in between the crevices, the cracks in the wood.

Always find him.

So he shutters his childhood home, as if he is winterizing a vacation house. He has no plans to return to it, no reason to ever go back.

He finds a bare-bones apartment, a single room with space enough for a large bed. He needs it so the dogs will have a place to sleep when he summons them in the night, when the terror seizes his chest and he wakes clutching at a pounding heart, afraid he is about to die.

He knows he won’t, though; dying would be far too great a mercy for a man like Kakashi.

And he’s always received plenty of attention. Men and women offering to keep his bed warm by his side, to provide some much-needed relief on extended missions.

He turns most of them down. But the one he doesn’t is a mistake because this person knows him too well, knows when he is hiding. They’ve been standing too close for years and they keep looking at him.

Now they draw maps across his body with their teeth like they are marking him.

Like he is theirs even if they know he will never allow them such a claim.

It is a dangerous thing, Kakashi knows, to think you belong to another person.

Other people die. They break.

But they promise him they won’t—that they are strong enough to withstand whatever agony he might thrust upon them. It doesn’t stop him from trying, though. His words are cruel, his actions sometimes more so. But every time he returns from a mission, they crawl into bed beside him and allow him to take his fill without complaint.

They hold him afterward, kiss his temple, even though they know come morning, he will shove them away.

Kakashi doesn’t dream so much when he’s with them. It’s almost as if they know a secret for keeping the ghosts at bay.

There's still cobwebs in the corners And the backyard's full of bones Won't you stay with me, my darling When this house don't feel like home? When this house don't feel like home?

Despite his best efforts, the apartment never feels like home. In desperation, Kakashi returns to the Hatake Clan’s farmhouse searching for that feeling of belonging somewhere he has missed for so long.

The floors are dusty, the closest ruled by spiders, each room achingly empty.

He stands in the place where he found his father’s body, curls his toes against the tatami mats, so fresh and new compared to those around them. He knows if he lifts them up, there will be a dark stain in the wood beneath that he could never quite scrub out.

And he wonders if one day his fate might be the same. If he remains so untethered to his life, will he return here to find peace and purpose in a blade?

After he leaves the house, he takes an unfamiliar path through Konoha.

It is the first time he visits another person’s bed. Though their body is second nature to him, now, the surroundings are strange. It’s exhilarating and beautiful—like a vacation from his existence, even if it is only a single evening.

They are surprised when he climbs through the window. This person who has followed him for so long, waited patiently for him, given of themselves to him without receiving anything in kind—they jump when he steps onto their floor.

But in an instant, their shock fades to elation and then concern.

“Is everything okay?”

It isn’t, but he nods. “Fine,” he says, closing the distance slowly; like a predator. His gaze is intense, both pupils tracing the lines of their face as he approaches.

“How did you know where I live?”

He wants to laugh. Admit he’s known for years where to find them at any given moment; they are like a beacon—a landmark he cannot escape even when he wants to.

Kakashi isn’t sure he wants to anymore.

He never answers their question, knows that doing so would reveal too much of his own feelings. Instead, he squeezes the last centimeters of air from between their bodies and claims the feeling of belonging he has so desperately been searching for without remorse.

They are more than happy to oblige.

Oh ashes, ashes, dust to dust The devil's after both of us Oh, lay my curses out to rest Make a mercy out of me

Kakashi should have known his penance would come in the form of flesh. The children assigned to him—the delicate lives balanced on his palms—reflect so acutely back at him.

Obito, Itachi, Minato-sensei, even Rin.

The ghosts are back, he realizes. He never should have expected to outrun them forever.

He throws himself forcibly into the role of teacher. He’s not very good at first, but he thinks he finds his footing eventually.

And after a long, cold while, there is warmth in his bed again—that same familiar person drawing maps. He tells them in a post-coital haze one night that he is cursed. That the eyes of Sasuke and Naruto, Sakura’s misplaced optimism, are his penitence for failing those who came before.

“That isn’t true,” they whisper, “you don’t owe anyone your contrition, not even the dead.”

He shrugs them off, then, even as they try to drag him back under the haze, under the blankets. But he showers instead, tells them gruffly they should be gone before he’s done.

They have never denied Kakashi anything he’s asked of them, and this time is no different.

When Kakashi walks back into the bedroom to find it empty—their clothes gone from the floor, shoes no longer by the door—he is disappointed.

As their scent fades in the cool night air, drifting lazily out his open window, Kakashi realizes he should have asked them to stay. Knows they would have if he had.

Maybe he is not cursed after all, he thinks, maybe he is the curse.

This tired old machine is a-rumbling Oh my, oh my Singing songs to the secrets behind my eye Oh my, oh my

He pushes them away. How could he not?

Kakashi has failed in every role he’s ever taken—student, commander, son, friend, sensei. How could he risk also falling short of lover?

It’s unfair, and so he stops playing coy with his distance. Instead of feigning disinterest, he shoves it at them. They arrive at his door and he slams it closed so quickly it hits their nose. He avoids their gaze when he sees their black eyes the next day, but they still wave at him. Still smile in his direction.

Subtle, heartfelt promises that everything is okay.

Kakashi does not understand why.

He wants to apologize, to hold their face between his hands and tell them it was an accident. Yes, he meant to close the door, but he was too distracted to realize they’d taken a step forward.

It’s just another example of his curses; everyone who gets close to him is lying unawares in the path of a tsunami. His disastrous lack will drown them one day.

They don’t mind treading water while they wait for him to be ready.

Kakashi watches Naruto disappear off with Jiraiya, pushes Sakura to train with Tsunade, and allows Gai to lose himself in his students. All while he himself retreats from the bonds he’s forged. He is cruel to his comrades so they will no longer invite him out for drinks after a mission. He keeps his window closed so no one will appear in it uninvited, asking if they can climb into bed next to him as they have countless times before.

And they recognize the distance for what it is—the grieving of a broken man—but they do not push. They watch him carefully from a distance, as they once did, content to keep a watchful eye out for any changes; to return to his side the moment he requires it.

Kakashi summons his ninken when he sleeps and they crowd around him, lie over his chest. It’s suffocating, but familiar. A comfort against the ceaseless darkness of his dreams.

The sharingan remembers everything it has ever seen, and it replays his failures in cruel clarity. Even those events for which he did not yet possess the eye seem to rewind themselves behind his lids as he sleeps, a blistering montage of the worst moments of his life.

There are someone else’s flowers on Rin’s grave. He sweeps them off and crushes the blooms underfoot.

Still, they bring more flowers and lay them over the stone. Say a prayer for the living as well as the dead.

All my aching bones are trembling And I may yet fall apart Won't you stay with me, my darling When the war starts in my heart? When the war starts in my heart?

Kakashi is prepared to die in the war. Part of him, he thinks, might welcome such a thing. The hope that he will not have to endure any more losses, that perhaps he can sacrifice himself to save the students he has failed so miserably, pushes him forward. Soothes his anxiety.

And so does the familiar whisper of a voice against his ear one evening as they prepare their battle plans.

The invitation he offers in return which is accepted.

They have waited so long for him to be ready and even if it’s only a brief moment, they leap at the opportunity.

Their body is warm and familiar, their teeth just as demanding and sharp as they have ever been. And Kakashi gives himself over to them, seeks his pleasure only distantly. What he really needs, tonight of all nights, is someone to hold him afterward; guard him against the approaching dawn.

He doesn’t say this, of course. Instead, his hands are rough and his voice level when he says, “Just this once. Just in case this is the end.”

“Of course,” they say, “this can’t happen again.”

He groans, pushing forward, forcing them down onto the mattress beneath him. They welcome his weight with a chorus of sighs, pulling him close.

Kakashi knows they are right—they both are. There are so many reasons this is a mistake. He does not need another person relying on him, cannot stand the idea of letting yet another precious person down. But their voice makes him shiver, and the way their hands smooth over his body so lovingly stirs something primal in him; some need to be cared for. To love.

They try to carve their affection into his skin—like the bruises and lines left by their nails might be enough to make Kakashi finally accept that he is worthy of them. They tell him how good it feels to be with him again and every word is a sacred truth.

Kakashi smothers the instinct to be soft and buries himself in lies as well as their body, takes what he can while giving so little it is a miracle they can take from him at all.

They find plenty to take for themselves, even if Kakashi does not realize it. He is more open here than anywhere else, more readable. Every word he’s never uttered with his mouth is said with his body, read clearly in his eyes. But they know he is not ready for the things he can’t say, so they keep those secrets closely guarded, even from their originator.

And after, they kiss his temple and run their fingers through his hair. He tells them he is a curse and they laugh, the sound vibrating against Kakashi’s ear from somewhere deep in their chest.

“If that’s true, Kakashi, then I’m happy to be cursed.”

They shouldn’t be, but he’s glad.

Oh ashes, ashes, dust to dust The devil's after both of us Oh, lay my curses out to rest Make a mercy out of me

Kakashi reels in the weeks and months following the war. The revelation of Obito, the return of Sasuke, the near-death of Gai.

It’s all too much. He buries himself in rebuilding alliances, strengthening them. He does not want to be made Hokage, but he knows the other options are limited and some of them are offensive. Regardless, duty dictates he accept the position and so he does.

Besides, he thinks, it will give him purpose. And it is clear he cannot live without something like that. He knows without being a commander and a sensei over the preceding years, he likely would have returned to the room where his father died long ago to join him.

There is a familiar presence as he prepares for his inauguration. Almost imperceptible to anyone but him.

Always close, but never intruding. Ever supportive and available, but hardly seen or heard unless specifically requested.

The entire process of taking office is horrific—the false smiles and lavish dinners. It’s everything Kakashi has never wanted.

Once he’s officially Hokage, he buries himself in paperwork to avoid meeting dignitaries as often as possible. He works himself ragged just trying to keep his head above water. He can’t stop thinking it should be Obito, not him, wearing the robes.

He receives a visitor one evening, someone who knows that arriving unannounced on the wrong night will invite derision. But they do it anyway because it’s obvious how exhausted he is, how much he has denied himself the rest he needs.

The same person who watched Kakashi grind his teeth after Rin died watches him do the same beneath the heavy brim of the Rokudaime’s hat and they know they must intervene on his behalf.

“Hokage-sama?”

Their voice is like honey dripping into tea—smooth and sweet. When he looks up from the budget reports he’s been glaring at for half the day, Kakashi finds a familiar figure standing before his desk with takeout in hand.

“Did I request a meeting?” he asks, genuinely baffled and assuming he did but forgot about it.

They only let the apparent rebuff glance off one shoulder before they recover fully. “No, Sir, but I thought maybe you could use some company.”

It starts like that—begins again, really. They share late-night meals and swap conversation.

Slowly, Kakashi starts expecting their visits without feeling guilty for doing so.

And they, in turn, start looking forward to them without feeling selfish.

One night, they go home together. And then every night after, they do the same.

Kakashi watches his students forge their paths, find happiness in their families and fulfillment in their careers. He watches Sasuke make as many amends as he is able, and hopes that will be enough.

Gai recovers as well as he can and even a crippled leg cannot stop him from seeing only the best in the world around him; even the loss of Neji does not dull his enthusiasm for long. Because he has always known there are always other students to support, other friends in need of his boundless love.

Kakashi thinks for the first time maybe home does not have to be a place without ghosts. Maybe with enough help, he can learn to live amongst them.

Oh ashes, ashes, dust to dust Tell me I am good enough Oh, lay my curses out to rest Make a mercy out of…

Us.

It’s a strange word, still; heavy and awkward on Kakashi’s tongue when he says it. But slowly growing more familiar as he uses it in his daily life.

“I’ll pick up groceries for us on the way home.”

“Gai invited us to dinner.”

“Naruto has asked us to watch Himawari.”

Every time he says something mundane about the life they have managed to build together, his partner beams. They know it has been a difficult road; that life handed Kakashi a harsh path to follow.

That he has done so and chosen them to remain at his side as he continues to brush the cobwebs of his past away from his periphery, is a feat worthy of every accolade. Never something to be taken for granted.

The house Kakashi grew up in slowly fills with new memories. And though the ghosts never truly leave, they quiet themselves a little. Perhaps that is because Gai’s voice is loud enough to drown them out, or maybe because there seems to always be a shoulder next to Kakashi’s radiating warmth instead of a deathly chill.

Either way, the house changes and he is glad he’s given it another chance.

As they lie next to Kakashi, they turn to look at him in the deepening dark.

“Do you still feel like you’re cursed?” they ask.

Kakashi isn’t sure how to answer. Doesn’t know for certain whether the curse of him could ever really be lifted.

But they are here, beside him, so even if it’s still there, it feels a little lighter.

He kisses their temple the way they do for him when he wakes from a nightmare. He never answers aloud, but they understand what he wants them to. And they are happy to spend the rest of their days proving to Kakashi Hatake that he is not a cursed man.

#lemony scribbles #kakashi hatake #gn!reader #kakashi fanfiction #kakashi angst #third person pov #angst #angst with a happy ending #song fic #tw depression #tw suicide mention #tw death #tw suggestive #it's not really a reader insert but work with me here okay a;ldskfjasfd

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cast-you-dxwn · 2 months

Text

Purge

“Contubernia 1-3 in position.”

The two small groups of angels had split in half, four legionaries on either side of the door that led into a no doubt small and cramped basement space. For that reason, each held only their short sword in one hand, the other resting upon the shoulder of the legionary in front of him the breaching stack.

Michael himself stood before the door, his own gladius tightly gripped, his nose wrinkled. He could hear the chanting beyond the thin particle board, could smell the blood and viscera, could hear the laughter mixed with song like, alluring giggling.

He knew his men could too. It was why each had tension tightening their musculature, why their knuckles where white upon their swords and their comrades shoulders, why the eyes of each burned with holy wrath.

Each knew what they would find inside. Each was eager for blood.

“Breach.” The word was muttered with a flick of his wrist, and the door splintered, exploding inwards to a chorus of confused and pained screams. The pieces of the door made fine shrapnel, but even throughout, that giggling only grew louder.

That, too, would fall silent soon. Tertius and Galavon, the two at the front of each stack, pulled small cylindrical objects from their belts. Bare metal, with only the image of a small cross etched into it. Pins were pulled, and both were tossed in. There was a flash, a deafening bang, and then a low and menacing hiss. The giggling stopped then, petering off into a hacking cough, then into low, distressed noises that gave way to shrieking screams. The sound of something burning alive.

“Engage.”

The legionaries thundered down the steps, and Michael followed closely. It was a short staircase, and they came upon their targets swiftly. They were still blind, deaf, choking on the fog of holy water that filled the room.

Most propped themselves up against the walls, or retched upon the floor, or clung weakly to the blood-soaked altar in the center of the room.

Tertius fell upon the first immediately, an empty hand tangling in the man’s hair, pulling him from the floor, his head back, a single well-practiced swipe of his blade cleaving the cultists head from his shoulders. The others similarly set about their purge, calmly and methodically relieving the profaned mortals of their heads, of their bellies, blood and offal spilling onto the concrete.

Galavons mighty arm hewed a woman in half with a single swing, her torso not meeting the floor before he had moved on to the next, simply pressing his hand into his chest until his entire being crackled and smoked, withering into ash as though incinerated by unseen flame.

For his part, Michael stepped to the altar, whereupon lay another corpse, not made by their hands. A young man, perhaps barely into his twenties, his already pale skin a bloodless pallor, his ribcage broken open in a bloody bouquet of gore. His heart had been removed, and laid upon the alter just beside his head.

But that was not where Michael’s attention was called. Deep grey eyes fell upon the twisted, disgustingly beautiful form that was curled upon the cold stone floor. It’s skin was splotched, wrinkled, turning from its normal purple color into a crisped black as it batted in futility at the fog that surrounded it, as though it could fan away the holy water that settled on its skin.

Its respiratory tract would already be beyond destroyed, the only sounds the demon could make, high-pitched whistling noises all that escaped its mouth as it hugged its knees to its chest. Writhing. Suffering.

All of this for a succubus.

Michael gave it little more thought, his blade falling in a clean arc. It weakly raised an arm, attempting to fend off the blow, but the angelic steel cleaved through its radius and ulna without resistance, meeting its neck, the pitiful noises it made cut mercifully short. Dimly, it occurred to him that he could have allowed it to suffer. To burn away into nothing as the holy water ate it alive.

He exhaled, as the demons corpse withered, blackened, and fell away to ash before dissipating into nothingness. Recalled the words he so often repeated to Lute.

Killing, when done righteously, is a chore like any other.

#drabble

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red-riding-wood · 1 year

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Heroes - Chapter 1

Chpt. 2 , Masterlist

Pairing: Sgt. Elias Grodin x Original Female Character (Alexis Ryder)

Summary: He is king, and she is queen. He smokes, and she is mean. Tomorrow, death may take them, but today, they are heroes. A story about love, war, courage, and the duality of man -- inspired by the David Bowie song, "Heroes".

Fandoms: Platoon (1986), Cherry (2021) -- I pull Tom Holland's character in but that's literally it WARNINGS: graphic violence and gore, language In future chapters: explicit sexual content, graphic torture, attempted sexual assault, language

DISCLAIMER: This story is fictional, but based on the U.S. war against Afghanistan. I have done my best to portray it and the military accurately, but there may be some mistakes. I apologize if this is the case. As the author, I also do not take any political stance on the themes in this book. The characters' thoughts, statements, etc. are of their own. Notes: Alexis/Alexa/Alex = "defender of man, defender of humankind, defender/protector"

Thirty minutes ago, my world had been music. My world had been peace, in a land ridden with war. My world had been a chopper’s deck, rumbling beneath my boots, and jagged mountain peaks soaring past windows like seagulls on a bright, blue horizon. My world had been ignorance, had been the world of someone who’d never had a bullet whiz past their jaw or watch a man’s intestines spill from his spasming body.

