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factorialsotherfandoms · 4 months

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XCOM AU, set a bit before the whumptober exhaustion prompt (and maybe gets a chapter 2 covering either Mike's PoV post-rescue, or Pac's PoV of the rescue, but... well, I'll leave it 1/2 on ao3 until I have time to write it. It might be this evening, it might be in months, who knows). By this point the first of the eggs have been recovered, but Mike /does not know about them/. Because he was caught before then. As such, his info on what some things are is incorrect.

How the soul-bond works is not something I've explained and not something Pac and Mike quite understand, but tldr the further apart physically they are the harder it is to do anything with it, and more faint the 'passive' bond is. As in, what they just feel and get without putting effort in. Also the further they are apart the quicker doing shit like 'shielding each other from psychic powers' will tire them out. Pac absolutely ends up unconscious not long after Mike the first time around.

TW: torture, magical mind manipulation, serious head injuries

Pac is faint in Mike's brain, and for once it is a blessing. He hangs onto that fact, onto the fact he can tell his soulmate is safe - safe and not nearby - and bares his teeth at his enemy. It's been weeks now, if not months, pinned to the wall, tortured and starved and unable to move. The muscles in his arms are past strained, hands long number and still up there.

His glasses are shattered on the floor and, for some reason, it makes him even angrier than the rest.

One Cucurucho sits in the corner, a desk dragged into the cell in a mockery of professionalism. It has a tablet and stylus at the ready to take notes.

Mike refuses to give it anything of use.

And then the aliens. Two Sectoids are held on leashes by a Federation Guard, ready to be unleashed at any moment.

And then the Hunter, the Federation's pet sniper, something once human, twisted and corrupted and changed. Faster, sharper, with eyes that see further and hands too steady and psionics the likes of which not even the Order have seen before.

The Hunter, the Assassin, the Warlock, the Federation's three perfect soldiers. Human DNA spliced with alien, then turned out to destroy the world.

He holds a pistol under Mike's chin, pressing up and into the soft flesh just there. Still Mike hisses and snarls and refuses to give in. His body is littered with scars and injuries from the torture, his nails broken or gone, his teeth bloody, his skin torn.

Still he does not give in.

"You will tell me," the Hunter demands. "Where are the eggs. We know your people stole them, boy..."

"I don't have a fucking clue what you're talking about," Mike snarls back, trying to push forward and only catching himself on the gun.

There's some few surviving chickens who live on Kristin's farm - Philza's mentioned them before, and sometimes they get a delivery for the canteen - but he slipped last week and mentioned that. Whatever eggs the Federation want, it's not them.

"Of course you do," the Hunter continues. "How could you not? Hasn't your little friend let something slip to you? We all know about him. We all know you two do the..." his tongue flicks across his lick, and for a horrifying moment Mike remembers the Cell of years ago "/research/."

How dare he, how fucking dare he bring Pac into this. Of course they know about him - about them - but how /dare/ he.

"Haven't done research in years," Mike just about manages to gather some spit, aiming it at the Hunter's eye. He misses, but does hit his deathly-blue tongue. "Neither's he. Tubbo and Aypierre took over R&D years ago. You know this. You tortured him, too."

Cucurucho's blank eyes are watching them now, the tablet placed down and hands folded atop the desk.

"Are you sure about that?" the Hunter's fingers move over the trigger.

"We're not so stupid as to let field agents know the details of R&D," Mike lies through his teeth. Like you could ever keep him and Pac from the labs. "Moron."

"Then I guess we have no use for you."

The Hunter's finger twitches. Mike fucking dares him to try.

He definitely went to pull the trigger, but then freezes.

"Wait."

The robotoic, familiar voice of Cucurucho says. The creature - fuck knows if its an alien, a robot, or some lab-grown abomination - slowly stands.

Slowly walks over.

Keeps its hands clasped before it.

"I will take over this investigation," Cucurucho says, completely bland.

The Hunter lowers the gun.

The Federation worker and both sectoids drop dead.

Cucurucho's eyes glow purple, and it reaches one set of claws to Mike's cheek.

He throws every secret he can from his mind, throws it all back at Pac, along their strained and distant bond. He hides the core of himself there, too, everything he should be or could be or wants, hiding in the security of his soulmate as a creature of the Federation tries to break into his skull.

Even so distant, even so far apart, Pac manages to throw a shield around them.

Keep the information safe.

