Whumptober2023 No. 3: “Like crying out in empty rooms; with no-one there except the moon.”
Journal | Solitary Confinement | “Make it stop.”
Fandom: The Wicked + The Divine
Whumptober on my ao3
tw: isolation/solitary confinement, mentions of canonical beheading (no death or mention of blood or gore), mild hints of body dysmorphia (not exactly, but Jon is disconnected from his body and is trying not to think about it and is feeling weird about it), canonical child abuse
1. You spend the first month thinking of ways to escape. Someone else would give up after the first week. But not you. You’re different - you’re not one who bends, you’re not one who breaks, you’re one who builds. You hold onto those words, even though they had been ones casually tossed out in an act of defiance against who you thought was the weirdest and least effective therapist you had ever met. You won’t break. You’re going to find a way out. If you can’t find one, you’ll build one.
2. When you sardonically ask your dad about the risk of you starving before his two years are up, he undoes the latches around your neck and for a second you stupidly think he’s going to free you. But he doesn’t. He shows you what he’s done to you and you’re glad you haven’t had anything to eat in a month or you would throw up. But your head isn’t connected to your stomach or anything, so you couldn’t do that anyway. You try not to think about it. You can’t.
3. Ananke doesn’t visit at all after that first day. Dad comes down whenever he has the chance, which isn’t often, between all the sex and drugs and whatever other bullshit he gets up to while living your life. You spend a lot of time alone with only your thoughts. In theory it’s no different to life before, but before was a choice. Now you’re trapped down with no one to talk to, and you never had many friends, but when you get out of here, you’re going to make some.
4. Seeing Dad is weird. You’re the only person who gets to see his face underneath the mask. You’re the only person who really knows him anymore. Maybe he likes that. Maybe he needs that, and that’s why he keeps coming back, taking off his mask just to chat with you. He never takes yours off, and you wonder if it makes it all easier for him. Whenever he puts the helmet on, you miss him, but you can pretend he’s someone else doing this to you. But he’s still Dad.
5. A beeping machine is the best you can do. It’s a good idea. It’s simple. It doesn’t look more or less important than anything else you’ve had to make for them, so it won’t draw their attention. That may be the downfall of your whole plan, but it’s something. It’s all you can think of. You’re scared. You’re trying. You have to keep trying. You can’t stop trying. It’s all over if you stop trying. If you give up, you’ve lost, and you can’t lose. You have to keep building.
6. You’re so tired. You don’t know how a head that doesn’t need a body to live can still get tired. You don’t know how any of this works, and you won’t stop to think about it. You don’t need to sleep, not really, but you do out of habit. That’s the benefit of not having a body, you guess, not having to get comfortable before being able to sleep. A head just needs a place to rest. You have that. You wish you could lay down. You’re so, so tired.
7. The cell is six feet long, six feet wide, and ten feet high. That’s your entire world. You used to be content just staying in your room half the day. You were never an outdoorsy kid. But you can’t even properly breathe the air in here, and you can’t move, and you can’t do anything about it. You keep trying. Every time they ask you to make something, you slip in something else that could lead someone to you. When you get out, you’re going to go to the park.
8. They could at least give you something to read. An ebook would be easy, they could just hook you up to a Kindle and you wouldn’t even need fingers to turn the pages. Or a DVD player, one of the portable ones from when you were a kid and needed entertainment in the car on the occasional day trips up north. You sometimes feel like your mind is melting from boredom, and it scares you more than staying here forever. If you don’t have your mind you don’t have anything.
9. You have to think about it. You finally stop to think about it. You consider your options. You’ve made robot armor, robot suits, you’ve built canons and mind-control machines, you’ve built things that should have been impossible outside of comic books and cartoons. You can build yourself a body when you get out of here. You start to draw up the plans in your head. They’ll be ready to go whenever you get out. It’ll be nice to build something with your hands again. When you have hands again, anyway.
10. You wonder how your mom is doing. You haven’t heard from her in years and you’d like to keep it that way. If she wanted you to miss her, she shouldn’t have left. But you still wonder. Does she know you’re missing? Does anyone? Dad pretended you had run away, he told you that, but he also told you he’d gone great lengths to "find you again". You wonder if he called your mom. You wonder if she’s worried about you. You don’t know if you want that or not.
11. You were never a violent kid. When the schoolyard bullies got you down, you fought back, but you didn’t like to. You weren’t any good at it, anyway. Now they have you building weapons. You don’t want to do it, but if someone has to do it, you’d rather it’s you, not them. You finally have a choice. You could make it right, and you do. You make cannons, lasers, a giant robot warrior, mind control machines, and you hate it as much as you’re proud of yourself for it.
12. The door cracks open. You hear voices. You recognize one of them from Ragnarok, what feels like a lifetime ago. You recognize the other from the recordings Dad has shown you. They’re the first voices besides your own and Dad’s you’ve heard in over a year, so you don’t care much when they fail to free you and they’re yelling at each other. When the Ragnarok girl undoes the latch on your neck, you feel her fingers graze your skin, and you could cry. Someone else is here with you.
my blog contains 18+ content that may be uncomfortable or triggering, including but not limited to: smoking, drugs/alcohol, sex (m and f), dark themes, violence, yandre behavior, noncon, and overall attraction towards men that would most likely put me on some sort of watch list and more !
nev // 20 // she/her // bisexual // writer (sometimes) // chronically online // activist (politics are important !!)
REQUESTS: CLOSED ( currently inactive :/ )
some of the fandoms i'll write for include: rory culkin // criminal minds // five nights at freddy's // call of duty // stranger things // the last of us // game of thrones // the 100 // you
i try incredibly hard to be inclusive to all body types, genders, and races. i try to be very descriptive with my tags so if i write anything too specific or uncomfortable, please let me know and i will fix it! i do unfortunately make all smut with f!reader in mind (i stick to what i know i’m sorry) but all fluff, angst, one-shots, etc. will never talk about gender! i want everyone and anyone to be able to read and enjoy my work. this is a safe space <3
please make sure to check out some of my fav fics and other lovely writers works which can be found under # nev’s recs !!
some of these works are subject to change, they are just quick ideas i think of and will more than likely change them as i go! please keep in mind i have a full time job and am currently taking night classes to get my emt certification, patience is greatly appreciated <3
☆ what if we had one? // spencer reid - you and spencer babysit henry for jj and will, something about seeing him with kids lights a fire in you * view similar blurb here! *
☆ through the window // charlie walker - you’re new in town and notice that you and your neighbor have a habit of watching each other through your bedroom windows * view small tease here! *
☆ only by the night // steve harrington - inspired by sex on fire by kings of leon,, giving steve head while he’s driving
☆ partners in crime // spencer reid - you and spencer have been working together for years. when his apartment flooded and the inspector finds mold growth, he needs a place to stay.
☁︎♡ stuck // charlie walker - after deciding to drop out of college to pursue a different career, you find comfort in a long term friend after feeling lost
☆ reading is fundamental // spencer reid - after spencer finds out that you were never read to, he decided that now was a great time to start. you on the other hand have different plans.. because what’s hotter than a man who reads?
Apart from being a piece of apocalyptic fiction and an investigation of a parallel world, The Watchmen is also a murder story and a detective story. Right from the first issue you have this obsessive, paranoid, psychotic detective working through a doomed America trying to find somebody who’s killed the Comedian.
Dave Gibbons & Alan Moore on Watchmen (1986) in Amazing Heroes #97, June 1986.