The psychedelic notes of David Bowie’s “Heroes" weren’t playing past my noise-cancelling headphones anymore. The air didn’t smell fresh and pure with pine. Now, the gurgling groans and howls of agony laced themselves like venomous demons through pine trees spattered by crimson, and the air reeked of the foul tang of blood and viscera.

My nose was buried in my sleeve, sucking in the scent of my uniform only to pant it back out against the cotton nylon. It was hot, stale, and even smelled faintly of the bile that had risen to the back of my throat.

My chest rose and fell with difficulty, my tactical rig suddenly digging into my ribcage past my plate carrier, both suddenly feeling heavier than they had back in the chopper.

My knees trembled, as did the fingers that were curled around the barrel of my M-4 carbine, not wishing to use it, but knowing that I might have to again at any moment. Just as my breath, it was hot around my fingers, having discharged only a minute or so prior. If I removed my nose from my sleeve and brought it to the barrel, I would still be able to smell the nitroglycerin.

“Alex, listen to me. You’re okay. You’re having an anxiety attack,” the man beside me told me, his hand resting gently on my heaving shoulder. “I get these all the time. You’re gonna be okay. Alex, look at me.”

That man went by the nickname “Cherry”, which was a word that the military assigned new recruits. What his real name was, I’d never found out, but we’d spent a lot of time together in basic training. He was maybe a year younger than me, barely past the age of eighteen. His eyes, like mine, still shone with that naivety that I’d never seen in anyone who’d been deployed during their service.

I sucked in another breath of stale air through the fabric of my sleeve, and rolled my head from my arm to look him in those wide, dark eyes. His gloves were bloodied, staining the fabric of my uniform where his hand eased my shoulder.

“Alex, I need to tend to the wounded,” he told me, blood-speckled jaw moving urgently and his own chest rising and falling with fervor. “But you’re gonna be okay.”

Cherry was a medic. He was gentle, caring. But he was also a soldier, one who knew his duties and his purpose. And as much as I felt I needed him, he couldn’t stay by my side. I’d gotten through this firefight with merely a few scrapes from the elements – the jagged rocks and the bark of fallen branches – but there were members of my platoon that were far less fortunate than I’d been.

He gave my shoulder a squeeze with those bloodied gloves, and I nodded at him, still wordless in my response, still swallowing back bile at that tang of iron and viscera that invaded my senses.

And then he was gone.

Gaze now fixed down on the grass beneath my boots, I began to mouth the lyrics to the song I’d been listening to a half-hour ago. Soundless, at first, my lungs still held captive by my anxiety. I traced the barrel of my gun with my fingers, tapping them, contorting them, as if composing the beautiful notes with my fingertips.

And slowly, as sound began to form from my sour, bile-tinged tongue, and my breath began to ease in my chest with the raucous beating of my heart, my fingers trembled a little less, and things like the sun that filtered through the boughs of the trees or the birds that resumed their song along their branches began to slowly trickle back into my mind.

“Ryder!” My name was called, ripped through the air with deep, monstrous baritones like a gunshot, and I flinched.

I knew before I looked to the man that the caller of my name was my squad leader, Sergeant Barnes.

Barnes was perhaps the most intimidating, most dangerous man I had met. The right half of his face was ravaged and sewn together, a hideous scar reaching across an already-deathly glare, a stoic expression framed by strong, broad features.

Barnes was the type of man who drove his soldiers to the very end of their wits, and forced them to walk its treacherous wire. He didn’t allow for grovelling, or snivelling, or a moment of hesitation or fear in the face of danger. I wasn’t even sure if he had fears.

Barnes was also the type of man who scoffed at those like Cherry; he was the type of man whose vocabulary didn’t include words like compassion or empathy. He was hardened, cold, unforgiving, and his purpose he made clear: to push his troops to their limits and to keep them alive, so that they could kill those responsible for 9/11, for the deaths of countless Americans, like that of my father.

Though I agreed with him on few things, there were many times that I also realized I needed to be more like Barnes. That I needed to be stronger, less afraid, that I needed to be the hero my parents would have wanted.

Back in that chopper, I’d felt like a hero.

But now, broken and fearful, and flinching at the sound of my own name, darting my eyes back down to the ground to avoid his hardened gaze, I realized I was the farthest thing from one.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes?” My voice came out softer, quieter than I would have liked, a quiver to my tone.

“What in the hell is wrong with you, Private?” He demanded, his strides bringing him to an uncomfortable proximity to me. When he came to a stop, towering over me, glaring at me from those cold, blue eyes, he let his rifle fall from its position over his chest to rest the butt of it against the earth, fingers curling around it not out of desperation like mine, but out of fury, his knuckles turning white.

“My soldiers are dyin’, and you’re sittin’ here without so much as a scratch on ya, keeled over like you’re still in your mother’s goddamn womb,” he said to me, Texas cadence lilting his words.

A pang, at the mention of my mother, shot through my chest, but I forced my gaze to meet his, forced my body to remain still, obedient, taking the verbal punishment in submission but not showing weakness.

“Get yourself together, Ryder,” he said. “Or I will. And you won’t like that too much.”

I nodded, swallowing a cruel knot in my throat. “Yes, sir.”

“And that medic, you’re distractin’ him from his duties. In fact, I don’t think I ever seen you two not joined at the hip. I’m gonna get him transferred to A Squad.”

Panic bubbled up from my chest, but I swallowed it back down. Cherry was my only friend here. He was the person I’d been leaning on all through basic, all through those moments where I’d felt like this had been a mistake, that I should’ve quit, faked a suicide attempt so I’d get sent back on the grounds of being psychologically unfit.

And Barnes was going to take him away. And there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Protest, and I would be punished. Ask questions, and I would be punished. This wasn’t school where you got a call home to your parents and a sternly-worded letter; this was the army, and you weren’t allowed to fuck up, because it could cost lives, and you certainly weren’t allowed to question authority – especially Barnes’ authority – because if you did, they’d make your life more of a hell than it already was.

So I merely nodded, complied.

“It won’t happen again, Sergeant,” I said numbly.

“It’d better not, Ryder. You’re already enough of a liability. Now get off your sorry ass and go patrol the perimeter. There could still be hostiles on our position, and I need you coverin’ the west treeline.” Barnes lifted a finger to point in the direction of the forest, which was all wild, untamed wood. Behind every aspen, every bough, every bush, could’ve been an al-Qaeda or Taliban soldier, creeping through the brush with an AK and a death wish.

“Yes, sir,” I said, and forced myself onto wobbling legs, ignoring the surge of nausea in my gut and bringing the stock of my rifle back to my chest.

At least, patrolling the temporary perimeter we’d set meant I was just a bit farther from the cries of the wounded soldiers and the dampness of blood against petals of grass.

But it also meant that if there was another ambush, that I’d be one of the first to get a bullet through my skull.

“Hey,” another man’s voice called to me from my six, nearly as deep in tone as Barnes’ but far lighter in expression.

I turned a head over my shoulder. It was Sergeant Elias Grodin, the leader of Two Alpha.

Though I’d never really spoken with him, I knew from how he interacted with Barnes and from what the others said about him that he was much friendlier, much more forgiving. And he disagreed with Barnes on practically everything, would always make it known. He seemed to be the one person who had the guts to stand up to him. Not even the platoon’s lieutenant, Wolfe, dared question Barnes.

Our platoon consisted of four squads: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

Unfortunately, I had been assigned to Bravo Squad, which was led by Barnes, and filled with men who were equally as deplorable and crass – perhaps even worse, because they seemed to take joy in their scathing insults and their awful jeers and their sexist remarks.

“I heard Barnes giving you a hard time back there,” Elias said to me. “Try not to take it to heart. Everyone’s a mess after their first firefight.”

Immediately, my gaze darted from him to the trees around me, back to where Barnes had disappeared likely to torment his other soldiers. Though he was far less kind than Elias, his company scared me less merely because I had no idea what my squad leader would do to me if he found me talking with his arch-nemesis. I already wasn’t exactly his favourite member of the infantry.

“Thank you, Sergeant Grodin,” I said, stiffly, as I continued walking the perimeter.

He had caught up in stride alongside me now, so that I had to switch the positioning of my rifle to point at the ground before me, and he was blocking my eyesight of the carnage that the al-Qaeda had caused. But I wanted more than anything for him to leave me be.

Elias chuffed out a laugh, eyes glittering with a mirth that was rare to see in a line of work like this. Though they were as blue as Barnes’, they were brighter, warmer, more full of life somehow despite his own years of experience in the war.

“I told ya, Ryder, it’s Elias,” he said to me.

Everyone called him that. But I was so accustomed to using every formality in the book that I’d forgotten.

“Sorry, sir,” I said. But I didn’t call him by his name; I didn’t want to open up that personal connection, that informal basis. Every survival instinct told me to keep as much physical and emotional distance I could from the man.

Elias examined me for a moment from blue eyes and mousy lashes that were teased by the locks of earthy-brown hair that fell around his headband. He scarcely ever wore his helmet; I’d noticed this about him from my observations, though I’d never had the opportunity to ask him why.

And then, he said, with the hint of frustration in his tone, “I told Barnes that he shouldn’t be sendin’ out the new recruits to lock down the perimeter. But he thinks throwing ya in the deep end is gonna somehow make ya into a goddamn Navy SEAL.”

Neither of the staff sergeants from Alpha and Bravo kept their thoughts hidden about the other. Almost everything negative I heard out of Barnes’ mouth was “Elias this”, “Elias that”, like he was a perpetual thorn in his side.

And almost any time I’d ever heard Elias speak with Barnes or that fuck-head O’Neill who never stood by anything he said, he’d always have a sarcastic insult or two to throw at them.

I let Elias rant in silence, the only noise coming from me being the soft landing of my boots against the grass, the occasional snap of a twig that I failed to avoid.

And then he said to me, the frustration ebbing from his tone, “Wanted to come check in on ya, make sure you’re doin’ alright.”

I met his gaze for a moment – just that, a moment –, nearly let myself get lost in the softness of his eyes in contrast to Barnes’.

“I’m alright,” I told him, giving an anxious nod and forcing the tight line of my mouth to curve upward. “I don’t need to be checked in on. But… thank you, sir.”

One of his brows shot up, and he chuffed out another laugh, his lips stretching wide and pulling into a toothy grin. Now that I thought of it, I’d never seen Barnes so much as smile.

“Well, alright,” Elias said almost amusedly, and then added, “And you can cut it out with the ‘sir’ bullshit too, yeah? I ain’t on a power-trip.”

Though I knew he wasn’t like Barnes, or O’Neill, or my drill instructor, he was asking me to work out one of the laws that had been ingrained so deeply in me during basic that even if I wanted to, I didn’t think I could go back on.

I nodded again, and said, “Thanks, Elias.”

And I glanced again, fearfully, over his shoulder.

Elias’ grin faded, falling from expressive cheekbones as his blue eyes scoured my own features, studying me with an intensity that made me feel so exposed, as if he could read my fears, my weaknesses, with only a glimpse of those glittering optics.

“You sure you’re alright?” he asked me.

Just leave, before Barnes sees us and yells at me again, I thought, each stride we made against the forest floor heightening my anxiety.

“Yes,” I said, from partially-gritted teeth. “Really, I’m okay.”

He didn’t believe me; that much was obvious. That blue gaze raked again across my face before finally he said, “If you say so, Private.” A quick glance at our surroundings, and then, “Good luck.”

And then he was gone, too, but I managed to breathe a sigh of relief that had built in my chest.

---

My eyes remained trained on every stalk of wood, every bush that seemed like it might be obscuring a threat. My senses were alert, listening to the sounds of the forest, inhaling once more the pine and the fresh, summer grass. Sweat clung heavy to my forehead, and I rubbed a hand across my brow, jostling my helmet. It caused my uniform to cling to my armpits, my sides. Even my khakis were sticking like cling-wrap to my damp calves.

I swatted a fly from my neck, hissing in frustration. The summers here, even in the alpines, were sweltering with dry heat, and it only encouraged the insects. Though I didn’t envy the soldiers that had been deployed in the lower valleys, it was still far from the comfort of home.

As my attention fixed back on the forest, I noticed a movement from behind one of the bushes, and my body tensed, heart picking up in my chest.

I rose the barrel of my rifle immediately, pointing it at the bush and trying to even my quickened breath.

A hand that had wrapped around some of the brambles to pull them aside stilled, and a dark eye peered at me in petrification.

“Hey,” I said, fear causing my tone to come out harsher, louder than I had intended. “U.S. military. Hands up, now. Out from behind there, now.”

I held my finger above the trigger, though it twitched, itching to lower. I didn’t know if this native was armed, or if he was the only one. I didn’t know if, in the next series of seconds, if I’d end up like one of the guys back at the ambush site, blood and organs spilling from my abdomen or my brains splattered against the trunk of a tree.

Slowly, hands raised, the man stood and stepped out from behind the bush, along with a woman and who appeared to be his son, based off of their age. A colourful turban was wrapped around the skull of each man, while the woman wore a black burqa that covered everything but dark, fearful eyes.

The older man uttered something in his native language to me.

I scanned each of them, but they didn’t appear to be armed. Still, that didn’t mean they weren’t hiding a pistol or a knife under their layers of ornate cloth.

“Sergeant Barnes!” I called over my shoulder. I was close enough to the ambush site that I would hopefully be heard. Us grunts didn’t carry radios on us. “I’ve got some civvies over here!”

It wasn’t long before Barnes showed up, along with a couple more of his men, Bunny and Junior. But my finger was tense above my trigger the entire time.

“Search them,” Barnes ordered us, and we got to work patting down the Afghanis.

The older man said something to us again, and Bunny sneered at him. “Keep your pussy mouth shut, old man. Or I’ll shoot your tongue off.” He yanked at the pockets of the man’s clothing, tearing a hole in his shawl.

I eyed Bunny warily. He was another one of the new recruits, picked out by Barnes likely because he didn’t trust Elias with conditioning us properly. And out of everyone in my squad, Bunny was the most liberal with what he said and did.

And even though I didn’t like the Afghan any more than the other soldiers, even I thought that his comment was perhaps unnecessarily far.

Barnes said nothing.

When we’d finished checking them for weapons, he ordered us to escort them back to the ambush site, where he would decide what to do with them. Elias and his squad had gone scouting ahead before we’d move forward, so that we wouldn’t get caught in another hairy situation. However, the translator, Lerner, had gone with them.

The barrel of my gun remained pointed at the back of one of the Afghanis the entire walk there, of which Bunny and Junior spent shoving the three of them forward impatiently. No matter how much they quickened their paces, it wasn’t enough for the two young men.

We waited several minutes for Two Alpha to return, and I was allowed to sit again, resting my aching legs by dangling them from the log of a fallen tree. Every muscle in my body ached from the tension that had built up from the firefight, tension that not even hours of running and scaling obstacles had prepared me for.

Bunny, Junior, and a couple others were shoving the prisoners around, roughing them up a little and cackling, grinning like children who’d just found new toys.

Barnes watched over them silently, checking his watch every so often.

Wolfe had traipsed over, exchanged a few tense words with the sergeant, but had quickly decided to leave him alone. I couldn’t help but notice the flicker of uncertainty in his eye when he walked away, gaze flicking to the prisoners but never intervening.

No one fucked with Barnes.

Blood was starting to form on the jaw of the older Afghan man, one of his eyelids blackened and bruised, when Barnes gave his watch a final check and then stood, gathering all of us around.

“We’re wasting our time here, playing babysitter,” he announced. “Elias might not be back for another fifteen, and by that time, we might have another ambush on our hands.”

A few of the men murmured in agreement.

I stayed quiet.

“We don’t know if they’re al-Qaeda,” Barnes stated. “We don’t know if they’ve got IEDs set up for us. We don’t know if they’re gonna go cryin’ back to their village about us and send more troops. If we let ‘em go, there’s a chance that could happen. And I won’t risk any one o’ you like that.”

“I say we waste ‘em,” Bunny piped up, and I looked to him in surprise. I knew already that he got away with a lot, because he marched to Barnes’ fife, but this was bold, even for him.

But Barnes didn’t chastise him, or even acknowledge him. Instead, those cold, blue eyes locked on me, and I froze, a chill running down the length of my sweat-slicked spine.

“Ryder,” he said. “You do the honours.”

#fanfiction #elias grodin #platoon #platoon 1986 #willem dafoe #my writing #heroes #oc: alexis #sgt. elias #mdni #eventual smut #writing

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kyofsonder · 2 years

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Find the Word

I was tagged twice by @aohendo to find two specific sets of words in my WIPs, and tag others to keep the game going. Thank you for the tag, and the chance to keep playing this game! I'm combining both sets of words into one post again, like I did when @on-noon tagged me, and taking on the challenge of finding ten words.

My Words: scurry, viscera(l), splatter, gore, crisp, fall, sun, apple, frost

I'll tag @inkspellangel, @writingpotato07, @starlightscribe, @inkspellangel, @wildjuniperjones, and as always anyone who wants to join the game can use the following words and say I tagged them!

Your Words: stalk, bewitch, rend(er), knit, warm(th)

This is going to be another long post, even if I expect to have a lot more fun facts than actual excerpts, so as usual I'll put everything under a cut.