Keep everything that Mike /is/ safe.

Keep Mike from dying once again.

He can feel Pac's questions now, now he's forced himself into their bond, and their terror merges into one. Mike's still linked to himself, can still feel his brain bleed information as Cucurucho rips through it, reading not just his mind but his very soul. Steals everything there - or rather copies it - from schematics of old weapons to the identities of the prominent Order members to Mike's memories from before the war.

Claws scrape along Pac's shield. The essence of Pac's being holds the essence of Mike's being closer, entwining them and the truly /dangerous/ information together for as long as he can, keeps the shield up as long as he can.

It's agony, agony, agony, to feel something tear through Mike's very soul. But he's also closer to Pac than he has been in - in months, he reads from Pac, closer than he's been in months - and he drinks the comfort he can from his soulmate.

Even like this, even expending so much energy to twine over continents, Mike still cannot feel Pac's words.

Mike tires the faster, torture and mind fuckery taking their toll, but even Pac is flagging before Cucurucho pulls away.

Mike is aware of all of himself at once, of course, starts instinctively placing memories back in their proper place while Pac tries to cling to him longer.

"Useless," Cucurucho deems him.

Relief he didn't let anything slip floods Mike, even as Pac grows in terror. The grip they have on each other is slipping, slipping, slipping..

Cucurucho returns to its desk.

The Hunter raises the pistol.

Mike readies himself to die, and Pac refuses to let him go.

It's not a gunshot that comes; the pistol slams into the side of Mike's head.

The force is too much; Mike's head cracks to the side, and he feels something break.

Everything goes black.

When the world comes back, there are hands on him - he doesn't get it, doesn't understand, but Pac is still distant - reaches to cling to him as soon as the black fades - so Mike doesn't care. He doesn't have the energy to reach along the bond for Pac, but he knows how to fight and fight and keeps on fighting.

His skin is torn and he tears skin in turn and he doesn't know what is happening, but the hands are not human hands and the claws are distinctly monstrous claws so he fights and he fights and he keeps on fighting.

He sees but does not understand, touches but does not feel, listens but cannot hear, so he keeps on fighting.

A rifle butt cracks across the back of his skull.

This time he can hear Pac's scream as light turns black once more.

#qsmp fanfic #qsmp mike #qsmp pac #qsmp cucurucho #qsmp tazercraft #qsmp au #qsmp x xcom #hybrids and similar count as human for internal monologue and legal purposes so long as they are naturally occurring and native to earth #the hunter assassin and warlock are actually proto-eggs #proofs of concept before they started making eggs for purposes of possession #they became too individual to overwrite and so are now the federation's genetically engineered supersoldiers #its not actually seconds between the two cracks to the head its days #mike is... really not in a good way by the time people find him

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hotforharrison · 2 months

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Hi! I want to hug you so bad!

(If anything, English is not my first language, but I hope it will be understandable, everything I write with the help of a translator).

Good for you for speaking up! You don't have to keep all the pain inside. It only hurts us more and also the feelings in our heads keep pressing on us even longer. I'll be honest! I have always been overweight myself. I'm not good with English weight meanings, but google says 200 pounds fits what I mean. And I weighed that in my teenage years because of family and school problems. I thought I could never change. I thought really horrible things. I really thought that death was the best way out. I might have weighed more, but at some point I stopped getting on the scale. I wish I could say that something universal helped me in the end, something that could help you quickly too! But it was more of a moment of acceptance. I realized that I was hurting myself. That all these thoughts were ruining me. I wanted to be happy and healthy! And you know what? You're realizing it, too, and that's a huge step forward. And the important thing is to remember that. There will be good days and there will be bad days. That's normal! But gradually things will change. It took me a couple of years to lose the weight, and it took me a few more years to figure out a little bit about myself and my problems, including my food problems. And maybe the help of a psychologist is what you need most right now.

It's also important for you to recover from injury and surgery. This will take even more time. But don't berate yourself and your body! It's a lot of stress for him and trust me! He's working very hard to recover. And you should be grateful to your body. One day things will go faster. You'll see! Just give yourself time. I know you want the best here and now, but when we've been eating and hurting ourselves for years at first without realizing it, and wanting to fix things quickly isn't going to work.