I found scurry in my Danny Phantom fic "Lingering Scars":

She might not be directly fighting ghosts as often as he does, or living the same ghost-adjacent life he lives, but she already sees the patterns that had taken him weeks of confusion and frustration to connect. Just by being observant, noticing the way certain things line up, she's already ahead of him.

It's true, after all. Some ghosts will get hurt badly enough and scurry back to the Ghost Zone -- or at least, somewhere quiet where they can lay low, even if that's the attic of an abandoned house somewhere -- and won't return for weeks or months at a time. He's seen it often enough.

I didn't find the words viscera(l), splatter, or gore so I'll share a fun fact about undead in the Eisenrell Universe where (most of) my original stories take place:

Ghosts that possess their own bodies rather than inanimate vessels or other living things are called zombies in most Eisenrell worlds, but since they've already died once their bodies invariably reject them and rapidly degenerate unless stabilized by some non-soul-magic method. Wild magic introduces a magic symbiote to encourage the degenerating flesh to rapidly regrow. This can be supplemented by staying close to wild witches, so this type of zombie usually ends up serving as a witch's familiar. Bloodline magic and tech magic both tend to use enchanted objects to do the same thing – or to simply stall the degenerative process itself. Bloodline magic can also create zombies by providing regular blood infusions, usually resulting in a zombie/familiar bond as so a specific witch can act as a specific zombie's donor, but this is such a costly and tedious practice that it's not widely popular. Using enchanted items to create zombies is controversial in some worlds as well, given the history of bloodline witches and – more commonly – tech mages who have magically revived corpses without waiting for spirits to inhabit them and created non-sentient undead. Some find this to be a clever way of recycling the bodies of the dead once their souls no longer have use for them, others see it as a cheap replacement for a fully-mechanical assistant or a living familiar, and still others think it's a creepy violation of the honor of the dead.

I found the word crisp in a short song I idly wrote years ago, for a Minecraft town called Autumn Arbor that my older brother was developing in a private server:

Though the winds may travel freely

From one adventure to the next,

Crisp winds of Autumn Arbor truly

Soothe my weary heart the best;

For on this gentle Autumn breeze

Are carried all the things that please

Those who've made this town into our own.

Reasons we call Autumn Arbor home:

The scent of fresh-baked pumpkin pie,

Calls of songbirds in the sky,

That smoke of hearth and smithy forge

Residents and artisans adore.

I feel that pull of Autumn air,

Returning from my journeys far away.

Savoring our Arbor fare,

I feel my heart has found a place to stay.

For on this gentle Autumn breeze

Are carried all the things that please

Those who've made this town into our own.

These reasons we call Autumn Arbor home!

I found fall in my Given fic "Present Tense":

"What are you talking about? I told you before, didn't I? You've already changed from when I first met you. Doesn't mean I suddenly don't know you anymore. If anything, I..." Ritsuka blushes, the color so pink and his teeth gritted so tight in embarrassment that it makes Mafuyu think of strawberry ice cream if you put lemon juice on top -- sweet and bright and bitter all at once -- and that image just reaffirms that he thinks Uenoyama Ritsuka is absolutely adorable, "I'll just fall in love with you even more. Like I've been doing this whole time. I don't just love the you who I taught to play guitar, y'know. I love Mafuyu. Whoever that becomes."

I found sun in my short story WIP "Kiyo":

I was so stuck for so long, and it's not like she suddenly cured me of that -- she didn't dig me out of any holes. She didn't even throw a rope down for me, not really. What Kiyo did was bring enough life back into my half-dead apartment to show me that it's still warm out in the world. If I do find a rope or some way to make handholds and I try to climb up myself, the sun will be waiting. As skeptical as I'd been, picking up a plant practically on a whim while telling myself it would be pointless to expect anything, I've depended on her a lot. Having someone else breathing and growing and living in the same space as me has been something I've needed for a long time and I hadn't even noticed. I don't want to lose this hope.

I found apple in a Pokémon fic based on a Pokémon Black Nuzlocke run I need to finish playing through at some point:

Some trainers do use the Box itself as a way to keep struggling Pokémon alive, but it can't prevent death entirely. It can save a Pokémon on the edge of life, but once they've fallen over that edge the Box is just a way to disperse their energy safely and respectfully. Neo apologizes to his lost Pokémon one last time, to gentle and determined Ginger, and closes the empty Box.

After some reassurance from his remaining Pokémon, Neo goes out to train and find more teammates again. He quickly meets a clumsy Pidove he names Apple due to its simple, innocent charm – like an apple pie. He decides to train intently, making sure that nobody on his team is in a vulnerable position like Ginger was again.

I found frost(bite) in my Danny Phantom fic "Lingering Scars", though it does count as cheating a little bit:

He does know why his left middle toe falls off whenever he gets too cold or loses control of his powers: because the tissue connecting it had been destroyed by hypothermia when he'd been training to control his core under Frostbite's supervision. It had been a harsh lesson at the time, and still sometimes reminds him how little he knows about being a half-ghost. About his own nature, and the limits of his abilities.

I didn't find quite as many words as I'd expected and I did have to cheat a little, but it was really interesting to see what words are most rare in my WIPs. This was a fun challenge!

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bastardsunlight · 1 year

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There is so much blood. The copper weight of it is almost physical in the air, the spattering of red outdone only by the hellfire burn of her eyes through the smoke.

Were appearances to be believed, she is in a rough way; her armor is clawed and scraped here and there and some lucky and colossal blow has cracked the grinning bone-mask still guarding her face. She has pushed back the goggles; one lens is compromised and she must be able to see clearly to continue this vicious dance with what remains of Tricell's finest.

She is a demon of war, wreathed in gunsmoke and smelling of hot lead and burnt carbon, her neutron-star density immovable even as the forces which dare to oppose Revenant set upon her. Man or BOW, it does not matter -- all are hurled aside, off the catwalk along which she inexorably advances toward her objective, to the testing floor twenty feet below where her brothers and sisters will finish them. Somewhere, down in the chaos, the steady thundering song of Sixteen's modified rifle tells her the BOWs are still coming. Coming and falling.

The Hyena forces the heavy doors of the control room open with brute strength. There is no hesitation, not even an inkling of consideration for self-preservation as its guards converge upon her, but it is for naught. She is blinding speed and impossible might and it is moments before the last man's viscera depart his body on white, diamond-hard claws honed razor-sharp for the occasion. Across the room, Leblanc's hand hovers over a dial -- one of many she has used to spring this or that subject from containment and slow Revenant's advance -- but Hawker pays her no mind. She has never been so full of hate as when, after thirteen years, she lays eyes upon a man who has far less of a right to be alive than she.

What words are there for this, for the meeting of such bitter enemies? What has Albert Wesker and his ilk not taken from Sarah Hawker, that she should grant him even the slightest pause? What cutting remark or gloating taunt is there that cannot wait until his dying gasps beneath her claws? None -- which is precisely how many moments she delays before she is across that room in a blink, and in her fury, it is as if Uroboros might, this time, be loosed from Apex's restraint and breach her own imitation of humanity, because along with the hate-glow in her eyes there is something like hunger, and perhaps in that moment only, the two understand each other perfectly:

I WILL SHOW YOU GODHOOD.

He can see it in her eyes the moment she enters the control room—that fire she always had, but burning blue-white with unadulterated hatred and righteous fury. He had been seated, as if enjoying a show through the floor-to ceiling, reinforced plate glass window which looked out over the testing floor where his forces—and some of hers—are being fed into a meat grinder of their own making. His chair has swiveled away from that show to this one and as she rushes him, he moves in the blink of an eye to meet her. There is no grimace of rage on his face, but a wide, elated smile.

“I was wondering when you would attempt your apotheosis, Twenty-one!”

Down below, the hammer blow of a pair of Ivan-class Tyrants has fallen hard upon Revenant. They all knew what they were signing up for, and they accept it now, but the pair of agents in charge of the two halves of the squad Hyena has brought with them are not willing to sacrifice anyone without just cause.

Sandman’s team has the left side and includes Sixteen. On the right side of the testing floor—the “Killing Floor”, Sixteen has informed them it had sometimes been called—is Chris Redfield.

They coordinate their strikes as best they can, but the two Ivans are nigh-unstoppable. Once they remove their limiters, Chris isn’t sure how much longer he and his men can last. But he doesn’t have time to worry about that. Worry is a distraction. Right now, they’ve got business to attend. He feels his gaze stray upward, to the control room where he knows… he knows his leader is engaging the source of all their agony. Get ‘im, he whispers, for all of us… For Leon.

#is he dead or is he a thrall #P30 Leon anyone?#'course we know that shit don't work right on 'im and he just seems to integrate stuff but who knows?#response #thumbsupgunsout #management #vehxmence #something something fake science wesker managed to integrate P30 into Apex because Apex's adaptability helps the serum fight las plagas #or something.

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a-small-batch-of-dragons · 2 years

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Everyone is Here

Prompts: Hi, I wanted to mention that I absolutely loved Nobody Left Behind! You hurt my boy, but it's okay, because you fixed it. If you feel so inclined, I'm really curious what everyone else's reactions would be to realizing they forgot Remus, but absolutely no pressure! I love what's there already it's super good! - anon

Idk if your prompts are open, but can you please write some soul crushing remus angst?

Thank you!!!! - anon

Prompt (If youre taking them): When Thomas was a kid he overheard someone making fun of someone for haveing a comfort item (Blanket, stuffed animal) and kinda internalized that having a comfort item was stupid. A few days later Logan has a presentation proving that having a comfort item is NOT stupid, but 1 side misses the meeting. Fast forward to present day, the side that missed the meeting has a comfort item but hides it due to fear of being made fun of. Havea great day!!! - anon

I come with a sanders sides request, if you're willing to accept it

remus with abandonment issues, scared of being left alone and forgotten after janus gets accepted but jan and logan prove him otherwise because they love him so much, roman being a good brother, virgil being remus' chaotic best friend who misses him a bunch and patton learning that the dark side of creativity isn't necessarily a bad thing

. . . did this make sense? idk, it's like 1 am here, do with that what you will - anon

My new favorite song is “I Deserve To Bleed” by Sushi Soucy and I keep thinking about Remus when I hear it, any chance you could write something inspired by that? Doesn’t have to be a songfic. Ofc no pressure if you don’t want to tho - anon

Read on Ao3 Part 1

Warnings: Remus still has abandonment issues

Pairings: listen either this is romantic DLAMPR or found family y’all can choose

Word Count: 3154

It’s movie night.

Roman said Remus could come.

He invited him specifically too; told him he’d drag him upstairs if he didn’t know better by now—but in that sweet way that Roman does where it means Remus doesn’t really have to come if he doesn’t want to and it makes Remus want to bash him over the head with a mallet—and Remus, well, he’s excited.

He hasn’t been upstairs for a proper movie night in, well, forever, and he’s been bouncing off the walls all day to the point where even the gulper eel at the bottom of his lake thought he was being excessive. Which is saying something; she swallows things bigger than a school bus on a daily basis. So he takes his viscera chunks and chucks them at the wall until they splatter all over him.

“Movie night,” he chants gleefully, grabbing more balls to stim with, “movie night, movie night, movie night!”

Ollie burbles in support, waving his arms back and forth—“Octopus have arms, not tentacles, Remus, we’ve been over this!”—as he swims up and down the length of his tank. Remus smiles and bounces on the balls of his feet and lets his gaze roam about the room.

It falls on his bed, where his family sits.

He pauses, some of the manic energy dissipating as he looks at them.

“What?” He tilts his head. “Aren’t you happy?”

They sit, watching him. He comes a bit closer.

“This is what Roman said we could do, remember? We—we’re gonna have fun tonight?”

The lion’s big red eyes gaze at him as the blue frog’s eyes balloon from its head.

“No, he did! You were there, you remember hearing it, he said he’s gonna bring his brother.”

The yellow snake curls atop his pillow and eyes him.

“I’m the only one he calls his brother, you know that. Of course he was talking about me. He even looked at me when he said it.”

The purple spider sits anxiously on the edge of the sheets, one of its legs lost in the folds of fabric.

“It’s gonna be fine. He said that they would be happy to see me, we’re watching Jennifer’s Body tonight, I’m the horror guy!”

The dark blue cat’s tail hangs over the edge of the bed. Remus frowns.

“I know you guys are just worried, but it’s gonna be good. I promise it’s gonna be good, I’m gonna—“

Remus takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, closing his eyes.

“I’m gonna try and have fun tonight,” he whispers, “it’s going to be good. I’m going upstairs to watch a movie with my brother and the others and it’s going to be good.”

When he opens his eyes, the plushies stare back at him and he grins.

“Well, time to get ready!”

He takes a shower. Like, an actual shower, not one where he’s dunking himself in whatever liquid he’s experimenting with this week. Shampoo—for washing! Not drinking!—and conditioner and body wash and everything. He towels off and pulls on his onesie—the one with the extra arms that Roman helped him make after he said he should have one, not just be in the buff the whole time.

“But it’s my strong suit, Roman,” he’d whined, “why are you trying to make me less strong?”

Roman had just given him a look over the piece of black fabric. “You looked plenty strong when you were sitting there shivering your little nuts off.”

“They are not little.”

“We’re twins, Remus, identical twins. You can’t lie to me.”

“You’re no fun.”

“Freezing your balls off is no fun.”

“Fine, but we’re giving it tentacles.”

“I thought they were called arms?”

“Shut up!”

He pulls the onesie on and buttons up the front, smiling as he takes in the neon green buttons and fabric spots. The rest of the arms hang around his waist, coming from somewhere in the back, perfect for fiddling with when he needs something to do with his hands. He sticks a fidget cube in his pocket just in case and turns.

“Don’t wait up,” he calls to Ollie as he leaves.

He bounces up the stairs, flapping his hands a bit as he gets to the living room. It’s a struggle to keep the smile off his face. It’s going to be so much fun!

He gets to the top of the stairs.

Virgil and Patton are in the middle of a massive pile of pillows. Logan and Janus are seated on the couch, each with mugs in their laps. They appear to be talking about something. Roman isn’t there yet.

Remus steps into the living room.

All noise stops.

They turn to look at him.

Virgil’s expression closes off as Janus’s schools into one of cool neutrality. Logan sits up a little straighter. A flash of fear flickers across Patton’s face.

Remus freezes. The excitement bubbling in his chest explodes.

“Remus,” Logan says in an even voice, “can we help you?”

Uh…he’s—he’s here for movie night. He should say that. That—he’s wearing a onesie, he got it right, didn’t he? They’re all in onesies too—well, except for Janus, but he’s in pajamas. Yeah. Yeah, Roman said onesies. He’s in a onesie.

Was he supposed to just pop up behind the couch? But then he wouldn’t really be able to see. He—he would like to see the movie too.

Only when he blinks and he realizes he’s said nothing does he start.

“Oh, uh, movie night?”

Something flickers across Virgil’s face but he looks away. “Right.”

They don’t stop staring at him. Remus shifts from foot to foot. “Can I, uh, sit?”

“There are no assigned seats,” Logan says, turning away and staring at the TV even though nothing is on it yet.

…that means he can sit, right? He can—he can sit down? He takes a step forward, waiting to see if they’ll tell him where to go, but they don’t. Logan and Janus stare at the black TV. Patton leans his head against Virgil’s shoulder but he’s anything other than relaxed. Virgil just stares at the blanket.

Remus swallows the lump in his throat and takes a step closer.

Closer.

Close enough to sit on the very edge of the cushion pile.

A few of the cushions fall down.

Virgil glances at them, then at Remus, but doesn’t say anything.

Silence hangs in the room like a wet rag, smothering them. Remus doesn’t dare approach it, not when they’ve erected it like a barrier between themselves and him.

His fingers itch.

The fidget cube would make noise.

Virgil mutters something about needing to use the bathroom and he extricates himself from Patton, moving up the stairs and out of sight.

Patton mumbles something about food and vanishes into the kitchen.

Janus sighs and says he’s going to go to his room until the movie starts, asking Logan to tell him when it’s started.

Remus stares at the carpet. It’s dirty. Thomas should vacuum.

Behind him, Logan clears his throat.

“Why did you come tonight, Remus?”

Remus opens his mouth to say Roman invited him, he loves the movie they’re going to see, he wants to be here, he misses them, he misses them, but nothing comes out.

He feels his heart shatter a little at that.

Logan sighs when he doesn’t say anything. “I’m going to fill my water bottle.”

And he gets up and goes into the kitchen with Patton.

Remus can’t turn his head to watch him go. He just stares at the ground. Traitorous bits of liquid begin to gather around his eyes and they’re not tears, because tears only happen when you actually cry and Remus is not crying.

His chest twinges and his ears roar. He keeps staring at the carpet. They really need to clean this carpet. Especially if he’s the one saying that.

Maybe he should’ve brought a plushie instead of the fidget cube. Fidget cubes were good for fidgeting but not very good for squeezing. Remus wants something to squeeze right now. He can’t move his hands out of his lap and reach the tentacles—arms—so he should...that’s something he should’ve thought of.

But then the others really wouldn’t have liked that. Security items were stupid, Thomas learned that ages ago, he shouldn’t need one. No part of him should need one.

Five plushies, each painstakingly made out of scraps of fabric and furrowed brows, each colored after—

Remus clenches his hands. His nails bite into his palms. He looks around. He stands up.

He puts the pillows back into place. He makes sure everything is tucked in and secure. He takes the blanket he was sitting on and folds it back up, making sure it’s nice and comfy for the people who will be sitting in it. He bites his lip and forces the water back from his eyes.

He takes one last look around the living room and a small smile comes to his face.

They’ll…they’ll have a good movie night.

Then he walks back downstairs and strips his onesie off as he gets into his room.

His family watches him with no judgment as he crawls into bed, tail between his legs. He pulls them close and buries his face in their soft fabrics. He sniffles.

They catch his tears on the ends of their noses.

There is a difference, Remus learns tonight, between knowing and knowing. The difference splinters his heart and he promises he won’t invade any more of their family things.

The red lion nestles under his chin until the points of the crown dig into the soft part where his tongue should be.

———————

Roman sighs, finally getting out of his room and rushing downstairs. “Sorry, sorry, I know I’m late, we can start now!”

He stops abruptly when he sees the empty room.

“Hello? Did I get the time wrong?”

Patton and Logan poke their heads out from the kitchen.

“Oh, hey, kiddo,” Patton calls, “no, you got it right, everybody just dispersed for a second.”

“Oh, thank the Force, I thought I messed up my times.” Roman plops down onto the couch. “But no, all’s well that ends well.”

“Only you,” Logan says, fond in a way that you’d only realize if you’d heard it before, “would quote Star Wars and Shakespeare in the same sentence and have them both be perfectly acceptable.”

“Aw, I care about you too.” Roman nudges Logan’s shoulder as he sits down, Patton lounging on the pillow pile. “Where’re the others?”

“I’m here,” Janus says, striding out from the corner where Logan summoned him, “had to go not be around people for a little longer.”

“Virge’s in the bathroom,” Logan says, taking a drink, “and…I don’t know where Remus went.”

Roman perks up. “Remus? Remus came? He actually came?”

“Whoa, Princey,” Virgil says, emerging from the top of the stairs, “no need to sound like they just announced a new Disney movie.”

“Yeah, kiddo, Remus was…he showed up.”

Roman’s eyes narrow at Virgil’s dismissal and Patton’s tone of voice. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing!” When Roman glares at him, Virgil raises his hands. “I didn’t say anything!”

“That’s true,” Patton says quickly, “Virgil didn’t say anything to him. He just—well, he came, we were all a bit…surprised, and he left while I was in the kitchen getting a snack.”

Janus sighs, leaning against the couch on Roman’s other side. “Well, I for one am not surprised that he made an appearance.”

Roman turns to narrow his eyes at Janus. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, since he’s obviously expressed interest in coming to these before,” Janus drawls, raising an eyebrow like he’s surprised at Roman’s reaction, “it makes perfect sense that he’d want to come and of course we’d give him a warm welcome.”

Oh. Oh, these absolute—

“Did you seriously run him off?”

“Roman,” Patton scolds, “we didn’t do anything like that.”

“Yeah? Then why else would he just leave?”

“Maybe he was going to get something,” Virgil suggests, squeezing his stuffed Jack Skellington, “I know I almost forgot my comfort object and we are watching a horror movie.”

“Roman,” Logan says quietly, drawing his attention, “Remus came upstairs and I asked what he needed. He said he was here for the movie night and asked where to sit. I told him it didn’t matter and he sat on the edge of the pillow pile. Everyone else left to go do little things and I asked Remus why he chose this movie to join us for. He didn’t answer and I went to go refill my water bottle, when I came back, he was gone.”

Oh, is that all?

Roman’s ire, slowly building since he realized his brother had been here and was no longer present, reaches a boiling point.

“So what he experienced was a sudden suspicion at his presence,” he says in a low, dangerous voice, “no clear direction for what to do at something he’s never been at before, everyone else making convenient excuses to leave, and then you asked him why he decided to come?”

Logan’s mouth opens and closes a few times before he manages a weak: “oh.”

“Yes, oh,” Roman grumbles, standing up, “now if you’ll excuse me, I have a brother to collect.”

“Wait!”

“Let us come with!”

“You’re gonna need more help if you’re dragging him with you.”

“Surely you can’t expect us to just wait for you both, we do want to start this movie soon.”

Roman suppresses a grin as they fly down the stairs.

We’re coming, Re, don’t you worry.

———————

“Remus!”

Remus buries his head in his pillows. He doesn’t want Roman to come in.

“Remus, it’s us, please open the door.”

“C’mon out, kiddo, we need to start the movie! We can’t do that without you!”

“Guys, stop, you’re gonna break the door.”

“Pfft, if you think this is what trying to break a door down looks like, you and I have not hung out enough.”

“Hey, do this later.” Another knock on the door. “Re, please, come out, this is a big misunderstanding, we want you upstairs, come on, please!”

Remus will always and forever resent the day he told Roman he was weak to his little pouty ‘please’s.

He barely has time to say anything before he’s being tackled to the ground.

“Ah—Roro!”

“Re,” Roman mumbles into his ear, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you came up, I would’ve explained it better.”

“I’m sorry, Remus,” Logan says softly, crouching down and trying to catch his eye over Roman’s head, “I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t welcome.”

“Princey, let him up, he needs to breathe.”

“He can breathe just fine,” is Roman’s cranky mumble, which is true, but ribs do hurt sometimes.

He pats Roman’s shoulder. “Ro-Bro, I’m good, you can get up.”

Roman sits up, dragging Remus with him. “So you’ll come back upstairs?”

When Remus hesitates, Virgil jumps in. “I’m sorry, Remus, I didn’t—I didn’t realize what we sounded like.”

“Or looked like,” Patton adds, “come upstairs, you can sit with us, it’ll be fun!”

Remus wants to. Oh, he really wants to. But he also wants to wrap his arms around Roman and hug him so tight his face turns blue. He can’t stop the way his gaze twitches toward the bed and his hands clench.

“You can bring them if you want,” Roman murmurs, too quiet for the others to hear, “no one will mind.”

“But security items are bad,” Remus whispers back, trying to keep anyone from realizing what he’s talking about, only for Logan to overhear and make a soft noise.

“They’re not,” he says softly, a hand on Remus’s shoulder, “that—well, I suppose you missed that presentation.”

“I—I can have them?”

“Of course you can.”

“We’re watching a horror movie,” Patton points out, his own face half-buried in his blanket, “we all need comfort objects.”

Logan raises his water bottle in support and Janus toys with the pendant he’d had hidden under his shirt. Remus looks at Roman who wraps his arms around his waist and squeezes.

“I got you, Re, I’ll be good.”

Remus blinks. And blinks. And blinks.

“Oh, hey, hey,” Logan says in this soft voice he’s never heard before, “it’s alright, Remus.”

Then Janus is leaning down and cupping his face in his hand and cooing about how Remus can just come and enjoy the movie, sweetie, it’ll be fun, Roman can keep a hold of you the whole time.

Then Virgil and Patton are helping put their arms around everyone and sinking them back into the living room, landing atop the mess of pillows.

Then Roman is mumbling for someone to press ‘play’ and get the lights and whispering that it’s all good, Re, I got you, you just sit with me, okay?

The tears whisper as they fall onto Logan’s arm, Janus’s hand, Roman’s neck, Virgil’s hair, Patton’s shoulder.

Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind.

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#dragonbabbles #fic #sanders sides #roman sanders #remus sanders #sympathetic remus #janus sanders #deceit sanders #sympathetic deceit #virgil sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders

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contemplativepancakes · 3 years

Text

enough to drive a man mad

~7k geraskier fake dating, because that is what this fandom needs. read on ao3 here!

Jaskier smells anxious. He reeked of apprehension all of yesterday, not to mention the fact that he hasn’t been able to sit still or stop tapping his foot on the wooden floorboards this morning.

It’s grating on Geralt’s last nerve.

“What, Jaskier?” he finally growls.

Jaskier jumps, almost falling out of his chair from where he sits tapping his quill idly in his notebook.

“What?”

“What has you so worked up?”

Jaskier looks Geralt in the eyes before glancing away again. He clears his throat. “Nothing.”

Geralt grunts.

“Oh, don’t sound so unconvinced,” Jaskier complains.

Geralt rolls his eyes, turning his back to Jaskier to finish settling all of his things into his pack. He wraps the glass jars carefully and tucks them between Jaskier’s shirts, so they don’t break. “If nothing is wrong, you’re ready to go then, right?”

Jaskier grumbles, but he tucks his notebook away and gets to his feet.

They make it about three hours before Jaskier finally broaches the subject.

“So, Geralt,” he starts. “Dear friend of mine.”

Geralt doesn’t even bother to look back at him. Nothing good can come with this as a conversation starter.

“Have I ever told you about my parents?”

“No.”

Jaskier sighs. “I suppose not. Well, they’ve written to me. They want me to visit.”

Geralt thinks back to the letter an innkeeper had handed to Jaskier a few weeks ago, the one that made him eerily quiet the rest of the night and that he had clammed up about when Geralt questioned him. Jaskier was perky and practically completely back to normal the next morning, so Geralt had almost forgotten about it. Apparently, Jaskier had not done the same.

“Hmm.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Dreadfully inconvenient for you. What will you do without your loyal companion?”

Geralt frowns. He hadn’t even thought about that, just registered the smell of unhappiness coming off of Jaskier at the thought of his parents. Jaskier is rather helpful, though. He’s never afraid to step in the middle of pay negotiations, inevitably getting Geralt more coin, and he’s certain Jaskier has stopped them from getting kicked out of at least three towns after Geralt had stumbled back to the inn covered in viscera.

“Do you want to visit them?”

Jaskier trips over his feet, and Geralt dutifully looks away, pretending not to have noticed. “Not particularly. But I have to.”

Geralt won’t pretend to understand how a typical human family works, so he just accepts Jaskier’s words at face value. He’s never felt obliged to return to Kaer Morhen every winter; it’s something he looks forward to—to seeing his patchwork family. But Jaskier deliberately never speaks of his family, and gets twitchy every time anyone brings them up, so Geralt had accepted it as one of Jaskier’s many quirks and moved on.

“Hmm. Well, I can travel with you there, at least. I’m sure there will be contracts in the area somewhere.”

Jaskier flushes red. “I was...I was actually hoping you would come with me.”

“What? I’m sure that’s not what your parents had in mind when they wanted you to visit. They wouldn’t want to meet me .”

“Well, they said it’s unbecoming for someone of my age to be a bachelor. And, so I. I, um.” Jaskier scratches the back of his neck. “I told them I wasn’t. And I maybe sort of perhaps insinuated we were together.”

Geralt can feel a stress headache brewing.

Marilla looks down at the letter in shock.

Dear Mother,

I fear I am not quite as much of a bachelor as you suppose. Have you heard any of my songs? I have gone and fallen head first into my muse. Typical, foolish me, but I’ve never been happier. We’ll visit soon.

Julian

She doesn’t like to think about Julian’s songs, about how he couldn’t even keep the name she had given him. She thrusts the letter to her husband. “He’s coming to visit,” she says in disbelief. “When’s the last time we saw him?”

Ethbert considers this as he reads the letter. “At least five years.”

“And I can’t believe he hasn’t spoken of this ‘muse’ any sooner. I’m not sure I believe him.”

Ethbert gave Marilla a placating smile. “He’s probably just ashamed he hasn’t found himself a wife yet. We’ll find out when he comes, doubtless with an excuse about where his beloved is.”

Marilla sniffs. “You’re right.”

Nell looks down at the scene in the kitchen with wide eyes from her spot crouched down between the banisters at the top of the stairs. Her brother? With a wife? She could scarcely imagine it. She thinks back to the last time Julian was here, the way he had boasted to her about his conquests for hours, away from the prying ears of their parents.

Well, surely if he had someone, he’d have talked about her in his songs. She resolves to get her hands on some of his music. She’ll solve this mystery before Julian even gets here.

“The first thing to know is that they’re awful,” Jaskier says, ticking down one of his fingers as he walks along beside Roach, seemingly uncaring of the dust that’s drifting up from her hooves and onto his doublet. “Well, except for my sister. Be nice to my sister, please, Geralt.”

“I’m nice to everyone.”

Jaskier stifles a laugh. “Mm. Be extra nice to her, then.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You need to loosen up, too. They’re never going to think we’re together when you look all...constipated like that.”

Geralt huffs.

“You’re lucky opposites attract,” Jaskier says, before dragging a hand down his face. “This is never going to work, is it?”

Nell squints at the lyrics spread out before her. This doesn’t sound very romantic to her at all. Maybe a breakup song? She’ll destroy with her sweet kiss , Nell hums. She can’t help but notice there’s three different people the song is talking about, though. Odd. She shakes her head and moves onto the next song.

This one is just a ditty, so Nell turns the page to see a song about the witcher Jaskier travels with. And then another, and another. Is he all Julian writes about? She expected to see love songs, not this nonsense. She goes through more of his catalogue, briefly regretting spending her allowance on the songbook, but she supposes it supports her brother, after all.

She’ll just have to see what she can wheedle out of him while he’s here.

Finally, after flipping through no less than four more songs about the witcher, she lands on one titled “The Eternal Flame.”

Interesting.

Around your house, now white from frost

Sparkles ice on pond and marsh

Your longing eyes grieve what is lost

But naught can change this parting harsh

Spring will return, on the road the rain will fall

Hearts will be warmed by the heat of the sun

It must be thus, for fire still smolders in us all

An eternal fire, hope for each one

There, Nell can read some romance in. She rubs the ends of her hair together in thought. This one song certainly isn’t enough proof that Julian has actually found a wife. More like he’s still pining over some old flame. It doesn’t seem like he’s written very many good love songs at all.

Nell rolls her eyes, thinking back to all the raunchy songs in his catalogue. Typical.

There’s the squeak of the door opening downstairs, and Nell hastily slams the book shut and hides it under her mattress. She doesn’t want Julian seeing and getting a bigger head, after all.

She straightens her dress and runs down the steps, eager to see if Julian’s by himself, which is her guess. She comes to a skidding halt when she sees who is with him.

Oh.

She supposes he does write love songs, after all.

Geralt shifts uncomfortably from the scrutiny Jaskier’s family is giving him. He wraps an arm around Jaskier’s shoulder, hoping he doesn’t look as awkward as he feels. He looks over to Jaskier for help, and Jaskier shrugs off his arm and takes Geralt by the hand, leading him forward to meet them.

“Mother, Father, this is Geralt. Nell, this is a very large, scary witcher who will eat you up if you don’t behave.”

Geralt frowns. He thought Jaskier told him to be extra nice to his sister?

Nell laughs, a delightful, tinkling thing that reminds him of Jaskier’s. “He’s going to like me better than you by the time he leaves.”

Geralt looks back to Jaskier, only to see him sticking his tongue out at her. Right. Their relationship is definitely more antagonistic than Jaskier had prepared him for, so Geralt is glad he had Lambert to prepare him for these things.

He’s not sure his interactions with Lambert would be appropriate to apply to Jaskier’s sister, though, so Geralt will let Jaskier handle the ribbing.

“Nice to meet you,” Geralt finally says. “Jaskier’s told me a lot about you.”

Which, of course, is a lie, but Geralt knows that’s the polite thing to say.

“He’s never even mentioned me, has he?”

When Geralt waffles, Nell sniffs dramatically and casts Jaskier a betrayed look.

Jaskier shoots that look right back to Geralt, and Geralt is so impossibly out of his depth right now. “Hmm.”

“Now look what you’ve done, you’ve made him regret agreeing to meet you in the first place!” Jaskier cries.

“That’s quite enough, Julian,” Jaskier’s mother cuts in, and—Julian?

He shoots Jaskier a puzzled look. Obviously, there was a little more he should have told Geralt before they came here.

“Well, I’m afraid we are absolutely knackered; we’ve been riding all day. I’m going to head upstairs…”

Geralt shoots him a look.

“I mean, we are going to head out to the stables and make sure that Geralt’s very polite mare is taken care of.”

“We have someone—”

“No, no, Geralt is very picky about who cares for his horse.”

With that, Jaskier drags Geralt out of the house and to the barn. “I thought the goal was for them to like me?” Geralt asks.

Jaskier snorts. “Gods, no. The goal is to have them believe that we’re in a relationship, and they would never believe I would choose anyone they actually liked .”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier rolls his eyes. “Honestly, Geralt. It’ll be fine. Just stop acting like you’re terrified of me every time I touch you. Maybe we should practice.”

Jaskier gets a gleam in his eye as he darts a glance back to the house, and then his very warm mouth is on Geralt’s. Geralt’s surprised for a second before he relaxes and kisses Jaskier back. He’ll show Jaskier he’s not terrified of him. Geralt would scoff if his mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied.

Geralt brings one hand up to rest on Jaskier’s jaw and one to wind through his soft hair. Geralt strokes his thumb over Jaskier’s cheekbone, and Jaskier melts against him, wrapping his arms around Geralt’s waist and tugging him closer.

“What was that for?” Geralt says, trying to keep his breathing even after they pull away.

Jaskier peers around him and looks back up at the house. “Well, they were watching through the window. Figured we’d give them a show. Alas.”

Jaskier turns and heads to the stables. Geralt trails behind him, surreptitiously bringing a hand up to his medallion to make sure it’s not vibrating.

He is in way over his head.

Nell stares at them with wide eyes from her bedroom window. She had...not exactly doubted them when Julian showed up with his witcher in tow, but she hadn’t exactly believed them, either. Who could let Julian trail around after them for years and not get sick of him?

If she hadn’t witnessed them kissing with her own two eyes, she never would have believed it. She pulls the book out from under the mattress and looks at the songs again, this time with a more critical eye. She can’t believe she didn’t see it before. Especially “Her Sweet Kiss.” She’d never admit it to Julian, but she’s glad he won over whoever this her is. He looks happy, in a way that he never did while he was here.

Her mother calls for her, so Nell sighs and puts away the book. She runs down the stairs. “Yes?”

“I need help with supper.”