And about your husband. Honey, I'm probably not the best person to help you with that, and I'm sorry. I can imagine how hard it is, being together for so many years and in an open marriage, but still at some point to realize that you are not so important anymore. I'm really sorry, honey. I think you're realizing it yourself and you know what will happen in the end. Again, it's the realization and acceptance that counts. It's going to hurt, darling. But time heals everything. Your attachment to your husband now is more a fact of your habit and the bargaining constancy you're used to. And change is always stressful. But whatever happens in the end, everything will be all right. You're going to get through this! And you will achieve your goals. Step by step, everything will be fine. You can do it, I believe in you ❤️

Thank you so much!

Your words are completely understandable and clear! I wouldn't have guessed your first language wasn't English.

I don't keep them completely inside. I do talk to my bestie about all these things (I met her on Tumblr over 4 years ago, and she's the best -- @skymoonandstardust )

I also have a counselor who I talk to, including about my disordered eating and relationship with food, but I've had some trouble getting sessions with her over the past couple of months. She's always booked pretty far out, and the last few sessions have been canceled due to the counseling center scheduling an appointment wrong (seeing both the marriage counselor and my solo session on the same day, which no one mentioned most insurances won't allow), then a massive power outage, then severe weather, then she had a family emergency and had to reschedule her appointments a few more weeks out. I hopefully have another session on Monday, if nothing happens to cancel it.

I'm sorry you went through all that with your weight and mental health issues, but I'm so glad you were able to work through it and that things got better for you! Being happy and healthy is so important.

I lost a lot of weight (around 80 lbs) my first year of college when I was 19. I was very active, both walking everyday and hitting the gym at least 3-4 times a week. I didn't count calories, but I did eat sensibly. The only problem with that was that the weight loss was entirely for my first... partner, I guess I could call him. It was a really messed up situation. I moved to be with him, minus all the weight. He hadn't seen me in a year, and he didn't comment on my weight loss at all. That hurt a lot after I worked so hard.

I'm losing the weight for me this time -- a good portion of which is for my health.

I had to do a pre-op complete metabolic panel for my ankle surgery back in January. There's a range in fasting blood sugar levels that indicates prediabetes, and I was 1 into that threshold, out of I think 26 -- something like 101 when the range was 100-126. Diabetes runs in my family, and a genetic test I had done several years ago indicated I was much more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than the average person.

There is the dating component, too, but the weight loss isn't for my future boyfriend (hopefully) so he'll think I'm hot or whatever. It's so I can be comfortable in my own skin. I'm obviously not going to be ready for a relationship if I don't want to be naked in front of anyone else because of my own intense insecurities.

I've also amassed a box full of clothes in my goal clothing size that I bought on clearance that I'd very much like to wear. I used to wear men's fandom shirts, like Marvel, and men's athletic pants pretty much exclusively. I felt terrible about myself, and it reflected in my appearance. I learned over some time that I feel much better about myself when I dress in feminine clothes that make me feel pretty, which I do also have in my current size.

I know didn't gain all the weight overnight, and I'm not going to lose it overnight either as much as I'd like to. Patience is definitely difficult with as much as I want to meet my goals, but I know it is important. I'm not going to help future me at all if I rush things and don't allow my body to heal like it needs to. I'm going to begrudgingly listen to my doctor and physical therapist and not push things.

The prospect of divorce is particularly hard for me because my husband was my first boyfriend, first legitimate actual relationship where I wasn't a dirty little secret. He's been my only real relationship, and the only person I've ever loved romantically.

I had a "boyfriend" in 2016 when we hadn't been polyamorous for long, but I use the term "boyfriend" loosely. The relationship was very short lived and more wishful thinking on my part because of being new to polyamory and wanting to have a boyfriend in the general sense of having one. We weren't very compatible. He was just the first guy who showed interest in me, and I went with that.

I know salvaging my marriage is likely the same sort of wishful thinking as well, and I realize that more some times than others, but I'm not ready to completely give up yet. It hurts too much right now. Just thinking about it leaves me in tears.

I think it's part of why I've been writing one of my fics again -- to escape from the reality of my marriage and imagine being in love again, when my heart fluttered and was full of joy and there were shared smiles and laughter and inside jokes and nothing was forced, instead of this aching in my chest with what I desperately wish was a premature sense of loss and grief, and profound loneliness that doesn't go away even when we're together, and trying to somehow recapture what used to be there between us when I just don't know how to accomplish that, and the only thing that seems to be left now is denial and a stream of tears that never fully dries up.

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