Nell sets the table, noting they’re using the fancy silverware, which is a surprise, because her mother has never taken a particular interest of what Julian thinks of her before this, so this is an interesting time to start. She’s sure their meal is going to be a very uncomfortable affair. Well, not for her, unless it starts to become painful to hold her laughter in.

She can’t wait.

She’s just finishing arranging the cutlery when her mother turns back to her. “Can you believe Julian? I knew witchers were for hire, but I didn’t think their services extended to...this.”

Nell barely holds back a snort.

Jaskier looks over to Geralt and suppresses a sigh. He had just planted a hand on Geralt’s thigh, and he’s sure his parents think that he just stabbed Geralt, from his reaction. He scoots his chair closer over to Geralt and drapes an arm over his shoulders. “Relax,” he whispers into Geralt’s ear.

Geralt does, marginally, but Jaskier can still see the doubt on his parent’s faces.

Jaskier’s father clears his throat. “So, Geralt, um. I suppose we know what you do, but, um. Um.”

“Honestly, haven’t you heard any of my songs? They are all the very true accounts of what Geralt gets up to,” Jaskier butts in.

Geralt takes a gulp of wine from his goblet to avoid commenting.

Jaskier notices, and elbows him in the ribs. “Geralt loves my songs, right?”

Jaskier’s parents are staring right at him, and it’s more than a little unnerving. “Right. They’re...very romantic.”

Jaskier’s grip around Geralt’s shoulders tightens. “Thank you, darling.”

Geralt is sure Vesemir once told him witchers can’t blush, but his face feels hot all of a sudden, and everyone is looking at him expectantly.

Geralt takes another drink.

Jaskier shakes his head. “Geralt’s been so nervous about meeting all of you. The poor dear is overwhelmed.”

Geralt shoots him a glare, before softening the look into something more akin to convincing Jaskier’s parents that they’re very happily together. Jaskier hastily bolts down the rest of his dinner before he drags Geralt up the stairs and to his room.

He shuts the door behind them, leaning against and tugging at his hair. “There’s no way they’re buying this,” he moans.

“I thought I was being rather convincing.”

The corner of Geralt’s lips twitch, so Jaskier hits him with a pillow. “You did not, you brute! Geralt if you’re doing this on purpose—”

“Hey, hey,” Geralt soothes. “I’m not. It’s just. Acting is not exactly on my list of talents.”

Jaskier crosses his arms and huffs. Geralt tugs him over to the bed and makes him sit down, plopping beside him. “What can I do?”

Jaskier throws his arm over his eyes and lays back, rather over dramatically, if you ask Geralt. “Nothi—Well, actually.”

Geralt does not like the sound of that. He was offering more to be nice than anything.

“We have to have sex.”

Geralt’s mouth goes dry. “What?”

Jaskier scoffs. “This is no time to act the blushing virgin, Geralt,” he says, before his hands are on Geralt’s clothes, tugging them and unbuttoning.

Geralt jerks back, but Jaskier is already done. “There. Nice and dishevelled.”

Geralt gapes at him for a moment, giving Jaskier the opportunity to muss his hair. Geralt growls.

“I know, I know. That took you hours to accomplish.”

Geralt catches his wrist. “Just, hold on a second. What are we doing?”

“We have to consummate my childhood bed, Geralt,” Jaskier says, completely seriously. “Or at least make my parents think we did.”

Jaskier starts moving his hips on the bed, making the headboard brush up against the wall with every gyration. “Mmm, fuck, Geralt, right there!” he cries.

“ Jaskier!” Geralt hisses, but Jaskier pays him no mind.

“You feel so good, darling!” He throws Geralt a wink, and Geralt tries not to combust.

Jaskier undoes three of the buttons of his doublet, revealing a thicket of chest hair. Geralt casts his eyes to the ceiling. Gods help him. “You know, you don’t have to be so stoic all the time, dear heart. You can let me hear you,” Jaskier says, pointedly prodding at Geralt.

Geralt shakes his head furiously. This is not what he agreed to.

Jaskier gives Geralt a put on sigh before clearing his throat quietly. “Oh, Jaskier,” he says in a deep voice.

“That doesn’t even sound like me,” Geralt whispers furiously.

Jaskier just arches an eyebrow, and Geralt knows that’s a challenge. He swings his leg over Jaskier, straddling him and trying to ignore both of their pounding hearts. It’s the heat of carrying out their plan, Geralt is sure, and not at all Jaskier’s proximity.

Geralt rocks the bed back and forth, making the headboard slam against the wall now.

Gearlt gives a half hearted moan, and Jaskier gives him a glare. “You’re making me sound like a terrible lover who’s left you horribly unfulfilled!” he hisses.

Geralt rolls his eyes and gives a more enthusiastic moan this time. Geralt begrudgingly keeps this up for a few more minutes before he grunts and clambers off of Jaskier. “A little quick to the finish line?” Jaskier asks, and Geralt shoots him a rude hand gesture.

Jaskier gasps in mock offense. “Why don’t you go get me a wash rag?” he suggests.

Geralt glares at him; this is taking the charade much too far, if you ask Geralt, but he follows Jaskier’s direction to the bathroom—where Jaskier’s mother is standing. Geralt suddenly becomes conscious of what a mess he must look like right now, thanks to Jaskier. “Hello again,” Marilla says.

Geralt grunts and nods to her, before remembering he should probably say something, anything. “Hi.”

Geralt grabs a washcloth and flees.

When he gets back to Jaskier, Jaskier is sitting on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest, scribbling away in his notebook, the inkwell balancing precariously on the mattress. He still has his buttons undone, and Geralt curses himself for even noticing.

“Did you run into anyone?” Jaskier asks.

Geralt’s disgruntled expression must be answer enough, because Jaskier rubs his hands together in delight. “Excellent.”

Marilla scurries back to her room, completely scandalized. She can’t believe they would...defile her home like this. It’s bad enough that Julian couldn’t choose anyone they suggested for himself, and now he brings home a witcher ? He’s trying to make her gray even faster.

She shuts the bedroom door behind her and looks to Ethbert. Her expression must linger on her face, because he asks her, “What?”

“They—” She makes a floppy hand gesture.

“Are you sure? What would a witcher want with Julian? There’s something not right about this.”

Marilla fans herself. “I know. They’re not even wed. It’s impropriety, is what it is.”

Ethbert squints doubtfully.

Geralt is not a morning person. When Jaskier first discovered this, he was puzzled. Geralt is the only person who dictates his schedule, so no one would yell at him if he chose to sleep until midday.

The more Jaskier thinks about it, though, the more it makes sense. Of course Geralt would wake up at the asscrack of dawn; he probably thinks of it as a punishment or some other such self loathing nonsense.

It’s certainly more of a punishment for Jaskier, because he’s the one that has to put up with Geralt’s bearish attitude every morning.

Geralt blinks awake and squints at the rising sun like it’s personally offended him, and Jaskier closes his eyes, not wanting to be caught staring.

“Morning,” Geralt grates out.

Jaskier’s lips twist into a wry smile. “Good morning.”

“I know you weren’t asleep,” Geralt says, sounding annoyed. “You could have woken me up.”

“Mm. And deal with a grumpy witcher first thing in the morning? I don’t think so.”

Geralt scoffs. “I’m not grumpy.”

“Right.”

Geralt swings his legs out of the bed and begins getting dressed. Jaskier stretches into the warmth Geralt left behind, tugging the blankets up over him.

What? He never said he was a morning person, either. “Where are you going?”

“Into town.”

“For what? Do you need things for potions? I’ll go with you.”

“No, no, I’m just going to see if there’s any contracts; you stay here.”

Jaskier gives a sly grin. “Does my family make you nervous?”

“ No .”

“Hmm,” Jaskier says.

“Shut up.”

“Well, don’t go gallivanting off without telling me where. You know I worry.”

Geralt rolls his eyes. “No need.”

Jaskier adopts a high pitched voice. “Why, thank you, Jaskier, my dearest friend. I’m so touched to know someone is looking out for me.”

“It’s pretty sad if you have to imagine someone to be your friend.”

Jaskier splutters as Geralt walks out of the room, a smile tugging at his lips.

Jaskier sighs as the door shuts behind him, wanting to bundle himself back in the blankets and Geralt’s scent, but he resists the urge and stumbles out of bed to pull on his clothes.

He makes it down the stairs and to the kitchen, picking up a bowl of eggs and whisking them, the need to be helpful overriding his desire to collapse in a chair and go back to sleep.

“Good morning, Julian,” his mother says stiffly. “Where’s your beau?”

Jaskier lets himself smile at the image of Geralt’s reaction to being heard of himself referred to as Jaskier’s beau .

“He’s out looking for a contract. He’ll be back for lunch, I’m sure.”

He gives his mother a bright grin. He thinks he should have made Geralt suck a hickey on his neck, but, to be honest, he’s not sure if he could have beared that. Geralt had already been so unbearably close to Jaskier when he straddled him. Jaskier’s not sure what had possessed Geralt to do that, all the while expecting Jaskier to keep his hands to himself.

He’s not sure Geralt’s looked in a mirror anytime in the past fifty years because of the whole monster-staring-back-at-him thing (complete horse shit, in Jaskier’s humble opinion, not that Geralt cares to listen to it), but Jaskier is forced to look at him every day, and he suffers.

He suffers every time he trails behind Geralt atop Roach, watching the subtle shift of his back muscles as he rides, and he’s devastated when Geralt deems Roach too tired to carry him and leads her in his tight leather pants. If Geralt hadn’t been wearing just such a thing when Jaskier met him, Jaskier would be convinced Geralt does it just to personally spite Jaskier.

To doom him to look but not touch for the rest of his life. As such, he had never expected Geralt to actually agree to this whole charade. But, he did, and now here they are. Here they are, with Jaskier knowing exactly what Geralt tastes like (less onion than one would expect), but still having to not just kiss the blank looks Geralt likes to give him right off his face.

It’s enough to drive a man mad.

Geralt looks at the pitiful notice board and sighs. He tugs down the one prospect to examine it more closely. Something is stealing a farmer’s sheep. There’s a few possibilities for what it could be, ranging from minor nuisances to things that he shouldn’t even mention to Jaskier because he’ll nag at Geralt until he lets him tag along, and those are always the kind of jobs that Jaskier should be nowhere near.

Geralt’s not sure how someone with the survival instinct of a fly larva is still alive, especially when he insists on following Geralt around, but Geralt’s not going to let Jaskier get hurt on his watch.

Geralt pockets the notice and goes to talk to the farmer who set the contract, but he has very little useful information to tell Geralt. All he offers is that the sheep have been disappearing without a trace. Geralt walks the edges of the property and a bit into the woods, doing a cursory inspection for the carcasses, but he doesn’t find them, either.

Hmm.

Geralt turns and heads back to Jaskier.

Geralt’s acting out of sorts when he returns from town, so Jaskier tugs him aside. “What’s wrong?”

Geralt just grunts and shakes his head.

Jaskier sighs. Typical. “Weren’t there any contracts?”

“There were, just—I don’t know what it is. But I’m sure it will be fine.”

Geralt even tries to give him a bracing smile, and even though it looks more like a grimace, Jaskier knows it’s not good if Geralt has stooped to trying to comfort him.

Jaskier hums at him and leads him to the table where his family are waiting on them for lunch. Jaskier keeps a hand on Geralt’s knee, because he’s allowed to, at the moment.

He delights in watching Geralt make awkward conversation with Nell, but it seems like they’re quickly warming up to each other. Jaskier’s mouth goes dry at the thought of them teaming up on him. They would truly be a menace.

Jaskier’s mood is quickly soured when they finish eating and Geralt insists on heading back out.

“Shouldn’t you wait until the morning? You know, be well rested?”

Geralt shrugs. “It’s been taking the animals at night. Better chance of finding it if I go now.”

“Geralt, we’re not exactly short on coin right now. Why even go?”

“If I don’t take care of this, who will?” Geralt huffs. “This farmer’s livelihood is at risk.”

Jaskier grins. “Geralt, you unbearable softie. You make me look callous.”

Jaskier darts a glance over to his family, who are pretending not to watch them. He takes that as license to tug Geralt in for a chaste kiss. Geralt stiffens against him, and Jaskier is just about ready to pull away, before Geralt starts kissing him back. He makes it decidedly less chaste, and Jaskier puts a hand on his chest. He lets himself savor it for one, two, three seconds before he takes a step back.

“Geralt, there are children present!” he says in a scandalized tone, grinning at Nell.

She glares, and he shoots her a wink.

Geralt clears his throat, and Jaskier jerks his attention back to him. “Right. Well, if I’m not going to talk you out of it, be safe.”

“I always am.”

Ethbert watches as Julian paces back and forth as he waits for the witcher to return. “Sit down,” he says gruffly.

Julian looks at the clock, then out the window, completely ignoring him. Ethbert snorts. Good to know nothing’s changed, then.

“Surely it can’t take this long to murder one measly little thing,” Julian mutters.

“He’s fine,” Ethbert says. “It’d take a lot to overpower a witcher, right?”

Jaskier sits down in a huff, and Ethbert starts to wonder if maybe their relationship is less of a farce than he thought. It’s certainly an odd one, and he’s still clueless as to what they could possibly have in common, but Julian is painting a convincing picture right now, especially as he tugs his cloak off the hook and settles it around his shoulders.

“Where are you going?”

“To find him!”

Ethbert jerks out of his seat with a splutter. “You can’t be serious. You think you’re going to be able to handle whatever a witcher couldn’t?”

Julian pauses. “Well, no. He’s probably lying in a ditch somewhere, slowly bleeding to death. Oh gods, what if he’s out there bleeding to death?”

Julian becomes even more frantic and rushes out the door and to the stables.

Ethbert resigns himself to a long night.

Jaskier clambers onto one of the smaller mares. He doesn’t have the patience to go through the whole process of putting all the tack on, so he clings to the horse’s neck and prays he doesn’t fall off. He digs into her with his knees, and away they go.

Jaskier has no idea which way Geralt went, but there’s some fairly fresh hoof tracks in the wet dirt of the road, so he follows them and hopes they’re Roach’s. Eventually, they go off the road, and Jaskier is left to squint at trampled grass. He wonders if Geralt would be proud of his tracking abilities, and he smiles thinking about the inevitable jab. Jaskier would respond with something about how Geralt was no better than a dog sniffing the air, and all would be well.

But first, he has to find him. Jaskier slows the horse to a walk as the trail becomes fainter, squinting as he looks at the ground. He comes to an outcrop of rocks with an opening just big enough to go inside, and he dismounts his horse cautiously. He certainly doesn’t want to deal with whatever calls this place its home.

Jaskier notices blood, and his heart kicks up a notch. It’s a rust red color, so it’s not very recent. Jaskier follows the splatters, and as he goes, they get brighter and brighter, until Jaskier’s heart threatens to burst out of his chest with the panicked tap dance it’s doing.

It certainly doesn’t help matters when he finds Roach wandering through the woods by herself. “Where’s Geralt?” he asks, and she snorts at him helpfully.

Jaskier casts a look at the blood glistening under the leaves underfoot and knows Geralt has to be close. Roach gives an agitated whinny before she turns and trots off, and Jaskier rushes after her.

In the end, Geralt’s not all that far away. Jaskier sees his hair before he sees anything else, and then he’s sprinting over to him with little thought for anything else. Jaskier drops to his knees beside Geralt. He looks paler than normal, even though Jaskier hadn’t known that was possible

There’s so much blood, and he’s not moving. Jaskier sucks in a breath. “Geralt? Geralt?” he asks, his voice getting louder and more panicked. “Geralt?”

Jaskier resists the urge to shake him and jostle whatever injuries he has, but there’s bile rising in his throat, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do—

His eyes latch on to the infinitesimal rise of Geralt’s chest, and the pressure on his own suddenly lifts. He shuts his eyes for a moment. Geralt isn’t dead, and he can work with that.

Jaskier takes a closer look at Geralt and finds there’s a chunk missing from his side. It’s still bleeding freely, and Jaskier tries to resist the urge to be sick. He works Geralt free of his armor with shaky hands, so he can take a closer look.

Geralt moans and starts to stir, and Jaskier plants his hands on Geralt’s chest. “Just stay still; you’re going to be fine.”

“Jask?” Geralt slurs.

“Yes, yes, it’s me, and you know I’m far too stubborn to let you die.”

“My pack—”

Jaskier could slap himself for not thinking of that. “Right. Um, your potions.”

He whistles for Roach, and she approaches skittishly. Jaskier glances back down at Geralt, and his eyes are slipping shut. Jaskier tightens his grip on Geralt’s shoulder. “Geralt! You have to stay awake. Do you hear me?”

Geralt murmurs something Jaskier doesn’t quite catch, but his eyes open wider. Geralt’s pupils are so dilated, there’s barely a ring of yellow left around the outsides. Jaskier clambers up to look through Roach’s saddlebags, and his heart clenches when Geralt’s hand comes up to clutch at him as he moves away. “I’m not going anywhere,” he soothes.

He rustles through the saddlebag. “Fuck, Geralt, do you really need so many tiny bottles?”

Geralt gives him a weak chuckle before he hisses in pain.

“Which one do you need?” Jaskier asks, hoping Geralt is coherent enough that he’s not about to poison himself.

Jaskier pulls the pouch out of the saddle bag to show him the options. Geralt points to a few, and Jaskier eyes them doubtfully. He uncorks them anyway, sitting back down and settling Geralt’s head into his lap, helping him get the elixirs down, even when Geralt tries to bat his hands away.

“Save your energy for something useful, would you?” Jaskier tuts.

Jaskier prods at the wound in Geralt’s side, jerking his hand back when Geralt winces. “I forgot just how delicate you were, my apologies.”

Geralt barely manages a huff at that, and Jaskier furrows his brows in worry. He pulls Geralt’s shirt away from the wound, biting his lip as it pulls skin away. The wound looks a sickly green underneath all the blood, and Jaskier gasps a little. This is much worse than he thought.

“Geralt, it’s—Geralt?”

Geralt’s eyes have slipped shut, and Jaskier scrabbles at him, trying to make him wake up again, but he stays stubbornly still. The only thing giving Jaskier even a tiny glimmer of peace is that his chest is still rising and falling.

Tears are threatening to burst to Jaskier’s eyes, but he pushes them down and takes a deep breath. Somehow, he manages to heave Geralt across Roach. Roach snorts, disgruntled, and Jaskier runs a hand over her flank, trying to soothe her.

He looks around, but he has no idea where the mare he rode out here went. Oops. Hopefully it will wander back to his parent’s estate, but if not, well, will they even miss it?

Jaskier gathers Roach’s reins in his hand and leads her back towards town at a steady trot.

When Geralt comes to, he’s sweltering. He seems to be in a tomb of blankets, and the fire is roaring in the corner of the room. The room? He’s not quite sure how he got here; he would have expected to be lying on the cold ground instead of a soft and yielding bed. There’s even less lumps than he’s accustomed to.

He groans when he tries to move, and there’s a rustling from beside him. Geralt looks over to see Jaskier jerking from his chair to fuss over him. Jaskier’s eyes are red when he finally looks up.

“You promised me you were going to be safe, you terror,” Jaskier sniffs.

Geralt doesn’t have his wits about him enough yet to be dealing with crying bards. “Hmm.”

“Geralt, you—What was it?”

“A cockatrice. It got me with its tail; spit a little poison at me just for fun.”

Jaskier shakes his head. “You wouldn’t know fun if it bit you in the ass.”

This makes Geralt look even grumpier, if possible. Jaskier’s glad; he much prefers that to the slack expression Geralt had had while he was sleeping, and Jaskier was terrified he wouldn’t wake up.

Jaskier looks back at him, and Geralt can’t help himself when he reaches out to swipe away Jaskier’s tears with his thumb. “I’m fine,” he murmurs.

Geralt tosses the covers off himself so he can see his wound. It’s wrapped rather nicely, and when Geralt pokes at it, it feels like there’s some kind of poultice under the bandages. He raises his eyebrows at Jaskier, waiting for an explanation.

“A healer.”

Geralt’s surprised Jaskier found someone who would treat him; most people aren’t too keen on helping witchers.

“I yelled at him until he helped you,” Jaskier admits.

Geralt huffs a laugh. “I’m sure he was terrified.”

Jaskier finally cracks a grin. “Hey, you’re not the only scary one around here.”

Jaskier’s eyes drop to his hand, the one that was just on his face, and fuck, what was Geralt even thinking, but Jaskier reaches out and puts his hand over Geralt’s.

“I was worried,” he says softly. And then, sharper, “Don’t you dare say hmm .”

“Hmm.”

Geralt laughs, and there’s a warmth that settles in his chest when Jaskier does the same.

“You’re incorrigible,” Jaskier finally says.

There’s a lengthy silence, and when Geralt looks up, Jaskier is staring back at him.

“You got the trophy, right?”

“Geralt, my ears must be deceiving me. You cannot possibly be worried about that right now.”

“How else am I going to get paid? Last time I checked, you liked to eat. It needs done before something else drags the carcass away.”

Jaskier sighs and huffs and does everything short of stomping his feet before he gathers his cloak from the back of his chair. He glares at Geralt before he slams the door shut behind him.

Geralt rubs a shaky hand down his face.

He’s an idiot.

Jaskier grumbles to himself as he makes his way back out into the chilly night. His advances are obviously unwelcome, if this is the kind of punishment Geralt is doling out to him. Well, that’s fine. Jaskier will just let him bleed out next time.

Okay, he won’t, but that doesn’t mean he won’t consider it for a few seconds.

Stupid emotionally repressed witchers. He can’t say he wasn’t hoping something would happen with Geralt while they were here, but he should have known better.

Jaskier trudges all the way back to near where he found Geralt, pointedly not looking at the blood stain on the grass. He’s fine , he reminds himself. Jaskier pokes around for a little bit until he remembers the cave he had seen earlier and some vague knowledge that cockatrices prefer them.

He’s half expecting another to show up as he plucks some feathers and cuts off the head, for good measure. He almost gags as his knife goes roughly through the bone and sinew, but he manages to keep his supper. He looks around for any last creatures that are just waiting to murder him, but none appear.

He sighs and makes the trek back.

When he arrives, Geralt is sitting at the table, talking to his family, and Jaskier wonders for a moment if he should be concerned about a doppler. Nell is eating up every word Geralt says, and Jaskier hopes she has pried some good stories out of him that Jaskier can repurpose as songs later.

For now, he swings the cockatrice head up onto the table, and silence falls. “There you go, love,” he says cheerfully.

Geralt is looking back at him with a peculiar expression, and he rises from his chair stiffly. Jaskier rushes over to him to help, and Geralt reluctantly drapes an arm over his shoulder. Geralt leads him to the bathroom, and Jaskier makes sure to say loudly enough for the rest of his family to hear, “Well, if you needed help holding it you only had to ask.”

Geralt huffs in exasperation and shuts the door behind him. Jaskier raises his eyebrows in question. “Did you actually need help, or…” Jaskier trails off, and then Geralt’s lips are on his, warm and hungry, and anymore of Jaskier’s thoughts fly out of his brain.

His arms automatically come up to wrap around Geralt’s waist, until he registers that this is Geralt , and he puts a hand on his chest. “Um. Do you need your head checked out, as well? I thought it was your side, but I can go get the healer again.”

“I’m fine,” Geralt growls.

Jaskier’s not convinced Geralt hasn’t sustained a lasting brain injury, but then Geralt is saying, “I should have done this a long time ago,” and kissing him again.

What is Jaskier to do but kiss him back? It’d be terribly impolite not to, after all. When Geralt finally pulls away, Jaskier asks breathlessly, “What was that for?”

Geralt shrugs, considering. “You looked kind of hot carrying that cockatrice head. The trachea hanging down really got me going.”

Jaskier stares at him in disbelief for a beat before they both dissolve into laughter.

“You’re an idiot,” Jaskier says. “You’re my idiot.”

Ethbert looks across the table, where what his son is doing can only be called terrorizing his witcher, and harrumphs to himself. This is not exactly who he pictured Julian ending up with, to say the least.

He wonders the etiquette for having a son in law older than he is. He supposes he’s going to have to find out.

#the witcher #geralt of rivia #jaskier #geraskier #fanfiction #contemplative writing

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groovesnjams · 2 years

Video

youtube

“K.M.B.” by Nova Twins

DV:

Gleefully profane and graphic, “K.M.B.” is the most fun I’ve had in 2022 so far. Nova Twins don’t just take the murder ballad over the top here, they luxuriate in the blood and viscera and cleanup of the body: if this winds up being “Goodbye Earl” for Gen Z, the kids will be all right. The chorus to “K.M.B.” hits like an anvil dropped from a great height, but the highlight might actually be the way the verses pirouette snottily around the crime scene, furious on one level and inescapably silly too ("I'm a sucker for a fucker" is an incredibly bad lyric in isolation and Nova Twins manage to sell it; this is god level work.) Maybe “Get my fucking crowbar” can be a guiding light in the year ahead; it’ll definitely keep things interesting.

MG:

“Gleefully profane and graphic,” I read before clicking play on “K.M.B.” I won’t say what I thought that acronym was, but I did not think it was “Kill My Boyfriend” and it was...kind of a relief when the song turned out equal parts angry and apathetic. Nova Twins take great pains to not sound desperate for the kill, peppering their lines with silly zingers like when they tell the 999 operator “Ain’t much going on between his eyes/ A little brain-dead so he can’t comply” about a guy who is dumb, but also, he was just maimed. And they don’t scream a line like “get my fucking crowbar,” despite a heavy metal production that practically begs them to unhinge their jaws and take aim. Nova Twins are stylized assassins -- not the blood-hungry psychos they claim to be on the chorus -- and it suits a world where women still prefer to murder as impersonally as possible. But sometimes I do still wish the death was wetter.

#nova twins #k.m.b.#kill my boyfriend

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thewhizzyhead · 3 years

Text

a non-filipino's guide to trese: ep 1

So some of my mutuals decided to check out Trese aka the Netflix adaptation of the Filipino horror comic book series that I keep rambling about here and then since well um most of my mutuals aren’t from the Philippines fshfs I decided to make a long-ass post that basically consists of me rambling about the cultural context present in Trese with fun little tidbits about Filipino folklore. I’m not an expert on Filipino mythology so um I just typed out the stuff that I know and the stuff that I looked up on Wikipedia so um take this with a grain of salt aaaaa I’ll save the extensive google scholar research ramble on folklore present in Trese for another day.

I’ll try to find the sites where I got some of the information from cause um yea I kinda had a bit of a hard time finding the other shit so um once again, take the stuff here with a grain of salt. Also, feel free to add more info if you guys got any!

SO ANYWAYS ENJOY ME RAMBLING ABOUT EPISODE 1 OF TRESE WOO

+ MRT and LRT (Manila Metro Rail Transit and Light Rail Transit) are train systems in NCR (the capital region) and yea them suddenly stopping and malfunctioning in the middle of the goddamn rail is a daily occurrence and we have been trying to deal with this bullshit for years but alas, corruption and negligence are sweet sweet drugs.

+ When the MRT broke down, you'd see a red bee in the flashing billboard right? Well that's Jollibee and that's probably the most well-known fast food restaurant chain here heck there are even branches of it abroad!

+ According to many youtube comments along with other social media posts that I am way too tired to link here, the opening theme is an Ifugao ethnic song called Balluha'd Bayyauhen but with modern accompaniments and I think the song is about a fruit called a balluha that the character in the song tries to it but cannot swallow. (someone please correct me if I’m wrong here fjkfs)

+ The first um monster that we see Alexandra interact with is the White Lady of Balete Drive. White Ladies or “Kaperosa” are a type of female ghosts typically dressed in ghostly white dresses or similar garments. According to legend, she died in a car accident while driving along Balete Drive (a two lane street formerly lined with Balete Trees which are said to be a home for spirits and mysterious creatures) in Quezon City while other accounts say she died waiting for the arrival of her lover; others also say that she was a teenage girl who was run over and killed by a taxi driver at night and then buried around a Balete tree while another variation of the tale claims that a student from the University of the Philippines was sexually assaulted and killed by a taxi driver nearby and so said ghost haunts the street in search of her murderer. There are many other variations but according to local rumor, the legend was fabricated by a reporter in 1953 in order to make an interesting story. What remains consistent in many variations is that apparently taxi drivers would be stopped by a beautiful lady asking for a ride and if one would look at the rear window, they would see that the white lady in question is bruised and drenched in blood.

+ There are a lot of mentions about "lakans" and stuff in reference to Alex and her father right? In precolonial times, the term is used to refer to the paramount ruler or the highest-ranking political authorities in Tagalog communities (so um NCR and some parts of Region 4). In Muslim communities, they are called sultans while communities with strong trade connecitons with Indonesia or Malaysia called them Rajah. Datu is umm the more generalized term though when it comes to discussing the leaders of the precolonial Filipinos.

+ So, Alex’s mom is a babaylan and back in the pre-colonial period, each barangay (which a native filipino term for a village or a district; said term is still used today to describe um divisions in municipalities like) had them and these are basically Philippine shamans and they specialized in communicating with the spirits of the dead. To my knowledge, the role of babaylan went to women and yea people assigned male at birth but then identified as female were also allowed to become babaylans and they would be treated with the same respect given to any woman back then (honestly I dunno much about lgbtq+ stuff back in the precolonial times but all I know is that precolonial Filipinos were much a lot more welcoming towards trans identities bUT THEN THE SPANIARDS CAME AND UM ERR RUINED THAT); also the writing Alexandra's mom did in that one scene with the dagger is in Baybayin - preHispanic Filipino script. I dunno what she wrote down though. .

+ Also I kinda find it funny that the people here esp those who were at the White Lady scene are um,,, not at all surprised? Like yea quite a number of filipinos have their own superstitions and beliefs and all that but um yea the people in Trese seem very used to the bullshit,,,which in retrospect, isn't at all inaccurate fsdfd I MEAN WE DEAL WITH UNSURMOUNTABLE AMOUNTS OF BS ON A DAILY BASIS SO I DON’T THINK DEAD GHOSTS WOULD EVEN FAZE MANY FSKJDS

+ The one that appears right before Alexandra talks with the duwende (the one in the manhole) is called Laman Lupa (which i guess translates to um "What is in the earth"? just um YEA THEY ARE DIRT CREATURES). normally this is an umbrella term for duwendes and nunos but in Trese they are servants of these aforementioned creatures.

+ Duwende (which came from the Spanish phrase "dueno de case" which means "owner of the house") or dwarves in Filipino folklore are known to be mischievous and magical environmental guardians. They are believed to reside in trees or under earth mounds (those that live in the latter are called nuno sa pundo or old man of the mount) which is why quite a lot of Filipinos say "tabi tabi po" or “excuse me” when wandering around a forest or earth mounds as a sign of respect and in the hopes the duwende won't torment them. If the person is friendly, the duwende can also be friendly in return and will bring that person good lucl; otherwise, those who destroy their homes by stepping on them will face their wrath in form of heartless curse and predictions of ominous and disastrous fates. A duwende's color also depends on their budhi or conscience: to my knowledge, white duwendes are kind, red ones give protection amulets, green ones are firnedly with children and the black ones give nothing but trouble.

+ Chocnut aka the snack Alex bribes the nuno with is a very yummy chocolate snack made of coconut milk, crushed peanuts and cocoa powder. They are umm about an inch in length and maybe half an inch in width so it's fairly small; that being said I WANT THE CHOCNUT THAT ALEXANDRA HAS CAUSE HOT DAMN THAT'S A BIG CHOCNUT

+ In Trese, the creatures in the MRT scene and in the warehouse Alexandra visits after she talks with the duwende are called "aswang". In Philippine folklore, it is an umbrella term for any kind of monster so um an aswang in Luzon would be very different from the aswang in Mindanao. According to what I saw on wikipedia, they can be classified in 5 categories: the vampire (self-explanatory um they drink blood), the viscera sucker (the manananggal, i'll get to that next time), the weredog (cats and pigs are also possible but um yea they target pregnant women), the witch (self-explanatory boom curses and stuff) and the ghoul (they gather near trees in cemeteries to feast on human corpses). Aswangs are often described to have a long, hollow tongue, sharp claws and sharp teeth, although they do also have human forms.

+ To my knowledge, Ibwa, the leader of the aswangs in the warehouse, is a creature from Tinguian or Itneg mythology (they, like the Ifugao, are an indigenous ethnic group in northwestern Luzon) though I could be wrong about this dksfsf Ibwa seems like an ethnic filipino term tho wah I can't remember where I once read that. But anyways, Ibwa often stalk sthe house of a dying person to steal its body. In order for the ibwa to NOT succeed in that, some people burn holes in the garments of the dead and put a sharp iron object on top of the grave since those are most powerful weapons against aswangs which is what Alexandra uses to subdue the Ibwa and kill all the other aswangs (the knife alex uses is named Sinag which means "ray of light".)

+ ALSO I AM SO SO GLAD THEY KEPT THE FILIPINO SWEARS IN THE ENGLISH DUB YES YES THIS IS A VERY GOOD JOB so lemme discuss the versatility of tangina-

+ Also umm Bossing is a nickname of Vic Sotto - one of the three pioneer hosts of Eat Bulaga! which is the longest running Philippine noontime variety show. Over time, most probably due to the show's popularity, the term "bossing" then became um slang for "boss" or "chief"

+ Translation of what Alex says when she's stirring the eye inside the cup: “In the eyes of others, secrets will reveal themselves.”

+ Sidenote: The English dub's pronunciation of many of the tagalog lines are um yea they r pretty good but they could use a bit of work but then again I'm really not that good in speaking in Tagalog so who am I to judge gkdkf sorry po guys conyo po ako-

+ Maria Makiling is arguably the most famous of all the diwatas (ancestral spirits, nature spirits, or deities) in Philippine Mythology; she is associated with Mount Makiling in Laguna as the guardian spirit of the mountain. Mount Makiling is said to resemble a profile of a woman and people associate the profile with Maria herself. She is also known as a goddess by the name of Dayang Masalanta and people would pray to her for safety and to stop storms and earthquakes. That's the goddess Alexandra's mother mentions right when she tells Alex to hide. (Translation to what she said there: Maria Makiling, goddess of the mountain, bless us.)

+ ALSO YEA THAT MAYOR IN THE MRT STATION IS UMMM RATHER REMINISCENT OF MAAAANY POLITICIANS AND PUBLIC SERVANTS HERE LIKE BELIEVE ME I CAN THINK OF SO MANY NAMES RN. THEY WOULD FLAUNT THEIR MACHISMO AND PROMISE THAT THEY THEMSELVES SHALL PUNISH THE PERPETRATORS HARSHLY BUT IN THE END THEY DONT MEAN SHIT AND ARE IN OFFICE TO SERVE ONLY THEMSELVES AND TO SHIT ON THE REST ESP THOSE OF THE POORER SECTORS AND *NOTHING IS DONE ABOUT IT*. WE LIVE IN HELL OKAY. also hmm how the police are represented here is umm,,,interesting,,, like i know there are sOME good police officers like the ones alexandra assists but like,,,our current sociopolitical climate + the many cases showcasing the corruption in the police force + tHE SHEER AMOUNT OF POLICE BRUTALITY HERE would ummm beg to differ. but um anyways-

+ Also Mang Inasal posters can be seen in the MRT station backdrops and um it’s a very famous restaurant chain here and they serve lots of barbecue and other filipino stuffs and i miss them a lot God their halo halo is very yummy

+ Santelmo - oki so this is the fire face thingy that Alexandra summons inside the ruined train. This is the shortened version of the term "Apoy ni Santa Elmo" or "St. Elmo's Fire" - this is a weather phenomenon wherein plasma is created from an electrical discharge from a rod like object in an atmospheric electric field. This phenomenon was used to warn of imminent lightning strikes or storms (there is a chapter in Noli Me Tangere where Pilosopo Tasyo talks about that bUT I'LL SAVE THE NOLI ME TANGERE RAMBLES FOR ANOTHER DAY). But according to Philippine folklore, santelmos - which are said to be souls of people lost as sea - are balls of fire that appear where accidents or big arguments happen. In Trese, santelmos (alex's santelmo being "The Great Spirit of the Binondo Fire") can be called to assist in supernatural investigations

+ Translation of what Alex says when she draws the circles to meet with the purple ghosts: "Souls, where are you off to? I'll be entering too, so please open the door."

+ Remember the scene at the train with all the purple ghosts and the woman in a veil? Yea the woman is an emissary of a goddess named Ibu and she is the Manobo (again, another indigenous ethnic group but this time they're from Mindanao; fun fact we have around 134 ethnic groups) goddess of deceased mortals and the queen of the underworld; she also serves as a psychopomp and guides the newly deceased souls to the other side (having an MRT be the ride to the underworld isn’t in the legends tho so fkkjsf)

+ The aswang in the top hat is called Xa Mul and according to the Isneg/Apayao people (yay another ethnic group but this time in northern Luzon - the Cordillera regions to be specific), they are an evil spirit known to swallow people whole.

+ Alex has two henchmen right? Yea they are named Crispin and Basillio and No I still don’t know who’s who and I'm really sorry about that fsfjs so anyways the names Crispin and Basillio are actually those of two brothers featured in the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo novels (Crispin is younger and Basilio is older) which are basically the national novels here cause um yea written by national hero Jose Rizal as sociopolitical commentary about the Spanish regime here. I don't know if I want to spoil this cause I kinda want other people to read the novel too fskfs BUT ALL IN ALL, ONE OF THEM DIES IN LIKE THE 10TH OR 11TH CHAPTER OF NOLI ME TANGERE (and the novel has 64 chapters btw) AND UM YEA-

+ OKI SO TO ADD MORE CONTEXT TO THE SQUATTER STUFFS MENTIONED IN TRESE (we r gonna use the tiny font here because holy shit this rant is long): So,in the Philippines, especially in the capital region, there are lots of slum areas called squatters. These are dense urban settlements made of compact makeshift housing units that aren't really officially recognized by the government. This is um very reflective of the poverty situation here and there are maaany factors that come into play here and if i were to go into depth about this topic, that rant would probably turn into an academic paper so for the sake of brevity, let's just say that Things Are Fucked Up Here. Oftentimes the poorer sectors are being ignored and left to their own devices despite tons of campaign promises to make things better and easier for them. The communities that live here are incredibly vulnerable to floods, fires, and the like and afaik no concrete solutions have been in effect to protect these people and their settlements. There have also been many times where squatter areas are dismantled or demolished despite protests of people living in those areas and yea I understand the need to make space and the need for renovation but the people should still be offered some sort of temporary settlement or financial compensation thingy that doESN'T fuck them over but alas, we have an anti-poor government. That being said, I really like Trese Ep 1's portrayal of governmental negligence, but I also have some thoughts, especially in regards to the mayor being arrested THAT FAST which um believe me, NEVER FUCKING HAPPENS BECAUSE MANY MAYORS AND A LOT OF POLITICIANS HAVE THE POLICE IN THEIR POCKETS SO UM ERR YEA JUSTICE IS RARELY A THING HERE BUT UM ANYWAYS YEA THE GOVERNMENT LIKES TO SHIT ON THE POOR WOO LET'S SAVE THE USE OF SOCIOLOGICAL LENS ON THIS MATTER FOR ANOTHER DAY

+ The news channel reporting the arrest of the mayor is ABC-ZNN WHICH IS AN OBVIOUS REFERENCE TO ABSCBN aka the top media conglomerate here (that has been fucked over by the government so many times to the point that they had to shut down operations last year which is all sorts of unfair so seeing them being referenced here kinda made me happy gksfks)

#HI PATROC I HAVE A GIFT #IT'S A VERY LONG AND CONVOLUTED GIFT #BUT IT'S A GIFT #I WISH YOU THE BEST OF LUCK IN TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THIS #this is literally 2813 words long AND IT TOOK ME 12 HOURS TO TYPE THIS OUT OH GOD #AND THIS IS JUST EP 1 #here's to hoping the following eps are gonna be much easier for me to like ramble about considering that i explained quite a lot here gfsfs #please do take this ramble with a grain of salt tho cause obviously I am not a mythology expert so um feel free to add more info!#i'd really love to see more info about trese so yay!#trese #trese netflix #alexandra trese #trese spoilers #ask to tag

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littlefreya · 4 years

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The Way To Hell - Final Chapter

Summary: Post Mi6, Alternate Canon. August escapes Hunt with his face intact and is currently the most dangerous man on earth. Unwilling to back down from his murderous agenda, he plots to continue where he stopped while a trained assassin is sent to bring him down.

Pairing: August Walker x OFC (Ingvild) 🖤

Word count: 5k (including epilogue)

Warnings: 18+, smut, boomer Walker, some fluff, sexual intercourse, cock-warming, mentions of torture, implied insanity, slight mentions of gore, violence, murder, mass-shooting and death. Please proceed with caution

A/N: The ending is here and I hope I did it justice, I hope I did right by you. I will reblog my kudos, but first I must thank @agniavateira for being my beta and a source of inspiration and @raspberrydreamclouds for the cover art.

*No permission is given for reposting my work, copying it, ideas or parts it and claiming it as your own*

Now allow me to die out of stress and anxiety.

Title: See You in Hell

Down by the valley, there is a serenity that exists only in fairy tales. Damp grass caresses her naked back, the pointy little tips ticking the base of her spine, leaving a fresh trail of dew. Pure mountain mist breathes life through blue hills caked with ice; white fog vales over the forest’s lush greenery and looms above the lake’s water like a lost-love phantom.

Lying with her eyes shut, she listens to the harmony of life surrounding her: the little fish bouncing in the river, the butterflies procreating mid-air and the hummingbird chirping with bliss. Yet the most beautiful sound is the low, melodic baritone humming and reverberating against her inner thighs.

”Angel, With those angel eyes Come and take this earth boy Up to paradise.”

”Boomer Walker…” she teases, “Is that a song from your time?”

Ascending a trail of kisses up her pelvis, he scoffs and shakes his head. “I’m starting to suspect that you have a kink for older men,” he answers with a throaty growl, shifting his weight further over her abdomen. The soft fur of his torso grazes between her thighs, and she sighs with pleasure.

”Do you want daddy to fuck you?”

”That’s gross!” she curls her nose and tries to hit his head playfully, but August snaps at her wrists with perfect instinct, pinning her hands against the wet meadow. His tongue flicks over the slant of her neck while he aligns his cock at the little piece of heaven between her legs.

Sensual yet rough, his massive girth splits her walls while his lips shower her with honeyed kisses. Ingvild throws her head back, lacing her fingers with his and coils herself beneath his large body.

“August...” she pants, feeling the air gradually diminishing from her lungs with every thrust, “I think I’m dying...”

Never halting or slowing his rhythm, August lowers his head to peer into her eyes. Fingers drenched with blood snap at her jaw.

“Stay with me, Ingvild.” He demands, letting out a husky groan, though his voice is but an echo.

A grey, thick mist wafts around the darkening forest, covering her with a bone-chilling breeze; his calling carries on the distance.

“Stay, princess...”

“Don’t leave...”

“Stay. We’ve only just begun.”

Ice bites its sharp fangs into the little creases between her cracked bones as another bucket filled with frosty water showers her trembling body. The stabbing pain lasts for a lingering moment, reminding her that she’s still very much alive.

It must be the 10th bucket, or maybe 12th? She lost count at some point. Day and night melt into one another in this place, and the hours don’t make much sense.

Muffled complaints vibrate in her ears. Vaguely her sight picks on two silhouettes arguing when the world abruptly flashes white, and her jaw soaks a terrible blow. Fully crashing onto the hard marble, she tries to recover, but a sudden kick rips through her abdomen.

“Your methods are too slow, Issac!” A grey-haired agent chides, standing over the girl with his foot still drawn, “Walker could be setting his bomb somewhere across the globe any minute now, and you’re taking your sweet time with her as if she’s an art project.”

The scrawny torturer frowns and turns his back at him. Walking toward the metal desk, he browses through different equipment. “My methods always work, the pretty little girl was taught to endure pain,” he grunts in exasperation and gestures at the bloodstained bandage around her hand, “she did this to herself.”

Sighing with a mixture of frustration and disgust, the CIA agent takes another swing at Ingvild’s torso, the pointy edge of his shoe colliding with the scar at her gut.

Bloodshot eyes rise with wrath, violent tides of aftershock course at her viscera. She peers at the men through the haze of pain when a third figure appears in the room, standing calmly whilst Issac and the agent argue among them.

Tall, broad, and charismatic, the handsome man strides toward her. His tailored steel-coloured suit envelops his statuesque body as if he is made of iron.

“You’re taking it so well, princess,” he praises in his deep, melodic baritone while crouching down to take a closer look. Ingvild lifts her head, slowly breaking into a weak grin. Onyx orbs replace the storm-touched eyes, but that chiselled face still belongs to her beautiful monster.

“Did you tell them anything about where I am headed?” he asks and gives her a pout, reaching his index finger and thumb to squeeze her bruised cheek affectionately.

Swallowing the aching dryness in her throat, she manages to shake her head meekly. “No… I said nothing,” her voice cracking as she whispers. Her chapped lips stretch into a pale, awkward grin.

Tiny lines form at the corner of his void-like eyes as he smiles back, radiating with dangerous delight.

“That’s my good girl.”

The grey-haired agent throws a glance over his shoulder, scrutinising Ingvild while he stands next to Issac, who is twirling a scalpel back and forth between his boney fingers.

“Who is she talking to?”

“Not very sane this one,” Issac explains as he examines the silver blade against the light, “multiple mental disorders, dissociative personality, psychotic.”

Pushing the agent aside with his free hand, Issac steps forward. He leers at Ingvild, who stares at nothing for a long second before averting her eyes back at them.

“We just need to dig a little deeper and the little bird will sing,” he exclaims and moves closer before dropping to his knees. One of his icy hands lands on her shoulder, forcing her flat on her back. Shuddering at his frozen touch, she closes her eyes; in the bleak nothingness, she recalls the night in the lake where August let her die.

“Pretty little Ingvild, have you heard of vivisection?” Her torturer asks as he lines his twig-like finger over the spine of the scalpel. Sensing his digits sneaking beneath the hem of her shirt, she shoots her eyes open yet remains still and intrepid.

The tiny black marbles beneath Issac’s brows glint with twisted joy, appeased at the sight of the scar as he exposes her torso. Ingvild expects the pain of the blade when something tepid and unpleasantly wet slithers across her gut like a little pink slug.

“Umm… Issac…?” The agent interrupts, furrowing his brow with confusion and disgust as he stares at his colleague licking the girl’s torso.

“What?!” Issac snaps at him, his eyes narrowing with spite, “you wanted me to go harder on her!”

“Yes, but…”

“But shut up and let me do my job!” He yells and returns his glare to Ingvild who blinks at the ceiling silently. Disrupted by his touch, she bites her tongue, fighting to hold back the acrid substance that threatens to emerge from her gut.

“You fight very hard to protect a man who doesn’t give a fuck about you, little bird,” his snake-like voice hisses as he leans down to half-whisper in her ear, “just tell me where he is and I won’t cut you open.”

Ingvild sucks the air in through gritted teeth and turns her head to look away from the obnoxious little man. She seeks for her beautiful monster, finding him leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. August’s empty glance wears a calm grin.

“He is in this room,” Ingvild jests faintly, her sardonic laughter stretching thin, her chest heaving, exhausting whatever strength is left in her muscles. August’s smirk widens with hers, large dimples are slicing into his cheeks.

Ticking his tongue, Issac allows the sharp edge of the scalpel cut a skin-deep line into her flesh. Ingvild stares at him stoically, not moving a muscle as shy drops of blood begin trickling down her navel.

“Are you sure about your response?” he asks, ghosting the scalpel over her abdomen while crooking an eyebrow.

Ingvild bites her lip, pretending to think about her answer for a few seconds. Lifting her head up, she inches her lips toward Issac’s ear. The scrawny man listens intently.

“August Walker is the devil, and the devil is everywhere.”

A peal of sinister chuckles spills from her lips as she throws her head back onto the ground, staring at Issac’s disapproving glare.

But her laughter soon dies.

Taut pressure pierces into her flesh, the blade penetrating deep, cutting through tissue and muscle as if it was soft cheese. Ingvild clenches her jaw, her mind flooded by charring white light that dismantles every thought while the blade continues to swerve.

For a brief moment, she finds herself in Bergen, hands covered with thick blood, holding the gushing wound in her stomach with shock. August stands above her, toying with his favourite knife and staring at the red taint.

“Time to fall, angel.”

Scattered musings run behind her eyes: Liam, the nuns at the orphanage, August, and even Erica. She’s reminded of every hit she was forced to take, every country she visited, all blending into a bizarre parade of death.

“C’mon girl, just tell us where he is!” She hears the other man shout as he steps closer with an urgent expression. “Just give us something, a country, a region, anything to make this stop, you can still do the right thing.”

The heavy stench of iron fills her nose; the warm, thick liquid trickles down her bare skin, spilling in a cross on the map of her torso. The pain now is undeniable, making her lips heavier as she makes an attempt to answer.

“I don’t…. know… any August.”

The CIA agent scoffs violently and balls his fists. “Deeper!” He orders Issac, who like a composer, trails the blade further through her gut, cutting into sinew and brittle tendons. Ingvild trembles, feeling her body grow weaker.

In her mind, she can hear caged screams.

“You will die for a man who doesn’t even care if you bleed!” The agent rasps, spit coming out of his mouth as he rages above her.

‘Stop!’

“He won’t even remember you once you die!”

‘Resist, don’t show pain. You’ve been through this before, you already died.’

“No one will.”

Swallowing every ounce of pain, she fights to remember her training, her past. Her mind scrambles for Fjellstrekninger forest, for the green pines and their stringy needles, for the scent of beech and the damp ground. She tries to imagine the silver-blue mountains of Bergen, that last time she hiked there before going to meet Liam at the gas station.

How strange that at the very same day she encountered the most wanted man on earth, not knowing she was destined to be his.

But none of these images appear before her.

‘You can’t escape this.’

Her screams shudder through the entire floor.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

August flicks his tongue over his bottom lip, glowering at the driver who gawks at him with disbelief and shakes his head. Pushing the phone against his chin, he stares forward at the rainy road, reciting in his mind the words of the MI6 and CIA apostles.

‘Erica captured a woman in her late 20s, having her tortured for information for a couple of days now. Can’t promise you she’s alive. No one goes in there.’

“I wasn’t asking,” August answers, throwing him an icy glare, “we’re taking the chopper to the Mi6 fortress in London. I don’t need to tell you what happens if you question my decisions.”

The driver tenses his fingers around the steering wheel and shakes his head once again. He means to say something, but the scowl on August’s face shuts him up right away.

“Who is she? What is she to you?”

August huffs and lowers his gaze, eyes dropping to the plutonium case and then forward through the windshield, watching the heavy rain clouds that stretch before the sky. As he blinks his eyes shut, his mind plays a vision of an inferno; cracked ground and scorched skies. He sits on a throne made of bones and drinks wine from a chalice made of human skull.

His angel sits on his knee, naked and pure, her iridescent wings tucked against her back. She stares at him with a smile full of admiration, her fingers brushing over his moustache.

‘Your angel of destruction.’

“She’s just an asset.”

‘Hell lives inside you August, it always has. Rotting you from the inside as it begs to be let out. And you will unleash it, won’t you? Your suffering must be shared.’

Vast shadows gather outside the double-pane windows of the main hall. The thick storm clouds paint the sky pitch black, swallowing the stars alive one by one. Light wanes just in time for the harbinger of chaos to march into the well-secured lobby of the sizable Mi6 fortress.

If fairytales were to be true, the devil would arrive riding a monstrous mare with hooves made of flames. But if anything, he is but a man in a tailored suit and a long trench-coat. The leather soles of his midnight-black shoes squeak as he marches on, leaving a trail of mud on the cream-coloured marble.

“Evening sir,” the security guard greets and gestures August to pass through the large weapon detector with nothing but a quick exchange of knowing looks.

The corners of August’s lips curl into a small smile beneath his moustache while he scrutinises the surroundings. Gold and pearly pillars spread across the vast hall, a false facade hiding a decaying world and the self-indulgent ghosts that harbour it. So lost in their own little lie, it takes them more than a few minutes to notice the hellhound who stepped into their haven.

It begins as a small rumble, like a seismic wave. The first tremor vibrates through the ground and the walls follow with a convulsing shudder. Gasps, chatter, and widened eyes stab at him with shock, yet they all seem to suffer from the same affliction.

Standing paralysed, they ogle at the most wanted man on earth as he combs his fingers through his hair and walks toward the elevators located at the end of a narrow, red corridor. Unapologetically confident and ever so relaxed and condescending, he ignores them.

A true king among peasants.

“Is that?...”

“What the fuck?!”

“How the fuck did he pass security???”

His confidence is nothing but theatrics, as his blue eyes carry toward the large elevators with a glossy sparkle breaking on his corneas. He tries so hard to envision her beautiful face yet all he sees is a pile of dry bones.

“Stop! Hands in the fucking air, Walker!”

‘Ah, took them long enough.’

Standing between the carpeted walls of the narrow corridor, only mere inches from the silver doors, August slowly spreads his long fingers and lifts his hands in the air. His keen ear catches at least three firearms as the guards cock their guns at his direction, panting with fright.

“Turn around so we can see you, piece of shit!!!” A presumingly young hero barks behind him.

“Someone call Director Sloane down here right now, she’s not going to believe it!!!”

The soft rumbling in the lobby grows into impending thunder. A flash of pale purple lightning floods the lit vicinity for a split second, echoing the small grin that spreads across August’s beaming face.

“Oh, I don’t think so, son,” he speaks serenely, almost like a tender fatherly coo. Not bothering to turn, he tilts his head up and inhales sharply.

“Go.”

Sharp gasps of shock and terror reverberate between the walls of the fortress as sudden darkness veils the main hall. The smell of their fear is almost as delightful as the strong smoky scent of gunpowder. Like shooting stars, the rapid gunfire pierces through the night. Cries, incoherent screams, and panicked gasps make for a beautiful concert, so much that he wishes he could stay, but he has a girl to rescue.

‘If she’s still alive…’

Swallowing the bitter bile, he enters an elevator and presses the button for the basement level. He watches the flickering beams of light as his men continue to execute the remaining agents before the doors shut in.

Drawing out his handgun and relieving the safety, he leans against the shuddering metal and stares at the neon red number while reminiscing on the day he met a pretty girl with an unpleasant smile.

“Too bad, I would have loved to see you again.”

“Well then, if our destinies were meant to be entwined, you will.”

The basement level seems completely abandoned and eerily silent. No wails nor cries carry on the chilly air.

His Ingvild is forbearing, she would never show her suffering. Would she?

Inching toward the interrogation cell, his hand runs across the naked concrete walls, sensing the coarse texture against the pads of his fingers. Opaline droplets of sweat bead his forehead and his lungs sink with the effort.

Muffled voices perk his ears the closer he gets: two men, no woman. No sounds of violence, no signs of her in there whatsoever.

‘Angel, are you being brave for me?’

Arriving at the door, he takes a deep breath and gingerly pushes the handle. The pungent scent of salt and iron pervades his nostrils as he steps a foot into the shower of blinding white light. The brightness hurts and for a moment it feels as everything before him fades.

Until his sight sharpens and he notices the two shadowy figures standing with their backs facing him. They look like vultures preying upon a corpse.

Her corpse.

‘No! Change this! Make this right!’

Wings of cherry-dark blood spread from her snow-pale body. Motionless, his girl lies with her top huddled around her chest to expose her bleeding gut.

‘You are too late…’

Pure, undistilled rage burns within August’s throat, so ferocious it stings in his eyes, making his entire body tremble. He lifts his hand and fires the gun hastily, shooting both men in the back of their heads before they even get the chance to turn and look at the man who executed them.

“Ingvild!” August pants, rushing and falling to his knees before her.

“Angel?” He presses one hand to her gut, trying to pressure her gushing wounds while his fingers etch around her nape to pull her closer to his face. Blood, still sticky and warm, tarnishes his clean outfit while he cradles her in his arms.

“Please don’t do this to me…” He whispers, shifting his hand to caress her bruised face, recalling the last time she was dead in his arms.

The world kept spinning on its axis when she died back at the lake. So why does it feel like right now it stopped in its place?

Pressing her to his chest, August shuts his eyes and shudders with fury. All emotions come to life, and every one of them hurt.

“You are not here…”

A deep quivering sigh of relief soars from his throat, mouth cracking into a smile at the sounds of her hoarse whisper and delicate moans. Blinking faintly, Ingvild half-opens her eyes and stares at him through heavy lids.

“I am here,” he whispers, brushing away the sticky strands of hair from her face and squeezes her cheek beneath his thumb, “I came to take you, we have to go.”

Shifting his arms, he tries to lift her up, but his petite woman is suddenly made of the heaviest rocks; her stiff muscles protest in his grip, making it impossible for him to manoeuvre her out of fear she will bleed to death.

“We were both at the garden,” she mumbles drowsily, licking her bloodied teeth before breaking into a maddened smile that quickly dies as she depletes her remaining strength. “I’m tired, I want to stay here and dream.”

“Ingvild, we don’t have time for this,” August warns with concern, noticing how her eyes roll back and her lashes flutter shut, “there’s a helicopter waiting for us on the roof. You have to get up, you have to survive this, you have to come with me! Please!”

Fat, oily tears roll down her temples, mingling with the blood and tangy sweat on her face. Opening her eyes again, she peers at her beautiful monster, recognising the familiar ocean and its eternal unrest.

Did he come here for her, or is it just a dream?

“Why?”

‘Tell her.’

Brow lifting and face softening, his hands clutch her tightly. He rocks her from side to side, holding her protectively. Ingvild senses the wrath that pours from his heart, the thundering beat throwing its fists against his ribcage as their bodies collide.

“You know why,” August suggests huskily, nearly begging, bargaining not to admit, not to say the words he was always so afraid of. But naively, her gaze pleas in return, the child-like innocence piercing a hole through his chest.

“Tell me,” she begs him.

‘She needs you to say it.’

“Because I need you.”

The words nearly crack on his tongue, his throat suddenly so dry it sears. He glances down at the fallen angel, sensing the most excruciating thirst, where the only way to stop it is by stealing several deep kisses from her lips.

“I need you by my side,” he murmurs above her lips between desperate, helpless kisses, hoping to breathe life into his weakened valkyrie, “stay with me, angel.”

An awkward stretch tugs at her cheeks, hurting as if someone slices them with a blade from side to side. For the first time in her life, true laughter crisps her face, followed by crystal-like tears that run down her sullen eyes.

“I love you, August.”

Every nerve in his body tingles with tendrils of light, reaching out deep within his gut and spreading throughout his tendons. For a moment, he feels divine, sanctified by the words of his angel, his woman, his by free will.

Offering her a brief smile, he captured her lips for one last stolen kiss. His thick moustache scratches at her tender flesh while a little hum plays on his tongue.

She tastes like blood and honey - the tarty flavour of victory.

“We have to go now, princess, I have to finish this.”

Gingerly rising to his feet, he hooks a hand below her knees and places the other against her bruised spine. Bloody footprints trail behind him as he carries her outside the white room, trying to make for their freedom.

Locked down in her office, Director Erica Sloane inhales and exhales by practice, brushing a hand through her sweat-slick hair while trying to call every backup unit. Bullets still rip through the air in every story; the sirens howl while red lights flicker from outside. She puts her hands around her ears, trying to shut the noises out, uncertain if the screams she is hearing are her people still being slaughtered, or her mind playing tricks.

Walker is many things: an idealist, a manipulative snake, a monster. But this is a side of him she never anticipated. There is no need to question his motives this time. She is smart enough to figure it out.

To risk so much, a man must feel deeply for a woman.

Her anxiety spikes as guilt seeps in when her phone suddenly rings.

“Director Sloane,” she pants against the receiver. Somehow, as she hears the deep, measured breath, she knows.

‘Walker.’

“Hello, Erica, did you miss me?”

Erica clenches her jaw and stares spitefully into nothing, “Hardly.”

She hears him scoff from the other line, her mind piecing together that horrible, pretentious grin of his. The bile climbs up her throat just from the vision.

“We don’t have much time, but I just wanted to thank you.” August pauses, sighing with the bliss of a madman at her ear, “You see, if not for Lacey, if not for you kicking me to the curb the way you did - I would have never become what I was meant to be. And you sent me an angel to light my way…”

“You’ve manipulated her.”

“No, you did,” August interrupts calmly, “I set her free. I will set them all free and unite them.”

The anger simmers in her gut to the point of nausea. She holds her breath, counts to ten and tries to gather her thoughts. ‘August wants a bargain,’ she thinks, but for a reason, it feels like he already won.

“Can you come and look out of the window for me, please?” He asks politely.

Turning her head at the window, she narrows her eyes and bites her plump lips with hesitation.

“If I had a sniper on you, you’d be dead 5 minutes ago,” he assures her.

She gets up from her office chair slowly, her fingers reaching to uncover the blinds. The storm weakened, yet heavy clouds still loom from above like a noxious mist. She seeks for August on the horizon, listening carefully to the sounds on the line. She realises they are coming from above. Her sharp eyes detect the helicopter: far, yet close enough to see his shit-eating grin and that hand that waves at her.

He has the girl with him. Who knew a monster could care.

“You know, you are the only woman in the CIA I haven’t fucked.” He provokes and then hangs up suddenly.

Erica watches as the helicopter takes off, her eyes widening with fear as the notion of her own demise resonates like a stinging slap.

The blast takes her along with the entire building within a split second.

Standing on the cliff by the edge of the valley, August stares down at the tranquil scar that swerves amidst lush, fertile mountains. The crystalline Indus river lies before his eyes, its sweet water so clear that the sky mirrors upon the brim.

It’s not every day when a simple man becomes a god.

The melancholic beauty of nature makes his fingers tighten around the detonator, thumb ghosting over the button as he allows himself a couple of last seconds to inhale the air of the old world.

Oh, how many will die for this god to receive his halo.

‘I wish you were here, my Ingvild…’ August muses with anguish, feeling an awkward jab at the spot where his heart should have been.

A sudden rumbling noise of a helicopter makes his gut weave.

‘That better not be Ethan fucking Hunt! I should have thrown him off the cliff in Norway!’

Alarmed yet stoic as ever, he draws his gun, aiming it at the aircraft inching its way to land on the other side of the flat terrain. The last thing he needs right now is someone meddling with his affairs, but it quickly becomes clear to him that if someone wanted a monster like him dead, they would have sniped him from the air before he could even see them coming.

‘Did you forget the woman is nothing but a valkyrie?’

“What are you doing here?” He calls out at Ingvild and frowns at the pilot, abruptly struck with anger. “I specifically asked to make sure she stays rested!”

The pilot shrugs while Ingvild makes her way toward August with mild effort. Dark circles rest beneath her eyes, yet she is still so very beautiful to him, especially when she frowns.

“She was very persuasive and horrendously stubborn,” the pilot retorts.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” August mutters to himself and watches the little battered woman making every attempt to remain stoic as she steps closer. A shadow of a malicious grin creeps on her frosty eyes.

Once upon a time, she promised him she will always find him. She has no intention of breaking that promise.

“Did you think I’ll let you do this without me, August Walker?” She sulks at him as she finally moves to stand in front of him. Every nerve in her body is inflamed with pain, yet the thought of not being here at the birth of the new world brings greater agony than imagined.

Something she compares to missing out on the birth of a child.

“We are in this together now, this is our cause, our better world. You don’t get to leave me behind.”

Her hand reaches for his wrist, thumb pressing to feel his quickening pulse. Wonder paints his eyes and his lips gape softly. He promised himself Lacey will never cross his thoughts again; yet he can’t help but think about that night in his study and the pain of betrayal.

‘How is she even real?’

Gently peeling her fingers off his wrist, he looks at the detonator. He then takes her hand in his, placing the device in her slender grasp.

“Forgive me, my darling. You’re right,” he apologises and turns her over to view the horizon. A shiver surges through her as she senses the weight in her palm when August moves to stand behind her, resting his chin on the top of her head.

“We do this together.”

Pesky little honeysuckles flutter within her chest as his arms wrap around her carefully. One of his hands holds hers, raising it up slightly to position the device in front of her chest.

“Do it angel, set them free.”

Taking a deep breath, Ingvild slides her fingertip over the red button. Scattered images of her life briefly flash through her mind, ending with the single moment where their gazes first met that day in Bergen.

Bright heavenly light cleanses the sky and loud thunder rips through the earth. Standing on the trembling ground, August and Ingvild stare into the distance while slowly turning to face each other. They hold their hands together, both gaping with awe as rich golden hues pour into the sky.

Enamoured, and lost within one another’s beauty, they share a long, lingering kiss.

Epilogue.

Sharp and heavy, the blade split the wood in half as if it was made out of soft butter. Resting the blunt side of the leaden axe over his shoulder, he pauses and observes the pile of firewood on the ground. His lips move in silence as he counts before crouching down to pick up another log and place it on the stump.

Strong shades of pink and orange spread between the clouds, kissed by the drowsy sun as it makes its way to slumber beneath the earth. It’s been 8 months since the coming of their new world. Even though there is still work to be done, August decided a hideout was necessary to let her mend her wings.

“Loki!”

Ingvild rushes into the green field with a wide, toothy smile. Feral rivers of chestnut-brown reach the small of her back, floating behind her as she runs around giggling.

‘That smile, like honey. So pure, so real.’

Playful barks answer her call, and a German Shepherd puppy appears from across the green hill, jumping over one of the logs ecstatically and wags its tail.

“Careful or I’ll cook him for dinner,” August mutters and points the axe at Loki’s direction. The pup tilts its head at him and barks with playful rage, growling and baring its needle-like teeth.

Ingvild pauses and gives August an icy stare before grabbing the large puppy and holding him to her chest, “You’re a shitty liar August Walker, you love him. Always sneaking him bacon when you think I'm not looking and snuggling him in your sleep.”

August shrugs, brushing away her comment before sticking the axe into the tree stump. “Get inside, time for dinner.” A small grin stretches on his lips as he sees her walking away, kissing the puppy on his wet little nose.

The scent of cedarwood burning at the mantle and brewed coffee welcomes her home as she enters the cabin, immediately filling her chest with mellowness. She allows Loki down on the ground before walking into their cosy bedroom where she removes her trousers and remains in an oversized sweater and black thigh-high stockings that August gifted her after they left Kashmir.

When she returns to the living room, August is sitting at the study with his laptop open. A small wrinkle lines his forehead while he runs two fingers over his moustache. A map and coordinates are visible on the screen, along with a messaging platform which she only assumes is a conversation with one of the apostles.

Loki lies guarding at his feet.

“Come here, princess,” August calls, reaching out his arm toward her. “I have something to show you.”

Sneaking toward him like a large feline, Ingvild takes his hand and lets him guide her to his lap. Her legs fall to each side of his thighs, and August rests his chin at the small crook of her neck where it always belonged.

“What are you looking for?” She asks, casually pulling the sleeve over her wrist to scratch at a peeling hammer tattoo gracing her skin.

“Don’t touch it, let it heal.” August answers and takes her hand in his, entwining their fingers together tightly. An illustration of an angel wing decorates the same spot on his arm. As she glances at the way the black ink is embedded into his flesh, she can’t help but smile and ever so slightly grind herself on the semi-rigid bulge beneath her ass.

August growls against her neck, grazing his stubbles over her supple skin before reaching a hand to unzip his tracking trousers and pull out his swelling manhood. After a soft scuffle of her panties, he lifts her hips and slides himself fully within her wet, angelic cove.

“August…” She sighs, fluttering her eyes shut for a split second, embracing both pain and pleasure. When August fills her, she is ethereal, as if a piece that was missing all her life has finally made it back home.

“You always look so beautiful with me inside you,” he murmurs against her neck, planting bristly kisses down her jawline before returning his glare forward. Ingvild only moves slightly above him, swaying slow and smooth on his thick, throbbing girth and squeezing him tight between her walls to relish in their bond.

“I have a present for you.” He opens a tab on his browser while his fingers toy with her clit with surprising tenderness.

“What is it?” She moans as he presses down on her sensitive pearl.

“I found Liam,” he explains, a twinge of pride and a spit of revenge hanging on his baritone. He growls slightly as her cunt clenches around him by his words. “He’s hiding out in Sao Paulo. I plan to bring you his head.”

Sucking on her bottom lip, she grinds a little harder, feeling August deep in her gut. The temptation to ride him hard and rough is too great, but this sweet slow torture always brings her to a higher ground of ecstasy when they finally fuck.

“Can it wait, my beautiful monster?” She asks sweetly, reaching her talons to clutch his thigh as he pushes further in and bottoms out inside her with a grunt. “I’d like to stay here for a while and be your angel for a little bit longer.”

August lifts his cerulean gaze back to Ingvild, the clear sky in his deep irises slightly darken as he observes the serene look on her face. His hand rises to cup her chin and turn her head to the side to meet his possessive lips. He cages her mouth with his, devouring her with the lust of a hungry man.

“You will always be mine and mine alone Ingvild,” he promises as he ends the kiss with a nibble on her chin. Ingvild licks his saliva off her mouth and stares back at him with the oxymoronic union of innocence and sinister urge before she leans back and continues to look at his plans.

‘Who is she to you?’

‘She is my queen, and I am the king of hell.’

_______________________________

Additional Notes: Song lyrics by Elvis Presely - Angel. Additional Inspiration by Nine Inchs Nails - We’re in this together.

Disclaimer: I own no rights to Mission Impossible’s franchise or August Walker.

#henry cavill #august walker #august walker x ofc #august walker fanfiction #henry cavill fanfiction #the way to hell #henrycavill

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